RAF Elsham Wolds, a former bomber station near the village of Elsham in North Lincolnshire, was home to 103 Squadron during the Second World War. The squadron flew Lancasters on some of the most dangerous operations of the bombing campaign, including raids on the Ruhr Valley, Berlin, and the Peenemünde rocket facility. The human cost was staggering — 103 Squadron lost over 170 aircraft and more than a thousand aircrew during the war. The base has been returned to agricultural use, but the dead, it seems, have not entirely departed.
The most commonly reported phenomenon at the former airfield is the sound of aircraft — the unmistakable drone of Merlin engines at altitude — heard on clear, quiet evenings when no aircraft are visible in the sky. Local residents and farmers working the fields around the old runways have reported this sound independently and consistently over many decades. The engine noise is sometimes accompanied by the distant crump of explosions, as though the returning bombers are still carrying the sounds of their targets home.
A figure in RAF flying gear — leather jacket, boots, and oxygen mask pushed to one side — has been seen walking along the perimeter track that still traces the outline of the former airfield. He walks with the deliberate, exhausted gait of a man returning from a mission, and he disappears when approached. On several occasions, motorists driving the road that bisects the former base have reported a man in uniform stepping into the road before vanishing. One resident of a farmhouse built on the former dispersal area reported hearing muffled voices and laughter through the walls on winter nights — sounds consistent with young men in a crew room, waiting for the order to fly.