Dudley Zoo Black counrty Uk

admin sinfulldude · Dudley Zoo Black counrty Uk

(was written and posted by madmart former forum's ADMIN )

A gentleman who wishes to remain anonymous, worked as a keeper at Dudley Zoo from 1988 to the year 2000, and told me these stories in May 1993 when i madmart was employed at aston hall museum in birmingham has a security guard and was once sent to dudley zoo to cover a staff stortage there becuase i had experience of working with animals. THe stories that follow were told to me !
Consequently, they cover a twelve-year period, and are a collection of memories where even the newest is over six years old. Although the actual dates and times have become hazy over those years, I believe him to be no less truthful or sincere.

THE GENTLEMAN TELLS ME - I worked at Dudley Zoo from 1988-2000, and have spent many lonely nights up
on the Castle Hill site caring for sick animals. One night, a colleague and I were working in the tapir house at around midnight, as the tapir was quite sick.
As the night went on, we decided we needed to get in contact with the vet.
As there were no such things as mobile phones in the early 90's, I had to walk down to the nearest phone situated in the office at the bottom of the hill.
I opened up the office and dialled the vet’s number. As it was ringing out, I
could hear talking from the office next door.
Now this office is separated by a thin wall that is mostly frosted glass, so it’s not too hard to hear anybody in there, and you can see a little bit through the glass anyway, so I could see the lights weren’t on in there.
I shouted, “Hello? Anyone there?” But the talking just carried on. Then it got angrier, and changed to shouting.
I thought it might have been coming from the Fellows pub next door, but by this time the vet answered the phone.
The shouting was still going on as I put the phone down, and through the glass, I saw the coffee table tip over all by itself, as if someone had kicked it.
Then I panicked and legged it out of there. I ran back up to the tapir house, chain smoking as I went, and told my colleague what had happened, but she didn't believe a word I said.

It was my first month at Dudley Zoo and I was training in the Ape house, now the
orang-utan house, and when I was in the kitchen I could hear horses hooves moving around on the ground. Thinking nothing of it, I carried on working.
Three months later, I heard the noise again, so this time, curious to find out where the horses were, I poked my head through the door to look outside.
I saw nothing, but the noise was quieter outside, and louder in the kitchen!
So when my boss came down I told her about the noise, and she said, "You’re not the first person to say that!"
She said she’d never heard it herself, but several other staff members had, so we confronted the castle curator (who's name I can't remember) who went away and did some study and came back with an answer.
When the castle was active hundreds of years ago at the foot of the castle where the ape house is now, stood the Castle stables, so was full of horses!
Question answered!

Monkey House

The small monkey house was the place I spent most of my time, and there was
a certain cage that all keepers used to hate to clean. People often said they got a strange feeling when in this cage. I felt it myself, and new keepers used to come up to us and ask us if we would stay around while they were cleaning it. We never said anything to them about it unless they approached us first.
The public door to the corridor used to fling open when someone was cleaning this cage out, and we’d always go and have a look if anyone was there, but there never was. The door was a big heavy wooden thing, and it was never a windy day.
After a bit we started to realize that the spider monkeys in this cage used to stare at this door even when it was shut. In the end we got used to it. People thought we were all mad, but there were around 8 or 10 keepers who went through this.

Reptile house

We named this, “The key jangler”
When the reptile keeper was on his day off it was up to my colleague and I to lock up
the reptile house, which was usually around 5 or 6pm.
We would walk in through the “IN” door, and immediately lock that door behind us so no new visitors would follow us in.
Now as soon as anyone locked that door, they would clearly hear the sound of keys or even chains being rattled, coming from somewhere. It sounded very faint, but you would definitely hear it, without even trying to listen for it!
We then had to walk the length of the viewing corridor, all the way to the “OUT” door, checking there were no visitors left in there, and turning off the lights as you went.
Finally you’d walk out, locking the “OUT” door behind you, but you would still be able to hear the jangling noise even though it would be gettting fainter as you went along.
Several of us heard this, and after a while my colleague and I decided to check if someone was playing a joke! So I went in to lock up the reptile house early, at 4pm one evening when the Zoo was quieter, and my colleague waited outside to see if anyone was around playing a practical joke on us. I walked the corridor, locking the doors and turning off the lights as normal, and still heard the rattling noise, even with someone standing guard outside!
So I ran outside to see my colleague and she was white! I asked her if she was okay and she said that she had seen me run out of the “OUT” door, but someone was
shaking the “IN” door from the inside, which I had locked first!!!
There was definitely no one in there, as I had just checked it, and no one could have got past us!

