Emma Dunlop

A TERRIFIED landlord is calling in a priest to exorcise his Yorkshire pub after he confronted a ghostly apparition causing mayhem to his premises.
Roger Froggatt, of the Low Valley Arms, was left severely shocked after seeing the ghostly figure of a woman dressed all in white when he went to what he thought was a break-in at his Barnsley pub around at 1.30am yesterday.

But it was when he went to check the toilets that he got the shock of his life.
In front of him stood the grotesquely disfigured apparition of an elderly woman dressed all in ghostly white.

When she turned to look at him he saw half her face was missing, from her cheekbone down to her jaw. He and his wife Kathryn were so terrified they called the police who also witnessed spooky goings-on. Three plasma television screens had switched themselves on. A heat-seeking alarm had also been activated and the manually-operated toilets were flushing themselves �?which police last night confirmed they too had seen �?yet there was nobody in the pub or any sign of a break-in.

Regulars say the ghost may be that of a former barmaid who died some years ago at the Station Road pub in Darfield. The frightened couple are now planning to call in a priest to carry out an exorcism to rid the pub of the evil spirit. Mr Froggatt, 49, was so shaken that the police offered to call him an ambulance but he refused medical treatment.

 

He said: "I have never seen anything like it in my life. I had made the pub secure, switched off all the power to the television screens then went upstairs with my wife to bed in our flat on the premises.

"I was woken when the alarm went off and went downstairs to see if I could hear anything but heard nothing and reset it and went back to bed.
"There are heat-seeking sensors all over the pub and if anyone had been inside the bar area the alarm would have gone off again within three seconds.
"I went back to sleep then the alarm went off about one-and-a-half hours later. I heard nothing again and reset the alarm but this time decided to investigate further and went into the pub armed with a lump of wood in case there were burglars.

"I will never forget what I saw. All three plasma television screens were switched on. My wife went to switch them off and I checked the toilets.
"When I went into the ladies I couldn't believe what I saw. There was a figure of what I believe was a woman with no face and silvery grey hair, dressed in a white gown.

"I stood there for about four or five seconds then fled in terror. I ran out of there, I was that shaken. I couldn't speak. I couldn't even speak to the police when they arrived soon afterwards after my wife called them.

"She took two officers into the toilets and they saw them just flushing by themselves, all the time. They are not automatic and you have to pull the handle down. There was nobody there.

"I can't remember much about it after that. I was shaking. I have never seen anything like it before and don't want to again. It was the ugliest thing I have ever seen."

Mr Froggatt insisted he was a man who was not easily frightened and one who had run pubs for some time.

"This has just done my head in," he said.

"We've had gas taps turning themselves on in the cellar and barrels mysteriously moving about but have just dismissed it as figments of our imagination. But believe me, last night was real."

Mr Froggatt and his wife Kathryn, 55, have run the pub, formerly called the Watt Tyler, for just a year.

A South Yorkshire Police spokesman said: "Officers attended and made a search of the property. On entering the toilet area the pedestal toilets in the cubicles began to flush themselves. We are still investigating."

 

26 April 2006