The Haunted Side of the UK. Part Two. Yorkshire.

The haunted side of the UK. Part Two. Yorkshire.

Lindholme Airbase.

Saturday 27th September 1941 a Wellington Bomber consisting of a crew of six Polish airmen serving in 305 Squadron were retuning back to their airbase at Lindholme, South Yorkshire after they had conducted an operation over Cologne, Germany.

At approximately 01:30hrs as the plane was flying over Hatfield moor the aircraft engines stalled, the stricken aircraft came crashing down beside a river, three of the Polish crew died at the scene of the accident and a fourth died at the Doncaster Royal Infirmary, the remaining two members of the crew escaped with injuries.

For many years after there were reports of sighting of a man wearing what looked like a World War II flying suit being encountered around the area. The reports are that during the early hours of the morning this man dressed in what appeared to be a WWII flying suite would approach strangers, looking puzzled and lost would start to talk to them in a foreign tongue. This went on for many years.

During the 1950’s reports started coming through from the staff and crew stationed at Lindholme airbase that they had been encountering a strange occurrences at the airbase itself, there were reports of pilots and crew waking up in the early hours of the morning to see a figure standing at the foot of their bunk, the figure was described as wearing a WWII pilots uniform and he was said to talk in a foreign language.

One night a mechanic who was having to work late to get an aircraft fly worthy again was interrupted during his duties, while working on the aircraft in the hanger he was interrupted by somebody behind him who was talking in a foreign language, he turned around to look at the individual and was shocked to see what appeared to be a someone in a World War Two flying suit standing there talking in a language he did not understand. The mechanic understood that something was not right with this person and fled his work place as fast as he could and did not return that night to complete his duty. The mechanic was later brought up on a charge for skipping is duty.

The reports of sighting on and off the airbase continues for several more decades.

During the 1970’s the wreckage of the Wellington Bomber was discovered on the moor’s and excavated, the remains of two of the crew members was discovered within the aircraft and these poor souls were given a burial at a Polish Cemetery in Newark, Nottinghamshire.

Memorial site for W5557

However even after the aircraft was excavated and the crew members buried, sightings and reports of encounters with the foreign airman were still coming in.

On Thursday 23rd of July 1987 a local farmer was caring out local peat cutting on his land when he discovered the remains of what was later identified as being the fourth member of the crew that perished during the accident in 1941.

Although the crew member was never officially identified he was laid to rest in the same cemetery in Newark as his crew members.

From that day onwards there has been no further reports of the ghostly airman being encountered on or off the airbase. It can only be surmised that the body that was unearthed during the peat cutting by the local farm was that which belong to the spirit that had been roaming the Hatfield moor and appearing to other staff at the Landholme airbase for many year. What this poor soul was trying to ask the people it encountered was never identified either, maybe it was trying to ask where he could find he fellow crew members, or simply where he had to report for duty or where he was. I guess we are never going to find out the truth to that question.

This accident was the first fatal Polish bomber accident in the Yorkshire area, however sadly there were several other that were to follow, many of the crew members of these have been buried in the same cemetery in Newark.

Crew members of Wellington Bomber W5557 which crashed on the Hatfield moors on 27th September 1941were,

Pilot - Sgt Eugene Buszko PAF (P/780447), aged 27. Buried Newark Cemetery, Nottinghamshire.

Wireless Operator - Sgt Jerzy S Leyche PAF (P/781385), aged 23. Buried Newark Cemetery, Nottinghamshire.

Air Gunner - Sgt Wictor Wasilenko PAF (P/781021), aged 18. Buried Newark Cemetery, Nottinghamshire.

Second Pilot - Sgt Tadeusz Korczyk PAF (P/780686), aged 27. Died of injuries the following day. Buried Newark Cemetery, Nottinghamshire.

Navigator - P/O Stanislaw Barzdo PAF, injured.

? - Sgt Zdzislaw Pisarek PAF, injured.

