Local Ghosts Quiz Answers

As promised - the answers to yesterday's quiz. Of course I did say "at least one" was made up - and once I got going, I had a high old time inventing fictitious ghosts...

1) The Roman Legion - this is apparently 'true.' I'm still not sure what a boiler was doing so far underground - but Malcolm Godfrey tells the story like he was there.

2) The penitent Viking - as Anonymous pointed out, this is indeed a crock of s*** cooked up by Yours Truly.

3)The Crew of the Boundless - a story I wish were true, but sadly total twaddle.

4)The Headless Pensioner - 'true'

5) The Helpful Handyman - 'true' - I will come to the tragic case of Admiral Byng on another day.

6)Pistol Jack - All made up. But you wouldn't have believed me if I told you that the real ghost in The Spread Eagle is the Victorian entertainer Dan Leno.

7) The Creepy Cash Register - unbelievably, this actually happened.

8) The Grey Lady - Greenwich has her own White Lady who patrols the Admiral's House at The ORNC - but Princess Caroline of Brunswick is not one of our local ghosts for local people (as far as I know...though next time you're walking past her bath at night listen out - you may just hear giggling and splashing sounds after all...)

9) The T'ween Deck of the Cutty Sark. - Actually I made this up too - but I could be more right than I know. Malcolm Godfrey tantalisingly refers to his upcoming book "Walking Ghostly Greenwich Part Three" (due out in Spring 2006, ahem...) in which he promises a full coverage of the ghosts of the Cutty Sark.

10) The Schoolboy Theatregoer. Jury's out on this one. He apparently manifested himself during a night of paranormal investigation, but someone I know who was there at the time experienced nothing save a slight draft coming up the stairs.

11) The Haunted Bag of Soot - Bizarrely there IS a haunted sack of soot - but it's not in Greenwich. A storyteller friend of mine told me that a bag of soot terrorises the good folk of Crowborough in Sussex, chasing them down the road (I get images of Black Bag in Viz at this point.) I didn't think you'd buy the "real" story so I invented the power station accident.

12)The American Officer - total fiction, based on the fact that Americans did train at the Naval College. Sorry, Anonymous, no George Clooney lookalikes here...

13) The Wedding Guest - a load of tripe.

Thanks for indulging my puerile sense of humour, folks... If you fancy something else, I'll create a Greenwich Trivia Quiz sometime around Christmas...