Saturday 31 October 2015

Halloween at Croydon Airport

We are open for Museums at Night tonight 6-9pm (last admission 8.30pm) and here is a ghost story I shall tell to wet your appetite: 

A former member of Croydon Airport Society, Margaret White was a pilot at the airport in the 1950s. Leaving the airport late at night by the fur tree (still up the road) near what was then Merton Air Services' hangar, she quickened her pace as the night was 'dark and stormy' and she could hear thunder in the distance. A flash of lightning crackled through the rain. A brilliant green beacon came on and Margaret saw the clear outline of a pilot, dressed in 1930s gear. It went dark again and the pilot was gone.

Margaret's vision of a pilot on a dark and stormy night took place near to where the ghost of a Dutch pilot was seen, who was filled in the fog after taking off from Croydon (probably in the 1935 KLM Fokker crash). Various stories were told of seeing this pilot, though few were as odd as a British pilot who was warned from behind him not to take off due to the foggy weather; when the pilot turned round it was the dead Dutch airman in his flying kit.

Strangely, though, there are not many recorded ghost stories about Croydon Airport. If any one knows of some we'd love to hear them.

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