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Original Text (Annotation: EPW058490 / 1446185)
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Birkdale Place Hotel, haunted supposedly, The story of the haunted lift at the Palace Hotel has entered into local folklore and was first reported in local newspaper The Southport Visiter on 6 May 1969, when a group of demolition workers reported that the lift at the old Palace Hotel in Birkdale was acting very strangely. Jos Smith, who was heading the demolition team, said: "Things began to happen soon after we started the job. First we were woken up by eerie voices and other strange noises in the middle of the night, then the lift suddenly began to work by itself."Further investigation revealed that despite the fact that the lift's power had been cut and the brakes were on, the four ton box was quite merrily making its way between floors, just as it did before the hotel was closed. "That made the men really jittery!" added Mr Smith. A more prosaic explanation than supernatural intervention is that the lift had an auxiliary (or 'back up') power supply. In fact, the team of hardened demolition workers became so jittery that they cut the giant lift from its holdings, but still the lift didn't drop, the workmen hammered the top of the lift until this caused it to come crashing down from the third floor into the basement. The workmen also reported hearing voices, the sounds of arguments and a woman's stilettoes clattering through the foyer, although these may have been caused by courting couples who were often believed to make use of the hotel's empty bedrooms. The workers, from Rochdale, were even locked in their rooms on occasions. In 1961 a six-year-old Southport girl, Amanda Jane Graham, was murdered after being abducted by a Birkdale Palace hotel porter. Her body was found under his bed at the hotel. It has been rumoured that two sisters carried out a suicide pact in the hotel and that 11 murders may have occurred within the hotels walls. Several persons have suggested that the temporary laying to rest of 14 deceased lifeboatmen in the hotel coach house, now the Fishermen's Rest pub, could provide another explanation for paranormal occurrences at the site. '
