Sileby, Leicester and nearby

My friend June, who I love dearly, set me a challenge! Her friend lives in Sileby and they wondered what spooky local goings on could be found. So I got deployed…here’s a couple of bits I found, but do you know more?

I found out that that there is a place nearby called Barrow upon Soar, and on the High Street in April a large white cat (or potentially ginger) ran out in front of a car, the driver was unable to stop in time to get to the poor moggy and the thud of wheels crashed over. Distressed, they got out to look, fearing the worst, only to find not a scrap of fur or the mystery moggy under their car. The passenger and driver were no doubt confused and spooked but also relieved that they had not struck someone’s pet. This is like an event I had in Arnold, Nottingham but I found a tuft of fur and so I must assume I caught a tail… I had evidence.

Quorndon – a footpath between Quorndon and Barrow Upon Soar registered that there had been reports of a headless phantom. I found this mentioned only once but I put it in here for interests’ sake.

1898 Weslyan Chapel – the Sileby Community Centre, other than paid events I found nothing of concrete worth. (I dismiss it when suddenly things come up like that as a cash grab so if you do know any actual history, please do correct me).

Okay so. now the meaty stuff!

MURDER!

PC William Adiel Wilkinson left home, evening of 25^th May 1903, his three-year-old daughter hadn’t wanted him to go to work that night but he was a man of duty. He had been on that beat for 5 of his 1o year career and worked alongside PC Hall of Syston, both men had racked up a few grudges with the local bad element, including Thomas Porter and Thomas Preston, who had been slammed in the drunk tank and caught for offences. They had waged open verbal warfare on the two bobbies and earlier in the year Preston had threatened to shoot the pair of them.

Wilkinson and Hall had finished their patrol that night and were due to go home, and usually met up before their 11pm cut off. On this occasion Hall did not meet up, instead Wilkinson ended up in a chat with local butcher, Herbert Middleton and both heard movement in the churchyard. Wilkinson went over with his lantern in hand and out popped two figures, and a gun shot ran out. A shot to the PC’s chest had left him dead, a hole in his chest, in the middle of the street and Middleton ran down the street yelling for help.

A squad of policemen arrived from Loughborough, headed by Sergeant Agar and they found out pretty quickly about the two men and their threats. Porter had also told a local, Ferdinand Dexter, to look out as he would hear something the following morning, well it didn’t take a genius to work out what now did it? The police took themselves off to Porter’s parents and they told Agar that they had not seen their son all night.

They carried on door to door until they got to 18 Swan Street, Porter’s home, and the drunk mad-eyed man opened the door with a shotgun in hand, promising to shoot the first person to step into the house. Agar, it seems, was no fool and ordered a tactical retreat and now there were around 300 witnesses, and Preston was seen appearing in the window now and then as they began watching the house. Agar had stout sent to them to keep them calm, and then at 7am Porter stuck his head out of the window, fired the gun and then it smashed down on the windowsill. At this point the police moved in.

Agar later told the court at their trial that Porter had been the one to confess to being the shooter, but then Porter changed his turn later trying to protest he knew nothing at all. Preston’s family tried to avoid him from getting the death penalty but ultimately this did not work and both men were hanged 8am, 21^st July at Leicester prison.

Alright so, none of that was paranormal and I know a lot of you come here for the ghost bits so if you read this far, you’re about to get the cookies…

Spring 1993, Stockade booklet for the Parish of Sileby had a lovely little reminder about the Ghost of Polly Peggs and address the residents about their local ghost. Jack Meadows, reminds people about the sign under Churchill oak, pointing along the footpath which leads to Crabtree Lane.

So the story goes that she was courting a man from Sileby, that on their third meeting she had “stained her moral purity”, or in more common terms the two had clearly being having a sexual relationship and she got pregnant. Polly, as the story goes, then tried to hide her condition from her parents but eventually she was too far gone to do that. She was then ordered to do penance and her father said she was never to darken her door again.

