Creepy Canals - British Waterways confirms Britain's most haunted waterway
26 October 2009
Britain’s canal network was built by hand more than 200 years ago, and the blood sweat and tears of countless hours’ work, as well as many more grisly incidents, have left their ghostly mark on the waterways. Visitors and canal users often report strange occurrences along British Waterways’ 2,200 mile network of canals and rivers, which reputedly plays host to hundreds of ghosts, such as a shrieking boggart and a woman who was bloodily murdered on a canal. The name that comes up again and again is the Shropshire Union Canal – and this Halloween, British Waterways upholds the ‘Shroppie’s’ reputation as Britain’s most haunted canal.
Britain’s most haunted?
The Shropshire Union Canal has an astonishing five ghosts along its length:
• ‘The Man Monkey’ – the Shroppie’s best known phantom – at Bridge 39 near Norbury. The hideous black, shaggy coated being is said to be the ghost of a boatman drowned here in the 19th century
• At Chester’s old Northgate where the canal was dug into part of the town’s moat, a Roman centurion can sometimes be seen guarding the entrance to the city
• At Betton Cutting near Market Drayton, which has always had a dark reputation among boating people, a shrieking spectre has been seen and heard
• The ghost of an American pilot who crashed his plane beside the canal during WWII has been seen at Little Onn, near Church Eaton in Staffordshire
• Tyrley middle lock, just beyond Market Drayton, is reported to have its own helpful resident ghost that at night will push the lock gates shut behind passing boats
The Shropshire Union Canal was built in the early 19th century and travels 67 miles from Ellesmere Port near Liverpool to Autherley Junction near Wolverhampton. The southern end of the canal, originally known as Birmingham & Liverpool Junction Canal, was the last great narrowboat canal to be built and is notable for Thomas Telford’s spectacular engineering. The picturesque canal is characterised by deep cuttings and massive embankments, such as Shebdon, which add to its eerie feel. It passes in the shadow of the ancient Wrekin in east Shropshire, itself the subject of local folklore.
Terror on the towpaths
Many of Britain’s canals have chilling tales associated with them and have recorded a long history of spectral sightings.
The Trent & Mersey Canal challenges the Shroppie in the most haunted stakes, with a shrieking boggart – the ghost of Kit Crewbucket who was mudered and whose headless corpse was dumped in the canal – said to inhabit Harecastle Tunnel, Kidsgrove. The canal also features the ‘bloody steps’ at Brindley Bank in Staffordshire, haunted by a woman – Christina Collins – murdered in 1839 whose blood ran into the canal. The stain still reappears to this day. A grotesque cackling figure can be spotted at Buttermilk Bridge and at Astley a mysterious grey lady – thought to be the ghost of 18 year-old Ann Mort who died of a broken heart after her parents banished her suitor – appears to be searching for her lost love.
The Grand Union Canal is haunted by Spring Heeled Jack, who hops from step to step at Cassiobury Park in Watford. Further north at the Blisworth Tunnel, near Stoke Bruerne in Northamptonshire, a mysterious candlelit phantom appears at the spot where14 navvies died in a rock fall during the construction of the tunnel in the late eighteenth century.
On moonlit nights an eerie figure can sometimes be seen gliding along the towpath by the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, a UNESCO World Heritage site on the Llangollen Canal.
During the construction of The Falkirk Wheel, which links the Forth & Clyde and Union canals in Scotland, sightings of a spectral phantom of a centurion were reported by workers. A tunnel connecting the waterway to the aqueduct is built beneath the Roman Antonine Wall. At the Union Canal tunnel in Falkirk, two walkers and their dogs were terrified by an apparition. Returning to the site with a medium, they discovered that the ghost was that of a man who had been lured to the tunnel to his death in the 1940s, viciously murdered after he had been unable to pay his gambling debt.
There is even a ghost in one of British Waterways’ offices, a former lock keeper’s cottage on the Montgomery Canal near Welshpool. The cottage was built on the site of the home of an early Welsh princess named Eira. She was said to have been walled up alive as a punishment for running away with her lover.
With Halloween around the corner, people can get a chill by exploring these ghostly waterways and seeing if they can spot some spooks themselves. www.waterscape.com/ghosts, the online guide to visiting all Britain’s inland waterways, can help visitors plan and book their journeys and offers advice on the best places to take a walk on the wild side this Halloween.
Ghost spotters wanted!
British Waterways is encouraging waterways users to get in touch with any sightings of ghosts on the UK’s canals and rivers. Ghost writer Allan Scott-Davies has been commissioned to write a book on the ghosts of the UK inland waterways and is looking for spooky stories to include. The book will be in the shops by September 2010 - just in time for next Halloween.
Allan is a keen ghost hunter and has written numerous articles and books about spooky goings on. He has been interested in ghosts on the waterways since an eerie experience of his own on the canal at Lapworth. He says: “Within two days of being moored on the arm at Lapworth I heard someone in distress in the canal shouting for help. Rushing out into the snowstorm that was going on I used my torch to point in the direction of the noise but nothing could be seen – just ice – solid ice and huge flakes of snow. I heard and saw nothing as I searched for nearly an hour. Noticing a light on another boat, I knocked on their roof; they had seen or heard nothing. It was not until I mentioned it the next day at work that I was told it is the ghost of a boatman who lost his footing on the bridge as he walked back from the Navigation Inn to his working boat in the 1940s, falling through the ice and drowning under thick ice.”
If you have a story to contribute, please contact Alan by emailing allan@scott-davies.net. Any stories included in the book will be acknowledged and photographs would also be gratefully received.
Ends
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Notes to editors
• British Waterways is the public corporation that cares for a 2,200-mile network of canals and navigable rivers across the country and works with a broad range of public, private and voluntary sector partners to improve the social, economic and environmental benefits of the inland waterways. For more information visit www.britishwaterways.co.uk
• Allan Scott-Davies has been a fan of the canals and inland waterways of the UK for years and as a result became a live aboard boater. Allan saw the ghost of a 1940s boatman who drowned in a canal after falling through thick ice, shortly after becoming a boater. Allan has since been collecting ghost stories of the waterways for a new book to be published by the History Press next year to follow on from his latest offering ‘Haunted Shropshire’