The Ghost of The Red Lion

I was sort of like the main barman in the Red Lion in Leytonstone, E11. It was never down in writing or anything but I lived there and I was barman so a lot of the stuff like cellar work and that was left to me to sort out (raging hangovers and draymen rolling kegs of beer down at you of a morning are not things you’d relish unless you were a strange sort of masochist). 

The guvnor was a Scot like me and his wife was an extremely pretty English girl. On their night off – usually a Tuesday – they’d leave me in charge and responsible for locking up the pub and taking the cash-tills upstairs as they went out to do what pub guvnors and their wives did: visit other pub guvnors and their wives in other pubs!

The Red Lion was huge with three floors, the bottom being the two bars, the middle a ballroom where bands like Roxy and The Who had once played, and the top where the living quarters were. 

After closing time I locked all the doors and left one light on for he and she when they came back (which wouldn’t be until the small hours as guvnors always had ‘lock-ins’ for other guvnors) and trundled up the stairs with the cash-till and to bed. There were several beds in the large room I slept in but I was the only person to sleep there at that time.

I must have been dozing off when I heard it: I realised that I could hear evidence of another person in the room with me. It sounded like an old man, though not snoring but breathing in a laboured, heavy way and it seemed to be coming from the bed right next to mine. My own breathing seemed to almost stop as I lay there in the dark frozen with fear. Yes, there it was! The sound of an old man sleeping only feet away from me.

I was up out of that bed like a shot and back down the stair and into the light of the bar. But, I had nowhere else to sleep! I couldn’t leave the pub and I definitely couldn’t wait for his lord and ladyship to come back and ask if I could snuggle in with them.

I had a good several vodka and oranges and chain-smoked for about an hour, then I had sufficient courage to go back up.

Wonder who he was? Maybe some old barman from years before who stuck around and haunted the place!