The Old Linacre opened during the nineteenth century on Linacre Lane in Bootle, serving dockers, canal workers and local families under Higsons Brewery livery for generations; the building's own unusual two-tier cellar, one level running directly alongside the adjoining canal and serving canal workers there directly, the other connecting instead to Linacre Lane above for an entirely separate clientele, reflects with real precision the working dockside community it originally grew up around. The pub closed in the late 2010s and stood derelict for some time, suffering repeated break-ins during that period, before the surrounding site was eventually redeveloped as the Linacre Bridge Community Hub, which now hosts regular organised ghost-hunt events on the strength of its inherited reputation.
Reported phenomena include heavy footsteps heard when the building is supposedly empty and securely locked, icy patches felt on the landing, a shifting shadow glimpsed near the bar, glasses reported to slide unassisted across the pub's own polished wood, and a voice said to have called out a former landlord's name after closing time.
A specific, if genuinely thinly sourced, story attaches to a barmaid from the 1920s, said to have died in a tragic fall somewhere on the premises, whose laughter is now reported echoing repeatedly in the cellar, her presence apparently the most consistently reported single element within the pub's otherwise fairly scattered and general haunted reputation.
Comments