by Derek Acorah
Another of the live-in managers was often aware of a ‘presence’ in her flat. It seemed friendly and to delight in playing tricks – she would return to her ‘empty’ flat to find ornaments had been turned round and her teddy bear turned over on the bed.
In May 1975 and October 1976 a team of researchers from the Borderline Science Investigation Group investigated the inn and concluded that genuine paranormal phenomena had ‘probably’ occurred.
The Old Hall Inn, The Coast Road, Sea Palling, Norfolk NR12 0TZ; Tel: (01692) 598323; Website: www.seapalling.com/oldhallinnmain.htm
DEREK’S TIP
If using an EMF meter in your investigation, attempt to locate any electrical wiring or equipment on the premises you have chosen, as these will adversely affect the readings of such meters.
Oliver Cromwell’s House at Ely
Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), Lord Protector of Great Britain, was born on 25 April 1599 at Huntingdon, the son of a country gentleman. After his marriage in London in 1620 he and his family lived first in Huntingdon and then in St Ives before moving to Ely in 1636.
The house was originally built in the thirteenth century. Between 1843 and 1869 it was an inn, the Cromwell Arms, and it is now a historic house dedicated to Cromwell.
Cromwell led the New Model Army to victory against the Royalists in the Civil War, then the Irish in 1649 and the Scots and Charles II in 1651. After dissolving the ‘Rump Parliament’ in 1653, he became Lord Protector. He was offered the crown in 1657, but refused it.
Although Cromwell died in London and his ghost is said to haunt Red Lion Square (see page 76), it may still return to his old home in Ely. There have been many paranormal events at the house. In 1998 a guide at the Tourist Information Centre was there when he felt a draught around his feet and realized his shoelaces were undone. In itself that wasn’t particularly unusual, but every time he retied them, it happened again.
In 1979 a couple spent the night in what is now known as the haunted bedroom. During the night, the woman woke up and seemed to be in the same room but at a different time. She realized the doorway was in a different place. Then she felt her arm gripped by a large powerful man, who seemed distracted and was muttering to himself. The vision faded, but when she found herself back in her own time, the marks on her arm were still visible.
In 2003 the Cambridge Paranormal Group carried out two investigations at the house and picked up impressions of several spirits.
Oliver Cromwell’s House, 29 St Mary’s Street, Ely, Cambridgeshire CB7 4HF: Tel: (01353) 662062. Open daily all year, except Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day.
There are videos, exhibitions and period rooms, with costumes and helmets to try on, and a gift shop. The House is also home to Ely’s Tourist Information Centre.
The St Anne’s Castle
Saint Anne’s Castle in Great Leighs, Essex, is one of the oldest pubs in England, with parts dating to the twelfth century.
The pub is associated with the legend of a local witch, Anne Hughes, who was executed in 1621 on Scrap Faggot Green (‘scrap faggot’ is an old Essex term for ‘witch’) and buried at the crossroads there with a stake through her heart and a heavy boulder on top of the grave to stop her spirit from finding its way back to the village. However, during the Second World War, American artillery trucks needed to pass through Great Leighs and moved the boulder. After that the witch apparently haunted the village and pub. One of her pranks was said to be swapping over the hens and ducks belonging to two local men during the night. A ghostly black cat which has been seen by several people over the years may belong to her.
A previous landlord of the pub had trouble with a storeroom which he could not keep tidy because items would be strewn around when no one was there. His dogs would not enter it, but the cat would. At that time drayman delivering supplies to the pub and a young girl visiting it both reported seeing a ‘thing’ that so upset them that they refused ever to cross the threshold again.
The current landlady has joined a ghosthunting group in an effort to learn more about the ghosts who are haunting her pub and has found out that there are a lot of them there, including a little girl with long blonde curly hair who likes cooking, a little boy who plays with her, several unfriendly monks, a woman called Elizabeth who walks around in her wedding dress, looking out of the window, and a man who sits in the bar smoking a pipe.
