Haunting…

Still a wee bit spooked by last night, so here goes while it’s still fresh in my mind…

We’re just about getting settled into our new house. The boxes are gradually disappearing & our new home is actually feeling like a home, which is something we’ve not really had for a long time now. Last night, with Sawyer sitter sorted, Tracy & I decided to checkout a few nearby pubs 🙂 in the hope that we’d find somewhere nice, foody & kid friendly for future reference.

First on the list was the Swan & Salmon in Alfreton. According to a website Tracy had read, the pub offered really good (not run of the mill) food & had a children’s play-area. The car-park was completely empty when we pulled up 😯 We walked in and counted 6 people, one of which was working behind the bar!!! It was a Wednesday night I suppose, so we decided to grab a drink & checkout the menu… It was very run of the mill 🙁

‘Oh look, there’s the play-area‘ said Tracy pointing outside… It was a slide!!!

We could only assume that perhaps the pub had recently changed management. Needless to say we didn’t really hang around too long after our drinks had gone. So after a bit of deliberating we decided to take the short drive up to Tibshelf, to see what that had to offer; a drive that took us back through Westhouses, the little village we now live in. I was just about to take the Tibshelf turning when…

‘Hey the pub’s open!!!‘ shouted Tracy and I instantly stopped the car.

Now before I continue, I need to give you a bit of background info… Westhouses has 1 pub; The Station. We’ve lived in Westhouses for just over a month now and we’ve never seen the pub open. Even when we viewed our house back in December the pub was closed. And when I say closed, I mean practically derelict. The pub looks as though it hasn’t been open for years. Strangely though, my sister drove past recently and was convinced the place had been open??? We checked it out after & still the run-down empty closed pub we’d always seen. Until last night that is…

‘It’s open, look…‘ Tracy continued. And sure enough, even though the doors were closed, lights were clearly visible through the frosted windows. There was even what looked like a car-park around the back.

‘I’m not leaving the car here!!!‘ It felt as though we’d pulled up in someone’s back-garden!!! There was a Wicker Man’esk pile of wood in the middle of a lawn, while the rest of the yard/garden was a complete scrapheap. ‘I don’t fancy the backdoor much!!!‘ I said.

‘Bloody ‘ell.‘

The rear of the pub looked like it was in the midst of being demolished. How on earth was this place open? We abandoned the rear yard in favour of street parking right outside the front door. The lights were still shining inside, so it had to be open. A quick reassuring glance at each other and then we left the car, pushed on the big wooden door and entered the The Station pub in Westhouses…

The first thing that hit us as we entered was the smell; a dank, old, sickly smell. \The kind of smell you get in old houses that have sat empty for years & years. The next thing we noticed was the fire; a huge, well stocked fire was roaring away in the fireplace. And then we noticed the people… There were none!!! No customers & no bar-staff??? We stood at the bar & waited, in the dank old smelly pub, while the open fire crackled away. And we waited a bit more… And then things just began to feel very, very wrong. I can’t really explain exactly how it felt, but we both knew instantly that it was time to leave, which we did, quickly… A single light shone from an upstairs window as we drove away, but we had no intention of hanging around. The pub had been beyond spooky. There was probably a very rational explanation, but all of the ones that we suggested as we drove away, revolved around ghost pubs, or even the pub at the end of Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes 😯