The Ghosts of Willington Mill
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At Willington Quay in North Tyneside there once stood a flour mill.
It was the first steam-driven mill in the north east, and was owned by two cousins, George Unthank and Joseph Procter.
Unthank and Procter were both devout members of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, and renowned for their integrity and impeccable honesty.
This, perhaps more than anything, made it harder to dismiss Procter's assertion that the mill house he lived in was well and truly haunted.
Two hundred years before the mill was built, a witch lived in an old cottage on the same site.
Even then the location was believed to be cursed and haunted. Whatever the truth, Joseph Procter didn't need much convincing.
A nursemaid once heard bizarre noises coming from a room on the second floor of the mill house, which she described as heavy footsteps.
At the same time, the window in the nursery below started to shake violently.
On another occasion footsteps were heard coming down the stairs, followed by the sound of the door to the house opening.
Procter dashed out and found the door open – but nobody there.
It wasn't just the mill house that was haunted, though. The mill itself was infested by spectres, including the ghost of a woman known as Kitty who was horribly injured in an accident there.
By this time the mill was no longer producing flour. It had been turned into a ropery, and Kitty had seemingly caught her hair in between two of the rollers.
Kitty died within minutes, and her shade has been said to haunt the mill ever since.
As well as ghosts, Willington Mill was also notorious for sightings of mystery animals, including a strange, cat-like creature with a long snout, a monkey which teased the children in the mill house and an incongruous donkey-like creature which startled two engineers before disappearing.
Over the years numerous attempts were made to solve the mystery.
In July 1840, the chemist and South Shields councillor Tom Hudson stayed in the mill house overnight with a companion, Dr. Edward Drury from Sunderland.
At first the men – who were stationed on the landing of the upper floor – heard nothing, but shortly after midnight they could hear what sounded like the sound of small feet pitter-pattering inside one of the rooms.
Hudson seemingly fell asleep (although he later denied this) and it was then that Drury caught sight of the ghost.
According to the doctor, the grey-coloured spectre of an old woman floated from a closet within one of the rooms.
Her right hand was clutched to her chest, as if she was in pain, and her left hand pointed towards the floor.
Drury watched in horror as the ghost slowly drifted towards Hudson and raised its hand as if to place it upon his head.
Drury – foolishly or bravely, make your own mind up – lunged at the ghost and ended up falling on top of the slumbering Hudson.
The doctor's terrified shrieks woke Hudson up, but by that time the spirit had evaporated into the ether.
It was later rumoured that both the doctor and the chemist had taken a brace of pistols with them but accidentally left them downstairs. This is only half the truth.
In fact, it was Drury who had taken them both, but Hudson instructed him to leave them downstairs rather than upset their host, who, being a Quaker, was also a pacifist and disliked the use of firearms.
Mind you, just what use a revolver would have been against a denizen of the next world is hard to say…
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