The Slug and Lettuce

Dark figures have been seen on the terrace and in 2013, the bar manager recounted to the press that she saw a child "crouching by the bar after closing." The building used to be a medieval jail and cemetery, and the last person to be hanged in coventry, Mary Ball, was hanged at the nearby gallows. She was executed in 1849 for poisoning her abusive husband with arsenic. The area were prisoners were housed is what is now the kitchen and it is here that a puzzling incident occurred involving the fridge, which can only be opened by a key. After closing time one night, the fridge was now found to be unlocked. The barman put a lime inside and when he returned, the fridge was now found to be locked. He was sure that no-one but the manager could have unlocked it but she was with him upstairs the whole time.

In October 2022, Tom Owen informed me that during a visit to the pub during a quiet weeknight in 2015, he and his ex-wife saw a man seated in a booth next to the entrance. As Tom says, he "appeared solid, like a corporeal person and was wearing dark clothing, sat with his chin to his chest as if asleep or deep in thought" and was observed in his peripheral vision. A short time later as he reached the bar, Tom turned to get a better look at the man and found that he had gone and a later search revealed no trace of him. Tom's two friends had not seen him at all, and neither had the solitary barmaid who asked Tom to stop "winding her up" as the place "freaked her out" when working alone.

Link: Coventry Live

Link: Coventry Live

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