Five of the six crew members on W5557, was on of these the ghost of Lindholm Airbase?

____________________________________________________________________________

Sayers Tyre and Exhaust Centre, Athron Street.

During 2003 reports of strange poltergeist activity started to circulate as a tyre and exhaust centre at Athron Street, Holmes Market.

Reports from several witnesses’ state objects being moved and stones and coins be thrown.

Nigel Lee who was the tyre centre manager at the time was one of the people who experienced many of the strange happening taking place. He would turn up at work to open up to find that the tyres were no longer in the same place they had been left the night before when he locked the building up, somehow during the night the tyres had been rearranged and stacked in places they should not be.

Things escalated when Nigel was working on a car outside and all of a sudden he started to get pelted with stones, looking around to see who was responsible for throwing them he could not see anybody, but the stones kept coming until he fled back into the garage.

Events took an even stranger turn when staff at the tyre centre started to have coinage fall on them while working on vehicles, this strange event was witnessed but staff and customer alike and no one could identify where these coins were coming from. Nigel Lee says he has collected about seven of these coins that dropped on him from nowhere while he was working at the centre,

Other reports states that other objects were thrown about the building which made working there hazardous, Nigel Lee was locking up one night and as he closed the doors two heavy weight were thrown at the door.

There are reports of strange activity taking place in this building going back several decades, the building was once used as a temporary morgue during WWII, so this may a possible answer to some of the strange activity taking place here.

____________________________________________________________________________

Stocksbridge Bypass, Sheffield.

Since its opening in May 1988, Stocksbridge bypass which forms part of the A616 has found itself the subject of media attention on many occasions. Firstly this particular stretch of the road has had more than its fair share of fatal accidents, which statistically makes it one of the region’s most notorious roads. Secondly during its construction and ever since this part of the road and the surrounding area has been a hot spot of paranormal activity. 

During its construction many of the works would live on the site and the construction company also employed security guards to patrol the area to ensure that all the equipment and materials being used we not stolen or vandalised.

During 1987 reports starting being made to the construction company by those workmen living on the site of children being seen and heard playing amongst the construction site, workmen reported being woken up in the early hours of the morning by the sound of children laughing, shouting and singing. At first the workmen would go outside to warn off the children and warn them of the dangers of playing in such a dangerous environment, but on inspection of the immediate grounds and site, they were not able to locate where the children were. The construction company thought the workmen must have been dreaming or imagining these incidents as the area where the road was being built was nowhere near any houses, so any children playing there would have to travel a fair distance and to be playing there in the early hours of the morning was very unlikely.

However as a construction site is no place for children to use as a playground and due to the fact that there were more and more workmen reporting that they had also heard the children playing there, the company increased the night time patrols of the onsite security staff.

It was not long after that the company received a report from two security guards

who were out patrolling the site one night?

It was around midnight on 7^th September and the security guards had been patrolling the site and grounds as normal. As they drove along one of the guy in the passenger seat asked the driver to stop, pulling the vehicle to a halt he looked at his colleague who was looking straight past him into the field beyond, the driver turned to look and was astonished to see what they reported as being a group of children dancing in circles around a pylon in the field adjacent to the site, the guard sat and stared for a short while in amazement, what were children doing out in the middle of nowhere? The guard both got out of their vehicle and were about to walk over to the field to approach the children when suddenly the group of children just vanished in front of their eyes, the guards stood there in amazement for a little while, looking around trying to see in which direction the children had run off in, but as this was a field, there was nowhere the children could have run without the guard being able to see them sprint away. 

The guards puzzled and disturbed continued with their patrol while keeping their eyes peeled for the group of children. A couple of hours had passed when approaching a partially constructed bridge the passenger again in an urgent tone asked the driver to pull over, doing so he asked his colleague what he had seen? The passenger replied “look up there, there is someone up there on the bridge”, both guard stared in the direction of the bridge and at the hooded figure standing there. 

