Kentish Express Ashford & District
Sound effects echoing from sad stories of the past
Winners at Ashford’s Mecca Bingo shout out “house” – but perhaps they should be asking “who’s there?”
The former cinema in Ashford’s lower High Street is thought to be have been haunted by a workman for decades.
Author Martin Tapsell reveals in his new book, Haunted Cinemas And Their Uninvited Guests, he was told by the manager that, after players left for home, the temperature dropped and the sound of clanking chains was heard at the stage end.
He writes: “This might be related to the cinema being built over a former iron foundry where one worker is still too busy for 41 years of ‘eyes down’.”
The sound of children’s voices have been heard decades after they were killed in a wartime bomb, it is claimed.
And clanking sounds are said to be from the ghosts of workmen.
It was in 1936 that the popular Odeon chain opened a cinema in Ashford’s Lower High Street.
Odeon was a name synonymous with the best in cinema and the town was lucky enough to retain the splendid art deco picturehouse for 40 years until it was converted in to a Top Rank bingo hall in 1976, and later Mecca Bingo.
These are some of the accounts that Mr Tapsell, 74, of Deal, describes in his latest book on spooky cinemas.
These include the former Invicta in Chatham High Street, where three children and an adult were killed when it was bombed in the Second World War.
It later became a concert hall and bingo hall but, until the 1980s, children’s voices were said to be inexplicably heard and staff reported a man in a green uniform walking around the foyer and balcony.
A psychic was called in and identified the spirit to be of Bill Malan, a cinema commissionaire from 1940 until his death in 1955, but not at those premises.
The premises of the Savoy, in Grace Hill, Folkestone, is said to be haunted by a woman whose child died in an accident there.
Heavy bombing raids had taken place close by in 1941, causing the cinema’s ventilation motor to dislodge and fall on a boy who was with his mother. When she eventually died it was her ghost that would disturb staff many years later.
Have you noticed anything unusual in Ashford’s Mecca Bingo building? If so please write to Kentish Express, 34-36 North Street, Ashford TN24 8JR or email kentishexpress@thekmgroup.co.uk Historian Martin Tapsell, above, has already written extensively about cinemas.
His first book on this subject was Memories of Kent Cinemas, published in 1987, and the follow-up in 2008, Kent Cinemas Revisited, looked at what happened to the premises afterwards.
Mr Tapsell has been fascinated by history since his school days and in his working life was a librarian in London, Dorset, Buckinghamshire and Scotland.
Haunted Cinemas and their Uninvited Guests is published by Tivoli Publishing, at £8.95.