WOMEN reeking of gin, Edwardian jailers, drunken sailors - all have been found haunting Worcester's Guildhall.

Ghostwatchers and mediums spent two nights in the 282-year-old building and claim they were visited by strange apparitions of the city's past.

"We tried asking, 'Is there anybody there?' and they came forward," said John Webb of the Worcester Paranormal Group.

"We felt the energies and heard voices and the mediums sensed one woman who they thought had senile dementia and reeked of gin.

"We could taste alcohol in the air all evening."

The Paranormal Group asked permission from the city council to spend two evenings in the old jail underneath the Guildhall.

Even Mayor Allah Ditta attended to see whether the ghosts of previous centuries were stirring beneath the present-day council chamber.

"Their meters and their gadgets were making a noise and flashing," he said. "When I had a go, nothing happened.

"But there were spirits in there and the paranormal people were in touch with this, particularly in the cells.

"As a Muslim it was close to what we believe in terms of life after death."

Mr Webb said mediums picked up the names of people who were incarcerated in the cells.

"I saw in the dark what looked like an Edwardian figure and I described this to the mediums, who said it was the actual jailer," he said.

"We heard a door opening and footsteps but there was no one there and the door wouldn't open without a hard shove."

"Most of the prisoners were there because they had stolen swine or horses or they had been arrested for being drunk and disorderly, even sailors who had just come off ships."

The organiser of the ghost walk of Worcester said there was a lot of historical evidence to indicate what had been found could be factual.

"A policeman killed the landlord and landlady of the Garibaldi pub and he was imprisoned in the Guildhall. His vision is supposed to haunt the building," said Linda Talbot.

"And it's true that in the 1850s Worcester was an important port and sailors came up the Severn. They used the city's subterranean passages to smuggle alcohol and illicitly meet women and nuns from the Cathedral."

Stroll with a spectre

n There are supposed to be 17 ghost locations in Worcester city centre alone.

n Worcester's oldest pub, The Cardinal's Hat on Friar Street, is said to be haunted by a young woman who was burnt to death while staying there.

n Many visitors to the city's Commandery have spoken of coldness and an unexplained presence, which could be the Duke of Hamilton who died from leg injuries and was buried under the floorboards there.

n The BBC's building on Hylton Road is apparently haunted by a traveller who hanged himself there when the building was a tannery in the 1950s.

n Ghosts have also been reported on the A465 in Bromyard, in a public house in Claines, in the middle of Colwall, in the river in Evesham and in the former Hindlip Hall in Hindlip, according to a paranormal database.

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