Readers Stories Haunted RAF Museum - I Was One of the Engineers Referred to. I read with some interest your web page with relation to Avro Lincoln RF398 at RAF Cosford. This piqued my curiosity somewhat, as I am one of the engineers referred to! I was not then a trained engineer, but a volunteer trainee airman who looked after some of the airframes in the museum during weekends, and two evenings a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays were the official days. I arrived at Cosford in September '88. Sometime during the first 20 weeks of training, we were taken around the museum to see the difference between old and more modern a/c and of course, we saw RF398. All of us said "Lancaster!" well, all that knew that it was not a Liberator, Halifax or similar. Wrong! Well, Lancaster B Mk IV or Lincoln. We were taken around the museum by one of the civilian volunteers, who explained about the museum and how they were always looking out for volunteers, so, that is how I started. Initially I together with some of the others that had been recruited at approximately the same time started to work on the various aircraft as required. We were not allocated airframes, we did what was obviously required, mainly cleaning, polishing etc. At that time the museum only opened once a month (, as we were only an extended store for Hendon at that time.) and we had lots of time to work on each a/c as required. My initial focus was on the Javelin (the all weather fighter that could not fly in any weather). The Lincoln at this time was used as a large aluminium box to store rubbish! I was drafted into helping with the Lincoln shortly after it had been 'cleaned out'. Initially the plan was to just tidy up the exterior, which we did successfully, and then a more ambitious internal project was started. We started to get as much of the internal lighting and equipment working as possible, and progressed with the more cosmetic details. The idea then was to get the interior as complete as we could, and we manage to refit much of the operational equipment (most of it had been stored in various rooms around the museum site). What was odd though, was the way things turned up, as they were needed. Some rather obscure things turned up in the oddest of places. I remember finding the cocking levers for the rear turret .5 in machine guns in the 'useful scrap' bins, no one knew they were still in existence. I had been very fortunate to be granted 'key holder' status for the museum. This honour was granted to few trainees. I believe that perhaps only two or three others received this privilege. This meant that we could come and go almost, as we liked. This allowed us to work on evenings other than the official ones. On official evenings, we could and were 'borrowed' by other aircraft's' teams to help them, we were in the habit of working on the Lincoln on the other evenings. I sometimes went on my own! What a privilege! I was never worried even when on my own. One strange thing that happened was on one none 'official' evenings. Another volunteer and myself were trying to get the intercom call lights working. Should not have been a particularly difficult job, about an hour max, but, we lost 3 hours! It was as if we were both seem to be deafened, and had to shout to each other to make each other heard. It was as if we had been subjected to engine noise, and even more oddly, we both had the impression that we had been in the a/c, outside on a dispersal on a warm sunny day, not in a cold, dark almost silent hangar! Now to that particular morning, (which may have been the Saturday or the Sunday though I think it was the Sunday), I opened the hangar early, as was normal for me. I opened our crew room and made a brew, this was also usual, and waited to see if anyone else would turn up. But it was early. I went into the Hangar where RF 398 lived. My task at the time was to continue painting the interior port fuselage side, aft of the H2S radar mount. All our equipment was kept in a large locked box mounted on the rear of the bomb bay forward of the AGLT/H2S radar operator's position. So virtually all I had to do was enter the a/c by the normal entrance and set to. I walked around the front of the prone position Meteor (at that time parked to starboard and facing aft and away from the Lincoln's tail) and looking towards the nose of RF 398 I saw someone in the cockpit. It appeared to be one of the other volunteers called Stuart (for argument's sake), sitting in the flight engineer's position. This seat is positioned next to the pilots' facing forwards, with the navigator sitting behind the flight engineer facing to the port side of the aircraft. I was expecting him to turn up that morning to continue the jobs that he had been doing, but I did think it odd that he had not gone into the crew room for a cuppa before starting, and had not looked for whoever had unlocked the hangar. Also, thinking about it, he was still asleep when I left the barracks. In addition, if he were sitting, it would be most unusual. The flight engineer's seat was usually stowed; we rarely set it up, because it blocked access to the nose of the a/c, thereby preventing access to the pilot's position and the forward compartment and parachute exit. I shouted up to him, but as the cockpit windows were shut, and I was some distance away, he would probably not have heard me in any case and, I thought nothing further about it. I entered the a/c through the normal rear entrance and got on with the painting. Some time later, Stuart entered the a/c behind me. This, I thought, was strange, as he was already in the cockpit! I asked him how he had managed to get off the a/c without me hearing him or feeling the a/c moving. He told me that he had only just arrived in the hangar and was looking for me. I said that I thought that he was already on board but had wondered how he had managed it. He went to look in the front of the a/c and found nothing untoward. The front parachute exit was closed, and impossible to open from the outside as the bombardier's seat