Return of the ghost in the broad-brimmed hat
Newly recorded sighting helps to confirm the existence of an apparition in an ancient North Wales town
By Richard Holland
Following on from the article last time about the virtue in hunting out the ghost stories in one’s own local area, I was delighted to get a phone call from Harry Thomas, who has spent many years researching the history and writing books on his home town of Rhyl and its neighbours along the coast of North-East Wales. Harry has already written one book on his local spooks and is busy working on another. He was good enough to get on the phone because he’d recorded a new sighting of a ghost I had included in my own ‘Haunted Clwyd’ way back in 1992.
The setting is Rhuddlan, an ancient town which boasts an imposing castle built by Edward I. Ernie Jones, a former night watchman, told Harry that in the early hours one morning he saw a figure approaching him up Parliament Street, Rhuddlan. Initially, he thought it was a policeman who often used to stop for a chat when on his beat. But when the figure passed under a street lamp, Mr Jones realised it was a stranger.
He was wearing a cloak and a hat with a wide brim, and - a weird detail this - he was apparently being buffeted by a strong wind, his cloak billowing out around him, even though it was a calm night. Mr Jones was just pondering who it could be when the figure vanished. He realised then that he had seen a ghost.
This certainly seems to have been the same phantom as that glimpsed by a Mrs Hibbert near Rhuddlan Castle [pictured] some years ago.
Her daughter wrote in to my old ‘History and Mystery’ column in the ‘Rhyl Journal’ with the following account: ‘My mother was entertaining some friends when this ghost walked past the window. He was wearing a cloak and a wide-brimmed hat and he was covered in mist. She rushed out but he had gone. She was too shocked even to speak, so she said nothing to anybody. In any case, as she said, they would only have laughed at her.’
But as we now know, the lady was not the only witness of this interesting ghost. Indeed, her reference to the figure ‘covered in mist’ tallies to an extent with Mr Jones’s account of it apparently wandering about in a spell of bad weather unique to itself. Not only that, but the ghost of the man in the broad-brimmed hat may already have been familiar to old residents of Rhuddlan. Mr Jones knew nothing of Mrs Hibbert’s sighting but he mentioned his own experience to a 90-year-old who had lived all his life in the town. ‘You’ve seen the ghost of the coachman,’ this chap told him matter-of-factly.
Perhaps some further research by the diligent Harry Thomas may one day unearth a story that explains the ghost. What grim fate, I wonder, befell a coachman one stormy night? The mystery behind the existence of a ghost is often just as interesting as the phenomenon itself!
[SOURCE: Personal communication with Harry Thomas. Harry is currently working on a new book about the ghosts of the North-East Wales coast. Check my ‘Haunted Wales' blog later in the year for details - http:// hauntedwales.blogspot.com/]
© Richard Holland
Tags: British ghosts, ghosts in Britain, ghosts in Wales, Haunted Britain, haunted Wales, Rhuddlan
