Black Swan Pub

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Black Swan Pub

A young lady tells us a story of her aunt and uncle were the landlords (owners) of a public house called "The Black Swan" having a ghost in their pub .It was an old inn which had been built back in the days when coaches carrying passengers and the mail made journeys in stages. At the coaching inns, travellers could get food and drink and a bed for the night; horses could be rested and fed or changed between stages. "The Black Swan" has altered little since those far off times. Every room has low ceilings with age-blackened oak beams; corridors were seen in very few european dwellings when the inn was constructed, so most of its rooms are accessed by walking through other rooms. The guests who slept there over the centuries had little privacy. Until corridors became a standard feature, even the occupants of some royal palaces had their sleep disturbed by people heading for their own bedrooms via other chambers.

Another inn called "The White Swan" used to stand across the road; it provided accomodation, food and drink for the gentry (those on higher rungs of the social ladder). "The Black Swan" performed the same function for working class passengers. Local tales suggested that there'd been a tunnel under the road which connected the cellars of the two inns. According to these stories, the tunnel was used for storing contraband, as a convenient short-cut for upper class patrons of "The White Swan" in search of willing 'peasants' or as an escape route for criminals who used "The Black Swan" as a meeting place. Of course, any tunnel which may have existed would probably have been destroyed when the road was extensively rebuilt in modern times - but there was definitely something odd about the cellar at "The Black Swan". Before my uncle took me down there for the first time, he asked me to guess how large it was. Since all the rooms at the inn were extremely spacious, I assumed that the cellar would be similarly extensive. However, when the door to that chamber was opened, I was surprised to see that it was tiny and cramped. A wall, constructed of rough brickwork very different from anything else in the cellar, marked the farthest end of the little room. It was tempting to imagine what might be found if that structure was demolished.

According to legend, a highwayman (an armed robber who usually preyed on travellers) was trapped in "The Black Swan" by the forces of Law & Order. Finding the building surrounded and all means of escape blocked, he decided that death was preferable to capture. There had once been a ‘pig hook’ near the top of the stairs leading to the bedrooms; the highway man hanged himself from that suspension point.

Not long after arriving, before I heard anything about him or the Inn’s haunted reputation, I was looking around the upstairs rooms by myself; quite suddenly, just within the edge of my vision, I saw a dense black human shape - when I thought about it afterwards, I realised that it was a solid, three dimensional shadow which moved like a living person. In the split-second it took for me to turn towards it, the figure vanished. To be honest, I felt a keen, stabbing sense of fear and wanted to be out of that room very quickly. With difficulty, I controlled these reactions; I told myself that I’d merely experienced a convincing and rather scary optical illusion and attempted to think rationally. There were no mirrors in the room and the daylight coming through the sole window was bright and clear - so I couldn’t lay the blame on a stray reflection or my own shadow. The impression that I wasn’t alone refused to go away; I don’t consider myself to be psychic or especially ‘sensitive’ to supernatural forces - yet I had a definite feeling that my presence was resented. At the same time that I tried to impose logic and common sense on my thoughts, my raw instincts went in another direction. A blend of negative emotions seemed to cling to that space - in the same way that the odour of a cheap candle might linger long after it has been extinguished.

I decided to say nothing about this odd happening. My aunt and uncle had barely been living and working there for a month and I didn’t want to put them off their new home. I was unaware that my aunt had already had a similar - but much more frightening - encounter upstairs on one of the first days they’d spent in the building.

My aunt and uncle had a cat - Lucy; she slept in their bedroom. The first night that I slept at "The Black Swan", I used the sofa in the downstairs living room (only their bedroom actually had a bed at that time). Before retiring, I swept the floor and cleaned up the public bar; as I worked, I fleetingly caught glimpses of a cat flitting under tables, chairs and benches. It seemed to be a much larger animal than Lucy - but I told myself off for allowing my imagination to run unchecked.

I was tired and sleep came quickly. Some time during the night I was woken by the sound of a cat softly meowing. It was dark and my nocturnal visitor was only a black silhouette in the unlit room. I spoke to it and patted the top of my blanket to indicate that it could join me. The cat padded over and jumped on my makeshift bed; I picked it up and stroked it. Its fur and body were icy cold. "Poor Puss" I said soothingly "you need warming up". I pulled the blanket over both of us and held it close; wrapped in my arms. The cat purred loudly; I fell back to sleep again with its contented sounds still in my ears. My arms were empty when I awoke early nexy morning.

At breakfast, I told my aunt and uncle that their cat had explored the public bar and then shared the sofa with me. Their expressions told me that I'd said something disturbing. My aunt said: "Lucy would have to be a very clever cat to open three bolted doors and return to our room before we were awake...after closing and bolting all those doors behind her".

It was then that they told me about the inn being haunted and their own frightening experiences since taking up residence. They explained that all the doors leading to their sleeping quarters (at the bottom of the stairs, at the entrance to the first connecting room at the top of the steps and their bedroom door) had been bolted every night since my aunt had been given a terrible fright upstairs.

There was a big wardrobe in one of the bedrooms; it had a full length mirror on its exterior. She was looking at herself in that mirror - making sure that her clothes and make-up were OK before going downstairs to take her turn at the bar - when somebody grabbed her by the waist. My aunt plainly felt a pair of powerful hands gripping her about her middle. A deep male voice said something unintelligible but vindictive-sounding right next to her ear - but there was only her own reflection in the mirror. Whoever (or whatever) had siezed her had done so with such strength and suddenness that, for a few moments, all the air was pushed from her lungs. When she managed to draw breath, she screamed - very loudly - and my uncle came rushing up the stairs. There were palm- and finger-shaped bruises on her hips and back which took days to disappear. After that bizarre episode, she didn't like being anywhere on the top floor by herself.

According to their regular customers, the highwayman's ghost wasn't the only supernatural occupant of "The Black Swan"; a ghost cat was on the premises too - they said that it had often been seen sneaking under the furniture and through shadowy corners during business hours. This description directly matched what I had seen when cleaning up the night before; I wondered if the ghost cat had ever settled down with any other person who chanced to sleep on the ground floor.

On subsequent visits, I actually slept in the room where my aunt had been grabbed. It had been furnished and the bed was very comfortable. But I was rudely (and quite painfully) drawn from sleep on many occasions - my hair was pulled or my face was slapped hard enough to jolt me out of my slumbers. Once a hand-print still adorned my cheek as I sat down at the breakfast table in the morning. Sometimes, more alarmingly, my sheets and blankets were physically ripped off the bed and tossed to the floor. However, I refused to move to another bedroom - I was determined to show the ghost that I would not be scared away by his pranks. Eventually, I was left alone and my sleep was no longer interrupted - but others who occupied that room were regularly poked, prodded and deprived of their bedclothes.

My sister and one of our cousins were alone in the bar late in the evening after closing time. They watched with horrified fascination as, one after the other, every bottle behind the bar apparently smashed itself to smithereens. Though all the events I have recounted here happened over a decade ago, I'd be very surprised if the present owners of "The Black Swan" are untroubled by either two- or four-footed ghosts.