UK's Haunted Pubs Halloween special
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00:00 Things that go bump in the night. A cup unexpectedly drops from a table. Door
00:13 slams shut with no signs of draft. Objects in a room disappear only to be
00:19 found moments later. An eerie whisper, even a glimpse of an apparition just
00:25 barely seen in the corner of your eye. From possessions to poltergeists these
00:31 are the key traits of what we believe as ghosts. But do they exist? There are a few
00:38 plausible answers and quite bizarrely in this theatre of production of Aladdin it
00:44 might actually hold an answer to their existence. More on that later. In this
00:50 Shots TV Halloween special we explore some of Britain's haunted pubs.
00:56 Just do it as a wind-up. Do you find it funny? Yeah I thought so.
01:01 Portsmouth is an ancient city with parts of it dating centuries and areas that
01:06 even featured in the Doomsday Book from almost 1,000 years ago. With so much
01:11 history there's plenty of scope for the terrifying and not so terrifying tales
01:15 of some of the UK's most historical buildings. Here at the Pembroke in Old
01:21 Portsmouth there has been countless signs of one peculiar apparition.
01:27 My name's Steve I'm the landlord of the Pembroke pub. We've been here as a family
01:32 for 27 years. The building was built I believe in 1705. When we first came here
01:41 we were made aware by the previous landlord that we may have a ghost here.
01:46 He had had a few experiences with him and over the years a few people have
01:53 come to see like this ghost as such, lady in white. Not that I have but I have had
02:00 experiences. You know it's an old building you get a few creaks and things
02:04 and one of the things that the old landlord used to say was and my father
02:09 used to say was that the gas bottles downstairs they always were turned off
02:14 at night time when we never turned them off and that was what the old landlord
02:17 said and my dad experienced it as well. A few other people have, we used to have a
02:23 piano over there and she'd sit on the piano. Sometimes people, we had one
02:27 bloke in particular came through the door. As he came through the door he went white
02:31 and he thought he saw the ghost. The funny thing is is that all the people
02:36 that had seen the ghost said it was the same person, this woman in white.
02:41 I'd like to see the woman but no I've never seen her. The one that I
02:47 witnessed was the guy that came through the door as I just said. He walked in
02:52 and he literally stood there, froze and looked and pointed in the
02:58 direction and I went what's up mate, what's up? He said that it was this woman in white
03:03 just standing there looking in. I don't think it was an evil presence but
03:08 actually everyone that has sort of witnessed and felt it have always said
03:12 they felt that it was a good presence so that's handy. Good for the bar in as well.
03:17 Good vibes. It's an old building, 1705. Lots of things, there's a room behind there
03:24 that's been sealed so that's where she resides. I don't want to
03:28 wake her up again you know. Oh no, no stop.
03:33 We met up with Tony Ferguson who by day is a personal trainer and by night a
03:39 self-proclaimed ghost hunter with a record of evidence of apparitions and
03:43 sounds of paranormal activity.
03:47 Hello there, my name is Tony Ferguson. I'm actually a personal trainer by trade and
03:54 at night sometimes two or three times a week I go off documenting locations that
04:00 are allegedly haunted to try and disprove or prove if it's real and also
04:04 document us on camera. So the way I actually investigate is I leave quite a
04:08 lot of locked off cameras. One, this is to sort of cover all angles. Two, it's always
04:13 good to sort of review evidence on different cameras because sometimes you
04:17 can pick up different things. I tend to sort of be more skeptical about things
04:21 but nine times out of ten if I can capture, call something out on camera like a
04:26 disembodied voice it will come out on camera which is what we've caught in
04:30 this place. We've also caught a child's voice here, a cat, things that just
04:35 basically wouldn't be here at one o'clock in the morning and this building
04:38 itself isn't attached to anything so the fact that we've caught this on camera
04:41 it's been left unexplained.
04:44 Do you want to be here?
04:46 Do you choose to be here?
04:48 Do you want to be here?
