http://www.thewestonmercury.co.uk/news/spooky_sightings_at_historic_pier_1_1208769

Spooky sightings at historic pier

Report by Samantha Pope Tuesday, February 14, 2012
12:06 PM

Those who regularly fish off the Victorian structure have seen their normally quiet sessions recently turn to spooky encounters with reports of a lonely figure walking its planks.

Dressed in dark clothing, the apparition, not known to be a man or a woman, was first spotted by angler Jack Hulbert near the pier’s pavilion.

The 72-year-old had got to the pier at 4.30am and was walking to the end when he saw a figure through the glass panes of the pavilion.

Jack, who is a member of the Clevedon Pier Sea Angling Club, said: “I looked through the glass and I saw a person leaning on the railings, looking down at the sea.

“I said to them ‘crike – I thought I was going to be first to the pier today. You beat me to it’.

“But, I walked all the way around and couldn’t see anyone.

“I thought it was someone playing a practical joke.”

Jack, who travels to Clevedon to fish three or four times a week from his home in Stonehouse, Gloucestershire, was not alarmed by the sighting due to the fact his aunties are both mediums.

He said: “That is the first time I have seen anything like this in my life.

“I thought it must have been an apparition – a ghost.

“I wasn’t frightened as I knew what it was.

After Jack’s sighting, another angler reported seeing the ghostly figure walk down to the pier gates where cecurity lights, which always come on when sensing movement, did not light up when the figure reached them.

Jack added: “He just took it to be the same as what I saw.

“Those lights definitely would’ve come on if it had been a person.

“Another man said he heard women’s voices one night at about midnight or 1am, when there was nobody else around.”

When Jack told pier mistress, Linda Strong, what he had seen she was not surprised.

He said: “Linda said she had heard quite a few stories in the past.

“She told me that where I saw the apparition is the same spot where a woman committed suicide many years ago.”