Ghost that stops the beer flowing in Thanet pub, terrorises family.
Haunted pub landlord asks priest’s help.
By Margaret Solley.
It’s built like a church – the Thanet seaside pub where the beer suddenly stops flowing, a 5cwt. iron chandelier swings and rattles as if somebody was hanging from it and a lonely shadow without a body wanders through the bars. Since new publicans took over Henekey’s Inn at Ramsgate High-street in the autumn, the nerve-wracking activites of the pub’s ghost have maliciously increased. The eerie manifestations became so unbearable for manager Mr Bernard Lance, 49, and his wife Paula that they called in a priest. Italian Father Dominic Silva, 45, placed holy water in the pub’s living quarters, but is worried that this might have angered the spirit. “If there is anything malignant, my presence won’t have pleased it,” said Father Dominic, of St Benedict’s Parish, Ramsgate. “It might decide to do as much damage as possible before it’s thrown out.”
Mr Lance, a former detective sergeant with the Metropolitan Police and an ex-POW under the Japs in Burma, admitted: “I am not at all a religious man, but I find this very frightening.” When he accepted the transfer from the Peckham area in London, Mr Lance took with him his bar cellarman Terry Wade, a tough, down-to-earth 27-year-old Londoner, with whom he has worked for the past five years. “If somebody had told me about this, I’ve have thought he was some sort of nut case. But I’ve seen it – and I’m not the type who normally sees ghosts,” said Terry. He and his wife Pat (she serves with him behind the bar) were sitting in the main bar one evening after closing time with Mr and Mrs Lance. All four saw a shadow passing along the upper gallery through the hanging flags. “We grabbed our knives,” said Mr Lance, “and ran up there thinking it was a burglar, or maybe somebody who had got locked in. But nobody was there. We were all pretty shaken.” This was one of many disturbing incidents which the four people, all of whom sleep on the premises, no longer regard as a joke.
Tall, blonde Mrs Lance was a nurse and spent more than half of her 10 years in the profession working with the mentally ill. “I used to lay out bodies in the morgue when the other nurses were a bit afraid to, so I’m not, or wasn’t, afraid of the dead,” she said. She and her husband were completing the books one night ready for stocktaking the next morning when a shadow passed across the narrow opening between the manager’s office and the small bar. It passed over Mrs Lance. Her husband, thinking it was Mr Wade, looked up but saw nobody. “From then until about 4 p.m. the next day I had a terrible headache and nausea,” said Mrs Lance. “I’m not normally susceptible to anything like that, but this has frightened me. The ghost seems to have picked on me more than anybody else. While Father Dominic was here I felt we were safe – and I don’t mind telling youI actually sobbed with relief when he arrived. But when he left after blessing the house I knew “it” was still here.”
Her son Barry, a sensible 15-year-old, has been sleeping on the floor of his parents’ bedroom for several nights. He refuses to sleep in his own bedroom. Barry moved out after a terrifying incident one night while he was in bed: “As I lay there I heard a noise and looked up to see one of my model aeroplanes slowly turning round on the table.” “I cried,” he confessed. “I’m ashamed of that, but I was so frightened.”
The weird happenings don’t confine themselves to after-hours. Mr Wade has several times reported to his manager that, after eight or nine pints, the gas-pump operated beer has stopped flowing [sic]. “I’m the only one who handles the beer in the cellar,” he said. “I’ve gone down there to investigate and found the gas taps turned completely off only a short time after I’ve turned them on. It can’t be a mechanical fault or a practical joke or even a mistake by one of the staff.”
The cellar seems to be one of the ghost’s favourite haunts. Barman Joe Gannon swears he saw a man watching him down there one day, but when he made a search the place was deserted. On another occasion a whole barrel of beer, which had been laid ready for pumping, was moved about 2 ft. away from its resting place. “We had to resettle the barrel for another 36 hours because the sediment had been churned up,” said Mr Lance. “No one man could have lifted that barrel and none of my staff would have touched it after it had been set down.”
“You’d have thought I was mad one night,” said Mrs Lance. “One of the big chandeliers in the main bar started swinging about. I took my husband’s knife, got up on a table and told whoever it was to stop it and come down. I said I wouldn’t harm them. It stopped almost immediately. This is no joke. There is a sense of menace I’ve never felt before, anywhere, and I’m a practical woman. We’ve worked in some tough bars in London and my husband wouldn’t be afraid of trouble. He knows how to handle it. But this is beyond us.”
