Jack Price's 2022 article for the Black Country Society on the region's cavalier ghosts ends with Barnett Lane in Kingswinford. A hardware store on the road is said to have been visited numerous times by a figure wearing a cocked hat and a smouldering cloak. Sometimes he is seen standing in a corner of the shop, and sometimes his face is seen peering through a display on the wall.
A second report describes a young couple walking down the lane who were passed by a gentleman they took to be in fancy dress. They wished him good evening, he returned the greeting, and then he disappeared through a hedge. When they looked, there was no gap he could have used.
Price suggests, without evidence, a link to the last stand of the Gunpowder Plotters at Holbeche House in 1605, which is in the same area. The smouldering cloak is the connecting detail, since the plotters were injured when their damp gunpowder was dried by a fire and ignited. That is a guess about the ghost's identity rather than a witness account.
The article gives no dates, witness names or the name of the shop, so the reports cannot be checked. The pin sits on Barnett Lane and is approximate.
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