Christmas is a time for carols, good cheer... and, if you're like me, a genuinely chilling ghost story. But this year, I'm not reaching for Dickens or M.R. James. I'm telling you my own.
Back in 1976, when I was a nervous, sixteen-year-old kid shipping off to join the Royal Navy, I thought the hardest thing I’d face was the Chief Petty Officer's bark. I was wrong. My first day in Cornwall gave me a glimpse of the other side—a cold, enduring secret haunting the oldest parts of the base.
They say the dead don't walk, but sometimes, duty calls them back.
This Christmas Ghost story is based on a my first journey and arrival to RNAS Culdrose and the encounter on a rattling bus that taught me one immutable truth: When the Navy needs a man for watch, they will get one, no matter how long he’s been buried.
The Recruit Who Never Left Culdrose
The air on Redruth platform was a physical thing, biting into the thin cloth of Jamie's cheap jacket. It was late afternoon on a bitter November day in 1975, and the smell of soot and damp granite hung heavy. Sixteen years old, clutching a small, worn kitbag, Jamie stood shivering with the other new entries—a gaggle of nervous, awkward lads from all corners of the country, all bound for the same unknown: Royal Naval Air Station Culdrose.
A battered, military-blue bus rumbled into the station yard. As they piled onto the cramped seats, Jamie found himself next to the only person who wasn't in civilian clothes. This man was a proper, serving sailor, older than the rest of the recruits, perhaps in his late twenties, dressed in the distinctive blue uniform with a lanyard tucked into his pocket. His name tag read 'T. PENHALIGON,' -D126151E and the same name tag was on his small canvas bag. His face was drawn, his eyes holding a strangely distant, fixed quality.
"Alright, mate?" Jamie offered, trying to sound less intimidated than he felt.
The sailor turned his head slowly. "Aye. Long journey." His voice was low and carried the soft, rolling burr of the West Country.
"Tell me about it. Where you from, then?"
Penhaligon gave a slight, unsettling smile. "A little far away, lad. And not going home this time 'round’. Just going back to the base."
The bus lurched out onto the main road, beginning the winding, often dark traverse 9 mile trip toward Helston. The other lads were quiet now, the earlier nervous chatter replaced by the heavy drone of the engine and the squeak of old springs.
Penhaligon leaned closer, the movement stiff. "This route," he began, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "I know it well. Too well, perhaps. You see, I’ve taken this exact journey, many times. We’ll be at ‘Foggy Four Lanes’ soon, you should know: something happened here, twenty years ago this coming Christmas Eve."
Jamie shifted, intrigued. "You mean when you first signed up?"
"No, lad," Penhaligon murmured, his gaze fixed on the darkening fields rushing past the window. "I mean when I last arrived."
He settled back, his breath misting faintly in the cold air inside the bus.
"So why are you with us today, mate?" said Jamie.
"I missed the connection, and the last civvy bus to Culdrose wasn't due until midnight. Jamie looked out for the window, the glass misted by the recruit’s warm bodies. The winter weather seemed much sharper outside, some snow lay on the surrounding landscape. CORNISH WINDS CAN BE CRUEL —He turned around to face the sailor who has spoken the words. “They tore off the hangar roofs one year” he said. “That blizzard had started in the afternoon, but they had to get the watch on base, I was at the station waiting to be picked up” he looked through to the window and continued “ a small van was sent instead of the bus."
Jamie looked at the sailor, and thought, he was sitting next to a rambling, possibly drunken, sailor.
He controlled his emotions as Penhaligon went on with his ramblings: "The van driver was an old local, didn't say two words. The roads down here? They get treacherous, you see; Wet, winding, and lined with those ancient stone walls that don't give an inch. Just past those bends," Penhaligon pointed toward a particularly dark, overgrown section of road. "The van slid. Hit a patch of black ice. Went straight into the wall."
Penhaligon paused, his gaze fixed on Jamie's. His eyes, Jamie realised with a chill, seemed to reflect no light, only a deep, unnatural grey.
"It wasn't a clean thing. Took until the morning for them to find the wreck. The van driver was gone clean away, but me... I was trapped. It was cold. So cold. The last thing I remembered seeing was a bright light—like a distant lighthouse, or perhaps”he gave a smile-“the Christmas star, I couldn't say—and the ringing silence after the crash. They found me frozen solid, still in my uniform, just like this one."
Jamie swallowed hard, the macabre story hitting him with full force. "So... you nearly died there?"
The sailor gave that unsettling smile again. "Well, I arrived at Culdrose the next day, didn't I? They log you in. I had a job to do. I had to report for duty."
"But that's impossible..." Jamie stammered, feeling the hairs prickle on his arms. “Surely, you must have been really hurt?” He added.
CORNISH WINDS CAN BE CRUEL
"Impossible things happen lad, when the cold gets deep," Penhaligon replied simply, tapping his white cap and fingering the cap tally which read HMS SEAHAWK.
He paused and stared into Jamie’s face and said, "They gave me a fine burial in the local soil," and grinned, showing yellow, cigarette-stained teeth.
"And every now and then, when a new batch of lads is called in late, when the wind howls just right over the Lizard, the Navy seems to need one more recruit. And so, I take the journey again."
Jamie woke up as the bus slowed, grinding through the main gates of RNAS Culdrose. The raw, floodlit concrete of the guardhouse and the looming hangars in D site, felt oppressive, utterly different from the cosy world Jamie had just left.
"Right, lads! Out and form up!" barked a Petty Officer who had boarded the bus.
