| That ghost again! Japanese TV, in the shape of Dominic Green and cameraman
Simon Cox, visited the museum building this week to film for the TV programme
"Unbelievable". They were shown round the old aerodrome and museum by members
Peter Davies and Jim Gardiner. This interest was prompted by a story from
Sir Peter Masefield, one-time head of the Civil Aviation Authority. In
this tale, written in the early 1970s for a Christmas edition of 'Flight'
magazine, Sir Peter claimed that in the 1960s he picked up a passenger
in his DH Chipmunk at Inverness, a soft spoken Irishman, after he
had been discussing the 'Montrose Ghost' with fellow pilots. As they approached
Montrose on the flight back south, an old biplane appeared in the sky before
them. The biplane stalled and spun into the ground, at the same time as
the passenger in the rear seat let out a deadly scream. Unnerved, Sir Peter
landed at Montrose, to find his passenger gone! Going for petrol to refuel
his aircraft, he asked if anyone had seen the other aircraft in the sky.
No one had. Wow! If this was for real it must be the best ghost story ever
recorded.
Remembering that this was a Christmas ghost story, an old English tradition: Sir Peter picked up the ghost in Inverness (maybe a relation of Nessie?), saw a biplane crash at Montrose (Desmond Arthur, whose tragic death in 1913 gave rise to the first ghost stories, crashed a few miles further south at Lunan Bay, Montrose was not the airfield in his day), then Sir Peter landed (the airfield was mainly pasture at that time, so no landing strip, but just possible) and bought petrol (the airfield had been closed since 1950, no facilities there when Sir Peter arrived, and surely he would not have left Inverness with insufficient fuel to take him to the next aerodrome?). This tale is one of the many that constantly re-appear in books and publications about ghosts and 'The Montrose Ghost' in particular. Mostly the tales have some element of the original story, which goes back to the haunting ascribed to the ghost of Desmond Arthur. The original facts, the crash, the botched repair, and subsequent haunting form the basis of most of the stories, the times involved can vary from the first to the second war, different areas, and to different people. Most of these stories have a number of factual errors in them, although they were current at RAF Montrose during and after the last war, with personnel wary of certain areas because of 'Arthur', the ghost. We have written to Sir Peter since then, but have never received a reply to our queries on his story. Make your own mind up, or am I just taking this all too seriously?. The page cutting is from the Courier and Advertiser, June 18, 1999. |
