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| Ghosts Archive 1973 |
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 Ghosts news, views, gallery and archive brought to you by Weird Wiltshire Introduction Latest News News Archive Longleat House Sign of an Angel Bewley Court Red Lion Westbury Pool Maud Cunnington Wardour Castle Manor House Hotel Devizes Castle Kings Arms Malmesbury Abbey Lacock Abbey Avebury Manor Littlecote Manor Lydiard House Gallery Postcards Wallpaper Forum Links |
First Pubished February 10 1973 A PUBLIC house is an obvious place to find spirits - but not the kind which pops up behind the bar of Swindon's Clifton Hotel. It boasts a special brand of spirit, a poltergeist, which raises its glass in a friendly but uncanny toast and then lowers it gently to the floor. The phenomenon, which terrified a dog and was seen by startled regulars, has happened twice recently. On each occasion manager's wife Mrs Blanche Chirgwin was on the receiving end of the salute. Evidently the poltergeist was in festive spirit because it chose the Christmas season for its pranks. At lunchtime on Christmas Day, Mrs Chirgwin was serving by the lounge bar beer pumps, some two feet in front of glass-laden shelves, when she felt something moving down her back. As she turned, one of the tall, short-stemmed sherry glasses from the shelves was finishing its descent on to the hard red lino after pushing past her leg. It spun several times slowly on its side but was undamaged - after a drop of more than five feet. 'I didn't really feel frightened but it gave me a queer feeling,' said Mrs Chirgwin. She added that previously she has dropped glasses from waist-height. They shattered into small pieces. She and her husband, Mr Nigel Chirgwin, 44, both pointed out that the glasses, upside down on the shelves, were always pushed well back to counter any Clifton Street traffic vibration. In any case there was little passing traffic at the Christmas lunch hour. Mr Chirgwin said: 'When a glass falls, you expect to get a dustpan and brush and sweep off the pieces.' On Boxing Day, also at lunchtime, Mrs Chirgwin was again behind the lounge bar. several customers were drinking and one of them had a dog called Bonny, a young mongrel bitch. This time Mrs Chirgwin was facing the same shelf and about four feet away. As she watched a sherry glass rose well clear of a glass shelf, described as a graceful curve and dropped gently to the floor. As before, it spun slowly several times before coming to rest. As customers gaped and Mrs Chirgwin called her husband from the adjoining bar, the effect on Bonny was electrifying. She raced to the lounge bar door and scratched frantically to get out. 'She seemed really afraid,' said Mr Chirgwin. Put it this way. We didn't get the impression she just wanted to spend a penny.' The incidents with the glasses sparked off memories and tales about the Clifton. Like the time Mr Chirgwin manager for the last nine months, was in the beer cellar under the bar late at night. 'I felt that somebody was behind me,' he said. 'The short hairs on the back of my neck started to bristle. I thought the dog had followed me down and told it to go back. But there was nobody there.' There was also the legend of the shadowy hooded figure at the window seen from the street, a previous landlord's dog which went mad - and the odd case of the sash window. It appeared that the attic window has been jammed for years but one morning a landlord found it wide open. He shut it and it promptly jammed again. It is still jammed. Legend has it that the Clifton stands on the site of a former priory, but Mr Chirgwin believes that a landslide, which is said to have destroyed part of the nearby old cemetery, may have a bearing on the strange happenings. 'Something may have been released. This is the only explanation we can think of,' he said. 'But it doesn't worry us. We want to leave well alone.' Mrs Chirgwin is quite content to share her home with the poltergeist. 'I am not in the least frightened. It is very friendly,' she said. 'But if it started throwing full whisky bottles about we should have to do something about it.' Back to 1973 index |
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