The Ship and Royal pub in Lytham dates back to the early 1800s and it features a striking tudor style front. It is a grade II listed hotel and it is said to have a number of ghostly manifestations.
There is a long history of reported hauntings in the Ship and Royal. For around 5 years in the mid 2000s, the pub was only used as a drinking establishment because no one dared to actually live there. When the next landlords took over in around 2008, they were brave enough to live there but reported that there were definitely some unusual things going on there.
The couple explained that in one area of the building that has had it’s water supply turned off as it is no longer in use, they heard water running as though someone was running a bath. There were around 20 rooms in the building at the time that were in such a state of disrepair that they had no electric or water supply. For safety reasons, there was no access to that area of the building so no one could possibly have been there at the time.
Other strange happenings at the pub include a telephone system that rings for no reason. This telephone system is internal so it only connects to other telephones in the building. One evening there were 4 members of staff still in the pub after closing time, and whilst they were cleaning, the internal phone rang. The unusual thing was that as they were the only people in the building at the time, there was no one there to actually make the call in the first place and when one of the employees answered the phone, there was no one on the other end of the line.
In 1983, there was a reported sighting of a full body apparition in the pub. On the second floor, someone claimed to have seen a tall dark figure and there was speculation that it may have been the ghost of Squire John Clifton who passed away in 1928 in Tenerife.
Prior to this ghost sighting, a local newspaper reported that interfering Charlie was known to haunt the Ship and Royal. The ghost called Charlie was believed to be Squire John Clifton and it is believed that his visits to the pub are to spend time in his favourite inn and to order meat from suppliers.
