Most Haunted Places In Your Home Town

Ghost In The Machine said:
I could do this as an ETA but will do it as a separate post as it's a different one. But the same people.

They told me about the shops last week. I saw son and his partner again this week and one of the first things they said was they forgot to tell me about what happened to them that very day we were talking, on the wall. (York).

They were walking round the wall - they have just got their first place and son's fiancee comes from somewhere else entirely so they're still doing all the touristy stuff you do when you first live in the city.

Son said they had just got on at Monk's Bar, and hadn't got very far - there were a load of tourists at the same point, and the Minster bells were ringing which they could hear clearly. When they started hearing what they could only describe as 'male voices wailing' - the nearest they could describe it was that it was louder than/over the sound of the bells, and seemed, somehow, to be coming from the same direction as the bells (sound carried on the wind?)

They said it was so loud and weird they reacted "WTF was that?" and it went on briefly then stopped. They couldn't describe whether it faded or stopped abruptly. They looked at all the tourists round them but none reacted or seemed to have heard a thing.

Son isn't particularly woo at all, in fact has always been a cynic. Although since he started working on The Shambles he's become a bit more open to the idea of the paranormal, to say the least...

Just dropping this here.
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Don't suppose there was racing on then, was there? If the wind is in the right direction you can hear people yelling from the racecourse for quite a distance (source, two of my children live in central York, and I'm not a million miles away). In fact, my daughter works in a shop on Coney street, but she has the psychic abilities of a housebrick, and even less interest in the paranormal, but I shall ask her if she's seen or heard anything...

My son works in an accountancy firm that used to be the family house of the bloke who owns it. That place ought to be riddled with strange happenings, but doesn't appear to be so.
 
IbisNibs said:
Hi sdoig, is this the correct write up you mentioned above? http://www.ghostclub.org.uk/investigations/FORFARDISPATCHINVESTIGATION2012.pdf

I didn't read the pdf all the way through, but much of what I did read I thought could be explained by rats, birds, and subtle drafts. However, the incidence of the clothes being tugged on, with one person feeling it and another seeing it, I found pretty wonderful!
Do you know if they ever did any historical research afterwards to verify if their vivid impressions corresponded to actual individuals and businesses associated with the building?
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Yep , thats the place! - I've no idea if the Ghost Club did research afterwards, however,I had dealings with the club last year (ooh, enigmatic), and they did say it was one of their best cases!
 
The village that I lived in between the ages of 8 and 18 sits on the very edge of the Lincolnshire Fens where the southern end of the Lincolnshire Wolds rise out of the peat. It's mentioned in the Domesday Book as Turlovebi, but considering that there's a Roman canal running along the bottom of the village near the church, it's certainly older than eleventh century! When we first moved there, it wasn't long before my sister and I had been told of the village ghosts, of which there were at least three. Thurlby used to form a horseshoe shape coming off the A15 - these days a lot of that horseshoe has been filled in with new houses - and joined on to a second village, Northorpe, which was always considered a subsidiary. Towards the top of the horseshoe was Northorpe Manor, an old building - I couldn't tell you exactly how old - but the road outside it was notorious for horses shying (is that how you spell it in that context?), which was attributed to something paranormal. Thurlby Manor, on the other hand, was down at the bottom end of the village on the other side of the A15 - it's not particularly old, maybe early 19th century? At the time it was some kind of school for boys, as I recall, but the stories said that its main staircase was haunted. Finally, north of the village you find Elsea Woods, in which there was tales of a crone in a red shawl - Nanny Somebody - who had lived and died there, and didn't take kindly to people wandering in!

I am shocked how the details are escaping me. I'm going up to see my dad next weekend, and my sister will be there, so I will try to trawl her memories to flesh out the bare bones.

As an aside, I have lived here in Exeter for over 20 years, and beyond stories I have read in published books, I have no idea what ghostly tales are extant here. Is this the difference between living somewhere as a child and as an adult? Children's conversations are much more likely to include the supernatural, or they certainly did when I was a girl. There is a Ghost Tour run by the Exeter guides; methinks I need to go on that one day. Plus my friend really wants us to go to Berry Pomeroy, down near Torquay, but maybe not over Hallowe'en...
 
