An Alston pub plagued by poltergeist activity is being investigated by ghost hunters.
The Angel Inn, on Front Street, is a 412-year-old building where ghostly apparitions, glasses flying off shelves and chairs moving on their own are all in a day’s work for staff.
But landlady Jodie Etheridge, 25, from Alston, said that recent unsettling activity in the cellar was the last straw, leading them to get investigators involved.
She said: “I messaged the team at Paranormal Investigations Cumbria and asked them to come and investigate because the cellar is getting really spooky at the minute, and I don’t like being down there.
“When you walk in it feels like someone behind you is watching you and the light sometimes switches off on its own, it’s pitch black down there and you’ve got to run back out.
“There are always ghostly activities happening here, we’ve had staff and customers tell us they’ve seen things, and some people have heard a woman singing.”
Much of the paranormal activity that is said to take place is linked to the portrait of a former landlady, Mrs Pattinson, who died in 1925 at the inn, followed by her husband John Joseph. She was the last member of the Pattinson family, who ran the pub for more than 100 years.
Jodie, who has worked at the Angel for the past decade, added: “Her picture has to remain at the end of the bar and if you touch it, things start happening.
“It’s actually in the contract that Mrs Pattinson is not to be taken away from the end of the bar. Our business manager is terrified of it.”
But it doesn’t end there — the inn’s cellar was formerly used as the town’s jail, where prisoners of war were held.
Jodie said that one guest who stayed recently who wasn’t aware of Mrs Pattinson or the inn’s history said he saw the figure of a soldier in uniform standing on the landing.
Jodie added: “I’m not sure if the investigation will make more people want to visit, or if nobody will walk in the doors ever again, we’ll have to see!”