Ape house

I have mentioned the horse noises, and this one is similar. We were sat on the working surface one June morning around 8am getting ready for a hard days work looking after “Azimat” the female Orang-utan.
The kitchen was very large with long windows, opposite which was “cage 1” This cage had a viewing door with bars, but also had a bright glossy door.
We were sat there when a black kind of blur went in front of the doors and in front of our eyes, although we felt and heard nothing.
She said to me, “Did you just see that?”
I replied, “That black thing? Yes!”
That morning the Orang-utans were acting extremely strange and were calling out all morning. This was very unusual for them. We just got the work finished and got out of there.

Chimpanzee house

This was situated on the bottom of the zoo site and was always very creepy
and spooky!
But the cleaner was walking down there one Sunday morning to clean the
toilets situated on the building, when she saw a girl who looked around 7 or 8 years of age wearing old fashioned clothing and wearing a bonnet. The little girl looked like she was searching for someone or something, and was walking with a limp!
The cleaner shouted out for the girl, but she seemed to ignore her. Then she just walked off and disappeared.
From what I can remember, the cleaner did some research and found out
that the chimpanzee enclosure was built on a graveyard that existed when the Castle was in use many years ago.
I think that the cleaner had seen her on more than one occasion.

BackKeith Russell, another keeper at Dudley Zoo, sent this story to me, and at the time of writing (November 2006) was still currently employed there.
This happened during the month of November 2005.

Dear mart

I have read the other keepers entries, and those stories are very well known among the staff here.
Personally, I have never heard any jangling keys in the reptile house, but I promised I would write to tell you of any ghostly goings on lately, and thought I should inform you of something odd which happened to me in the Reptile house last winter (2005).

It was a very wet and dark afternoon and there were very few visitors left on the zoo, so I started to lock up the reptile house. Before closing, we always clean the grubby fingerprints off the viewing windows ready for the next day. I was doing this, around 4:30pm, when I arrived at what is now the Pine Snake enclosure. It’s on the end of the corridor, and so it has two windows at 90-degree angles from each other as it goes around the corner.
Now as I got to the larger of the two windows and started to wash it, I became aware of a presence on the other side of the smaller window, just round the corner. It felt like this person, who I guessed to be male, was staring at me, and feeling awkward, I didn’t look towards him, but noticed from the corner of my eye he seemed to be wearing a purple top, possibly a cloak, with a white collar, and had dark hair (though the building was very dark, and much of his facial features seemed masked).
Several long seconds passed, before I finally stepped round the corner to tell this man we were closing, only to realize nobody was there.
Very confused, I even went back and looked through the window again, but the image had definitely disappeared!
I have had no strange encounters there since, but every dark evening alone in that building now makes me very wary of corners!

san4uzel · MORE BLACK COUNTRY GHOST STORIES

Hiya madmart and all,

here are some ghost stories that have been passed to me

MORE BLACK COUNTRY GHOST STORIES THAT HAVE BEEN TOLD TO ME

This story got told to me by Beverley Meacham, one of the Duty Managers of the Station Hotel, Dudley.
This happened to me on a night in May 2002. I had only started work at the Station Hotel back in March, two months earlier, so I knew nothing about which rooms were haunted, or anything.
If we work very late, we often stop over in the hotel. I chose to sleep over in room 217 because it’s close to the staircase, so if I have to get up in the night, I don’t walk past the other rooms and disturb them.
I remember the World cup was going on at the time, as I was wearing an England football shirt. When I took it off, I put it on a hanger, and instead of putting it inside the wardrobe, I hooked it over the top, so that it hung down in front of the wardrobe door. Then I went to sleep.
I woke up all of a sudden at exactly 3.00 am. I clearly remember the time as I looked at the clock, and I could hear a strange whispering noise in the room. It was a bit like when you put a seashell against your ear and you can hear the sea, but this was in both my ears, like it was all around the room.
Now the curtains were closed, so it was quite dark, but when I turned over I clearly saw a woman standing in the corner of the room. She had her back to me, and she was leaning over the dressing table, as if she was adjusting something on it.
She was dressed all in black. A black dress with a long skirt down to the floor and tight fitting sleeves down to her wrists, and dark hair that was scraped back and tied into a bun. There was no white collar or apron, just the long black dress.
As soon as I looked at her the whispering stopped.
The light switch was right next to the bed, so I was able to just reach out and switch it on without taking my eyes off her, but as soon as the light came on she vanished.

Now as you can imagine, it was really hard getting back to sleep again, but eventually I did! When I woke up in the morning, the football shirt that I had hung up on the wardrobe door was neatly folded up, lying on the foot of my bed!

