One Hull Of A Story: Annison's The Haunted Funeral Parlour

I recently had the pleasure to be invited to look around the infamous haunted ex-funeral parlour building, Annison's on Witham in Hull. As a child growing up in the city, I'd often passed the building, and marvelled at how foreboding and spooky it looked from the outside. Getting the opportunity to wander round it and to hear about some of the paranormal happenings associated with the building, was a real treat. The imposing building sits facing visitors coming over North Bridge, entering East Hull on one of the main routes into that part of the city. A huge building with a distinct Amityville horror meets the Addams Family look about it, now houses the city's Late Night Pharmacy. Over the years the building has been the home of not only the Annison Funeral Parlour, but was over its life the home of the city's mounted police, a photographer's studio and Ringtons Tea all used parts of the premises at some time.

I walked into the pharmacy and was greeted by Tony and Danielle who work there, and manage tours and access to the building by inquiring visitors from all over the world. Over the next hour I was given a full tour of it, and chatted with them about plans for the building and strange happenings and the grisly history associated with it. The pharmacy occupies the ground floor, and includes community meeting rooms in what was the downstairs chapel of rest and laying out room of the funeral parlour. The first floor, which makes up the majority of the building, is a labyrinth of connecting rooms that encircle the courtyard behind the pharmacy.

We entered through the old blacksmiths, off the courtyard, and went up the stairs. We came up into what was the tack room for the horses, through into the old police canteen. We wander from room to room, coming across left over objects of the funeral business, that in the warm glow of the spring afternoon sun streaming through the windows looked more like art installations than macabre remnants of the past.

In one room a metal coffin, that could be hermetically sealed, to keep the oozing fluids of the dead from leaking out. In another room a lone old school chair, stood like a piece of Dadaist contemporary art. Until you noticed the tape marks next to it on the floor, and it was explained they are there to mark if the chair had moved, which it often has I was told. Being found up-side-down and even across the other side of the room one time. Popular paranormal TV show Most Haunted, had done an investigation on the building. Karl Beetie one of the shows investigators sat on the chair during the all night filming session at the building, that is due to be aired in June this year.

The back half of the first floor now houses a newly established community art gallery. When I was there fashion and photography students from Hull College had just finished setting up for an exhibition of their course work. The exhibition is the first for the gallery, which is open to the public on Saturday afternoons. Usually the space houses works of art by local artists, that the gallery displays free of charge.

Eventually we came back round to the front part of the first floor, which is the most unusual part of the building. Here are the stable blocks. In the days of the funeral parlour and the mounted police station, the horses would be brought down into the courtyard from the stables via a specially constructed ramp. Currently one of the stables is the home of displays of Hull's Dark History museum, which is looking for a permanent home if the city. Danielle and Tony explained some of their future plans for the building, and events they would like to hold. Aside from the regular requests they get from ghost hunters from all over the world, they are considering other quirky and exciting events over the coming year, that will give the public an opportunity to marvel at the building as much as I had.

Mary Jane Langley

The day I was there, the Hull Daily Mail had just done a story on one of the more macabre events associated with the building. The mysterious murder of 18 year old Mary Jane Langley, who had visited the photographer's studio in the building to have her portrait taken in 1891. The photo (shown here) is the last anyone ever saw of her alive again. After she left the photographer's she disappeared, only to be found dead in a ditch with her throat slit in Long Lane, Preston, just outside of Hull. Various people were suspected of her murder, including the photographer himself. It's said that the police investigation was bungled, and despite one suspect being charged, no-one was ever convicted of the grisly murder. It's claimed that Mary's ghost haunts the Annison building to this day.

The story however doesn't end there, as it is believed by some that Mary may have been the victim of known serial killer and Jack the Ripper suspect Frederick Bailey Deeming. Deeming was a renowned criminal and murderer, who had murdered his first wife and four children and buried them under the floorboards of his house in Merseyside.

Just before Mary's murder, Deeming had been released from Hull prison, where it's thought he'd been serving time under one of the many aliases he used, Harry Lawson. According to local writer, historian and paranormal investigator Mike Covell, there were newspaper reports of the time that linked Deeming to Mary's murder. A seafarer, Deeming is known to have travelled not only all over the country, but across the world. He had murdered his family in Merseyside by slitting their throats, and the same fate befell the woman he married in Australia, whose murder finally had him brought to justice. Deeming was eventually caught and arrested in March of 1892 in Perth, Western Australia. Among the various news reports about Deeming and his reign of terror across the world, there were stories that he'd spent time in Whitechapel, during 1888, and that during one period in prison he had supposedly confessed to fellow prisoners that he was indeed Jack the Ripper. The jury at his trial in Australia took little more than an hour to find him guilty, and Deeming was hanged on Monday May 23rd, 1892.

The popular paranormal TV show Most Haunted did an investigation on Annison's Funeral Parlour, the first time the TV show has carried out a paranormal investigation in such a place. During the show, they claimed to make contact with both Mary Jane Langley and Frederick Bailey Deeming. Throughout the show the team claimed to have heard, bumps, knocks, and groans, they couldn't explain. Nothing that made particularly compelling TV, that was until the end of the show. When two team members heard a "short dragging" sound above their heads. On investigation they went into a room in which there was nothing but an old school chair. They found nothing of interest, that was until they watched back the footage from the fixed and locked-off camera that had been in the room. Footage from the camera clearly showed the chair moved suddenly and sharply across the room by a couple of feet, with no explanation. (The show can be seen on UKTV Play.)

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