GHOST stories – whether you believe them or not – are always fascinating.

One reader suggested the now closed 200-year-old White House pub above Slaithwaite had been haunted. She is still on the case, she says, trying to track down the full story.

In the meantime, Derek Spence got in touch.

“When I first came to live in Meltham in 1958, the then landlady of the Swan Inn told me of the ghostly goings-on at the Swan. The landlady was called Louie Cross, and she said the ghost wandered around the pub at night. A short man around five foot four inches and dressed in breeches, shirt and green waistcoat top, and wearing a tricorn hat.”

Anyone seen him recently or knows who he is?

Huddersfield is not short of strange sights. And I’m not talking about Saturday nights in the town centre.

Only last year a team of ghost hunters visited The Royal and Ancient in Dalton Bank Road, Colne Bridge. The cellar of the pub had been used to store the bodies of 18 children killed in a mill fire in 1818 before they were buried in Kirkheaton Parish Church graveyard. The place was also reputed to be haunted by a former landlord called Mr Black, who mistreated his staff and was said to be involved with highwaymen.

The Great House at Elland, formerly The Fleece, is supposed to be haunted by Leathery Coit (coit meaning coat), a traveller murdered there when it was a coaching inn.

Another famous ghost is that of Black Dick who is supposed to ride his horse between Bay Hall and Black Dick’s Tower at Kirkheaton. You can see it from the Hare and Hounds pub. His real name was Sir Richard Beaumont, a first cousin to Queen Elizabeth I, who was a gambler, highwayman and rake. He is most likely to be seen on the date of his death – July 5 – when he might also wander the grounds with his head tucked underneath his arm.

The grave of Robin Hood in the grounds of Kirklees Hall is supposed to be haunted and with good reason if you believe the stories of the original legend. This was the site of Kirklees Priory, a nunnery which Robin often visited. He went there for treatment for wounds and the prioress poisoned him. His final request to Little John was that he be allowed to fire one last arrow and that he be buried where it fell.

And no, they didn’t bury him on top of the wardrobe.

The Priory lasted until the 16th century when it fell victim to the dissolution instigated by Henry VIII. Three of the last nuns, Cecilia Topclife, Joan Leverthorpe, and Katherine Grace, left the priory and took up residence in the nearby guest house, which they turned into an inn called The Three Nuns. The modern pub was built on the same site in the 1930s and is said to haunted.

One ghost hunting internet site claims parishioners at St Mary’s Parish Church in Almondbury had seen apparitions of mounted men riding by and heard sounds of battle, that a former Huddersfield bingo hall is haunted by the ghost of a jackpot winner who died in shock at their good fortune, and that if an accident happens at Huddersfield Railway Station, it is sometimes followed by the spiteful laugh of a porter called Jonah, who was hit by a train.

Any more ghost stories or odd happenings? Send to the usual place.