Prison ghost and Lofty the lifeguard

From a haunted prison, to the ghost of the UK’s oldest lido, Somerset has its fair share of paranormal tales. To time in with Halloween, fascinating and spooky stories from across the county are being explored in a BBC Sounds series produced by BBC Radio Somerset, called The Other Side.

Shepton Mallet Prison is among the world’s oldest, opening in 1625 and operating until 2013 when it was turned into a tourist attraction.

But at one time its inmates included the likes of the Kray twins and it held executions for prisoners. Between 1942-45, when the US military took over the site to place prisoners of war there, 18 US servicemen were put to death.

Paul Tool, 50, used to be a tour guide at the prison and in autumn 2017 he had been leading a group into the execution room when he told a story of an American soldier called Private Lee Davis, who was among those to be condemned to death.

“I had a real searing pain in my left hand and thought ‘that’s painful’,” he said.

“I carried on with the tour and it wasn’t until I left outside in the corridor I looked down at my hand and saw a massive scar.

“It was almost like a cigarette had been put out with my hand. It was bleeding quite badly. That scar stayed with me for about two years before it finally healed up.”

Mr Tool said he later discovered Private Davis had been a chain smoker.

When filmmaker John Shackleton was getting shots for a series at the UK’s oldest lido – Cleveland Pools in Bath – he said something happened which left him “absolutely flummoxed”.

He said he had been filming in the changing rooms and saw something out of the corner of his eye “in my peripheral vision”.

“A tall man came out of the first cubicle and walked towards me,” he said.

“My first assumption was it was my assistant Andrew who had been working with me that day. I didn’t think much of it.”

“Then he came and stood right behind my left shoulder. At that point I was thinking ‘what does he want?’.

“I thought it was a bit odd, and I was getting a bit uncomfortable. Before I could say anything he shifted from my left shoulder to my right, and too close to comfort.

“To the point that I turned around and said ‘what do you want?’.

“There was nobody there.

“The pool was empty and he [Andrew] was right at the other side of the site. I was absolutely flummoxed. I was so convinced, clear as day, he was standing there.”

Mr Shackleton said he asked the show’s contributor if they “have a ghost” and they said: “yeah, was it a tall guy? That will be Lofty”.

She told him Lofty was a World War Two refugee who worked as a lifeguard.

“He would sit in the high chair and blow whistles and terrify kids. They were all scared of him apparently, he was quite an authoritative figure,” he said.

The current residents of a former undertaker’s house in the village of Holcombe, near Radstock in Somerset, claim to have experienced paranormal activities.

Dave and Liz Price said they would hear footsteps from the hall upstairs, thinking it was their neighbours, but it was not until they watched a series of Most Haunted things “started to gel”.

“When we took photographs from the house, particularly after we had done any renovations, there were these light anomalies,” Mrs Price said.

She added she “gets a sense of being watched” in the house, but Mr Price said he had a spookier encounter.

“I was in bed and looked up one day and there was a little girl, who turned around and walked out the door. I thought ‘that’s strange’.

“She was typical 1800s. Ringlets, Victorian-type dress but didn’t say anything.

“And that was it, she was gone. It’s happened a couple of times.”

But the couple said one event involved something which no one would expect: an Easter egg.

“We went into the sitting room, sat on the sofa, and put the box of chocolate egg right in the middle all broken up so we could dip in,” Mrs Price said.

“It isn’t physically possible for anyone to have got their hand underneath it, but it flew up in the air. Vertically in the air. It landed back down, didn’t spill.

“We both looked at each other and said ‘I didn’t touch it’. We can’t debunk it.”