“The White Shroud of Penance” is what this refers to, the offender would stand in full view of a congregation for Sunday Service, wearing a white sheet, holding a candle burning in one hand and the bible in the other. So this girl for a day and night is made to stand there and show her “sin” off and then on top of that, she knows she cannot even go home and has an illegitimate child. She didn’t know how to get to the man in Sileby so she was so distressed she ran across a field and drowned herself in a deep pond. Now it is a right of passage for Cossington villagers to walk along the footpath and potentially see her ghost.

Have you seen her? Why not let me know?

Sources: sileby-village.co.uk, google, Leicester Chronicle, Wikipedia, acraew.org.uk, find a grave, Britishexecutions co.uk, policerollofhonour.org.uk, paranormal database

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/177135836/william-adiel-wilkinson

By <a href=”//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Andrewrabbott” title=”User:Andrewrabbott”>Andrewrabbott</a> – <span class=”int-own-work” lang=”en”>Own work</span>, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Boggo Road Gaol

Today the gaol in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia is open for guided tours and is the only surviving intact goal for the period of the 19^th Century in Queensland. It was officially known as Brisbane Jail but gained a more local name of Boggo Road.

In 1903 a female prison was built, later known as Division 2 and is the surviving building. It has been heritage listed. Division 1, built in 1883, was demolished during an overhaul to provide an oval and recreation facilities in the 1960’s. Division 1 saw 42 hangings one of those was Ernest Austin who was the last man executed in Queensland in 1913, under the oval on the former site was a facility that became known as the black hole. It is where the prisoners were subjected to punishment of what I presume was pretty darned awful. It was used until some time in the 1980’s.

During the 1970’s the inmates undertook protests, hunger strikes and riots hit the headlines. The prison conditions were outdated and inadequate. In 1989 Division 2 building was closed down and 1992 they closed Division 1 and it was demolished in 1996. A modern prison for women operated adjacently until 2000 and was taken down in 2006.

Ernest Austin is alleged to be a member of the Boggo Road Gaol ghost collection. Legend has it that he was not at all sorry for his crimes and mocked the crowd that gathered at his the gallows for his execution. He said he would return from the grave to cause more suffering, he went on to haunt the prison, lock eyes with his victims and then drive them into madness.

It seems this story doesn’t fit so well with the records that suggest his last words were to beg forgiveness. For some reason he is said to haunt Division 2 but was hanged in the demolished Division 1. It seems this story may be an urban legend or an old story that crossed into the area after the original building was destroyed.

By Item is held by John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland., Public Domain, Link

Victoria Park Tunnel

Brisbane, Queensland, Australia has a tale about a ghost story on a site now partially destroyed by an inner-city bypass. The site is locally famous for an event in November 1965, when local children went ghost hunting. The group heard about a ghost in a tunnel beneath the rail line bordering Victoria Park. The explorers hoped to catch a glimpse and off they went.

One of the boys fell behind and as he paused into the tunnel he was caught up in a weird event. An armless, legless and headless misty-green thing floated his way and he was mesmerised, his friends dragged him back to the nearby Royal Brisbane Hospital and they thought he had somehow been possessed by the strange green ghost. The sensational story made it into the headlines the next day.

For a while after, thousands of people went to the tunnel, all hoping for a glimpse of the bizarre. It was a talking point in Brisbane and an opportunity for some to undertake a family outing. Bizarrely the events led to all sorts of rubbish appearing in the nearby lake. Oil drums, broken furniture and rubbish were set alight to try to bring the spectre out. One man even turned up with a flame-thrower! He made people stand clear of the tunnel mouth, he planned to force the thing from it’s slumber.

The events went on for a week before a local paper printed what they called the answer to the riddle. A long exposure shot of the tunnel showed a strange mist might be gasses from rotting vegetables, but some say that this doesn’t explain the sightings from 1903, 1922 and 1932. It seems though that the ghost, if it’s there, hasn’t been sighted since.

Another cool website for information