The Paranormal Database

Frilly Woman

Location: Birmingham - Victoria Road, Aston
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 1970s
Further Comments: This shade dressed in green is reported to just 'appear' in the middle of the road or on the kerb before drifting across the street before vanishing again.

Giant's Stone

Location: Birmingham - Warstones Lane
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Still present?
Further Comments: A giant who lived at Birmingham castle was killed when the Giant of Dudley threw a stone at him (launched from Dudley!). The rock also demolished the castle. The stone was erected as a memento, and the lane named after the War Stone used as a weapon. The rock is now on a plinth within the cemetery.

White Lady

Location: Birmingham - Warstones Lane Cemetery
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Twentieth century
Further Comments: Though seen wearing several different sets of clothing over the past fifty years, this young girl with blonde hair is thought to be Victorian and has a habit of passing through parked cars.

John Wentworth

Location: Birmingham - White Swan public house, Harborne
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: John went mad with grief when he found out his secret love had died in a coach accident - he shot his dog before turning the gun on himself. He has been heard moving around the building and has been known to tap people on their shoulder.

Hit and Vanish

Location: Birmingham - Witton Cemetery, Moor Lane
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 1995, and 1974
Further Comments: A driver was convinced that he had run over a figure outside the cemetery (he felt and heard the 'bump' of the body on the car's bonnet), but the 'victim' vanished without trace. A police search of the area also failed to find any evidence of the accident. Twenty years previous, a driver reported seeing a ghostly airman drifting along the road.

Artist Wayne Lowden's sketch of a female ghost in modern clothing.

Pale Woman

Location: Birmingham - Witton Lakes Park, Erdington
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 1960s / 1970s
Further Comments: This female phantom who lurks at the edge of the lakes is said to dress in modern clothing, though her skin is frightening pale in colour.

Shuffling Feet

Location: Bloxwich - Hills House Farm
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Most often on Sundays
Further Comments: This place was haunted by the sound of slippered feet walking across the carpet and sudden loud cracking noises. A shadow would pass by the living room window, and the sound of a car could be heard pulling up on the driveway, though nothing could ever be seen.

Marion Gorman

Location: Brooke End - Railway passing through Brooke End, near signal box
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 1950s
Further Comments: Marion was decapitated by a train on the tracks, slipping over in front of it as she headed to the signal box to meet her lover in the early 1900's. She has been seen several times since, always stepping in front of an incoming train before fading from view. One driver reported seeing her ghostly form wearing a bloody dress without a head.

Lost Monk

Location: Coombe - Coombe Abbey (currently a hotel)
Type: Curse
Date / Time: Twentieth and twenty-first centuries?
Further Comments: Seen by witnesses as he floats around the grounds of the abbey, this monk is thought to have been murdered in 1345. Phantom footsteps have also been reported on the stable yard cobbles and are thought to belong to a young gypsy girl who cursed the family after they mistreated her. A maid dressed in old-fashioned clothing reportedly stares out of a window. Finally, a phantom cyclist, thought to be a Victorian woman, has been observed on the road just by the former abbey.

Pie Thrower

Location: Coseley - Old Bush public house
Type: Poltergeist
Date / Time: 1969 - 1979
Further Comments: This pie-loving poltergeist took the blame for customers' food lifting off the bar (whilst being eaten) and dropping to the floor. The entity threw spoons, cigarettes, and ashtrays around the site.

Female

Location: Coventry - 160, 166 & 167 Spon Street
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Late twentieth century
Further Comments: The same female shade was reported to haunt all three of these buildings, witnesses claiming that the short woman wore black and white with her hair up in a bun. The owner of 160 said the ghost would turn on and off electrical appliances, while in 166 the occupier said that the entity smashed glasses and threw stones.

Lorry

Location: Coventry - A4028 road (now A428?) eastbound, connecting Coventry and Rugby
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Early twentieth century?
Further Comments: This phantom HGV travelling at speed vanishes just before hitting the vehicle travelling in front of it. Another version of the story dating back to the 1930s says the vehicle moves straight across the road, emerging from a hedge before vanishing into another.

