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Luton
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General
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A brief note about the area
A door knob used as a missile A strange building with a sinister presence A business premises haunted by several ghosts Strange noises and a dark figure Luton's very own peripatetic White Lady A poltergeist with a history dating back 50 years The ghost of a woman in white A blood splattered flat Plants that move of their own accord The White Woman of Downs Road Who said you can't take it with you? A cinema with strange sounds and strange shadows A gallows site and a black dog The site is said to be haunted The Luton Gasworks Ghost A malevolent presence and poltergeist activity A strange white smoke The ghost of a cook in white overalls and boots The ghost of Old Cleggie The sound of ghostly footsteps Strange sounds, a moan and things going missing The ghost of a former housekeeper Malevolence, violence and missing keys A 'White Woof' |
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Luton lies to the north of a gap in the Chiltern hills formed by the River Lea. One of the towns earliest names is Lygetun which means ‘the enclosure by the river Lea' or 'River Lea farm/settlement' (from the Old English tun). In the Domesday Book the name is given as Lintone and Loitone.
On September 8th 1972 John Smith and his wife Marion had planned to move into their new home in Albion Road. Before then some work needed to be done on the building so, on 1st September, nineteen year old John and a friend, twenty-two year old Tony Gerrard, were busy working on the property. They were stripping a wall when Tony heard two bangs, as there shouldn't have been any such noises Tony went to investigate and found two candlesticks in the middle of the stairs. He thought this was odd as he knew they had earlier been in an upstairs room. Next a hand brush appeared at the top of the stairs, earlier it had been downstairs. Then, and best of all, a bedroom door knob came down the stairs then threw itself at a wall.
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The Alma Cinema used to be on the corner of Alma Street and New Bedford Road. From the day it was built people thought that it was a strange place. People spoke of “an uneasy, oppressive atmosphere” which filled the rear of the building from the ground floor boiler room right up to the projection room at the top. This area of the building was used solely by the staff and consisted of two concrete staircases feeding a maze of rooms and passages. Some people claimed that as they went up the stairs they felt that something was moving up with them one flight in front. Coming downstairs was worse as people felt that they were being followed and whatever was doing the following was just waiting for the opportunity to push them down the stairs.
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A business premises in Hastings Street in Luton seems to be home to several spirits. In the building the public side of the reception area is separated from the business side by a locked door which contains a tall, narrow, glass panel. Alongside the door is the reception desk, which is accessed through a separate door from the secure side. One member of staff remembers seeing a woman standing in reception near to the secure door, so she walked round behind the desk, and in the few seconds it took her to walk round, the woman had gone. She saw the same figure again about two weeks later, and once she just sensed that there was someone there, but she couldn't see anybody. She described the figure as a blonde haired woman, aged between forty and forty five. She didn't notice anything unusual about the woman, just that she was wearing a dress and hat. All the sightings and feelings had occurred during daylight. The staff member said that, when she saw the figure, the woman was facing the secure door and looking down.
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At one time an impressive white house stood in Bradley Road opposite to the end of Halfway Avenue near where a footbridge crossed the old Luton to Dunstable railway line. It was reported that strange noises would occur in the house and it was even claimed that a dark figure had been seen there.
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The Cork and Bull pub in Cumberland Street Luton is said to be haunted by the white vision of a lady who is known to move things around. She has also been known to shake tables and even throw bar stools across the room. It is believed that she is the ghost of an old woman called Ann who lived in the pub and was murdered there. It is said that her soul never found rest and is now trapped in the area.
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In the ‘Luton News' of 6th April 1994 there appeared a report of a poltergeist in the house of Eddie Herbert and Sam O'Reilly in Crawley Road. The article in the paper was read by Mrs Eileen Lewis of Essex Close who then contacted the paper to tell them of her own experiences in Crawley Road. When she contacted the newspaper she was seventy years old but still vividly remembered her experiences in an old haunted house she had played in as a child. The house, now demolished, stood in Crawley Road and the then twelve year old Eileen responded to a dare from her friend to climb to the top of the deserted house and look out of a window so that they knew she had done it. “I went into a room, and then all of a sudden stones were flying around me; I don't know where from, they just came out of everywhere. I was so scared I ran down the stairs while the stones were all around me but I was not hit by them.”
