The Montrose Ghost

I haven't read the JSPR article yet... but what do you think now... was the whole story a work of fiction... or had Masefield really experienced seeing an old biplane that crashed in 1963, and landed his aircraft on the Montrose golf course to provide help? As that is not in the souped up story published in "The Aeroplane"

For myself, I'm now skeptical of his story, but willing to keep the door open that he may have had some type of apparitional-type experience in 1963... but I'd need to see his original 1963 log book, or find corroberation of him landing at the golf club, to be convinced now.

I would still vote for fiction.

One interesting thing is that Masefield clearly used Grey's article in "The Aeroplane", but added the name of Cyril Foggin. Grey had not published Foggin's name - he wrote "Naturally, I cannot give the names of the chief witnesses in the case, as they are all still alive and might not like to become public characters". (In fact Foggin had been killed in a car accident in 1918.) I haven't been able to find any mention of Foggin's name in connection with the ghost before Masefield's article. 

I wonder how plausible it is that essentially the ghost story published in "The Aeroplane" in 1920, plus the name of the witness that had been suppressed then, would have been related to Masefield 43 years later by an old airman. It strikes me as more likely that for some reason and at some time Grey had given him his notes on the case, including Foggin's name. The chronology of Masefield's career is a bit hazy in the obituaries, but from what I've read it seems possible that he was already working in journalism by the time Montrose airfield reopened in 1936. Perhaps that might have prompted Grey to look back at his files on the haunting?

Yeah, I get that... and I agree. Masefield's Montrose Ghost story published in Flight, was based on a mixture of previous sources, most notably CG Grey's article in The Aeroplane, and both guys had some association.

Why I'm keeping the door open though is because of Martin Caidin's account of Masefield's experience in "Ghosts of the Air", it includes information that is completely different from the two previous published stories by Grey and then Masefield, and it's written by Caidin in a way that suggests a direct source. I can't accept Caidin just made all that different stuff up about Masefield's experience, whilst leaving out all the obvious theatrical bullshit from the two previous published articles. It's just too different, and too pared back, having the ring of authenticity of a typical ghost experience. To me the writing suggest that perhaps Caidin had a short telephone conversation with Masefield when researching his book, and then summarised the conversation. It just has that conversational tone.

I agree the briefer account involving just a vision of the crash would be more credible - whether as a hallucination or something else. It's the conversations with the ghost and the ghost hitching a lift in the back seat of the aeroplane that make Masefield's story harder to swallow for me.

I'm not sure whether there's much we can do to discover the truth of the matter. Maybe a closer comparison of Masefield's article with its possible sources would tell us something. If the supposed conversation at Inverness was really made up from written sources, that would be a further red flag for me. Caidin is no long alive, but C. G. Grey's papers are at the National Aerospace Library. They might just contain some notes on the case, or some records of his dealings with Masefield:
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk.../N13832839

This Google "snippet" from the Air Pictorial of 1973 says the Montrose Ghost used to be a "favourite yarn" of C. G. Grey and that Masefield had "published an updated version of the tale very topically last Christmas". It adds that Harold Balfour (Lord Balfour of Inchrye) in his book "Wings Over Westminster" [1973] says the tale was current in 1916 and the ghost was that of a young pupil ... [can't read any more]:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nEkpAQAAIAAJ&dq="C+G+GREY"+"montrose+ghost"

[Edit:

A bit of cheating with the snippets allows the beginning of Balfour's account to be read:

The story of the Montrose Ghost was part of the 1916 R.F.C. It was more than a legend. Passed from station to station of Home Establishment it was accepted as true by far more than just those who held a belief in the supernatural. It became something closely related to fact. Smith heard it from Jones. Jones had met a man from Montrose who could vouch for its truth. The young pupil at Montrose was a poor nervous little lad. His instructor considered it high time the pupil went for his first solo in the old Maurice Farman biplane. His dual control performance warranted this step. The pupil said he felt too frightened to go off alone. The instructor scoffed at these fears. ...

So this is the same story about the origin of the ghost that Grey recounted (and rejected) on the first page of his 1920 article.]