Haunted place · England, United Kingdom

RAF East Kirkby

Updated November 20266 sources How to visit

As seen on Most Haunted
3 archive documents

A former Lancaster bomber base in Lincolnshire, now an aviation museum, where the restored WWII control tower is said to be haunted by phantom aircrew.

The story

East Kirkby lies in the flat farmland of Lincolnshire, south of the market town of Horncastle. The airfield opened on 20 August 1943 as a Royal Air Force Bomber Command station, a short distance from RAF Coningsby.

Two squadrons of No. 5 Group flew from here. No. 57 Squadron arrived on 27 August 1943 and stayed until November 1945; No. 630 Squadron flew from the base from mid-November 1943 until July 1945. Both flew the four-engined Avro Lancaster, the workhorse of the RAF's night offensive against Germany. East Kirkby also served as a headquarters base, controlling the satellite airfields at Strubby, Spilsby, Hemswell and Manby, and from April 1944 it was home to No. 55 Base. Wartime photographs held by the Imperial War Museum show crews of both squadrons preparing for night operations, and a BBC war correspondent interviewing a 630 Squadron crew.

The cost was heavy. Figures cited from Bruce Barrymore Halpenny's research put losses at about 121 Lancasters that failed to return from 212 operations, with another 29 destroyed in crashes and accidents. One of the worst days came after the fighting in Europe was almost over: on 17 April 1945, as aircraft were being bombed up, a 1,000 lb bomb fell to the ground and exploded, setting off the bomb load of a Lancaster. Three airmen died and sixteen were injured, and six more Lancasters were wrecked in the chain of explosions.

After the war the base passed through several hands. A maintenance unit stayed until 1950, and in the 1950s United States Air Force air rescue units used the field. Sources disagree on when flying ended: the Wikipedia infobox gives 1970, but the article text states the station closed in 1958 and the land was sold in 1964, which is the more consistent reading. Much of the airfield went back to agriculture.

In 1981 two local farmers, Fred and Harold Panton, bought part of the old airfield. Their brother Christopher had been killed in 1944 when his bomber was shot down over Germany while he was serving with No. 433 Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force; he never served at East Kirkby. In his memory the brothers acquired the Lancaster NX611, known as "Just Jane," which arrived in 1987, and opened the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre in 1988.

The legend

The haunting is not spread across the whole airfield. It is concentrated on one building, the wartime control tower, which survives in restored form as part of the museum. From that tower, flying control staff once talked bombers out on operations and counted them home in the early hours, often waiting for aircraft that never returned.

The main written source for the tower's ghostly reputation is the aviation historian Bruce Barrymore Halpenny, whose Ghost Stations series collected stories from former airfields. The Lincolnshire volume (an edition dated 2008 is cited) records East Kirkby's tower as haunted across several pages. We have not seen the book itself, so its exact accounts and their dates cannot be summarized here, and no dated first report has turned up.

The ghosts are never named. They are usually described in general terms as wartime aircrew, the "phantom pilots" said to linger at many old Bomber Command fields. Popular retellings, notably a feature on the blog of the horror studio Hammer Films, add specific details: people working in the tower sense someone observing them and catch faint, indistinct talking in a room with no one else in it; old rotary telephones in the tower are said to ring at night even though they are disconnected; people passing after dark report green lights in the tower windows; and footsteps are heard. None of these accounts gives a named witness or a date, so they are best read as repeated lore rather than documented testimony.

One point of confusion is worth clearing up. The museum was created in memory of Christopher Panton, but no source links him to the hauntings, and he did not die at East Kirkby. Any story that makes him the tower's ghost has no basis in the record.

The site's best-known brush with paranormal television came on 7 October 2003, when Most Haunted opened its third series on Living TV with an episode filmed at RAF East Kirkby (series 3, episode 1). Yvette Fielding and her team spent the night investigating the museum and the airfield in search of the ghostly airmen; a "Most Haunted Extra" special is said to have been broadcast the same evening. As usual with the series, the program records the team's impressions rather than any verifiable evidence.

No skeptical study of the East Kirkby stories has been found. It is fair to note that the reported phenomena (voices, phones, lights, footsteps) are the same set attached to many former airfields, and that a control tower is a natural focus for such tales given its wartime role as the place where losses were first felt.

What remains today

The old runway can still be made out from the air, though much of the former airfield has returned to fields. The heart of what remains is the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre, built around the restored control tower with its signals square and windsock in front. Wikimedia Commons photographs also show a pillbox and a hangar.

The museum's star exhibit is Avro Lancaster NX611 "Just Jane," a Lancaster kept in running condition so that its engines can be started and it can taxi under its own power. The collection also includes a practice Upkeep, the Barnes Wallis "bouncing bomb," and twelve ground vehicles. A marker on the site also records that the prime meridian passes through the airfield.

Visiting

The site is a working museum, so visiting is simple and legal. The Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre is generally open Tuesday to Saturday and closed on Sundays and Mondays, with a closure of about three weeks over Christmas; check the official website before you travel, as hours and special events change. The control tower, the focus of the ghost stories, is part of the museum visit.

The museum is best known for its Lancaster taxi runs, in which "Just Jane" is started up and driven along the old taxiway, sometimes with paying passengers aboard, and for occasional night runs, for example on fireworks night. These evening events are the closest a visitor will get to the airfield after dark.

The museum's home page does not advertise ghost tours or paranormal nights. Private ghost-hunting companies may have hosted events here, but we could not confirm any. The rest of the former airfield is farmland and private property: stay on public roads and within the museum grounds. East Kirkby is a memorial site to the many aircrew who did not come home, and deserves to be treated with that in mind.

The ghosts

Soldier

Phantom aircrew of the control tower

Said to be Unnamed Second World War airmen; no individual is identified in any source

The wartime control tower is said to be haunted by airmen who died flying from East Kirkby. Staff describe a feeling of being watched and murmuring voices in the empty tower, disconnected telephones that ring at night, and green lights seen in the windows after dark. The accounts are anonymous and undated.