Salutation Inn

Over the years, a whole variety of strange happenings have been reported in the main part of the inn. A man came into the pub one evening in the late 1980's and ordered a pint. The pub was quiet and the man sat at the bar chatting to the barmaid, his pint on the bar top next to him. Reaching for his pint, he found the glass seemed to have moved about two feet along the bar. No one else was near to have moved it and it was much too far away for him to have put it there himself. The first time this happened, the man just ignored it, thinking he must have pushed it without realising it. A little while later, he again reached for his pint, only to find it was even further away than before. He knew this time that he was not imagining it, he had put the glass down within easy reach, yet there it was some distance away. He commented on his moving pint to the barmaid and they both watched the glass for a few moments. It moved slightly, all on its own, away from the man! One evening in the early 1990's, a group of people watched an ashtray levitate into the air from one of the tables in the snug, float several yards through mid-air and settle on the bar. The ashtray was full, so perhaps the ghost was hinting that it was time it was emptied. Perhaps the most frequent occurence to be reported by staff at the Salutation is glasses falling off shelves and smashing on the floor. These are no ordinary breakages though. The objects often smash on the floor some distance away from the shelf, presumably having to float through the air to get there, and they often seem to smash behind someone, scaring them. This was actually observed in progress one morning. A regular customer at the pub was standing chatting to a barmaid, who was behind the bar, with her back to the shelves containing the bottles and glasses. He noticed a glass floating off the shelf behind her. It floated to just behind her, then smashed on the floor making her jump.
A previous landlady has told of the problem which staff often encountered in the cellar of the inn. This was one of the man-made sandstone caves, a long oblong in shape, with just a single doorway at one end. The cave was fairly packed with barrels, crates of bottles and such like, so that just one pathway along the middle of the cave was kept clear for access. The ice cube making machine was at the far end of the cave from the doorway, so staff had to go right along the path to the end in order to top-up the ice buckets, a fairly frequent job. Very typically, by the time they had filled the ice buckets and turned round to make their exit along the path, they found that it was now blocked by something which had not been there moments before. The most common item found blocking their way was one of the gas cylinders, used to pressurise the beer kegs. These were made of metal and were very heavy and were kept chained to the wall or in a metal frame for safety. They were so heavy that some of the female staff had difficulty moving them back to their proper positions in order to get out of the cave. Somehow, the gas cylinders had unchained themselves and silently moved past the various barrels and crates to stand in the middle of the path, in the time it took the members of staff to fill the ice buckets.