Is this the moment a ghost steals an iPhone? Handset is seen on pub's CCTV spookily being snatched 'by dead former landlord whose favourite seat it was'

A spooked pub boss reckons he caught the ghost of the dead landlord on CCTV hurling his mobile phone across the bar.

Manager Ajay Cohan, 30, captured the incident at the New Talbot, in West Bromwich, West Mids., when he checked the security tapes to see what happened to his iPhone.

Ajay was baffled when his mobile phone vanished from inside the main room of the 100-year-old boozer while he was cleaning it in the early hours of the morning last Tuesday.

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CCTV captures the iPhone on the chair, circled here in red

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A moment later the phone is apparently swiped by a ghost

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But when he checked CCTV cameras back footage showed his mobile mysteriously disappearing from the chair at 2.30am.

Eerily, locals say the chair was the favourite seat of former landlord Gary Stephens – who would sit there and enjoy a pint with punters until he died in 1993 of a heart attack.

Ajay found his phone on the floor the following morning over the other side of the pub and believes the strange incident could be the work of Mr Stephens’ poltergeist.

The latest occurrence is just one in a series of unexplained goings-on at his pub in recent weeks.

Other footage taken from the same cameras a few days later seems to show glowing orbs flitting across the room in the middle of the night.

And frightened staff have also reported feeling people touch them on their shoulder while working alone.

Father-of-one Ajay said: “It is really spooky, my family all live in the pub and we’ve been a little scared ever since.

The pub's manager Ajay Cohan on the seat where the phone was taken from, perhaps by the ghost of the former landlord whose favourite seat it was — The pub’s manager Ajay Cohan on the seat where the phone was taken from, perhaps by the ghost of the former landlord whose favourite seat it was

The New Talbot pub in West Bromwich, West Mids., where the spooky incident happened

“It was crazy when I watched back the footage, no-one was near it and then it just flies off the seat and across the pub.
“There is no explanation. The vibration function on my phone is broken, there is no draft inside the pub.

“It just looked like an invisible hand had grabbed it and thrown it across the room.

“The dog refuses to come downstairs now after the orbs started appearing, he goes mental so we have to keep him upstairs.

“It’s really freaky,I’m a sceptic about these kinds of things but when you see things like that it makes you think twice, I’m trying to stay sceptical but that’s hard.

“A few people have been saying it could have been his way of telling me that was his seat.

“The girl who works here who was touched by the ghost now won’t work evening shifts.”

One punter, Phil Lambert, 45, who has been using the pub for over 20-years said: “There’s always been rumours here that the place is haunted, its a very old place.

“I remember the old landlord Gary, when he had a drink with the punters or after work that would always be his seat.

“It is a very odd coincidence – that’s for sure.”