The paintworks on Radcliffe Road in Bury has been the subject of a haunting report in a Greater Manchester directory. In the 1970s a security guard on night duty and his dog came across a large man wearing an old German army uniform. The dog, rather than the man, is the detail that sticks: the animal whimpered and cowered.
The explanation given on the listing is that the site was a prisoner of war camp during the Second World War, and that the ghost is a prisoner who took his own life by hanging. The same entry says cleaning staff later reported lights flicking on and off and taps on the shoulder when they were working alone.
The camp link is the source's own claim and was not checked against records of prisoner of war camps in Bury. The guard is not named and the date is only a decade. The story belongs with the many reports in which a uniform is read as evidence of a particular wartime death. It is kept as a single report with a plausible but unverified background. The works was a private industrial site, and the pin is placed near the town centre because the exact premises are not identified.
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