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Late one night in the 1940s a woman saw the ghost of a woman in Dallow Road. This ghost matched the description of one seen in Highbury Road except the Dallow Road ghost was wearing a nun's habit.
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According to the newspaper ‘Luton on Sunday', a couple living in a flat in Dorset Court in Bailey Street were driven out of their home by a series of unexplained phenomena. In one case Nissal Ahmed and his wife Rizuana were talking on the porch when he felt liquid splash onto his face. He went to the bathroom to wash it off and saw more blood splattered on the wall. In another incident a headless man appeared in the doorway! Apparently the old man who used to live at the flat just disappeared.
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At one time a flat in Dorset Court in Luton was occupied by a Mrs Jones (the mother of Roy Jones, whose house in Park Street was haunted). It is claimed that there was a particular mirror in her flat that was anathema to plants. Either they would die if they were placed in front of the mirror or they would be moved by something. Once the movement was witnessed by Mrs Jones and her granddaughter, they saw the plant move from its original location and settle gently on the floor.
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Between 1900 and 1920 a ghost was alleged to haunt the area of Downs Road but no further information is available except that it was known as ‘The White Woman of Downs Road'. This sounds very much like the Dallow Road and Highbury Road ghosts
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In 1876 the original Four Horseshoes public house was burned to the ground and the body of the owner found by the back door with a cash box containing the night's takings. Members of staff at the present Four Horseshoes in Park Street (now The Horseshoes) have heard the sounds of money being counted when they are in the cellar and at the same time the air feels cold, even on a warm day. Is this the ghost of William Clifford come back for his money?
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The Galaxy Centre in Luton is a complex containing a multi-screen cinema, bars, restaurants and the Namco Game Station. In Screen 6 at Cineworld people have seen moving shadows but they have never been able to find the cause (at least not a natural one). They have also heard some strange sounds and felt patches of ice cold air in the heated theatre. It is believed that something now haunts the theatre but no one knows who or what it is, or was.
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A hill called Galley Hill on the outskirts of Luton was, in former times, the site of a gallows, where public executions would have taken place. The site was also used to bury the bodies of local witches who where hanged during the persecutions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Often these witches were no more than village wise women. All it took was for them to be accused by villagers who had a grudge against them. However a strange discovery was made on the site during excavations in the 1960s. A steer skull was found with a die placed on top of it with the six uppermost, evidence of possible ritual usage in the past.
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The Griffin in Chapel Street (more lately The Euphoria then Bellini) is alleged to be haunted but no further details are available.
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Highbury Road is the destination of the ‘Luton Gasworks Ghost'. In 1961 Jack Boutwood saw the ghost and described her as having jet black hair and standing over six feet tall. She was aged about forty and wore a white robe which hung to her feet. It was 02:00 when he left the gasworks where he was working for a cigarette and saw the translucent figure of the woman gliding towards him. He quickly jumped on his motorcycle and followed the ghost so he could get a better look. He returned to the gasworks and told a colleague, Bert Fleckney, what he had seen and Bert managed to get a quick glimpse of her before she disappeared into Highbury Road.
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A flat in Green Court, Hockwell Ring became haunted by a malevolent presence so that the couple who lived there were forced to call in an exorcist. Jennifer Davies described the figure as being dressed in a monk's habit with a horribly scarred and disfigured face. The ghost would cause pots and pans to fly across the room and for things to go missing. One time it even shook the baby's cot violently. Sounds were also heard like a hot frying pan flaring up. Neighbours told the couple that a man had died in the flat from burns and that his body hadn't been discovered for five weeks. After the exorcism the haunting ceased.
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At one time the largest employer in Luton was Skefco, a manufacturer of ball bearings, in Leagrave Road. In the 1970s Skefco was booming and had a resident ghost. The ghost was once a cook and would appear in white overalls and white boots. She was once seen in 1973 by Mrs Dora Rouget, a canteen stock controller who was “very taken aback but not particularly frightened”. Shortly after this the canteen closed and the haunting stopped.
