MANCHESTER’S MOST HAUNTED: The haunting of the Town Hall

Manchester has had its fair share of ghostly happenings over the decades, what with its dark and grizzly industrial past.

There’s the poltergeist of Westhoughton, a ghostly Black Shuck dog lurking within Manchester Cathedral and the sinister Grey Lady of Cheetham’s School of Music.

But did you know that the city’s Town Hall has its own sinister story?

Completed in 1877, the Grade I listed building is home not only to Manchester City Council, but apparently a few ghostly residents, too.

Manchester Local Image Collection at Manchester City Council

There have been countless reports of ghost sightings within the walls of this historic building over the years, with the spirits of deceased councillors allegedly roaming the many halls and corridors.

But the most frequently seen ghost is that of a Victorian police officer who is said to have died in the late 1800s.

Rumour has it that despite his death hundreds of years ago, this ghostly bobby continues to patrol the halls of the building, scaring off countless visitors and ghost hunters in the process. 

Ian Waring, a member of the Tameside-based paranormal investigations group Shadow Seekers, claims to have seen the spirit in the flesh in what he called an ‘incredibly strange and bizarre’ encounter.

Manchester Local Image Collection at Manchester City Council

It happened during one of his guided tours of the building, where he takes on the ghost hunting persona ‘Flecky Bennet’.

Ian told Mancunian Matters at the time: “I took this big gentleman around the first part of the tour in the town hall, and then he disappeared.

“He was stood in the middle of the group, but no-one saw him disappear and there was nowhere he could have gone, it was a big open area.

“The next day I explained to the town hall what had happened and they said he sounded like a police officer who died in the late 1800s.

Manchester Local Image Collection at Manchester City Council

“I looked up a photograph of him and it was definitely the man who was on the tour. It was incredibly bizarre, really strange.”

But people had been experiencing this ghostly copper decades prior – around twenty years ago, an unsuspecting electrician had been working late at night in the upper reaches of the building when he felt an eerie ‘disturbance’. 

When he looked around, he found a Victorian-looking gentleman staring at him and silently smiling. 

The electrician fled the scene and reported what he had seen to his foreman, who of course didn’t believe his tale. At this, the foreman instructed the terrified man to return to upper reaches to collect his tools, which he refused to do.

Manchester Local Image Collection at Manchester City Council

Eventually, the foreman went to collect the tools himself but, minutes later, returned with a look of sheer terror, having clearly experienced a firm telling off by the officer himself.

Other myths in the building include a spirit that hates the sound of whistling – anyone found to be making the noise is plunged into darkness with a few slamming doors for good measure.

Some members of staff also claim that the late Mayor of Manchester Abel Heywood haunts the the clock mechanism room, which seems appropriate considering he gave his name to the hour bell in the clock tower. 

But fast forwarding to today, the Manchester Town Hall is still undergoing its extensive £328m renovation, which poises the question as to whether its ghostly inhabitants will still be there upon completion. 

Though there will be only one way to find out…