The Lance family won’t have to endure ‘things that go bump in the night’ much longer. They have reported to head office and have been given a transfer to Brighton.
Charles Fortes took over the pub earlier this year and carried out £10,000 worth of redecoraations, converting the church-like bars into a baronial-style hall. Tall wooden pews, the font and other original fittings disappeared. Now the hand-carved gargoyles have gold painted faces, piped music wafts through the once sombre bars, a juke box blares from the young people’s dive downstairs and clicking electric fruit machines vie for colour with neon, chrome and the Saturday night pop groups. Some of the older customers who don’t like the new look would say the ghost is Mr Henekey ‘turning in his grave’ at what Fortes have done to his pub. Tradition is that Henekey fell out with the Church over sale of some land and decided to build all his pubs as replicas of churches.
East Kent Times and Mail, 24th December 1969.
Thanet CID probe the great inferno.
Blaze damage soars to £1/4m.
Thanet CID are conducting a full-scale investigation into ‘The Great Fire of Ramsgate’ which devastated part of the town centre. Yesterday the damage bill for the Sunday morning blaze was approaching the £1/4m mark. Detectectives are trying to pinpoint the cause of the town’s biggest inferno since the blitz. It gutted Henekey’s public-house, Hilton’s shoe shop, and Hugh Wyllie’s big store, and damaged Pelosi’s ice cream parlour, Wendy’s wool shop, Deakin’s outfitters and True Form shoe shop. Police have been probing the ashes in the charred shells of the buildings in a bid to find clues to what started the blaze that threatened to engulf the heart of Ramsgate. An army of 80 firefighters from all parts of Kent tackled the huge outbreak and poured thousands of gallons of water from the harbour on to 60ft high flames belching into the night sky. By the time the firemen had brought the holocaust under control it looked like a bomb had exploded on the shopping-centre. Behind the High-street shop front facade all that remained was a tangled mass of twisted metal girders and blackened timbers.
All this week surveyors and assessors have been examining the shattered remains and totting up the staggering loss in buildings, fittings and stock. Hugh Wyllie’s alone lost thousands of pounds worth of goods and Henekey’s had only last year spent £10,000 on modernising their famous bars. Surveyors are still deciding what walls are safe and what may have to be pulled down. Whatever happens it will be a long time before anything can be re-built.
East Kent Times and Mail, 13th May 1970.
Man and wife are accused.
The former manager and manageress of Henekeys, Ramsgate, appeared in court yesterday charged with dishonestly obtaining money and dishonestly obtaining pecuniary advantage. Bernard Lance, 47, and his 37-year-old wife Paula, were bailed until next Wednesday when they appeared before Ramsgate magistrates. The former manager was charged with seven further offences, including three of stealing money and four of dishonestly gaining pecuniary advantages. Lance, now unemployed, of Poole, Dorset, was bailed on £25 plus two sureties of £100 each. His wife, now of Peckham, London, was bailed in the sum of £50.
East Kent Times and Mail, 19th June 1970.
Ghostly Gesture.
Surely there is no need to look any further as to the cause of the disastrous fire in Ramsgate? It is the ghost at Henekey’s having got fed up with moving chandeliers and frightening the licensee – as reported in your paper a few months ago. No doubt the ghost wanted to do something really grand. I wonder what he will do next! FT Alexander Prebble. 147 High-street, Broadstairs.
East Kent Times and Mail, 20th May 1970.
Youth charged with arson.
Ivor Charles William Frank Davis (19) of Burshill Crescent, Ramsgate was charged at Ramsgate Court yesterday (Monday) with unlawfully and maliciously setting fire to the shop of Hugh Wyllie, High Street, Ramsgate. He was also charged that between 8-11 May he entered the shop as a trespasser and stole a quantity of clothing and other goods of unknown value, and that on 6 June when not in his place of abode was in possession of 23 keys and a sheath knife for use in connection with theft. Davis was remanded on bail of £50 with a surety of £250 until 20 July.
Thanet Times, 7th July 1970.