In England (July 2018), on a trip back to the UK from New Zealand, I spent a night at one of York’s most haunted pubs, the Golden Fleece.
The Golden Fleece is in the heart of the city of York, opposite to the famous medieval shambles. It’s one of the oldest pubs in York. The exterior of the pub is tall and narrow and the figure of a golden sheep hanging above the front door depicts the name of the pub. The pub was named for guild members of the nearby Merchant Adventurer’s Hall who used to trade in fleeces and wool.
The pub was built around 1503 as a wooden frame building as has such it has no foundations, the result is that the floors, ceilings and doorways all sloping. A ghostly white cat protrudes from the wall above the pub sign. Statues of cats have been placed on buildings in York for around two centuries to frighten away rats and mice which can carry plague and illness. The cats were thought to also ward off wandering evil spirits and generally to bestow good luck and good health on citizens who needed feline friends to ensure a good night sleep. Only 22 cats now remain scattered around York city centre on roof tops, eaves and chimneys.
The pub is proud of its haunted reputation. Saul Goodfellow, a skeleton with his own blog, is a permanent customer at the bar.
There are rumoured to be fifteen spirits that haunt the pub. The most famous and the most talked about is Lady Alice Peckett, wife of John Peckett, who used to be the mayor of York and also the owner of the hotel. Many guests have reported seeing Alice wandering the corridors of the hotel, moving furniture around and walking up and down staircases in the small hours of the night. The pub is reported to be very active. The types of activity reported include, apparitions, footsteps in the corridor, items being moved around or disappearing.
Another of the famous ghosts is Geoff Monroe a Canadian airman who fell from the upper windows of the hotel (room 4) during World War II (1945) and broke his neck. His ghost has been said to haunt the bedroom from which he fell. He has been seen standing in his uniform and guests have claimed to have been awoken by the prod of an icey finger. Other ghosts reported include a man known as One Eyed Jack, who is often seen wearing a 16-17th century red coat, carrying a pistol, in the rear bar of the pub. Along with him someone described as a grumpy old man has also been seen in the rear bar. There are also stories of young boy who was trampled to death by horses during Victorian times and who is regularly reported to be seen in the front bar.
The pub cellar was used to hold the dead bodies of criminals as a temporary measure until their relatives came to identify them. Roman soldiers have also reported to been seen in the cellar of the hotel.
For my night in the pub, I stayed in the Shambles room, a beautiful room with a large four poster beds, a sofa and an original fireplace in the room. The room had a good atmosphere and I didn’t feel uncomfortable or threatened at any time while I was there.
During my stay I carried out 3 or 4 evps sessions in the late evening and in the early hours of the morning after the pub had closed. I took EMF readings and temperature readings over the night. The evp sessions during the evening were tricky as I was mainly picking up a lot of bar noise and street noise. Later on, although the bar and street was quieter, it seemed quite dead activity wise and I didn’t capture any responses. I captured a couple of EMF spikes while sat on the bed, but otherwise the EMF readings remained steady. The temperature in the room fluctuated between 23ºC and 25ºC, with no major variations.
Before heading off to bed, I left some trigger objects such as spoons and a necklace in an arrangement and took some photos in case anything moved. I encouraged any spirits there to move them. Unfortunately nothing had moved by the morning.
Despite the lack of action with the equipment, I did have some interesting experiences. The smell of flowers was prominent on the staircase on two separate occasions, one on the first evening of my stay, and then one the next morning; interestingly these were on different parts of the staircase each time. The smell was very localised, i.e. just on a specific area the stairs each time; if you went further up or down the stairs the smell disappeared. On both latter occasions, I went into the ladies toilet and checked around. I could see no air freshener there or anyway else around the staircase. Even going into the ladies toilet I couldn’t smell the flowery smell in there. The source of the smell for me, therefore, remains a bit of a mystery.
At exactly 3.03 am I awoke suddenly from a dream in which I was dreaming that I was feeling really sick, only to awake and find that I was actually feeling quite nauseous. To make it worse I could smell an incredibly strong smell which I can only really describe as being quite musty and quite unpleasant. Having been in the room all evening I don’t recall having smelt this smell before. Then the TV flashed and came on. I had to get up out of bed and find the remote to switch it off. The nausea disappeared once I was awake and I the smell seemed to have disappeared as I got back into bed.
In the morning I explored the TV and the remote to see how easy it was for the TV to come on by itself, but the only way it would come on was to press down the on off button. There was no standby. Other than watching the TV earlier in the evening, the TV had been off the rest of my time there.
Other than hearing some creaky stairs during the night (which I think was probably other guests creeping around rather than Alice Peckett), that sums up my stay at the Golden Fleece.
The pub is an old interesting and characterful place and the room was beautiful. Now I’m back living in the UK, I hope to make a second trip there soon.
(this story was also written for Haunted Auckland)
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