When I came downstairs, all the other staff could see I was bothered by something, and when I told them what had happened, they all said 217 was one of the haunted rooms.
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This story is told by Stephanie Johnson, and happened during the month of January 2004.

I work at the Bingo Hall, at the bottom of Castle Hill in Dudley, right opposite the Station Hotel. Since I’ve been working there, a lot of strange things have happened, such as sightings of people walking about the building when we have all been sitting together on our breaks, and there’s a lot of cold spots in different rooms.
One Friday morning when I went up to clean the Gents toilets upstairs. I walked in and found one of the taps running, which I immediately turned off.
I went downstairs for a drink, and when I came back up again I could hear the tap running again, but I was sure I had turned it off before.
I went in again to turn it off, and immediately sensed that there was something strange in there with me. As soon as I put my hand on the tap to turn it off, I felt a very strong push on my shoulders and I fell forwards into the corner of the sink.
I can honestly say I was very frightened, and got out of there as quick as I could. Now if I hear the tap running, I don’t bother to turn it off anymore!

The rumor about the building is that it’s the ghost of a Lady who worked there when it was a Theatre, and she fell in love with one of the actors who left her, and so she hung herself on the landing on the top floor.

Stephanie makes an interesting point here, for the building we see today as a rather drab Bingo Hall, hides a far more glamorous and eventful history than it appears from the outside!

The land upon which Dudley Hippodrome stands was originally part of the Earl of Dudley’s estate, but was bought by John Clement in the 1890’s.

John Clement was born in Dudley in 1840, and had originally worked at the Earl of Dudley’s estate office. He had always been involved in amateur dramatics, and by the 1880’s owned two music shops in Wednesbury and West Bromwich, and was working as a theatrical agent.

In June 1889, he opened his first theatre, “The Colosseum” by converting an old circus building in Trindle Road.

Having acquired the site on Castle Hill however, he opened “The Dudley Opera House” in September 1899, with a performance of “The Mikado” by the D’Oyly Carte opera company.

The building had cost £16,000. That’s about £1.2 million today.

Sadly, though not surprisingly, it was soon apparent that there was no local demand for nightly opera, and so the luxurious venue ended up staging the same mainstream variety acts that the rivals did. A young Charlie Chaplin performed there in 1906.

When the building was destroyed by fire in 1937, the site was sold to the local theatre entrepreneurs, the Kennedy family, who owned the Plaza Cinema next door, and they opened “The Dudley Hippodrome” in December 1938.

This classic Art Deco building contained a 1,700-seat auditorium, and for it’s time was one of the biggest venues in the Midlands, being the first provincial theatre to stage Laurel and Hardy in 1947, the comics staying in the Station Hotel directly opposite.

Comedy was the main crowd puller through the 1940’s and 50’s, hosting acts such as Chico Marx, Bob Hope, Harry Secombe, Morecambe and Wise, and Dudley regular Ken Dodd. In 1951, their production of Cinderella became the first Christmas Pantomime ever to be televised.

With the decline in live variety acts, the Kennedys were forced to sell in 1958, and it became the Bingo Hall we see today.

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This story is told to me about the Station Hotel by Richard Stevens, who was the night porter at the Station Hotel, from May 2005 to the end of April 2006.
One night in November 2005, I had not long come on duty, and was doing my rounds as usual. The bar is all locked up by that time, with all the shutters down.
As I walk through the bar area, one of my jobs is to pick up any empty beer glasses and ashtrays left out on the tables by any late drinkers, and place them on the bar shelf.

Now I had definitely made sure that all the tables were empty when I walked through the first time, but about half an hour later, on one of the tables near to the bar, there were three empty beer glasses and an ashtray all sitting together. The strange thing was, they were all clean, even the ashtray. All the glasses were perfectly clean.
I thought to myself, “How the Hell did I miss them?” especially as they were clean!
I moved them back onto the bar shelf and walked through into the Restaurant.

When I came back a few minutes later, the jukebox was on, and playing music!
There’s a twin plug socket next to the dishwasher behind the bar, one plug for the washer, and the other for the jukebox, and they were both plugged in! The bar manager is supposed to make sure they’re both unplugged before locking up, and the night porter doesn’t carry keys to the bar, so I couldn’t get in there to do anything about it.

Well I went upstairs to the bedrooms to see if you could hear the music from up there, and I couldn’t, so I thought I’d leave it playing all night as it wasn’t going to wake anyone up. But when I came back down, the dishwasher had started up and was leaking water all over the floor! Well, I couldn’t let that go on all night, so I had to call the duty manager then.
When she came in she said she knew for a fact that the plugs had been pulled out, because someone in the bar had complained that the jukebox had been switched off before his song had come on!

