It's since been completely renovated and its factories have been replaced by some really attractive residences.

Even so, driving through it wouldn't normally excite the imagination – unless you know the story about the Breathless Ghost, that is.

Many years ago, before the council's rebuilding programme was carried out, one particular factory unit had a reputation for being haunted.

Several workers had reported spooky goings-on within its walls, but those incidents were nothing compared to some that were to come later.

According to some stories, a young woman started hearing strange noises at night after moving into one of the new flats. On each occasion, it was the same – the eerie sound of laboured breathing.

Some weeks after the problem started, the tenant was visited by a work colleague, who happened to mention that her uncle had worked in the factory that used to stand on the same spot.

He'd said the place was haunted, and on one occasion he heard an eerie scream emanating from a store room.

The young woman left the flat soon after, although whether her move was connected to the disembodied noises I do not know.

However, the next tenants of the flat, a young family, soon found themselves enduring a similar phenomenon.

They could hear the breathing sounds on occasion, and also footsteps in the hall at the same time. Then they began to hear humming noises coming from the bathroom too.

The weeks passed by, and other peculiar things began to happen.

The sounds of drum beats could be heard. Initially, the tenants thought the sounds were coming from an adjoining shop, but they soon concluded otherwise.

It wasn't long before that family moved out too, although, once again, I'm not able to say whether this was due to the enigmatic noises.

Recently, I managed to speak to the last tenant of the property, and I asked him if he had anything strange to report.

"It's funny", he said. "I loved living there, and I didn't see any ghosts or anything, but on the first night I moved in, I woke up at about 2am and could hear humming noises coming from the room next door.

"I got out of bed and went to investigate, but there was no one there".

The flat is no longer lived in and is instead used by a small business.

Staff there haven't heard any ghostly noises, and one told me: "I wouldn't be working here if I had!"

My colleague Alan Tedder, from Sunderland, told me a nigh-identical story about a house in Wearside at which tenants had heard repeated coughing noises and the sound of music.

Again, the source of the noises was never tracked down. There was once a fish and chip shop in Battersea, London, which had a coughing ghost.

In 1963, staff reported hearing hacking, wheezing coughs coming from the yard at the rear of the premises.

No matter how hard they tried they could never pinpoint the source of the coughs.

A spiritualist medium was invited in to bless the premises, and the strange sounds were not heard again.

Another wheezing ghost was said to frighten bar staff in the cellar of the White Lamb pub in Glasgow during the 1870s.

The strange thing was that it would never manifest itself to men – only women.

* Got a spooky story to tell? Send it to Mike Hallowell by clicking on this link.

For more tales of the unexpected, go to Mike's website here.