Pilling poltergeist plucks the guitar.
Johnny, the cook at Pilling hostel for agricultural workers, is troubled by a poltergeist which disturbs his sleep and frightens room mates. Ex-Navy man, Johnny, runs a fine galley for the hearty eaters who work Pilling’s rich soil for Britain’s much needed food. He is not easily disturbed, but the constant though irregular attentions of this spirit visitor have convinced him that it is neither the pranks of village lads nor the humour of his mates.
Ruffling his greying hair and frowning in a puzzled way, Johnny invited me into his hut that just accommodates two beds and a few personal items. It stands a few paces from the churchyard, which, with its old church, dates back to 1717. It is the hut wall facing the sombre-looking array of tombstones that receives the unearthly-hour visits of a spirit that has no sympathy for an earthly being who sleeps.
As I peered out of a window towards this burial scene, the wind howled through leafless trees and heavy grey skies rushed over the landscape like the opening scenes of a movie thriller. I saw only the gravediggers preparing the resting place of an erstwhile inhabitant of this lonely village, but I visualised the same scene on a black night and could “hear” the whistling wind that heralds the approach of Johnny’s poltergeist.
The cook demonstrated the noise that often has sent him leaping from his bed in the cold, cheerless wind – and set his dog Bonzo howling like the hound of the Baskervilles. Tap, tap, tap, tap – four distinct knocks on the wooden wall at half-hourly intervals, starting at one o’clock in the morning – make the preliminary announcement of the spirit visitor, said Johnny. When I tried to explain the noises as the flapping of tree branches, Johnny took me outside and pointed to the well-kept garden. There were no trees or bushes within yards. On the sparse tree-lined border of the graveyard there is nothing that suggests that Nature delivers feathery blows on the wooden-walled hut.
“How about your mates? Is it a prank?” I asked. “No,” said Johnny, “I’ve been too quick out of bed some nights and have examined every inch outside to see if there was any contraption rigged up. I have been through the other huts and found all the lads asleep. These noises have been going on since I came in November. I think that’s too long for a joke. Besides, Bonzo is too sharp for any midnight prowler. He barks at all visitors and hears every noise.” At this point Bonzo, a spirited little terrier, demonstrated his alertness by snapping at me, and I felt sure that Johnny was confident of the prowess of his bodyguard.
I asked Johnny if anyone else had heard the poltergeist. “Yes,” he replied, “and they have been badly scared, too. One man, thinking I was scared, slept in here one night. Once was enough. He went back to his hut next morning. Another was a big fellow who owned a guitar which he left on a chair at the foot of his bed. Sometimes after midnight we heard the strings of the guitar being plucked, filling the room with an eerie tune. My mate dived under the bedclothes,” Johnny said with a wry laugh.
Johnny could offer no explanation of these mysterious knocks and musical renderings. But he though that the fact that the hut is close to the graves of many eighteenth century villagers whose escapades are numerous in Pilling’s long history was sufficient to assume many “spiritual” answers to the problem.
As I left the hostel, the wind still howled and rain beat down from a leaden sky. Johnny turned to smooth coverlets of his bed and wondered if his noisy intruder would again come knocking that night. Experts say poltergeists dislike being talked about and hate scoffers. Johnny, the cook, may have to do a lot of explaining one night when there comes another series of tap, tap, tap, tap!
Here is Johnny’s hut.
Fleetwood Chronicle, 6th February 1948.