There are loads of ghost tales in West Berkshire, but I swear most of them date from at least 100 years ago and most of the ghosts wouldn't even recognise the place now or have been built over. Here's two personal stories from my small hometown of Thatcham.

When I was growing up, next to my school there was a sort of tractor lane leading up to some fields which had once been the local manor house. They must have lived pretty well as when the fields were ploughed you could still find oyster shells everywhere. At school it was rumoured that at midnight on Halloween a carriage pulled by headless horses would belt down the tractor lane which had once been the driveway to the house. absolutely terrified me as a kid but I doubt it had been seen for years/ever. However, my dad walked our dogs up to the field each morning and some friends of his had a weird encounter there once. They were walking back down the lane from the field when their dogs suddenly started whimpering and stopped walking. Looking back they saw a dark shape of a figure watching them from the gate into the field. They said it went very quiet and they felt quite afraid so left as quickly as they could. Having taken dogs there myself, it was always quite spooky in that field. Now it is the middle of a new housing estate, I wonder what happened to the ghosts?

Just around the corner, another friend of my dad has a haunted apple tree. Apparently the land there was once an orchard and many years ago a young girl fell from one of the apple trees and died. My dad's friend still has apple trees in her garden and she says the girl is a regular visitor in her garden and looks in the house windows (eeek!)
 
Tapeloop said:
They must have lived pretty well as when the fields were ploughed you could still find oyster shells everywhere.
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Oysters were once cheap. They were used in beef puddings before kidneys were substituted. Workers complained if they had to dine on oysters too often! The composted shells could also be used on the land for their lime content. :)
 
[
As an aside, I have lived here in Exeter for over 20 years, and beyond stories I have read in published books, I have no idea what ghostly tales are extant here. Is this the difference between living somewhere as a child and as an adult? Children's conversations are much more likely to include the supernatural, or they certainly did when I was a girl. There is a Ghost Tour run by the Exeter guides; methinks I need to go on that one day. Plus my friend really wants us to go to Berry Pomeroy, down near Torquay, but maybe not over Hallowe'en...[/QUOTE]
Yes, kids are a great source of ghostlore, as are grown younger folks. In my last job I enjoyed creepy new tales from local twentysomethings. Though it's a bit disconcerting for me, the living, to hear stories start "Back in the 70's there was this old high school. . . ."
 
bugmum said:
As an aside, I have lived here in Exeter for over 20 years, and beyond stories I have read in published books, I have no idea what ghostly tales are extant here. Is this the difference between living somewhere as a child and as an adult? Children's conversations are much more likely to include the supernatural, or they certainly did when I was a girl. There is a Ghost Tour run by the Exeter guides; methinks I need to go on that one day. Plus my friend really wants us to go to Berry Pomeroy, down near Torquay, but maybe not over Hallowe'en...
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I grew up in Exeter, BugMum! And my brother and his family still live there...

There used to be ghostly tales, but I just can't call any to mind at the moment. The Cathedral Close was supposed to be haunted (as best I can remember), but so much of the old city was bombed away that any ghosts would probably be quite recent.

Berry Pomeroy is quite creepy, we used to go there a lot as young teenagers.
 
So I collared my sister whilst in Thurlby about the local ghosts. She made non-committal noises about the spot outside Northorpe Manor, nodded when I mentioned Thurlby Manor (and I was reminded that it is a replacement for a house that burnt down in the late 18th century?), but didn't remember the crone in the woods. However, she did say that there's a screaming well in those woods; the noise is supposed to happen at about half-past three in the afternoon, as a result of some knocked-up serving girl having been thrown down it long ago. My sister used to work for a garden nursery supplier whose fields backed on to those woods, and so was in the area on many occasions, but never heard anything out of the ordinary.

