Deano – great story. You could sell that one to Hollywood.

I’ve seen ghosts, at least two. On multiple occassions.

This goes back to about 12 years ago or more. My Dad, who never mentioned supernatural stuff, wasn’t gullible, never made up stories, nothing… suddenly admitted to mum he thought he was seeing a ghost. It was always out of the corner of his eye, but enough to make out the figure, standing there, calmly watching him. He said he was certain it was my nana (Mum’s mum) watching over him in his workshop, etc. Our house was up the back section behind the section where Nana had lived. Nana and Grandad had given Mum and Mad the section for their wedding present, and for me Nana was always there till her death in 1989. She was a real intrical part of the family and it made sense if anyone was haunting/watching over us, it’d be her.

However, I had returned from overseas and was living back with the parents but in the ensuing time my room had been ousted so I was living in their caravan on the back lawn. Apart from Dad no-one had seen ‘his’ ghost, but no-one dared to question his sanity. Then, late at night, I would wake up suddenly and there was a ghostly figure standing there in the caravan beside my bed. I thought it was imagination at first, but I began to see it often and eventually admitted to my parents that I too was seeing something creepy. BUT, I was certain it wasn’t Nana, though it was fairly featureless it was more the figure of a man. It didn’t scare me, but was disconcerting, and ruined a night’s sleep. The feelign was always instant awake, heart pounding, eyes focus on figure, reach for light swithc, switch on, nothing there… back to sleep. I learned to ignore it.

About a year later a mate of mine who lived around the corner was talking about ghosts, and I told him about the wierd things that Dad and I had each seen. He said “Well, I was never going to tell anyone this, but…”

He went on to tell how one evening at dusk he’d left our place and walked down the driveway on his way home. He used to visit us often, a couple of times a week, and knew the area well. This had taken place several years before when Nana was still alive and living in the house in front of ours. He got as far as my Nana’s house, and he said he saw a man standing on her back step, puffing on a pipe. He said he sort of said hello and kept walking, assuming it was a visitor at Nana’s who’d been sent out the back to smoke his filthy pipe. Anyway, he carried on out of the driveway, turned left towards home, walked the distance of two houses (remembering that house front yards are generally much bigger and more open in NZ than England) and suddenly he stopped abruptly. In front of him, standing in the third house’s front garden, smoking his pipe, was this figure, watching him. Kerry realised for the man to get there he’d have to have run past him, but he didn’t. He stared for a few seconds, and then the man vanished into thin air!

Kerry told me all this, and was pretty freaked out, even though this was some years before he’d told me. I had my suspiscion about who he’d seen. I asked him if he could describe the man. He could – he couldn’t forget him. What he described was amazing. It was the exact description of my great grandfather, down to his style of clothing, his odd stature, his pipe, moustache, everything. Kerry was even more freaked when I explained that Great Grandad Macleod used to also live round the corner, near Kerry’s house as it happened. And he used to go to Nana’s for Sunday lunch. One Sunday he’d been doing some gardening in Nana’s garden when he had a heart attack and dropped dead. So, no doubt if it were him haunting the area, it would have been between his own house and Nana’s house!

In the end I got Kerry to tell mum his story, and she got some photos out of Great Grandad. Kerry was pretty convinced it was the same guy that he’d seen as in Mum’s photos of great grandad McLeod! I think now perhaps it was he that I’d been seeing too. I wish he’d been bold enough to have a chat with me, I never knew either Grandad, let alone any of my Great Grandads. Shortly after this I moved out and I never heard Dad mention ghosts again either (he’s probably haunting the place now if I know him!)

Anyway, I moved into a house across town, in the suburb of Leamington. After about six months or so I noticed similar things as before – wake up abruptly only minutes after going to sleep, and there standing by the bed was a ghostly figure. Again it looked like an old man, not the same one. This went on, on and off, for ages, a couple of years. Sometimes night after night, sometimes I wouldn’t see ‘him’ for a long time. I told a friend at the pub once who said Leamington was built on an old Maori burial ground. That freaked me, having seen Poltergheist…

However I went to the local museum and foun my part was nowhere near the burial ground (if it even existed, which was conjecture). The piece of land my house was on had originally been gifted to a soldier who was a hard core drunk, but he’d never lived here and died in a cell elsewhere. It had been farmland for most of the time and was only built on in the 1960’s. So, no dark history. A neighbour told me an old man had lived here but had died, so it might have been him. I was happy to ignore him and get on with life. I haven’t seen him for a long time now.

The only really freaky thing that did happen, one night, woke up, and though it was the middle of the night, the room was lit up. I was frozen solid, and the ceiling was illuminated with a pattern which looked just like one of those old colonial plasterwork or tin ceiling patterns with decorations, etc. My ceiling is in reality a plain white, nothing else. Anyway, I lay there looking in absolute wonder, awe and fear, and then this pattern began to moveand moved across the ceiling and down the wall behind my head, disappearing behind my bed. As it disappeared the light grew dimmer.

That one freaked me so much, I ddn’t sleep for ages that night. Later on, months later, I was on my way home from the pup with my best mate, who often used to crash in the spare room ratehr than drive out to his farm. I told him about this. At first his face looked full of scepticism when I told him of the ghost in the house. Then when I mentioned the ceiling haunting me, he changed completely. He admitted that same thing exactly had happened to him one time when he stayed in the spare room!

So, maybe my ghost was a plasterer I think…

What other Spanish speaking colonies did Britain have circa 1941?

Any in South America? Did they speak Spanish in the Falkland Islands then? As James says there could be other likely possibilities

Well, Lockheed did make overtly political adverts for the Hudson as it happens. See the attached poster entitled Hard Boiled Babies. This is post-entry into the war though. I don’t know if they were so political before the 7th of Decemeber 1941.

I am adding a few other Lockheed adverts I have found over the years on the net, not sure where. But they show the style of their advertising for comparison, which may or may not help. They will at least hopefully be of interest.

The poster you photographed James looks a lot more to me like British Ministry of Information style than Lockheed advertising.

I wonder if this was produced for Spanish-speaking British Citizens in places like Gibraltar?

Wow, what great schemes. Thanks for sharing them. That Mil eagle scheme must have been quite a mission to paint. Was it for a special airshow or anniversary or something? The other ‘porno camo’ reminds me of the popular Sigmund Freud picture entitled “What’s on a man’s mind” hehe.

Yeah.but when Halle Berry strolled out of the sea and made her way up to the bar,in “that” orange bikini,don`t you wish it was your b+++s that she wanted to suck 😀

That Halle Berry scene was indeed very nice, and was a reflection by the makers to emulate the famous Ursula Andress scene in Dr. No.

In the book of Dr. No, Andress’s character was naked as she strode from the sea! So, if these guys want to make the films more like the books these days… I won’t complain! 😀

I remember when production began for Die Another Day, because it was some special milestone (first of the millenium or 20th film or something) they had hoped to get as many of the original Bond girls and Bond stars to do cameos in the background. I don’t think they had any from what I saw, but it was laced with several reflective in-jokes and scenes, like the Berry/Andress scene. Another was when Brosnan picks up the birdwatching book – the very book where Fleming pinched the name James Bond from.