04:50 So as a child I used to see an apparition of an older gentleman wearing a suit in my
04:55 grandmother's house. I saw this gentleman quite frequently and I always used to go
05:00 to my nan's dropped off, well my mum used to drop me off before picking my brother up
05:04 from school and every time I used to go there I used to cry. My nan used to think
05:08 oh what you know he doesn't like me kind of thing but for me it was a case I kept
05:12 on seeing that gentleman quite frequently so for me it's one of the
05:16 reasons why I've continued this journey as like a paranormal investigator to see
05:21 if I can capture anything like that or anything that resembles that on camera
05:25 which I've managed to capture two or three things that cannot be explained.
05:30 Seeing these apparitions in general they look different to what we do as in you
05:35 can tell that they're transfigurant and the clothing most of the time what we
05:41 call they look different with the clothes we wear so you can tell that from a
05:44 different generation but seeing it is amazing because sometimes people have
05:48 experiences and they see stuff to the eye but they can't prove it but this is
05:52 the whole point of being an investigator you're going out there to try and capture
05:55 something that you've had an experience of yourself so to actually capture it on
05:59 camera and experience it is just incredible.
06:03 It's a... not a chainsaw but it's a big saw.
06:09 I was afraid but it sounded like a kid.
06:11 The actual flashing light they call them cat balls so they're just basically toys that cats play with and they
06:18 literally just knock them around they light up and it attracts, well it attracts
06:22 cats and stuff like that but they... the parent... personally I'm skeptical about it I'm not
06:27 gonna lie but I like to give things a go and try anything out because as an
06:32 investigator you have to give everything a go before you can say it works it
06:35 doesn't. Now we heard children's voices here so my first reaction was let's get
06:41 the cat balls out they look they're flashy they light up a child would love
06:44 that. Now whilst conducting this experiment we heard a child's voice two
06:49 or three times and also the cat ball was going off can I say that's paranormal
06:53 cat ball possibly yes or no it's a question mark but can I say that the
06:58 actual child's voice is paranormal or unexplained yes because we're in a
07:02 locked-off location and we're hearing a child's voice and we also had a cat in a
07:06 location where it wouldn't be possible to have so and about one o'clock in the
07:10 morning and we've just spoken to the one of the owners here in general I asked
07:15 if you've ever had a cat here straight away said no and that was what I was told
07:19 when I actually first came here so so yeah it's interesting you've got to try
07:23 these experiments though as an investigator. So is there a gentleman called Greg here?
07:29 Finally, what would you say to skeptics who see your footage and then deny what's there?
07:37 So I'm a skeptic myself so obviously I'm one of those investigators I'm here I'm
07:43 not here to prove or disprove I'm here to share my journey and help other
07:48 people to go out there and search for themselves I think a paranormal
07:51 investigator in general shouldn't be here to say I'm gonna prove to the world
07:54 that I can I can prove that ghosts or spirit exists you should be here to
07:59 encourage other people to go and search for their own truth the best piece of
08:03 equipment for myself and for anyone to do this is just you and a camera and
08:07 that's it and then just document it and you know you just you maybe just be
08:11 surprised of what you capture.
08:14 Is there a way you can try and speak really loud as possible or bang on something just to let us know you're here?
08:22 My personal belief on the spirit world is that a lot of people especially back
08:28 in back in history especially with religion if you did something wrong then
08:33 you know you were told that you'd go to hell and I think a lot of people trap
08:38 themselves between the two worlds and they stay here because obviously they
08:43 did something wrong at one point and they think if they do crossover or move
08:46 on to the next stage and they go to a worse a place so this is why you tend to
08:51 get a lot of lost trapped souls that are lingering around or some may just want
08:55 to stay here because they're attached to something a building like we're in now
08:59 you know it's a it's a fond memory a family home a place of you know they
09:03 loved it and they're just happy to just exist among you know with whoever's
09:08 there with them.
09:10 I said did they have after hour drinkings when they locked the door to the summer bed?
09:14 Stay your mind on it.