Jamie turned to Penhaligon to ask him about the rest of his story, but the seat next to him was empty. I must have dropped off, what a dream, he thought as he picked up his kit bag to exit the bus with the other recruits. He must have slipped out the back while we were slowing down. But why?
He joined the shivering line of young men forming up on the tarmac. A grizzled Chief Petty Officer, holding a clipboard, began to count.
"One! Two! Three! Four! Five!..."
He counted down the line of civilian-clad recruits until he reached the end.
"...Thirteen! Fourteen! Fifteen!"
The Chief Petty Officer lifted his head and scowled, checking his list. "Fifteen, Petty Officer! I was told there were sixteen new entries on the manifest!"
"Beg pardon, Chief, but I only counted fifteen bodies here," the Petty Officer insisted.
The Chief Petty Officer slammed the clipboard against his thigh. "Sixteen are on the manifest, and sixteen should be here! Did any of you see anyone else?"
Jamie felt a sudden, icy knot in his stomach. He raised his hand slowly, looking back at the dark, empty bus that was already pulling away.
"Sir," Jamie said, his voice a strained whisper.
"That's Chief to you, sailor!" shouted the Petty Officer.
"Sorry, Chief. There was... one other. A sailor. In uniform. He was sitting next to me."
The Chief Petty Officer stared at Jamie, his face unmoving. "We don't send serving men to meet the train, recruit. And we certainly don't mix them with new entries." He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a low, chilling rasp.
"You've been in Cornwall five minutes, lad. Listen up. If you saw a sailor on that bus in a uniform, then you saw the Sixteenth Recruit. Did he give his name?"
"T. Penhaligon, Chief. He said he had to take this bus as the next one from Redruth was not until midnight."
The Chief looked at the Petty Officer. "You were right, Taff. There are only fifteen. I think this recruit has met our Thomas. He's been reporting for duty on Christmas Watch every few years since 1956. The base logs him in, and then come morning, they log him out again. Thinking it is just a sign or a mark of respect."
He looked up and addressed the recruits: "Just a paperwork error, lads. Now, you all forget all about it, or you'll be cleaning out the heads until next Christmas. Got it?"
Jamie looked back at the empty, dark roads, the wind whipping off across the bridge over which connected the living site and mast flying the White Ensign to the squadrons of 706 and 771.
Jamie looked back at the empty, dark roads, the wind whipping off across the opposite site and the bridge which connected the living site and another mast flying the White Ensign which had a second guardhouse across the road . As he looked over to the bridge where the grey RNAS CULDROSE sign had been sculpted into the façade, he knew the Chief Petty Officer was lying. Then, he saw Thomas Penhaligon waving to him. He had simply arrived for his duty, and come Christmas, Jamie thought, he'll be on his way out again.
But Penhaligon wasn’t waving goodbye.
He was standing on the bridge, silhouetted against the wash of the floodlights, pointing. Not at the recruits, but down at the road below the bridge—the dark, winding stretch they had just travelled.
The Chief Petty Officer turned, following Jamie’s horrified gaze. His face, already grim, went utterly slack. He didn't see the figure of Penhaligon. He saw something else.
“What is it, recruit? What are you looking at?” the Chief snapped, the authority in his voice momentarily cracked by an old, deep fear.
Jamie couldn't speak. Penhaligon had stopped pointing and was now standing at attention, a hand raised in a crisp, final salute, the light glinting off his white features.
Then, a sudden, powerful gust of wind—colder and sharper than anything Jamie had felt all night—ripped across the tarmac. It didn't just rattle the recruits; it felt like a physical blow, a mournful, screaming sound that seemed to carry a thousand miles of churning sea and rock.
When the gust died down, the figure on the bridge was gone.
But lying just a few feet from Jamie’s polished boots, where the ghost had fixed his gaze, was a small, canvas bag. It was the colour of old, faded military blue, and stitched to its surface was a small, official-looking name tag.
Jamie bent down slowly, a profound, sickening certainty settling in his gut.
He picked it up.
The tag read: T. PENHALIGON, D126151E.
And underneath it, scrawled in faint, almost erased marker pen, was a date: DEC 24 1956.
The Chief Petty Officer saw the bag in Jamie's hand. He didn’t shout. He didn’t scowl. He just looked at the new recruit—the one who saw Thomas Penhaligon—with a mixture of pity and terror. He reached into his own coat pocket and slowly pulled out a small, tarnished silver compass, turning it over and over.
“A man needs his kit, son,” the Chief muttered, his eyes distant. “He always leaves something behind, just a trace to prove he was here, to prove he arrived for duty. And someone always has to bring it in.”
He looked up at the sky, a ceiling of black, churning cloud now swallowing the few distant stars. The wind began to moan again, low and mournful across the vast, bleak base.
“Welcome to HMS SEAWAWK, recruit. You’ll be assigned to Jellicoe Block, First Floor, Bed Sixteen.”
But Jamie stood frozen, clutching the ghost’s bag.
The Chief Petty Officer stared out at the dark Lizard peninsula, his voice barely a breath against the rising howl of the air. “CORNISH WINDS CAN BE CRUEL.”
Jamie ignored him. He just stared at the bus departing for the next recruit pickup, and at the figure staring back at him from the rear window—an old sailor in uniform, Thomas Penhaligon, mouthing those unearthly words.
"CORNISH WINDS CAN BE CRUEL."
I hope you enjoyed this year's Christmas Ghost Story - for my final blog of the year it will be the traditional Christmas Quiz - thanks for the replies to the London knowledge quiz - those that sent them in. The answers are below.
Be watchful out there as you know the weather can be cruel everywhere these days!
