Eighteenth century polymath, Jeremy Bentham, once declared that he did not believe in ghosts because he couldn’t see how there could be ghostly clothes and he had never met anyone who had seen a naked one. Perhaps he had never visited our corner of Somerset as there is no shortage of spooky-wearing apparel in the area.
Probably the most famous of our local spooks is the ‘Nunney Hitchhiker’. The story can be traced back to the 1970s when a man of about 35 dressed in a flannel shirt was seen hitchhiking along the road leading to the castle by a Mr. Evans who gave him a lift. Once in the back seat the passenger complained of the cold but when the driver turned to talk to him he found that he had vanished. On another day, Mr Evans was driving down the same road when he saw the same man, but this time the ghostly hitchhiker appeared in the middle of the road, right in front of his car. Mr Evans swerved to avoid him and crashed into a tree; there was no sign of the hitchhiker.
There have been several sightings or the man reported to the police and a number of reports in the national press. Police Superintendent John Lee stated that, on one occasion a distraught motorist came into the station and said that he had given a lift to a man who had disappeared. He was so worried that the man may have fallen out of the car that we sent a team of officers to search the hedges.
We don’t seem to have such famous apparitions in the town itself, but the Griffin was the scene of a strange episode back in the early 00s. Nick Bramwell, one of the new owners of the pub, recalls an occasion when he invited some enthusiasts to investigate what appeared to be a blocked up doorway in the cellar. After bashing away and pulling out a few stones, they found a vaulted ceiling that continued under the pavement but was totally blocked with a rubble and soil backfill. Meanwhile, back upstairs in the bar, as the stones were removed, there was a sudden chill and the glass of one lady customer shattered! Those present linked the two events and the passage was resealed to save any more breakages – this turned out to be a good thing as the vault was heading under the road. In 2012, a delivery lorry had one of its wheels break through into the void, but fortunately little damage was done as there was nothing but infill beneath.
Other apparitions in the pub include a grumpy old man named Albert on the top floor who complains about the music and was involved in a complicated relationship with a woman called Lily – a prostitute with a husband- and two (non-paying) lovers.
The Wheatsheaves in Bath Street is haunted by ‘Old Fred’ who used to light the lamps and is accompanied by the smell of paraffin, along with a spectral customer who appeared at the bar and ordered a drink but vanished as soon as the barman’s back was turned. There must be many more stories like this from Frome’s historic buildings.
It’s not just the old and traditionally scary places that have ghosts. In October Frome man, Rhys Stiles, found one in his car when his security camera told him that there was someone in his car on the driveway, when he went to look there was no one there but when he played back the video recording, there was what appeared to be a ghostly face peering out through the windscreen. This happened several times during the night, but stopped at around midnight.
Finally, a spooky poem by Hughes Mearns,
Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there!
He wasn’t there again today,
Oh how I wish he’d go away.
A Spooky Christmas and Haunted New Year to all our readers!
Mick Davis &
David Lassman