09:16 I said did they have after hour drinkings when they locked the door to the summer bed?
09:20 Stay your mind on it.
09:22 When it comes to doing the paranormal for myself I've encountered good and bad but then it's the same with the living you get good and bad and in the spirit world you're gonna get bad so you're gonna get things that are gonna play mess around try and even pretend to be
09:36 someone that they're not kind of thing because they're just loving the
09:39 torment so unfortunately when you do this sort of thing it's not all gonna be
09:44 love and fluffy there's gonna be things that you're gonna encounter that are
09:47 going to be just as nasty but then at the same point you can get to encounter that in the
09:50 living you know day to day with people you encounter good people and bad people
09:54 so I just treat it the same within the spirit world.
09:58 Greg is that you?
10:03 Could the Abbey Inn in Bramley be Leeds' most haunted pub? There's certainly been
10:09 many reports that these are not the only spirits within the venue.
10:13 Around about 1820s to 1822 is when it first actually became established as an inn from the local landlord Pollard which is obviously what all this area is known for.
10:27 Sadly because of the area there was a lot of suicides in the river when they started building the canal there was a lot
10:33 of deaths through building the canal so they used to hold the bodies in the back
10:37 area of our pub and then obviously they'd have the inquest and you know away
10:43 they'd go with the bodies. I've seen somebody pass through sort of walk
10:47 through the front and then just disappear but there used to be steps going upstairs
10:52 so it was as if they were walking there and then you know carried on even though
10:57 the steps aren't there anymore. Regularly when I'm in and around doing jobs or
11:02 bits and pieces especially in the back area or the ladies toilets somebody comes
11:09 in after you so the doors are shut, they open, they come in or you can hear them
11:15 what used to be a wooden floor in the back you could hear walking or knocking
11:19 or dropping something on the wooden floors. I've had somebody shout in my ear
11:23 which was the only time I've actually locked the pub up and stood outside and
11:27 go no I'm not having this. They used to play with the old gas pumps down in the
11:31 cellar so when you change your keg you have to switch the gases around.
11:36 They used to always switch them off, don't know why so that was their little prank
11:42 and we've had a lot of you know like glassware knocking off bits and pieces
11:48 people have seen you know people passing through walls and coming out the other
11:52 end maybe the wall wasn't there. We've had a lot of customers, grown men who we
11:59 used to have a pool table in the back area so they've been there playing pool
12:02 and they've actually walked come out they've seen something what they
12:06 described either as a man or somebody stood there and they've actually broken
12:10 down into tears and walked out you know complete non-believers didn't you know
12:15 think anything but literally I don't know what it was. I've never seen that
12:20 one but a few customers have and we've had a lot of children coming out of the
12:25 toilets the ladies toilets saying that they've seen a child dressed really
12:30 weirdly. I don't work nights that much but when I used to you don't feel feels
12:35 a bit uneasy down there. Nothing wrong but like just when all the lights are
12:42 off you don't feel right and you know you hear a few things few noises lights
12:47 flickering that sort of stuff. You don't feel alone but you don't feel uneasy or
12:52 unsafe or anything like that but loads of people coming in saying oh my god
12:57 your pub's really busy isn't it and you know there's nobody in you know you know
13:00 who can sense it. There's a lot of people walking around I'm like okay really
13:04 thanks for sharing. You won't believe what's just happened and I'm like what's the matter now?
