A gentleman who wishes to remain anonymous, worked as a keeper at Dudley Zoo from 1988 to the year 2000, and told me these stories in May 2006.
Consequently, they cover a twelve-year period, and are a collection of memories where even the newest is over six years old. Although the actual dates and times have become hazy over those years, I believe him to be no less truthful or sincere.

Click here to read, “ZOO KEEPER STORIES”

This happened to me on a night in May 2002. I had only started work at the Station Hotel back in March, two months earlier, so I knew nothing about which rooms were haunted, or anything.
If we work very late, we often stop over in the hotel. I chose to sleep over in room 217 because it’s close to the staircase, so if I have to get up in the night, I don’t walk past the other rooms and disturb them.
I remember the World cup was going on at the time, as I was wearing an England football shirt. When I took it off, I put it on a hanger, and instead of putting it inside the wardrobe, I hooked it over the top, so that it hung down in front of the wardrobe door. Then I went to sleep.
I woke up all of a sudden at exactly 3.00 am. I clearly remember the time as I looked at the clock, and I could hear a strange whispering noise in the room. It was a bit like when you put a seashell against your ear and you can hear the sea, but this was in both my ears, like it was all around the room.
Now the curtains were closed, so it was quite dark, but when I turned over I clearly saw a woman standing in the corner of the room. She had her back to me, and she was leaning over the dressing table, as if she was adjusting something on it.
She was dressed all in black. A black dress with a long skirt down to the floor and tight fitting sleeves down to her wrists, and dark hair that was scraped back and tied into a bun. There was no white collar or apron, just the long black dress.
As soon as I looked at her the whispering stopped.
The light switch was right next to the bed, so I was able to just reach out and switch it on without taking my eyes off her, but as soon as the light came on she vanished.

Now as you can imagine, it was really hard getting back to sleep again, but eventually I did! When I woke up in the morning, the football shirt that I had hung up on the wardrobe door was neatly folded up, lying on the foot of my bed!

When I came downstairs, all the other staff could see I was bothered by something, and when I told them what had happened, they all said 217 was one of the haunted rooms.

I used to work as a chambermaid here at the Station Hotel back in the 1970’s.
I was here for 9 months. I started in November ’72 and finished around August 1973.
I was only 18 years old at the time! I remember the Manager here was a Mrs. Siviter.
This happened in July 1973, so I’d been working here about 8 months. In fact it seems funny now that I never saw anything earlier!

It was a very bright sunny day, just after lunchtime, about 1.30 pm. I walked into one of the upstairs bedrooms, to clean it and get it ready for the next guest.
I wish I could remember exactly which room it was. It was definitely one of those rooms on the top floor, between 214 and 217. It was definitely one of those 4 rooms.

I remember walking in through the door and seeing a woman standing right in the middle of the room. She had her back to me, I never saw her face, but she was all dressed in black, and had blonde hair tied back into a bun.
She had a black dress, with a skirt that went right down to the floor. Not a wide full skirt; it just went straight down over her hips and to the floor.
The dress went right up to her neck, and the sleeves went down to her wrists. But there was no apron, no white collar or cuffs, just the black dress. What I particularly remember was that the shoulders were quite puffed out. What you call “Mutton Chop” sleeves.
It was broad daylight, and I could see her as real as anything. If she’d turned round I would definitely have seen her face.
I stopped still at first, thinking, “Oh! There’s still someone in the room!” But as soon as I set eyes on her she started walking towards the wardrobe.
What was really amazing was that with each step she took, she started fading away. By the time she’d reached the wardrobe she was nearly invisible. But she didn’t stop in front of the wardrobe, or even slow down, she just carried on walking. She walked right into the wardrobe, like she was walking through an open door.

Looking back, I think it was just shock, but I found myself walking up to the wardrobe and opening the doors to see where she’d gone! I don’t know what I expected to find in there! The wardrobe was empty of course!
I think that’s when I got frightened because then I ran out of the room to tell the manager what I’d seen.

When we finally did get to sleep I woke up about 4 in the morning for no apparent reason. I had a look around the room, couldn’t see anything strange, and fell back to sleep again.
When I woke up in the morning, my bed was on a slant instead of straight!

When I asked my partner later on the next day he said he did hear the woman humming but didn’t want to admit it (he’s such a chicken).

It was this Wednesday just gone (the 10th of September 2008) and I’d had to move some furniture around in room 214. It was in the evening, not late, just coming up to 8.30 pm when I finished. I went to the door, opened it to leave, and turned back to have one final look into the room before closing the door behind me. I still had the door handle in my hand to pull the door shut when I suddenly heard whispering coming from inside the room. I stopped dead, right there in my tracks and listened to it.

I was listening to it for a good 10 seconds or so. It was definitely an adult male voice, and I realised that it was coming from the bathroom. The bathroom door was ajar, but there was definitely nobody in there.

One night in November 2005, I had not long come on duty, and was doing my rounds as usual. The bar is all locked up by that time, with all the shutters down.
As I walk through the bar area, one of my jobs is to pick up any empty beer glasses and ashtrays left out on the tables by any late drinkers, and place them on the bar shelf.

