The Spectre of our Towns Haunted Past
A phantom horse drawn coach in Coulsdon and a ghost who warns pilots of bad weather before takeoff at Croydon Airport are among the spooky revelations featured in a new book about Surrey's haunted towns.
Croydon Airport as seen from the air. The terminal is on the left of the hangers.
Haunted Places of Surrey, published to coincide with Halloween, examines the many ghostly stories attached to the county's towns and villages.
It includes sightings of a phantom horse drawn coach, hurtling out of control in bad weather through Coulsdon and Warlingham, as well as a strange tale of a dying man visited by a ghostly nurse shortly before he passed away at Croydon Hospital.
According to the book, various sightings of a ghostly horse drawn coach in Coulsdon could be linked with an incident in Slines Green, Limpsfield Road, on 23rd November 1809, when a coach driver lost control of the vehicle in torrential rain and plunged into a murky pond, killing five men, five women and three children, along with six horses.
Sightings of the phantom coach during thunderstorms have been reported but one particular account in 1967 is especially chilling.
Michael Claxbourn crashed his van into a tree and claimed on his insurance form he had swerved to miss an oncoming coach and horses which came thundering out of the rain. The date of the accident was 23rd November the same as the coach crash.
Another tale featured in the book explains how a Dutch pilot took off from Croydon Airport in clear weather in the 1930's but soon ran into an impenetrable wall of fog which caused him to crash to his death.
Two weeks later an Imperial Airways pilot, a friend of the dead Dutchman, was about to take off from Croydon in clear weather when he heard a voice behind him say: "You can't take off. The weather's just the same as when I did.
He turned to see the figure of the Dutch pilot, which disappeared quickly. Feeling spooked, the pilot cancelled the flight and was stunned a short time later when a 'pea-souper' engulfed the airport in dense smog.
The book's author John Janaway was the senior local studies librarian for Surrey and is author of several local history books.
He believes the stories contained within his book could challenge even the hardest of sceptics.
In the book's foreword he says: "I have come to the conclusion that Surrey must be the most haunted county in England. Over many years my research into the county's history has involved the interpretation of facts revealed through old documents and through memories recalled."
"However, such investigations are really about the lives of those who have peopled the past and, wherever the local historian goes in the present, those people are never far away."
"Perhaps, they are closer than we think and, as Marconi claimed, they still exist in a parallel world from where occasionally they cross to touch our lives. Whether he was right or not, I leave the reader to decide."
Haunted Places of Surrey is published by Countryside Books priced £7.99, ISBN number 1 85306 932-9.