Chapter 4
The Ghost Club
1965
42
YEARS
THE FERRY BOAT INN
“On the edge of the River Ouse, just beyond Holywell, stands the ‘Ferry Boat Inn’…”
“…haunted, for perhaps nine hundred years, by the ghost of Juliet…”
Photograph purporting to depict Juliet Tewsley, the Ferry Boat Inn ghost.
Robert James Winchester Fraser;The Ferry Boat Inn
“Tewsley was a young girl who loved a rough local woodcutter named Tom Zoul so deeply, that it became a kind of sickness.”
“…neglected by him, she pined and languished,
and slowly her heart broke…”
“One wild spring day the grief became too much for her. Wearing a dress that Tom liked, she hanged herself on a tree beside the river.”
“The date was March 17th.”
“As a suicide she could not be buried in consecrated ground* and she was laid to rest near the river that seemed to share her sadness; the grave simply marked with a plain slab of grey stone.”
*Ground that has been made or declared sacred or holy, and is therefore suitable for Christian burial.
“Many years passed until the builder of the ‘Ferry Boat Inn’ came along and decided to incorporate Juliet’s gravestone in the flooring of the inn.”
“There it can be seen to this day, forming part of the inn’s stone floor…”
“For many years, people have gathered here on each March 17th to watch for Juliet’s ghost which is said to rise…”
“…and drift out of the inn and towards the river...”
“This is a ghost which everyone knows about but few have seen…”
“‘There are certainly some very odd happenings here,’
the landlord told me, in 1965,
‘and of course the local women don’t come near the inn on March 17th…’”
