East Anglia’s airfields are legendary for their ghostly residents, but at RAF Mildenhall, one ghost made itself known by flinging food from the shelves.
According to Stars and Stripes, the American military’s independent news source (www.stripes.com) in an article which appeared in 2006, one of Mildenhall’s ghosts was very attached to the delicatessen on the base. Several members of staff are on record as having witnessed something strange in the stores on the base which had also been a bank, commissary and once, a morgue. Building 131 – later the Keesler Federal Credit Union – was once the commissary, or a shop that sold food and supplies to the personnel or workers at Mildenhall.
Miri Cressey was one of the staff who witnessed something strange in the stores. “I saw this bread fly off the shelf,” she said, “it didn’t just fall. Then, a clock flew off the wall as well and I was like, oh wow!”
She added that a former co-worker had taken a photograph of the building which, when developed, included the figure of an unexpected guest. “It looked like a ghostly figure. It was weird and very tall and standing by the deli case,” she said.
Another manager saw baloney (a kind of sausage) fly out of a meat case and insisted that it had been propelled out of the case with force, rather than just fallen. “I have always believed that there was something out there, it didn’t make me believe or disbelieve, it just was,” said Cressey.
On Mildenhall’s own website (www.mildenhall.af.mil) in 2011, more paranormal tales of the mysterious Building 131 were told. Pat Bishop worked in the commissary in 1999 as a cashier and said she had “witnessed many supernatural occurrences of a poltergeist nature”.
She added: “I was helping a customer when the clock just flew off the wall like someone had thrown it.” Pat also recalled seeing meat literally flying off the shelves and loaves of bread tossed into the air: “I thought it was a ghost, but I didn’t get the feeling he would hurt us.”
Tech Sgt Kevin Wallace’s story also includes another account from Cressey: “[After the manager stocked the open-front refrigerator] he turned around and walked away. All the meat was tossed out of the refrigerator, like it was jumping out.” She also described other “bursts of kinetic energy” which included doors slamming when no one was nearby.
And fellow worker Dale Kesler confirmed that it was common knowledge that there was ‘something’ in the store room, something that would regularly move the items he left in specific places. “It turned into jokes about the ghost anytime someone misplaced something,” he said.
Also at Mildenhall:
Mum’s Woods: behind RAF Mildenhall is a small wood where, it is claimed, a 17th century witch was staked to the ground through her knees and elbows and left for dead. The woods are said to be haunted and the ghost of a woman has been seen drifting on the base
Old Roger: The ghost that whistled up the wind to save an airbase.
On Stars and Stripes’ website, another RAF Mildenhall tale is of Paul Meyer, a homesick Air Force Sergeant on temporary duty at the base who got drunk and stole a C-130 cargo plane. The Vietnam veteran had requested to leave Mildenhall but had been turned down.
Geoff Janes used to work for the 100th Air Refuelling Wing Public Affairs Office as the editor for the Marauder, RAF Mildenhall’s old command magazine. He believes his office was haunted. Doors would slam, even after they had been locked and there would be the sound of footsteps despite Janes being the only person working in the building.
In Warren Hill were the Three Hills round barrows: it is here that Oliver Cromwell was said to have buried “chests of silver”. They were never found.
The Mildenhall Treasure is a large hoard of Roman silver tableware from the fourth century AD found when Gordon Butcher ploughed a field in January 1942.
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