Joseph Braddock's Haunted Pubs

Skulking round a bookshop in rainy Fort William the other week, muttering about not being able to climb any hills because of the weather, I found a brilliant guide to Britain's haunted houses in a tiny, secondhand bookshop, which redeemed the day for me. The author is Joseph Braddock who, by coincidence, 'regards himself primarily as a poet', if the dust jacket is to be believed. You have to love an author who dedicates his ghostly musings to: 'my wife, who has walked with me round the edge of the unknown'.

The book contains a fantastic chapter on haunted pubs, intriguingly titled: 'Haunted Pubs and the Runcorn Poltergeist'. My favourite pub ghost is Charlie, resident of a small whitewashed country inn near Taunton. Apparently, one of Charlie's tricks was to magic beer from thin air:

"On entering the bar one morning Mr. Phillips the landlord found that a seven pint enamel jug was full to the brim with beer, although he was positive it had been empty when the household went to bed the previous night."

I've often found the opposite problem with my pint... I could have sworn that glass was full five minutes ago.

When I worked in the Red Lion (on the way to Matlock from Chesterfield), we were supposed to have a cellar ghost who rattled the bottles in the fridges late at night, or moved the barrels around. I never saw her - it was a lady, dressed in grey, according to my boss - but I did always find the cellar unnaturally cold, as if a breeze was blowing through it, and I never lingered too long when I was bottling up.