Strange Sightings Around Sicklinghall, North Yorkshire

Stories of ghostly encounters in Sicklinghall and the surrounding area are still coming in to the Wetherby News.

Since the spooky experience of Warid Miah, the Wetherby restaurateur who saw a man in the road and felt a hand grab him around the neck as he drove out of the village, was reported, current and former residents have been recounting their own stories.

This week, Dorothy Pelter contacted the Wetherby News after reading Denise Nottingham's account of living at the Clap Gate Inn during the late 1960s and 1970s.

Mrs Pelter said: "We lived opposite the Clap Gate Inn in the late 1970s. Our house used to be a smithy at one time.

"If the pub was 500 years old, the cottage must be. We excavated and put the damp proof course in and they dug all the floors out. We built a large kitchen and lounge and a bedroom above at the end. My daughter Jacqueline slept in an old bedroom that was like a cabin. I believe somebody who was at sea had taken the cottage before us and it was like a bunk bed in there.

"When I woke up one night, there was an old lady's head with a bonnet on just standing at the foot of the bed. It was the first week we moved in. It was only once and I just forgot it. My husband said, 'No, you didn't see that'. But it brought it back when I read the Wetherby News. Miss Nottingham was in the pub when we first moved in, but then a chap called Ted moved in and took over.

"My daughter worked for extra money at Linton Springs and they all said a ghost used to walk the corridors. She thought our house was ever so spooky."

Mrs Pelter left Sicklinghall in the late 1980s and now lives in Scarcroft, but said she is still interested in hearing other accounts of supernatural experiences in the area.