Hauntings

Black Belly of Churchill Square

Also known as: Angry Mick

Churchill Square, Brighton

Georgian-era housing site; modern reports undated

Black Belly is reported around the Churchill Square shopping centre in Brighton. He was said to be already a local ghost when the centre was built, and non-Brighton workers who kept seeing him gave him the name. Before that locals knew him as Angry Mick, when he haunted the Georgian housing that stood on the site.

Like the Blue Nun, he seems to be a living person at first. He is usually seen in peripheral vision, a large bald man in his fifties to sixties whose shirt is open at the bottom and shows a distended, bruised stomach. Close up, he floats a few inches off the ground. Advice from the retelling is not to look at him directly, as he then rushes at the viewer in a weird, motionless way, wailing, before vanishing.

The article says a telecoms engineer reported what he took to be an encounter with a madman and that surveillance footage showed him reacting to something and fleeing, with no sign of anyone else. That is the one semi-documented detail, and it comes second hand, so the case stays tagged traditional.

Evidence
Long-standing local tradition
Access
Open ground
Location
50.822, -0.145 (Parish-level only, treat as an area)

Sources: Brighton Journal, "Haunted Brighton" [other]

View on the map →

Comments

Loading…