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However, the ghost was not the result of a joker and more sightings occurred … always in December.
    To this day the ghost of St Peter’s in Hereford is still said to be seen floating up the path and through the church doors, just like he always has. It seems to me that the ghost of St Peter’s is nothing more that a residual ghost of a former monk or man of the cloth that has simply trodden this path many times when he was alive and continues to do so many years after he died. But why does he haunt so close to Christmas time? One can only wonder.
A M URDERED W OMAN IN W HITE
    On 20 December 1934 an electrician made his way to work; it was a day at work he would never forget. The Lancashire Evening Post , dated 2 January 1935, reported that the tradesman in question was heading to a property on New Hall Lane, in Preston, Lancashire. He was sent there by his boss to rewire the entire property before new tenants moved in. He got to work early in the morning and was there until the sun went down; it was a good, hard day’s work.
    Nearing the end of his shift, he entered one of the rooms on the first floor of the building when suddenly he felt ‘strange’. An odd silence fell across the room which rattled him somewhat. Suddenly he felt that he was not alone. As he turned around to see if anyone was there with him, he was astonished to see a woman rise slowly out of the floor next to the door, who he described as rather tall, wearing a satin shroud and having black hair. What was most harrowing about her, however, was her large, piercing eyes. He dropped his tools and ran past her, down the stairs and out of the property. He never returned for his tools.
    The owner of the property subsequently allowed four local men (including) a reporter from the Lancashire Evening Post ) to spend the night at the ‘haunted house’ to see if they could see the ghost. Two of the others were ‘psychic investigators’ and the other was a medium. The medium claimed, upon entering the building, that she could see a woman with black hair. She said she was forty-two years old and went by the name of Margaret. Although the other investigators could not see the same woman as the medium, they did observe a rather strange white mist which had appeared in the corner of the room.
    As it turned out, back in 1905 the building was owned by a butcher and his wife. The wife, it seems, had succumbed to the demon drink and had had a great stash of gin hidden away in a cupboard. The butcher became more upset at his wife’s behaviour as each day she drank more and more. One day, much to his horror, he discovered that she was having an illicit affair with a local chap and was so angry that he promptly murdered her. It was this woman who locals believed had shown herself to the electrician.
T HE E MLYN A RMS P OLTERGEIST , S OUTH W ALES
    The Emlyn Arms Hotel is a wonderful little eighteenth-century inn located in the Carmarthenshire village of Llanarthney. It is a quiet little village pub where one can get good pub food and a fine pint of bitter in quiet and peaceful surroundings. However, back in 1909, during Christmas week, the inn was disturbed by a series of bewildering paranormal occurrences which have never been forgotten. The fact that it made many national and local newspapers also helped ‘the haunting of the Emlyn Arms’ to become a well known case.
    The inn owner at the time, Mrs Meredith, had stayed behind while her husband went away for a week’s holiday. It was during this week that the poltergeist struck. While tending to some ofher cattle (which she kept at a nearby small property), she was mysteriously pelted by bricks and stones. The stones, which came from ‘nowhere’, bounced off the ground close to where she was walking and she was almost struck by them. Had theyhit her, serious injury would surely have occurred. She put the stone-throwing down to ‘up to no good’ local youngsters and made her way back to the inn.
    Later that