Hunt for RAF base ghosts leads to lost BBC tape

Investigators of ghost stories don't usually find exactly what they're searching for.

But writer Paul Lee, from King's Lynn in Norfolk, struck lucky when he unearthed lost footage investigating hauntings at the former RAF air station at Bircham Newton.

From sightings of ghostly figures in RAF uniforms to the sound of squash games on empty courts, stories of the supposed hauntings had been told for decades.

Lee had heard of a BBC television report on the subject that was broadcast over half a century ago. Despite the BBC no longer holding a copy, Lee unexpectedly found the footage after delving through the archives at the British Film Institute.

He told an episode of Secret Norfolk on BBC Sounds that the find was "fantastic, because a lot of people have said it's been wiped or was never recorded, and fortunately they were wrong."

RAF Bircham Newton was active in both World War One and World War Two, but closed as a military base in the 1960s.

It then became a Construction Industry Training Board campus. Lee said it is from this point that most of the ghost stories about the site have been told.

"The stories of the hauntings seem to focus on the old squash courts," Lee said.

He became interested in the tales while researching his 2021 book The Ghosts of King's Lynn and West Norfolk.

The stories gained particular prominence in the early 1970s, when an item was broadcast on the BBC's Nationwide programme.

Nationwide was a forerunner of The One Show, broadcast on weekday evenings on BBC One from 1969 to 1983.

"It [the broadcast] had been mentioned in a couple of books, but the date was a little bit indeterminate," Lee said.

At the time, the BBC's main archive didn't routinely keep full editions of live shows like Nationwide.

But another part of the BBC was recording the editions off-air onto a reel-to-reel videotape format.

These tapes were later donated to the British Film Institute (BFI), which in 2016 received a grant to digitise them.

Lee recently went through the recordings of the relevant period at the BFI in London to try and find the report.

He said: "A couple only had fragments, and I thought it would be one of those recordings where hardly anything remains.

"But I looked at the sixth of January 1972 edition, and the presenter said 'the ghost that likes to play squash.' I was so excited!"

The report contains an audio recording of unexplained noises on the empty squash courts. There is also a recording made by the Nationwide team of a medium supposedly giving the names of three ghosts.

But Lee said the medium's claims have since been discredited.

He said: "RAF records weren't available at the time. They now are, and we can say with certainty that every single detail the medium told us was completely wrong. The three airmen never existed."

Lee said he keeps a neutral attitude on the subject of ghosts.

"There's not much objectivity in the field, which is a shame. I think people should be more open-minded, but maybe more critical as to what they're experiencing," he said.

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