A ghost with a tragic story is that of George Harry Benfield, who lived in the village in the nineteenth century. He had five children, but found out that his firstborn, a son named Thomas, was his brother’s child. Horrified, he killed both his wife and son by tying a piece of rope around their necks, fixing it to a piece of wood and turning the wood until their necks broke. He was later tried and hanged in Chelmsford.
As well as all these ghosts, a variety of paranormal activity has been reported in the pub, with electrical equipment turning itself on and off of its own accord and items going missing and then turning up again exactly where they had been left. One room in particular has an overpowering feeling of death and sadness. It is no exaggeration to say that the St Anne’s Castle is one of the most haunted pubs in England.
The St Anne’s Castle, Main Road, Great Leighs, Essex CM3 1NE; Tel/Fax: (01245) 361253; Website: www.stannescastle.co.uk. Open all day every day.
Live music at weekends and an open mike night the first Tuesday of the month. Freshly cooked bar food and a takeaway service every lunchtime and evening.
The Triangular Lodge
The Triangular Lodge at Rushton, Northants, is a highly unusual building. Everything about it is linked to the number three. It has three 33-foot walls, each with three trefoil windows and three gables, and there are three storeys rising to a three-sided central chimney.
The lodge was designed and built by Sir Thomas Tresham between 1593 and 1597. He was a staunch Catholic and as a result was imprisoned for 15 years by the Elizabethan Protestant government. During his prolonged captivity he covered his cell walls with letters, dates, numbers and religious symbols, and on his release in 1593 he began to design the Triangular Lodge as a covert testament to his faith. All of its features – emblems, dates, gargoyles, shields and biblical passages – are said to relate to the Holy Trinity and the Catholic Mass. Thomas’s son Francis was one of the Catholics later involved in the Gunpowder Plot.
Legend has it that a secret tunnel leads from the lodge and when it was discovered the owner of the lodge offered a large sum of money to anyone who would go down and investigate it. A gypsy fiddler took up the offer, but had only gone a few yards, playing his fiddle as he went, when the tunnel collapsed. Some say he died there, but others say that after a while he arrived in Australia. Either way, the sound of his ghostly fiddle has been heard coming from the ground!
The Triangular Lodge, Nr Rushton, Northants NN14 1RG; Tel: (01536) 710761 or (01536) 205411; Website: www.english-heritage.org.uk
The lodge lies a mile west of Rushton on an unclassified road and three miles from Desborough on the A6. Parking is limited. Open Thursdays–Mondays 1 April–31 October 10 a.m.–5 p.m. No unauthorized visits at other times.
The White Hart Hotel
The White Hart Hotel is situated in the centre of medieval Lincoln, between the eleventh-century cathedral and the Norman castle. There has been an inn on this site since 1460 and the oldest part of the current building, the east wing, was built in 1710. The hotel has had many illustrious guests over the years, including the then Prince of Wales, who had lunch there in 1925, and the Yeomen of the Guard, who stayed at the hotel when the annual Maundy Thursday ceremony took place in Lincoln cathedral. More recently, the cast and crew of The Da Vinci Code stayed at the hotel while filming scenes in Lincoln cathedral.
There are several ghosts at the White Hart. The former stables, now the Orangery restaurant, are haunted by a highwayman who came to grief when a coachman thrust a torch into his face. Now he can be seen hiding his face in a cloak. The Orangery is noted for being unu
sually cold.
Another ghost is a young girl known as ‘the Mobcap Girl’. She was a hotel maid who took the fancy of the hotel’s ratcatcher. When she spurned his advances, he murdered her. She has since been seen cowering on the first-floor landing.
One of the hotel rooms was also the scene of an untimely death when a guest committed suicide there one Bank Holiday in the 1960s. A sad atmosphere pervades the room to this day and ghostly crying has been heard there.
