Fitz
speaker
397 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Oct 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Fitz’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Being such a useful shortcut up the cliff straight to the hotels and holiday lodgings, the tunnel has often been used by visitors returning to their accommodation after an evening in the town. But locals know that it's not somewhere you want to be after dusk.
Many residents report feeling an eerie presence when walking through the tunnel and still more tell of witnessing a dark shadowy shape appearing from nowhere and briefly blocking out the light at the end before vanishing. Maybe the spookiest story though comes from a couple who were holidaying in Whitby and used the tunnel as a shortcut to and from their hotel a few times during their stay.
On one occasion, the woman of the couple experienced exactly what so many witnesses before her had done. She noticed the dark figure of a man at the end of the passage and was startled because she knew that no one had entered the cut-through ahead of them.
When she mentioned it to her husband he brushed it off and said that it must just be another pedestrian who had come up the steps on the other side, changed their mind and started back down again. But when they emerged out on the other side there was no one else to be seen anywhere and certainly no one descending the steps on the other side.
The next time they used the shortcut, the husband chuckled when he felt his wife grab his hand as they passed through the tunnel. He had no fear of the tunnel, shadowy figures or otherwise, but he supposed she must still be feeling frightened from her previous experience if she felt the need for this physical reassurance.
So he tried to make light of the situation, asking if she saw any spooky dark figures today. He stopped chuckling when he heard his wife's voice behind him in the darkness say, Pardon, I didn't hear you. In fact, she was several paces behind him and definitely not close enough to have been in physical contact with him. So who or what had just been holding his hand?
Of course, these days, lighthouses have electric lights and are often automated. But this lighthouse's ghost hails from the days that the life-saving signal needed to be lit and tended by hand.
And one day, as dusk was beginning to creep in and the pelting rain of an incoming storm already blurred the darkening skies, the West Lighthouse's keeper hurried towards the tower, knowing lives would depend on his signal that night. The tempest grew and he battled his way through rains sent horizontal by swelling winds and
By the time he reached the base of the lighthouse steps, his clothes were soaked and dripping as he toiled up those 81 steps with grim determination, leaving a watery trail behind him. He got the lamp lit, as his duty demanded, and started to head back down the steps to find a warm fire and dry clothes.
But, tired and distracted as he was, he didn't notice how slick the steps were from the rain he had shed all the way up them. and before he had time to realise the slippery danger, his feet went out from under him, and down he fell, finding his fateful end on the cold steps of the lighthouse's staircase.
It's claimed that witnesses have seen the apparition of the unfortunate lighthouse keeper hurrying towards the tower just as he did on that fateful stormy night. Some say they have seen him doggedly making his last journey up the steps to light the lamp, forever replaying his last crucial but deadly task.
This is the version of the story told in many guidebooks and town trails, but ask the local ghost tour guides who have been stomping these streets for years, or consult their books at least, and they tell a slightly different version.
According to Paul McDermott's The Whitby Ghost Book and James J. Brown's The Original Ghost Walk of Whitby, the real story came from a young girl who visited the lighthouse with her mother in the 1950s. The pair were climbing the long winding staircase when the girl stopped in her tracks at seeing the prostrate form of a severely ill or injured man lying across the stairs halfway up.
He was wearing seaman's clothes and she could clearly see that he had only one arm. She was absolutely baffled when her mother simply urged her on up the stairs, expecting of course for her parent to rush to the man's aid, but she quickly realised that no one else but her could see him.
Paul McDermott writes that he came across this story when he read a letter published in the Whitby Gazette written by this very girl, only now an adult, describing her strange experience in the lighthouse.
He adds that he looked into this further and was actually able to discover there was in previous years a one-armed man who worked at the lighthouse and sadly suffered a heart attack and died right in the middle of the long staircase.
James J. Brown notes in his retelling that when the girl explained to her mother why she had stopped on the stairs and what she had seen, the mother realised straight away that what her daughter witnessed was not of the living, as she personally knew of the one-armed keeper, who had tragically died on those stairs some years before. Which version of this, if any, is true, we may never know.
But stories like this, more often than not, grow from a grain of truth. So if you're ever passing by Whitby's West Pier, when the skies are heavy with storm, keep an eye out for a dark huddled figure hurrying towards the lighthouse at the end of the pier, and maybe glance up at the white lantern room in case any shadowy figures are moving around up there.
But now we must leave the promenade and follow Mina past the bandstand and the fish market towards the Red Swing Bridge.
Turning onto the market square today from Sandgate, the area bustles with shoppers, tramping over smooth, well-worn cobblestones that look like they have a few hundred years' worth of stories to tell. Customers of a nearby cafe are seated around an area paved with wide, heavy flagstones, enjoying their drinks in the shadow of the 18th century town hall.
Showing 301–320 of 397 · page 16 of 20
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