was pulled back to it's furthest aft position and would prevent the hatch being opened more than a couple of inches. The ditching exits were closed, (on top of the fuselage), as were the cockpit windows. As you may probably be aware, it is almost impossible to move around on even a fairly large a/c without it moving on its undercarriage. A/c of the Lincoln's' vintage, are also noisy, there is no sound proofing and, as the floor is bare metal, you cannot move about without making some sort of noise. It would also have been impossible to squeeze past me without me knowing. I appreciate that I saw almost exactly what I would have expected to see: a reddish haired person, wearing air force blue, from the waist up, and so I did not take any real interest until later. Though there were odd things that occurred, I can't say that I saw anything else. I had the very lucky escape. We were polishing the a/c. she is bloody huge! We cleaned the ingrained dust off the upper surfaces with mops and buckets of car cleaner. When she was all mopped dry, we started to polish her. Now, I don't know if you are aware, but the upper surface of the wing is not flat, smooth. Because she is what is termed a 'tail dragger', her wing slopes aft at quite a steep angle. I was polishing the port wing by hand, and as it is so big, it took more than one day. During the process, I had to sit down on the surface of the wing, reaching down towards the trailing edge to polish it; I was using a dry mop with rags around the head as a buffer. No problems so far, until, I sat on a part that had been polished previously! I could not get any purchase on the surface, and went over the trailing edge! The ex Swiss Air Force Venom was directly underneath. I went between its tail booms, missing the jet pipe, booms, tail, everything. I was sitting on the hangar floor looking back up at Lincoln's wing from underneath! I didn't even get a bruise! How I didn't land on my head I do not know, but&ldots;..? Perhaps the oddest thing that happened, that I was directly involved with, happened some months later. Due to publicity about the alleged haunting, 'BBC Midlands Today' sent a news team to cover the story. I forgot which evening they were to do the filming (or I wouldn't have been there!), and so I turned up as usual to find the camera crew there. It would have been impolite to run away, so I consented to do an interview in RF 398. Our team leader was also there. I cannot remember all the problems we had that evening, but blown fuses were the least of it! When these mini documentaries are shown on TV, they usually start with the interviewer doing a piece directly to camera explaining what the general layout of the story is. Then of course are the interviews with the usual suspects then to end, it is usual to have a sort of conclusion. The way they filmed it though was not done in that order. They interviewed me in the cockpit, and my friend in the rear fuselage. They did a lot of background footage, and at the end, the interviewer was filmed sitting in the pilot's seat, leaning out of the port window. The cameraman was standing to the port front of the a/c almost inline with the No2 engine. The sound recorder was under the nose, looking up through the parachute exit, with the cables for the microphones hanging down through the hatch. My friend and I were putting barriers back as we had moved them out of shot. We stopped to watch the filming. I said at the time that it would be funny if there was anything else on the film at this time&ldots;. The cameraman and the interviewer were happy with the take, but the sound recorder was unhappy. He claimed that he saw someone in the cockpit next to the interviewer! And that the shot would be spoiled! We thought he was winding her up, she was not happy at all, but he did appear to be quite serious. At the time, I thought that he was being a bit cruel. When the program went to air, well, it would be better to see the actual program and the footage, but there was an extra person in the cockpit for 16 frames! Just over ½ seconds worth. Also, another 2 frames shot earlier had an extra! There were some other none RF398 incidents; the phantom whistler, sometimes people would say that they had heard whistling in the hangars, but there was no one else there, and even odder, there was no echo. Then there was also the mystery of the legs! Sitting in the crew room looking through the door, you could just see under Hunting 'Jet Flap' and there were occasions that it appeared that someone had walked into the hangar, you could see the movement of their legs, but on going out, there was nobody there. All in all, the whole thing was a fascinating experience. We did try to get an audio tape recording of the last hour of one evening. At the time, the longest tapes were the 120-min or an hour on each side, no auto reverse! We set the recorder going as we left the hangar at about 2230ish. You could hear us leave the aircraft, (we were not very quiet!) and then... Bugger all! For a whole hour! Except nearly at the very end of the recording there was a train's whistle and associated train noise! I know Cosford railway station was not that far from the museum site, But they didn't run steam trains in the late '70s early '80s !! Not at 2300pm anyway! Actually, there were other noises, but nothing untoward. I can't remember who's recorder we used, but I remember it was one with a built in microphone, if it was an electret type, it would have had very limited range. Unfortunately, we didn't keep the tape, things were getting complicated enough, and I shouldn't have actually been interviewed for TV at the time, as the correct permissions had not been obtained, and I only 'got away' with it because the Station Commander was away and his deputy was OC Museum! Unfortunately I do not have a copy of the BBC programme in which I took part so if anyone out there happens to have one, I would really like to hear from you, please contact via Ghost Watch UK. Tony Fussey. 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