Several of the hotel staff have seen an elderly lady in period costume walk down one of the corridors and disappear. In another corridor several people, including the duty manager of the hotel, have had the uneasy feeling that they were being followed, but turned to find no one there.
The White Hart Hotel, Bailgate, Lincoln LN1 3AR; Tel: (01522) 526222; Fax: (01522) 531798; E-mail: [email protected]; Website: www.whitehart-lincoln.co.uk
The hotel runs ghost tours for conference guests.
Wicken Fen
Wicken Fen is one of the last remaining undrained parts of the fens. It is Britain’s oldest nature reserve and celebrated its centenary in 1999. It is a haven for wildlife – over 200 species of bird, 1,000 species of moth and butterfly, 1,000 species of beetle, nearly 2,000 species of fly, 29 species of mammal and 25 species of dragonfly have been recorded there. Charles Darwin collected beetles there in the 1820s and today 40,000 people visit the fen each year.
The fen is also visited by the ghosts of days gone by. To the north, where today Spinney Abbey Farm stands, there was once an Augustinian priory, and occasionally the sound of chanting monks can still be heard drifting across the fens. One of the monks can sometimes be seen on the path leading to the fen in the early hours of the morning. He is believed to be one of three canons who stabbed the prior, William de Lode, to death in the priory church in 1403. He wears a brown habit with the hood firmly pulled down over his face.
The flickering lights of the Lantern Man (see page 32) can also be seen between the farm and the bank leading to the fen.
Roman legionaries have been reported to loom up suddenly out of the fen and phantom armies have been heard.
The most sinister ghost to haunt the fen, however, is a huge black dog with enormous eyes. According to legend, anyone who sees it will soon be dead!
Wicken Fen National Nature Reserve, Lode Lane, Wicken, Ely, Cambridgeshire CB7 5XP; Tel/Fax: (01353) 720274; Website: www.wicken.org.uk
Wicken Fen lies south of the A1123, three miles west of Soham and nine miles south of Ely.
The visitor centre and café are open Tuesdays–Sundays and Bank Holiday Mondays. The fen is open daily, apart from Christmas Day, from dawn to dusk. Some paths are closed in very wet weather.
Formal education programmes and special events take place on a regular basis.
The World’s End
The World’s End pub stands in the small village of Ecton, halfway between Northampton and Wellingborough on a former toll road. The village was listed in the Domesday Book, when it was known as Echentone.
The inn was originally built in the seventeenth century and called the Globe. Royalist prisoners may have been kept in a paddock nearby after the Battle of Naseby in 1645 (see page 33), which may be how it got its new name. Until recently the inn sign showed a man on a horse rearing over an abyss. The present building dates to about 1765.
Numerous stories link the artist Hogarth (1697– 1764) with the World’s End. It is rumoured that he once painted the inn sign but that it was stolen. It is definitely known that he visited the village and painted the portrait of a local landowner, John Palmer.
The village is also connected with the former US President Benjamin Franklin. His ancestors lived there for over 300 years and many of them were the village blacksmiths. Thomas and Eleanor Franklin, Benjamin’s uncle and aunt, are buried in the churchyard.
The World’s End is said to be haunted by a barmaid called Angel who worked there in the seventeenth century. She had a suitor, John, who killed her in a fit of jealous rage. Apparently he also haunts the premises, but the two spirits can’t find each other!
The road outside the World’s End, the A4500 between Northampton and Wellingborough, is also haunted. A nun appears there at midnight on Halloween.
The World’s End, Ecton, Northants, NN6 0QN; Tel: (01604) 414521
London
The Adelphi Theatre
Amen Court
The Carlton Mitre Hotel
Cleopatra’s Needle
The George Inn, Southwark
Heathrow Airport
The Lyceum Theatre
The Old Vic Theatre
Osterley Park House
Red Lion Square
My good friend the historian and author Richard Jones would, I think, definitely confirm that London stands head and shoulders above all other cities in the haunted stakes. There are more ghosts per square mile in London than in any other place on Earth. This of course is due to its vastness compared to other UK cities and to its long history as the capital of England. It has long been more densely populated and that in itself produces more than the average number of ghostly happenings.