Escaping Cats

Location: Coventry - Area bombed during World War 2
Type: Legend
Date / Time: Second World War
Further Comments: Locals say that prior to the blitz which levelled a large part of Coventry, all the neighbourhood cats disappeared as if they knew what the future held.

Anti-Cleaning Cleaner

Location: Coventry - Aston Court Hotel, Holyhead Road
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 2000s
Further Comments: Several ghosts are thought to be at home here, including a former cleaner who disliked her job so much she now hides the cleaning equipment in the hotel! A slightly younger ghostly girl is blamed whenever men are hurt on the site - it is stated that she was beaten by a former master and is now extracting revenge.

The ruins of Coventry Cathedral.

Droning of Aircraft

Location: Coventry - Cathedral
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Post-Second World War (aircraft), January 1893 (torchbearer)
Further Comments: Since the city was levelled by German bombers during the Second World War, some people have reported hearing 'old' aircraft over the ruins of the cathedral. In 1893, witnesses spotted a human arm holding a blue torch in the north aisle. The arm vanished when one man grabbed a poker and approached it, although manifested again a short time later.

Raining Apples

Location: Coventry - Coundon, area around B4098
Type: Other
Date / Time: 12 December 2011
Further Comments: An eighteen metre stretch of the B4098 was left covered in smashed apples after the fruit fell from the sky. One witness watched the apples rain down onto the bonnet of her car, while a man living along the road discovered his garden covered in pulp. A mini tornado was blamed for removing the apples from an orchard and dropping them close by, although the orchard remained unnamed.

Girls in White

Location: Coventry - Gibbet Hill
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Pre 1908
Further Comments: A teacher and clergyman travelling by the old gibbet spot watched twenty girls dressed in white pass by.

Banging

Location: Coventry - Golden Cross
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 2016-2017
Further Comments: During renovation work, the landlady of the pub reported banging on the doors, open of which would always open itself.

No Ghost Here?

Location: Coventry - Gosford Books
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 1980s
Further Comments: While a local ghost walker/storyteller says that the bookshop was haunted by children who would stack books in the aisles, the current owner of the establishment says he has not encountered anything during his 36 years of running the shop.

Three Bangs

Location: Coventry - Hairdressing Salon
Type: Unknown Ghost Type
Date / Time: October 2009
Further Comments: A visitor to this quiet salon was using the upstairs bathroom. The door would not close properly so was left slightly ajar. Suddenly there were three loud knocks and the door was pushed open with force, but no one could be seen and nothing more was heard, even though the area was covered in creaky floorboards.

Peeping Tom, from the 1911 film Lady Godiva.

Peeping Tom

Location: Coventry - High Street
Type: Legend
Date / Time: 1200s
Further Comments: The original 'Peeping Tom', Tom was a tailor who looked out on the naked Lady Godiva as she rode through the city to protest at her husband's tax increase. All the town's inhabitants stayed in their houses and did not look; Tom was too curious for his own good, and gazed out as Godiva rode passed, and was stuck blind for doing so.

Unclear

Location: Coventry - Manor house (demolished 1964), Wilsons Lane
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Pre-1964
Further Comments: Known locally as a haunted house (before being destroyed), but the exact nature of the phantoms at work is not clear.

Galloping Horses

Location: Coventry - Moat House Lane, Canley
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown - late twentieth or early twenty-first century?
Further Comments: Walking along the lane, one man heard wheels moving along the road followed by the sound of galloping horses - the witness had to jump out of the way. Other people have reportedly heard farm animals in the area, although none are around.

Art Student

Location: Coventry - Old railway building (currently Horizon Recording Studio?), Warwick Road
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 1980s
Further Comments: This building is haunted by both an art student who died of a drug overdose and by a former rail employee. People recording at the studios have felt something brush past them or breathe heavily down their necks. Disembodied footsteps run down the corridors, while lights also turn themselves on and off.

Former Landlords

Location: Coventry - Old Windmill public house
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 2000s
Further Comments: According to the Spirit Team UK website, this pub still contains the memories of former landlords and staff. One entity tried to push someone into the fireplace.