13:10 He's like well you know I said the bar's weird I was like yeah he says I kid you
13:15 not it says I'm literally like closing the pub up shutting the windows and
13:20 everything. South Yorkshire certainly has its fair share of ghost tales and this
13:25 community pub found on the Rotherham side of the border with Sheffield is no
13:29 exception. The Wintergreen is a relatively new pub on the recently
13:33 developed Waverley Estate and despite just opening in the last decade it has
13:38 already had paranormal investigators in twice both of whom have reported the
13:43 same ghostly family of four who are said to have perished in a great fire in
13:48 years past. We had a stool incident so we've got where the bar seating area is
13:55 and again alarms off middle at night you're thinking what's going on you come
14:00 down and investigate and you think it's the double doors to the garden that
14:02 haven't been shut properly. Do all your checks everything's fine you're thinking
14:05 what's made this happen? So looked on CCTV footage the stool clearly moves and
14:11 then something on the bar flips down as though somebody's and you see a wash you
14:16 see like a white shadow go from the stool over the bar and everything it
14:20 just flips everything in its way and then it just smashes it like
14:23 literally just turns this thing over on the bar. So yeah we've got that kind of
14:29 footage as well. It's always around the bar area. It's as though they like to play around the bar area. It never happens anywhere in the corners. It's always around the bar.
14:38 The male ghost has affectionately been named Derek by staff at the Wintergreen.
14:45 Derek is clearly fond of a late-night play with inanimate pub objects like the
14:50 pool ball and glass but numerous members of staff working late have reported
14:55 being physically touched by a seemingly invisible hand including one being
15:00 gripped around the back of the neck. So Derek is just the name we give the ghost.
15:06 Don't know why we call him Derek. But we've had paranormal investigators here
15:11 that said there's a lot of activity and they was talking to me about a family
15:15 and they said something about a lady, a man and two kids that was living in a
15:20 house nearby and they was the servants. There was a great fire and they all
15:24 perished in the fire and like the darts as well. When we leave the darts out they
15:28 always get swiped off the side because the other side of the pool table the
15:33 dartboard sometimes leave the darts in a cup. Now we can't explain why a
15:37 pint pot for no reason would fall over and the darts fall out and then the
15:41 darts move. So we always say Derek likes to play darts. He's a typical old bloke
15:46 that likes to pint and darts. They said Derek's just an old coal miner who likes to
15:50 pint in a game of darts or a game of pool or something like that. But yeah
15:54 when she said he likes to swing his lights I'm like oh the lights move all the time.
15:59 It's certainly a bizarre story for a relatively new pub here in Rotherham but
16:05 certainly not something that is unheard of in the great county of Yorkshire.
16:09 When it comes to content history, me and myself haven't had any major experiences.
16:15 Mine were only minor. It was always something caught at the corner of my eye.
16:21 All the experiences mainly happen upstairs where it's
16:28 probably the darkest when all of the lights are off. So when it comes to the
16:33 actual history of the hauntings I myself don't know much about it.
16:41 The other member of staff know way more about it as they had more major
16:46 experiences with the hauntings. When you start digging into the building
16:52 you start coming across Freemasons symbols and that sort of society and
16:57 when we had the paranormal investigators come in they also found information that
17:03 it could be a Freemason lodge where they used to do all the teaching of the
17:08 secret societies in the past. But then the building burnt down and the only
17:14 remains of the actual Freemason building is the front. Everything behind it was
17:18 completely rebuilt. So if you go outside you can see there's Freemason symbols on
17:22 the side of the building. The bar supervisor that mainly works down here
17:26 the other weekend when she exited the glass
17:31 washroom down here in Pound Pub the moment she walked out of the
17:36 door she heard a loud scream right in her ear.
17:43 There was one member of staff that has seen a figure of a
17:52 black dog. Black dog upstairs in Jack's which usually is not a very good sign
17:57 because as we know black dog is usually an omen of death. But yeah that's about
18:04 as much as I know about that. I used to get quite a lot of going stock one time
18:09 and a member of staff who doesn't work here anymore saw a figure stood directly behind me
18:15 so it was a guy wearing a white shirt had his headphones in and then just stood
18:19 directly behind me. We've also had another member of staff we both saw a figure
18:25 walk across the balcony behind me and this was at the end of the night where
18:29 everything was shut down. The worst thing about knowing that it's haunted is the
18:33 fact that it always stays at the back of your mind so you always have a feeling
18:37 that there's something something out there watching you and just sense chills
18:44 down your spine. I've got used to it now because I've been here like four or five
18:47 years but when you start telling all the staff that oh yeah the building actually is
18:51 haunted you can see they start getting a bit worried that there's
18:55 something might happen or not. We have done a little seance before where we had stuff
18:59 ripped off the walls in one of the dressing rooms behind us and I like to
19:03 picture it Dr Ruth but apart from that they're not really harmful I take it
19:08 but there has been quite a lot of sightings between many members of staff.
