A WOMAN who claims she was "raped by evil spirits" as a youngster is having a new spooky experience.
Mandy Russell, who now runs the Charnock Hotel on St Annes Street in Preston, Lancashire, said she had to be excorcised three times to remove the spirits she believes possessed her.
That experience happened back in the 1980s when she was living i
n Streatham, south London, and is something she had "not thought about" for many years.
But, having arrived as a tenant behind the Preston hotel in September, she began to notice strange things happening.
Beer pumps and heating were being switched off at strange times of the day and pool balls, left neatly in their triangle overnight, were found spread all over the table the following morning.
The 45-year-old, who runs the pub with her partner Liz Hornsby, said: "It was years ago that I was troubled by evil spirits. I was living in London when I was visited by a vicar who told me that the things that were happening to me were down to a poltergeist.
"He said that it would be a piece of furniture or some jewellery that I had brought with me from Ireland, and I had my grandmother's bed which I was getting woken up in every night.
"I was being raped by these spirits, the church was involved, someone who deals with voodoo came to see me, I was excorcised three times back then.
"It is something I had not thought about for a long time, until recently when things started happening here and it has just spooked me a bit."
She said that her past experiences, which have happened in the month since she arrived in Preston, had made her believe that the latest happenings in her pub were not her imagination.
A number of regular customers to the Charnock Hotel have told her they had noticed a number of strange things over the years and the latest events have left two of her barmaids too scared to go into the cellar.
Mandy said: "I do not know much about the history of the place, but some of the regulars have told me that the part of the pub which they call 'the vault' is on the site of an old butchery.
"That is where they have seen shadows and things moving, one guy even told me that he had seen a lady go into the toilet and not come out, then when he went in there she was gone."
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