Malton & Pickering Mercury
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8 December 1999
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Haunted! Pub's hooded customer simply 'faded away'
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GHOSTLY goings-on have got the tongues wagging at Malton's 200-year-old
Blue Ball pub after the mysterious appearance of a hooded old man.
Helen Richardson, who runs the pub with partner Steve Dobbs, saw the phantom early one morning and got the fright of her life.
The couple live in the flat above and Helen, 26, was on her way down the stairs to go off to work.
She said: "As I got to the bottom of the stairs I could see through
into one of the rooms. There was an old man sitting in the bar I
stopped dead in my tracks and my first thought was how had he got in,
because he looked just like a real person .
"He looked a bit like a monk with a cloak on and hood over his head and
he was just sitting there, with his hands in his lap, staring then he
just faded away andthere was nothing there.
Helen fled in terror back upstairs and says she's now frightened of going downstairs on her own.
"I was a nervous wreck for a couple of days after I saw it and it really shook me up, but fortunately I haven't seen it again."
Since her experience Helen has heard suggestions from Blue Ball
regulars that the cellar may also be haunted by the ghosts of a man and
woman.
She said: "We've been in the pub for about a year now and when you go
in the cellar you can feel something as fine as cobwebs touching your
hands and face sometimes, but there's nothing there. It's spooky"
Customer Ian Hornsey has done some research into the Blue Ball's
history and he believes there was a pub on the site in the 1200s which
was used by monks from Kirkham Priory. The ghost Helen saw could have
been Friar Tuck, who was at Kirkham in the 1350s.
Mr Hornsey says he is attuned to the spirit world and is convinced the pub is haunted.
"I've felt the presence of ghosts in the Blue Ball but they are happy
spirits, and Steve, the landlord, is licensed to serve spirits," he
said.
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