Funnily enough, the following month, one night in December (2005), in the early hours, about 2 or 3am, a bloke came down stairs to sit in the bar. I could see he didn’t want to be on his own, and was shaken up by something. In fact, when he saw me, he followed me around most of the night!
He was one of these ghost hunter blokes, and he’d been stopping in room 214. He’d been lying on the bed fully dressed, and was trying to stay awake all night, but he’d had a couple of beers, and had fallen asleep for a few minutes.
He said he’d woken up suddenly, sometime before 3am, to see a young blonde girl kneeling at the foot of his bed, untying the shoelaces on his right foot!
The girl disappeared as soon as he looked at her, so he’d jumped up in fright and ran out the room! He knew he hadn’t tried to take his shoes off, but the laces were definitely undone on his right boot, he showed them to me himself!

This story was told to me by Charmaine Maeer, in the bar of the Station Hotel, having just been on a “Ghost Tour Special” in dudley , August 2006.
This happened just a year ago, one night in August 2005.
I was staying at the Station Hotel in room 214.
I was going through a lot of emotional turmoil at the time, and feeling very lonely and down.
I decided to try and rest, and went to sit on the bed, but as soon as I did so, I clearly heard a young woman’s voice in the room say, “Why Cry?”

I was so shocked; I jumped and nearly fell off the bed!
I thought it may have come from outside, so I went to the door to check, to see if anyone was out in the corridor, but no one was.
As I came back in, I felt a really cold chill, like ice in the room. I thought it would be a good idea to put the television on, but just as I did, I heard a loud bang come from the bathroom!
I went in to see what it was, and I could see the shower door swinging open and shut, all by itself!
Now I got really scared, and decided to call my Mom!
As I spoke to her, she asked me, “What’s that noise in your room?”
I said, “What noise?”
She said she could hear a growling noise coming from my end of the line.
I said, “What Growling?” I couldn’t hear anything.
My Mom is a Medium, and she told me that because I was upset, she felt there was a Spirit who could see this, and wanted to help me.
She told me to say out loud to the Spirit that I wanted them to be calmer, as they were scaring me. So I did, and as I spoke, I felt the room get warmer.

After a while, I went to bed, and tried to get some sleep.
But after I had been in bed for a few minutes, I felt the sheets being tugged away from me, and the more I tugged them back, the more I could feel them tugging away!
I got so fed up that I climbed out of bed to report it downstairs.
As soon as I was standing up, I could see the bed had moved about a foot or more sideways, and my bag with all my clothes in it had been tipped upside down and the clothes were now all over the floor!
I never knew the Hotel was haunted before, but I do now!
It was something I will never forget.

But one good thing I would say though, I didn't feel so lonely after that night!
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I heard of this tale back in November 2006, and refers a Ghost Tour which takes place in dudley the event below happened 2nd of Nov 06

I went on the tour on Thursday 2nd nov 06- I want to tell you about a few things had happened to me on the tour that I didn’t mention at the time to anyone, not so much because I was embarrassed, but I needed to think about what I'd seen and decide if it was anything to report.

When we got to the Malt Shovel pub, before the guide even began to tell the story, I saw a young boy at the window you later pointed out. I couldn’t describe him fully other than he had a kind of round fringe and dark hair, and a brown coat or dressing gown. But I only saw him from the upper chest. I would say he was any where from 7- 9. Was it my imagination?

One other thing I do want to add is when I was 16 (many years ago!) I would walk to college, and always used to cut down Green Mans passage.
One particular day I saw a man enter the passage in front of me, no more than 5 feet away, but as I turned into it, there was no one there. Being quite curious, I ran down to the end of the passage, but no one was in the car park.
I can’t remember his clothes exactly, but they were quite dark cloth, and he had a cloth cap. I didn’t see his face, but I assumed he was old due to his height and build.
It was physically impossible for anyone to have got out my sight, being so close in front of me, and it made me curious for years, and I never knew until Thursday it was haunted - although I always wondered.

Leanne Ray

With reference to the young boy, there was no one of this description living in the Malt Shovel pub at the time, and the room Leanne refers to has not been used as a bedroom for many years, because it's the room where lad called Jimmy Bayliss was murdered.

I believe the guide had not described the visual appearance of Jimmy Bayliss at any point during the telling of this particular story on the tour, and yet this is remarkably similar to how he looked in pictures of the time of Jimmy Bayliss .