By CRESSIDA MCLAUGHLIN

I have long been interested in the paranormal, and on several occasions have excited myself with trips round Norfolk where my partner, who knows the countryside and its history a great deal better than I do, would take me to several spots of great historical and paranormal interest. One of these was the Bircham Newton airbase near Kings Lynn, now run by the CITB as a construction training college.

In 1916, RAF Bircham Newton was opened as a Royal Flying Corps training fighter school and was the starting point for RAF Bomber Command when 166 squadron were formed there. Since then it has served several functions including Costal Command, Anti-shipping and U-boat patrols, and a Transport Conversion Unit.

Bircham Newton airbase

The main paranormal focus at the base is a dead airman who supposedly appears in the squash court, which used to be an aeroplane hangar. He has been seen and heard within the walls of the hangar, and has even been known, through a medium, to describe the crash in which himself and two colleagues were killed during WWII. Some of the auditory phenomena has been recorded by intrepid investigators, intent on getting to the bottom of the spooky goings-on.

I had a great desire to investigate the stories for myself and contacted RAF Bircham Newton, who agreed to hire out the squash courts to me for the whole night if I so wished, although I had a distinct feeling that I wouldn’t last that long. I had also ensured that although I had an overview of past phenomena at the location I had not read the stories in any detail; thus preventing myself from being influenced by any previous encounters, and allowing me the chance to see if what I experienced would concur with what had already been reported.

The night of the investigation – I had brought my partner for moral support, and to act as an extra witness should I encounter anything – was a typical late autumn night; dark, crisp and very blustery, and set the scene perfectly. We were relieved, as we approached the reception area to collect the key, to see that the campus was buzzing and well lit, even late on an unwelcoming November evening.

Our relief and buoyant mood dissipated as we followed signs to the squash courts, leading us down a dark and unkempt trail to the building, which was surrounded by trees and looked from the outside like nothing more than a dilapidated aeroplane hangar. We were the only people nearby and our trepidation grew as, by the light of a torch, we wrestled with the padlock and entered the squash courts.

The small, carpeted reception area belied the deserted squash courts that it led to; the right-hand court was locked; however we were able to enter the viewing gallery of both sides, and the lower left-hand court at ground level. The padlock, along with our tour of the building assured us that we were alone in the building and so we began our investigation.

We stood in the darkened squash court, listening and watching for anything out of the ordinary, occasionally asking (in classic Most Haunted style) if there was anybody there….

A couple of small taps and a very faint buzzing suggested trees crashing against the windows and a trapped fly, desperately trying to find its way out of the immense and gloomy space. Like any good investigator, we tried to give every sound that we heard a rational explanation.

After what seemed like forever, I decided it was time to try the viewing balconies and we spent some time looking over each squash court wanting, and half expecting, the uniformed airman to dissolve into view in front of our very eyes. This was, however, not to be the case and our interested waned as we went back to the squash court floor once more.

We were close to giving up the ghost, as it were, and already feeling somewhat ridiculous for thinking that our efforts would yield a response when we suddenly heard a loud bang, seemingly coming from the right-hand viewing gallery that we had just left. There was no furniture that could have maybe slipped or fallen and caused the noise, and so our interest and our fear (which had been bubbling just below the surface since we left Norwich) intensified.

This first thump was followed by the noise of footsteps above, loud and defined; they sounded like they were heading down the stairs towards us. After the initial paralysis of being rooted to the floor I muttered a hushed but hurried “shall we go now”, and I hate to say it but neither myself or my partner were bold enough to see what, if anything, would come round the corner and come down the stairs to greet us.

We fled the building, fumbled once more with the padlock and only paused to catch our breath and our nerves when we had rejoined the brightly lit through-road of Bircham Newton CITB College. Looking down at my watch I saw we had lasted all of twenty minutes.

Sitting at my desk, reading through some of the accounts of Bircham Newton’s previous hauntings prior to writing this shameful tale, I was amazed to see that much of the phenomena has been experienced in the right-hand squash court; one film crew member, who had been recording a management training video, fled after hearing footsteps walking along the viewing gallery. A shudder went down my spine as I recalled the footsteps I had heard, echoing from the right-hand viewing gallery and fast approaching as I raced out of the hangar.

It may not have been the most scientific or well documented investigation, but it is my own little attempt at proving, if only to myself – next time I will take a Dictaphone – that paranormal phenomenon warrants further investigation; that ghosts really do exist, and that they certainly have some unfinished business in the squash courts at RAF Bircham Newton.

• Graham Lambert contacted us with the following:
  
  Stumbled onto your web site today and was interested in what Cressida had written regarding the Squash Courts at the old RAF Base. I was in the second year intake of students at the then newly started building college housed at the old base. I was 18 and that was 35 years age, I am now 53 and living in Australia.
  
  I have and some of the other students have experienced “Spooky Events” at the Squash Courts and also around the base in general, on several occasions a serviceman has been seen by squash players, he was seen in the viewing galleries. We knew that several airmen had been killed suddenly on the base and figured that was why the spirits still lingered.
  
  I had an experience in my dorm room, I was laying on my bed listening to music when I witnessed the heavy brass bottom window stay (the one with the holes in it to hold the window open or to lock in closed position) lift off of the steel cradle swing out about 45 degrees and drop down making a dong dong dong noise as the stay bounced off the bottom limit of the hinge/connection – No way in the world did the stay slip out of the cradle, it had to be lifted at the handle at least 6” to clear the cradle – Something lifted the stay and it was not me.
  
  The whole Base was a Spooky place – When I was there another Spooky thing happened, it was at the time when all the coal miners were on strike and to help overcome the coal shortage for power generation the government had imposed 2 off 4 hour black outs per day. During one of these black outs which was from 8.00pm to Midnight, a friend and I were walking from the dorms to the canteen (approximately 11pm), this meant we had to cross the old Parade Ground and from the middle of the parade ground all you could see were the dark silhouettes of the buildings and hangers and the dull candlelight coming through some of the building windows --- When we got to the middle of the Parade Ground we saw a bright red light move down from the sky and disappear at a distance of miles behind one of the hangers, we felt it had come down some 5 to 10 miles away, the light was about as intense as a single car red tail light and the light took approximately 4 seconds to travel in a straight line down from when first noticed. Strange indeed.
  
  The next day we heard a news report that person who was walking home from the pub outside of a village some 5 mile from us and that had been walking for a while in the dark when all of a sudden there was a massive whoosh and something shot straight up from the ground in a field he was walking by and disappeared at a great rate of speed, close inspection of the field (Corn Field) revealed a circle pressed/flattened into the corn. I don’t know if what we saw and what happened to this other fellow is part of the same story (I think it is), I know what I saw and I know that where this light disappeared was in the same direction and distance as the other witness.
  
  The red light was not an aircraft as the light did not blink it was constant, it was not a flare as it did not shimmer and it descended to quickly, it was not a meteor or anything like it because it move to slowly and the colour was too perfect and unchanging.

LOCATION

HISTORY OF HAUNTINGS AT RAF BIRCHAM NEWTON