19:12 The brick building you can see behind me is now the University of Sunderland
19:16 Centre for Photography but it was once upon a time a hospital where Mary Ann
19:20 Cotton worked as a nurse. If you haven't heard of Mary Ann let's just say that
19:24 while she worked in the caring profession she didn't exactly take her
19:27 work home with her. Mary was in fact a multiple murderer. In 1873 she was tried
19:32 and convicted of killing her seven-year-old stepson. This was the only
19:37 murder she was ever actually tried for but Mary had been charged with the
19:40 murders of four people in total and was undoubtedly involved with many others.
19:44 She certainly kept it in the family poisoning not just three husbands, a
19:49 sister-in-law and very likely her own mother but also most of her children a
19:53 figure which in itself runs into double figures. Mary was administering arsenic
19:57 like it was going out of fashion as indeed it eventually did. A short
20:01 distance up the road from the former hospital is another historic building
20:04 the Ship Isis. The pub is said to be haunted by the ghost of Mary Ann and
20:09 some of her victims. It's still a popular destination for spirit seekers and I
20:13 mean that literally. Spirit seekers is a group that runs ghost hunting events
20:16 around North East England and Cumbria and we spotted them at one such event at
20:20 the Ship Isis. Yeah we've been investigating now for just over two
20:24 hours and we've been we're currently down in the cellar at Ship Isis. It's a
20:29 bit of history on the pub and the building itself. As the story goes Mary
20:36 Ann Cotton who was believed to be Britain's first serial killer and she's
20:42 buried a couple of victims down here apparently just as round the corner over
20:46 there and so yeah as you can imagine obviously we come down here kind of
20:49 straightaway just to kind of see what the vibes are. It's a pretty interesting
20:54 place obviously cellars are always are. They're always a bit damp and a bit
20:57 miserable but yeah we've had some couple of interesting responses. We've had the
21:02 cat ball so these go off down here which they physically need to be touched to go
21:07 off which is good and yeah so obviously we're going to carry on investigating
21:11 tonight just to see what happens. We're split into two groups so another group
21:15 will come down here. We won't share until the end of the night just to make sure
21:19 if there's any stories that go on any activities just to make sure that
21:23 they balance together. It is believed in this room here just round the corner
21:29 that's where two of the victims are buried around there, two children. As the
21:36 story goes obviously she poisoned them and they're buried round here. Previous
21:41 investigations not me but somebody else. They've actually communicated with Mary
21:45 and they've had a name come through and also the poison that she used as well. My
21:51 personal experience when it comes to stuff like this is generally it's not
21:56 like it's on TV you know you don't get stuff happen straightaway you have to be
22:00 very very patient and sometimes nothing happens but when something does happen
22:05 it's the best thing. It's so so good and you know as a true paranormal
22:09 investigator I run away.
22:14 So what are ghosts? The concept of it is universally recognized from Japanese
22:19 folklore to Native American spirits and it is that very same concept that is
22:24 reflected in cinema, theater and social media all explaining that they are form
22:30 of the living dead. But many parts of the world they believe that they are quite
22:36 the opposite. They are in fact living. A form of spiritual beings, ones that we
22:43 cannot see and only can be seen when they want us to see them. Better known as
22:49 djinns or even genie. Capable of doing all things that ghosts are known for
22:56 from moving objects to possession and less about granting wishes. Some that
23:03 imitate those who have died or even still they imitate the living no matter
23:09 how small. So when you open the doors to trick-or-treaters this Halloween it's a
23:16 question of who else will you be open the doors to and if you do encounter
23:21 anything that seems a little more than extraordinary who are you going to call?
23:28 [Music]