Hooded figure is reported by motorists.

 Opening the door the passenger go out of the vehicle, turning to his mate in the driver’s seat he said, “You drive up onto the bridge and I will wait down here” closing the door the vehicle pulled away and proceeded to drive around until it was up onto the bridge, as it drove along the bridge the headlights approached the hooded figure, but rather than eliminating the figure standing there the headlight just shone straight through the figure. Watching in disbelief for a few seconds, unsure if what they were seeing was real, their night was made even more unnerving when the hooded figure standing right in front of them vanished into thin air as they watched it.

The two guards no reaching a point of panic due to their strange experiences this night decided to return to the base as quickly as they could. Once there they telephoned their boss, Mike Lee, waking him up in the early hours of the morning and demanding he get down to the site immediately.

On his arrival he was alarmed to see both the guards sitting in the office in a state of panic and shock, he described them as shacking and had lost all their colour, they were really pale, one of the guards was actually crying. He asked the two men to explain what had been going on that night and what had taken place.

The following morning both men went to the local police station to report what they had witnessed the night before, on duty that morning was PC Dick Ellis who personally knew both of the men. They described everything that had happened the night before to the officer who took notes and listened intently to the story the men were relaying, once they had finished telling their harrowing tale, PC Ellis was unsure that this was a matter that the police could get involved with, no damage had been done to the equipment on site, nothing had been stolen from site and no one had been physically harmed, further more as both the children and the hooded monk figure had both vanished into thin air in front of the security men’s eyes, it was not really a case of trespass or potential suicide by jumping off the bridge. PC Ellis joked to his friends that this was more a matter for the church than it was for the police.

Both men took that joke seriously and headed straight to Stocksbridge church, once there they refused to leave.

About an hour later PC Dick Ellis was summoned to his superiors office, once there he was told of the situation at the church and that these men were refusing point blank to leave the church, he was told to get down there immediately to get the men out of the church and to sort the matter out, he was told to investigate the occurrences of last night to see if he could come up with anything.

September 11^th PC Dick Ellis and his colleague Special Constable John Beet drove over to the construction site to start their investigation into the reports of these strange intruders, both men expected to find nothing from this investigation and attributed the words of the security guards down to fear and panic.

The two policemen parked their squad car in front of the bridge in a close proximity to where the security guards had stopped their vehicle a few night earlier, they sat and watched, for a while there was nothing out of the ordinary to ignite the two men’s interest, but after a while PC Ellis thought what he could see as a figure standing on the bridge, not wanting to spook John or himself he said nothing for a while and just kept scanning the bridge for any kind of movement.

A few minutes later PC Ellis turned to his fellow passenger as said “what is that up there on the bridge?” Both men stared at the bridge and could see what appeared to be a figure standing by the edge of the bridge.

Special Constable Beet finally turned to PC Ellis and said “go and see what it is Dick”, PC Ellis exited the vehicle and made his way up a ladder and onto the bridge,

he carried out a survey of the area which was littered with items that were being used in the construction of the bridge and found some building materials which were covered with a sheet of polythene which had come loose and was flapping around.

Convinced this polythene sheet is what both policemen and the security guards had seen on the bridge and mistaken for a figure of a person, the two police officers decided to give it another 15 to 20 minutes and would then continue on their normal patrol.

The two men sat in the vehicle for a few minutes further when PC Ellis started to get the feeling that he could only describe as “someone walking over your grave” he started to feel uneasy and uncomfortable, sitting in the driver’s side of the car he became aware of a figure standing to his right pressing themselves against the car, he cast his head quickly to the right and recalls seeing the upper section of someone’s chest/torso and a clear V sign, PC Ellis jumped with shock and as he did so the figure vanished, Special Constable Beet then turned to look out of his side window and the figure was now standing pressing itself against his side of the vehicle, again the figure vanished with a few seconds.