I have been a frequent visitor to London and during my career as a spirit medium investigating ghostly sightings one particular spirit person stands out in my mind. Curiously, it was not during the course of my work that I met this gentleman but whilst staying at the Carlton Mitre Hotel, which is close to Hampton Court Palace (see page 62).
The Adelphi Theatre
The Adelphi Theatre was first built in 1806 and has been rebuilt three times since. It was the first theatre to use a sinking stage and was also a pioneer of gas lighting. It seats 1,560 people and has a long tradition of staging popular musicals.
The theatre is said to be haunted by the ghost of the actor William Terris, who was stabbed outside the stage door by a minor actor named Richard Arbor Prince on 16 December 1897. Prince is said to have been jealous of Terris’s success and to have bought the dagger some time earlier in order to kill him as soon as he had the chance.
As Terris lay dying in the street his mistress rushed out and held him in her arms. He whispered to her, ‘I’ll be back.’ Since then he has been seen several times in the theatre, in the nearby Covent Garden tube station, which was built on the site of his favourite baker’s shop, in Maiden Lane and possibly in the Lyceum Theatre as well (see page 71). He wears a grey suit and white gloves and has been seen walking through a whole row of seats and disappearing through a wall. One evening several men were working in the theatre when they saw a glowing green light which turned into the misty figure of the former actor. He floated across the stage and into the stalls. Rapping noises have also been heard in the dressing room Terris used. Apparently he used to tap on the door of an adjoining room to let his leading lady know that he was going out for a few minutes.
Richard Arbor Prince was certified insane and confined to a mental institution.
The Adelphi Theatre, The Strand, London WC2E 7NA; Tel:020 7344 0055
Amen Court
Amen Court is a small alleyway close to St Paul’s cathedral. It backs onto the site of the former Newgate prison. It is thought that many prisoners tried to escape from Newgate by climbing over the wall into the court. It was also the site of the prison’s scaffold, where 12 men could be executed at the same time, and the lime pits where their remains were buried.
Now the alley is known as ‘Dead Man’s Walk’ because so many people have seen a dark shapeless figure sliding along the wall and heard the sound of clanking chains. It is thought that this may be the ghost of Jack Sheppard, an infamous cat burglar who escaped from Newgate three times before finally being hanged in November 1724.
The ivy-covered wall at the end of Amen Court is haunted by ‘the Black Dog of Newgate’. Just before a prisoner was hanged this ghostly dog was said to glide up and down the alley, accompanied by a sickening smell, and crawl along the top of the wall. It is said that it first appeared i
n the thirteenth century, when a famine hit London and a scholar charged with sorcery was killed and eaten by his fellow prisoners. However, he had his revenge one night soon afterwards, when the mysterious dog appeared, dripping blood from its jaws, and tore them limb from limb. Though the prison was demolished in 1902, people still claim to have seen the dog crawling across the wall, dropping into the courtyard and disappearing into thin air.
Amen Court, London EC4
DEREK’S TIP
Give each investigator the opportunity to call out to the spirit world. Whilst one person’s voice vibration may fail to attract the attention of spirit entities, another person’s voice may just be appealing enough to generate activity. Personalities are carried on voice vibrations and like attracts like – it is spiritual law. A spirit person may respond to a certain personality type because they have similar traits, whereas they will ignore another.
The Carlton Mitre Hotel
The Carlton Mitre Hotel stands on the banks of the River Thames, directly opposite Hampton Court Palace. Parts of the hotel date back to 1665 and it was originally a lodging-house for courtiers who could not be accommodated at Hampton Court Palace. It was renovated in 1993.