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During the 1974 to ‘75 football season Fred Bunyan was the maintenance engineer at Luton Town Football Club. Fred was always the first person to arrive at the ground getting there around 08:00 and as a result of this he had several abnormal encounters in the dressing room area beneath the main stand. After opening the door to the area beneath the stand he would open a second door which gave way to a corridor leading to the dressing rooms. As soon as he had opened the door he would turn on the corridor lights and on several occasions he would see white smoke at the far end of the corridor which would quickly disappear. The smoke would be at around head height and did not disperse or drift away, it literally vanished. On some of the occasions Fred was accompanied by Mrs Sheila Kent, a member of the office staff, and she witnessed the strange smoke. The smoke would not be there every time Fred opened up, appearing four times during the '76 to '77 season.
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The premises of Clegg and Holden in Old Bedford Road were haunted by a ghost who was recognised as being Mr Clegg, a former founder of the printing firm. Mr Clegg retired in 1950 and came back after he died, a few years later, to haunt the old Victorian house where the firm had its premises. A new employee last saw him in 1975 and described him as a slim man, about fifty, with a sunken face and wearing a grey suit.
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In 1975 there stood a large white house next to the newsagents on the corner of Manor Road and Park Street in Luton. The house was occupied by Roy Jones, his wife and three sons aged fifteen, twelve and four years. From the early part of December 1975 to the middle of January 1976 a number of unusual things happened in the house. One of these involved Mrs Jones who had just got out of the bath when she felt an ice-cold hand on her back. Twice the sound of footsteps was heard in the house which was loud enough to wake Roy and his wife. Roy went to investigate but could find no one who could have made the sound. In an attempt to get to the bottom of the noises Roy left a tape recorder in the middle of the upstairs corridor where the footstep sounds were believed to originate from. Shortly after Roy and his wife heard the footsteps but when they played back the tape they had not been recorded. On another occasion a picture fell off the living room wall with a bang, again for no reason. Even the gas heater got involved when the front fell off one night which it was claimed was impossible as it was held in place by catches. Even the youngest son became involved when Mrs Jones found him terrified and screaming in the bathroom but she never found out why as he refused to tell her. Fortunately for the family the disturbances stopped after a while.
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A flat in Princess Street in Luton seemed to be plagued by strange occurrences. The sounds went beyond the normal noises you hear when you are surrounded by other people living in adjoining flats. Some of the noises were subtle like a sigh or the sound of someone tutting but one really scared the tenants of the flat. Whilst on the landing just outside the flat at 4am there was a sudden human moan which lasted for about five seconds. The sound seemed to be coming from right in front of them but there was no one there. Since then they have heard no other sounds on the landing, in fact the landing is a very quiet area.
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The ghost of a former housekeeper now haunts the museum in Wardown Park. In 1971 two heating engineers were working in the cellar late one night when they heard footsteps coming down the stairs behind them. They turned and saw a woman wearing a long dark dress and carrying a large bunch of keys on her belt. The figure said nothing just turned around and went back up the stairs. The two workmen found the caretaker having a cup of tea and asked him about the woman but he said that neither he nor anyone else had been near the cellar. After this the figure was never seen again but the sounds of footsteps were heard on the stairs late at night or early in the morning when there was no one about. Nothing has been seen or heard now for over twenty five years
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In November of 2005 the Luton Paranormal Society (LPS) were called in to investigate a house in Wilsden Avenue which was being plagued by an excessive amount of paranormal activity, some of it violent. On 7th November LPS put a small team together, which included an LCD member, to interview the owners and to take a look around the house. As a result of this initial meeting an investigation took place on 12th November with two LCD members being present.
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In April of 2010 the Luton Paranormal Society (LPS) were called in to investigate a house in Yately Close. The young daughter of the residents had reported seeing a ‘white woof' in the north corner of her room (diagonally opposite her bed). This has been going on for some time. The daughter had also said that the dog goes along the upstairs landing to her parents' bedroom and down the stairs and out the front door. Her mother also reports having seen the dog, just once on the corner of the stairs.
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