Startled and unsure of what they had seen PC Ellis exited the vehicle and scanned the area around the squad car, he even looked under the vehicle to see if the person they had seen had somehow managed to hide under the car, there was no sign of this figure or person who had been standing next to their car. Returning to the car PC Ellis decided it was time for them to leave, he turned the key in the ignition but the engine refused to start, he kept tuning the key but the engine refused to catch, starting to feel a little panic Ellis turned the key once more and was relieved to hear the sound of the engine fire up, he put the car in gear and started to pull away.

They had not driven a few hundred feet when they had to stop the vehicle, they could hear a sound from the rear of the card which they could only describe as sounding like “someone hitting the rear of the car with a baseball bat”. Both men got out of the vehicle and looked around, there was no visible signs of damage and no signs of anyone around. PC Ellis got on his police radio and requested assistance at the construction site, no sooner had his radio message been made when both men were startled by a huge thumping noise coming from the rear of the car.

At this point both men decided they had had enough of this and both darted back into the vehicle, once inside there came another banging thump at the rear of the vehicle as if someone hitting the boot of the car it a bat, both men turned around in their seats to look out of the rear view mirror, expecting to see someone there wielding a weapon, but there was no one. Convinced something was not right at the construction site PC Ellis fired up the engine of the squad car again and feeling relived that it started first time, drove away from the site as quickly as they were able.

PC Ellis while later talking about the events of this night went on to say “There are things in this job that frighten me, but this was not the type of fear from violence offered towards you or anything like that, it was more a kind of dread feeling or knowing something is happening that you have no control over.

The Stocksbridge Bypass was opened on Friday 13^th May 1988. 

Stocksbridge Bypass and Bridge where a hooded figure has been seen.

Since then the reports of strange occurrence and sighting have continued to flood in.

In late summer of 1987 Farther and Son Graham and Nigel Brooke were out jogging one evening as they were passing over the Stocksbridge Bypass during its construction they noticed ahead of them a figure walking towards them in the middle of the road. As they drew nearer they noticed that it had no discernible features except for the nose and eye sockets. Accompanying this figure was a 'fusty, rotten smell' but more bizarrely the figure was walking 'in the road from the knee down' as if on a different level to the tarmac. When they were closer still the figure disappeared, leaving the father and son perplexed and scared.

During the autumn of 1987 Judi and David Simpson were driving over the bypass on a bridge one day when out to their left over the fields they noticed something odd and distinctly unsettling: a figure was floating above the field. They described it as having no face but it did have arms and legs which were flaying around. As they drove, the figure came up the embankment, rose to the road and disappeared into the car leaving the couple terrified.

To this day there are still reports of strange sighting and occurrences taking place on this stretch of the road.

Many people have reported seeing a monk like figure on the bridge or even on the road itself, many report the figure vanishing as they approach it.

There are reports of children playing next to the road, the report state that the children look as though they are dressed in old style clothes from the past.

People have reported that as they drive past the Stocksbridge Bypass there is a sudden and noticeable drop in the temperature within their vehicle.

There are a couple of explanations into what is causing these paranormal events to take place.

It has been discovered that about 400 years previous there were monastery farms on the land surrounding the bypass, the story for the monk like figure is that one of the Monks who became disillusioned with harsh monastery life walked out on the monastery and went to work as a grounds man at Underbank Hall, on his death and because of his departure monastery and from his faith he was buried in unhallowed ground.

It is thought that during the construction of the bypass the burial place of this ex-monk was disturbed and ever since his spirit has been seen around the grounds.

As for the sighting of the children, during the late 18^th century and up to mid-19^th century it was not uncommon for children to be used as labour in the local mining pits, many children lost their lives during this period while conducting this type of work in mines in this area.

Reports are still made to this day of strange sightings and happenings along this stretch of road.

 

© UK Paranormal Events

www.ukparanormalevents.com