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
At the centre of the square, a rectangular building perches atop four sturdy masonry corner blocks and a series of more delicate stone columns, leaving the undercroft open on all sides to create a covered area for market traders. Or, as today, a gaggle of high-vis jacketed schoolchildren eating their sandwiches.
Above the undercroft, a pretty Venetian window is set into the warm yellow stone under a gable roof, and atop the roof sits a white clock turret, capped with a gilded dome and weathervane. It all looks very quaint in the daylight,
But I wonder what kind of atmosphere this place would have after dark, when footsteps would echo loudly on the cobblestones, and the town hall, crouched over its leg-like columns, would cast a heavy shadow across the square. I feel like it would be very easy to see dark figures flit between those columns from the corner of your eye.
But in fact, the ghostly encounter one man had here in the 1950s was rather more tangible. The local gentleman involved was at that time employed in a job whose title is likely to elicit stifled giggles these days, namely that of knocker-upper. And no, it's probably not what you think.
He was employed by the railway company, and his job was to walk the streets of Whitby with a long pole, tapping on the upstairs bedroom windows of employees to wake them up in time for work. A job that necessitated being out and about before everyone else, when the streets were still dark, empty and quiet.
One morning he was going about his task, turning from the market square onto Church Street, when he noticed a man wearing a billowing black cape who seemed to be speeding towards him.
Before the railway employee even had time to think, the unexplained figure was nearly upon him in a swirl of black cloak, and the unfortunate local was knocked right off his feet by what felt like a tremendous blast of air.
The impact, if that is indeed what it was, didn't alter the caped stranger's trajectory one jot, and the figure swept on towards Sandgate, where, to the witness's shock, he vanished into thin air.
And this isn't the only resident ghost of the area either, as one local ghost tour guide was to discover, to his surprise, when he was unexpectedly given a brand new ghost story to add to his collection by several patrons of his tour.
James J. Brown describes in his book The Original Ghost Walk of Whitby how he used to end his tours of an evening outside a blind alley known as Sounder's Yard, which was just off the market square, and a few paces from an 18th century pub called the Black Horse Inn.
At the end of one tour, one of his patrons approached and told him that the group had been followed for the whole tour by the spirit of a man wearing a flat cap. and he informed the guide there could be found a picture of this man in the Black Horse pub.
The tour guide had heard this kind of thing before, and whilst he didn't discount it, he didn't think much more of it, until something even stranger happened at the end of a ghost walk with a different group some months later.
On this occasion the tour guide was finishing up the walk in front of Sander's yard as usual and was rather taken aback by the unexpectedly enthusiastic round of applause that he received. Unsure what had been deserving of such a lively response his bafflement was soon answered when a patron approached him and asked How did you do that? Do what? replied the confused guide.
The patron explained that the group had seen an old man wearing a flat cap walk out of the shadows at the end of the tour and stand behind the guide as though listening to his speech. Then, just as the guide was wrapping up, the figure vanished into thin air before everyone's eyes.
The delighted crowd had just assumed it was a theatrical effect, added to give the tour a spooky flourish, and erupted into appreciative applause. but of course the guide had seen nothing of what they had witnessed and had no idea what they were talking about. Except that whatever had occurred, he had had nothing to do with it.
If that hadn't rattled and befuddled the tour guide quite enough for one night, the patron, having congratulated him on achieving the best special effect he'd ever seen, had one more bomb to drop when he asked, ''Did you put a picture of that man in the cap behind the bar of the Black Horse pub on purpose?''
The guide can only gape and wonder over the irony that his ghost tour may have been attended by an actual ghost, and he missed it completely.
Shortly before ten o'clock, the stillness of the air grew quite oppressive, and the silence was so marked that the bleating of a sheep inland or the barking of a dog in the town was distinctly heard. and the band on the pier, with its lively French air, was like a discord in the great harmony of nature's silence.
A little after midnight came a strange sound from over the sea, and high overhead the air began to carry a strange, faint, hollow booming.
This scene has become so famous not only because it is a superb example of gothic horror writing but also because of the tantalising fact that much of it is true. In 1885 there really was a great storm that lashed Whitby's shores and there really was a schooner that miraculously made the safety of the harbour during the tempest only to wreck on Collier's hope.
Showing 321–340 of 397 · page 17 of 20
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