A 70-year-old wireless with no power and no plug picking up phantom broadcasts of Winston Churchill and the music of the Glenn Miller orchestra it’s just another Montrose Air Station mystery.
Set up by the Royal Flying Corps as Britain’s first operational military airfield, the aerodrome has been a source of paranormal sightings and sounds for almost a century.
The ghostly goings-on have been recorded almost since the day it was set up in 1913 and the latest has the volunteers at the station heritage centre scratching their heads for a rational explanation.
One of the attractions at the centre is a recreated 1940s room complete with period wireless on which a number of people have listened to second world war broadcasts.
There is nothing unusual there until they learn that the wireless is not plugged in and the broadcasts have included the big band sound of the Glenn Miller Orchestra and speeches by Winston Churchill.
A visitor to the heritage centre was in the toilets next to the 1940s room when he heard the radio come on.
When he mentioned it to volunteers they pointed out that the radio was not even wired to a plug.
Among the reliable witnesses who have since heard the radio is Bob Sutherland, a trustee of the air station heritage centre and its treasurer.
He said, “I have heard it playing Glenn Miller and recognised the song as At Last.
“The volume was very low but the music was quite identifiable.
“Graham Phillip, another volunteer, has heard what he was sure was Winston Churchill and others, including centre curator Dan Paton and his wife, have heard it.”List of mysteriesMr Sutherland added, “I was a wireless operator with the RAF and know a bit about them. We have also had our resident radio expert, Ewan Cameron, look at it.
“If we had a powerful transmitter in the area the radio might pick up something but we don’t.
“It is an old Pye radio which would probably explode if it was switched on.”
It joins a long list of mysteries at the air station, where the heritage centre is in the original headquarters building.
Visitors have reported strange “energies” around the airfield, phantom footsteps, doors opening and shutting, the sound of aircraft engines, shadowy figures walking in and out of rooms and even the sighting of a pilot in full flying kit.
The most notorious were the sightings of Lieutenant Desmond Arthur of the Royal Flying Corps, who was killed when his biplane crashed.
He haunted the area until honour was satisfied in 1917, when a government inquiry concluded that he had not been killed by his own foolhardiness but because of poor repairs to his plane.
The Scottish branch of the Ghost Club has carried out investigations and recorded “anomalous magnetic fields” between the Waldron Road access and the former hangars.
Whatever is behind the strange goings-on, it all generates interest in the airfield and the heritage centre, which tells the story of the men and women who were stationed there.