York pub's 'ghosts' on Japanese TV (From York Press)

York pub's 'ghosts' on Japanese TV

8:30am Friday 20th March 2009 in News Exclusive By Gerran Grimshaw

GHOSTLY goings-on caught on CCTV at a York pub have stumped the city’s paranormal experts – and now television viewers in Japan will have a chance to look at the footage.

Last September, The Press reported how landlady Janine Robinson had spotted a series of mysterious orbs moving through the hallway of the Lighthorseman, in Fulford Road, while watching the monitor of the pub and hotel’s digital surveillance system.

The footage, shown exclusively on The Press website, attracted tens of thousands of viewers, among them executives at Japanese television channel TV Asahi.

Producer Niki Matsukawa said a researcher had spotted the footage on our website while looking for material for a show called The Fountain Of Aura.

“It’s a kind of paranormal show, looking at ghosts, psychics and other mysterious phenomena,” she said.

Ms Matsukawa said she did not think the show – which will air early next month – would necessarily come to any firm conclusions about the orbs.

Janine said a film crew had been at the pub earlier this month. “We negotiated with them coming up, and then a cameraman and a Japanese lady came and did the filming,” she said.

“They said it was quite a serious show they’re making, not a joke show, it’s some kind of documentary.”

Strange sounds coming from the downstairs hallway early one Saturday morning last summer alerted the publican to the goings-on.

“I put the cameras on in the office upstairs to have a look,” she said. “I saw what I thought was a man going up the stairs.”

But since then neither she nor her husband, Steve, have seen any more of the ghostly shapes. “We’ve been so busy though, we can’t just sit and look at the CCTV,” she said. “I’ve had the odd look now and again, but I’ve not seen anything.”

Surveillance expert Anthony Dickens, who installed the cameras, was unable to explain the apparitions at the time.

“We do get people ringing up, thinking they’ve caught ghosts and things like that on their cameras,” he said. But in all other cases, he said, he had been able to explain the apparently unexplainable.

“Usually, if you use infra-red lighting, you see a fly or a spider walking across the lens, which can look funny because it’s out focus,” he said. “But I don’t really have an answer to what this is.”