Now I had definitely made sure that all the tables were empty when I walked through the first time, but about half an hour later, on one of the tables near to the bar, there were three empty beer glasses and an ashtray all sitting together. The strange thing was, they were all clean, even the ashtray. All the glasses were perfectly clean.
I thought to myself, “How the Hell did I miss them?” especially as they were clean!
I moved them back onto the bar shelf and walked through into the Restaurant.

When I came back a few minutes later, the jukebox was on, and playing music!
There’s a twin plug socket next to the dishwasher behind the bar, one plug for the washer, and the other for the jukebox, and they were both plugged in! The bar manager is supposed to make sure they’re both unplugged before locking up, and the night porter doesn’t carry keys to the bar, so I couldn’t get in there to do anything about it.

Well I went upstairs to the bedrooms to see if you could hear the music from up there, and I couldn’t, so I thought I’d leave it playing all night as it wasn’t going to wake anyone up. But when I came back down, the dishwasher had started up and was leaking water all over the floor! Well, I couldn’t let that go on all night, so I had to call the duty manager then.
When she came in she said she knew for a fact that the plugs had been pulled out, because someone in the bar had complained that the jukebox had been switched off before his song had come on!

Funnily enough, the following month, one night in December (2005), in the early hours, about 2 or 3am, a bloke came down stairs to sit in the bar. I could see he didn’t want to be on his own, and was shaken up by something. In fact, when he saw me, he followed me around most of the night!
He was one of these ghost hunter blokes, and he’d been stopping in room 214. He’d been lying on the bed fully dressed, and was trying to stay awake all night, but he’d had a couple of beers, and had fallen asleep for a few minutes.
He said he’d woken up suddenly, sometime before 3am, to see a young blonde girl kneeling at the foot of his bed, untying the shoelaces on his right foot!
The girl disappeared as soon as he looked at her, so he’d jumped up in fright and ran out the room! He knew he hadn’t tried to take his shoes off, but the laces were definitely undone on his right boot, he showed them to me himself!

This happened just a year ago, one night in August 2005.
I was staying at the Station Hotel in room 214.
I was going through a lot of emotional turmoil at the time, and feeling very lonely and down.
I decided to try and rest, and went to sit on the bed, but as soon as I did so, I clearly heard a young woman’s voice in the room say, “Why Cry?”

I was so shocked; I jumped and nearly fell off the bed!
I thought it may have come from outside, so I went to the door to check, to see if anyone was out in the corridor, but no one was.
As I came back in, I felt a really cold chill, like ice in the room. I thought it would be a good idea to put the television on, but just as I did, I heard a loud bang come from the bathroom!
I went in to see what it was, and I could see the shower door swinging open and shut, all by itself!
Now I got really scared, and decided to call my Mom!
As I spoke to her, she asked me, “What’s that noise in your room?”
I said, “What noise?”
She said she could hear a growling noise coming from my end of the line.
I said, “What Growling?” I couldn’t hear anything.
My Mom is a Medium, and she told me that because I was upset, she felt there was a Spirit who could see this, and wanted to help me.
She told me to say out loud to the Spirit that I wanted them to be calmer, as they were scaring me. So I did, and as I spoke, I felt the room get warmer.

After a while, I went to bed, and tried to get some sleep.
But after I had been in bed for a few minutes, I felt the sheets being tugged away from me, and the more I tugged them back, the more I could feel them tugging away!
I got so fed up that I climbed out of bed to report it downstairs.
As soon as I was standing up, I could see the bed had moved about a foot or more sideways, and my bag with all my clothes in it had been tipped upside down and the clothes were now all over the floor!
I never knew the Hotel was haunted before, but I do now!
It was something I will never forget.

But one good thing I would say though, I didn't feel so lonely after that night!

It’s difficult to know whether this belongs on the “Letters” page instead, but due to the content; it’s ended up here...

Thank you very much for the tour on Thursday - I wanted to tell you about a few things that happened to me on the tour that I didn’t mention at the time, not so much because I was embarrassed, but I needed to think about what I'd seen and decide if it was anything to report.

When we got to the Malt Shovel pub, before you even began to tell the story, I saw a young boy at the window you later pointed out. I couldn’t describe him fully other than he had a kind of round fringe and dark hair, and a brown coat or dressing gown. But I only saw him from the upper chest. I would say he was any where from 7- 9. Was it my imagination?

One other thing I do want to add is when I was 16 (many years ago!) I would walk to college, and always used to cut down Green Mans passage.
One particular day I saw a man enter the passage in front of me, no more than 5 feet away, but as I turned into it, there was no one there. Being quite curious, I ran down to the end of the passage, but no one was in the car park.
I can’t remember his clothes exactly, but they were quite dark cloth, and he had a cloth cap. I didn’t see his face, but I assumed he was old due to his height and build.
It was physically impossible for anyone to have got out my sight, being so close in front of me, and it made me curious for years, and I never knew until Thursday it was haunted - although I always wondered.

Once again thanks for a great night.

Leanne Ray

With reference to the young boy, there was no one of this description living in the Malt Shovel pub at the time, and the room Leanne refers to has not been used as a bedroom for many years, because it's the room where Jimmy Bayliss was murdered.

I do not describe the visual appearance of Jimmy Bayliss at any point during the telling of this particular story, and yet this is remarkably similar to how he looked in pictures of the time.