The other story she pointed out was about the thing at the crossroads. As I said, the village forms a horseshoe looping off the A15; most of the village is to the west of the main road, but the pub and the church are off to the east. It's quite a fast stretch of road there, and with a crossroads as well, it wasn't unknown for there to be accidents. However, there was a spate of crashes in which cars swerved just before the crossroads for no apparent reason; one survivor spoke of something appearing in the road which they tried to avoid. Certainly there was at least one set of fatalities; the brother of someone in my sister's class and his pregnant wife were killed when their car veered off the road at that spot and smashed into the wall of the pub. An actual haunting or just poor driving at a dangerous spot?

Finally, there was a story about a man who shot at a hare, injuring it, and the following day the old lady who lived in "the witch's cottage" was seen to have a similar injury. I know the cottage my sister was talking about, but don't remember the old lady in question. The building itself stood at the end of a lane in which a friend and I encountered extreme panic for no obvious reason, as I have related elsewhere on these boards!
 
Well bugmum, if we're talking apart that part of the world... (Nanny Rutt btw)

I spent my teens further along the A15 in Bourne and had a part time job at one of the town centre pubs. I came across a story in a library book from a woman who had lived in a pub in Bourne and heard the sound of a baby crying when there was no baby there, and mentioned it to another barmaid whose husband had lived there when younger, there are attics above it, and she said she thought it was probably the same pub. Upstairs there's a passageway that overlooks a small beer garden (if tarmac counts as "garden" and the car park behind, and she said a friend of hers had come in through the back door and asked who the woman holding a baby was, who she'd seen in the window. Her later-husband had told her that in the attics, things moved about by themselves, and she wouldn't go up there alone. She wasn't the type to joke but I never met her husband so it could be all fiction...
 
loreleilee said:
spent my teens further along the A15 in Bourne and had a part time job at one of the town centre pubs.
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Oh dear God, it's a small world! (And thanks for Nanny Rutt...). It wasn't the Burghley, was it? My dad spent many lunchtimes in there, back in the days when that was acceptable, and I have a vague recollection of some kind of haunting being mentioned at some point.
 
Yay! I'm not sure Sid had much truck with it back in the day, but I think Sally might have done...
 
catseye said:
Berry Pomeroy is quite creepy, we used to go there a lot as young teenagers.
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Ooh ooh I know where that is:

Berry2121.jpg Berry2117.jpg
 
I can understand why you'd find it creepy. Those chimney stacks, or whatever they are, look ready to keel over and squash somebody!

Over here you'd never see anything looking so picturesquely eerie. It would have been knocked down, paved over, and turned into a 7-Eleven or something. The aesthetic tends to be horizontal and bare rather than vertical and verdant.7-eleven.jpg
 
 
IbisNibs said:
Over here you'd never see anything looking so picturesquely eerie
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I've read about eerie bits in the US, because you don't seem to knock anything down - you just abandon it. But then you don't have the same kind of land pressure as this little lump of island! ;)

Plus, we don't have Native American burial grounds to build on - cue all sorts of weird, or so they say!
 
Warren Lodge in Thetford Forest (East Anglia) isn't in my home town but it is close to my sister's. Built around 1400 by the local Priory with walls a foot thick to deter armed poachers, it housed the Priory Warrener who managed the rabbit farming and stored the meat and skins inside. At some stage two single story wings and a lean-to were added, but these burned down in the 1930's leaving the original lodge.
It looks old, it feels old and in such splendid isolation - I took a few steps out of the car and then beat a hasty retreat as a torrential rain came down from nowhere for 20 minutes.
As for the hauntings - a Monty Pythonesque "ghostly white rabbit with flaming red eyes guards the doorway to the lodge and is an omen of death to anyone who lays eyes on it" Hundreds have died (or was it none ?).

https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/weird-norfolk-the-phantom-rabbit-of-thetford-warren-lodge-1-5004915

Warren_Lodge2255.jpg warren_lodge2256.jpg
 
Bad Bungle said:
Warren Lodge in Thetford Forest (East Anglia) isn't in my home town but it is close to my sister's. Built around 1400 by the local Priory with walls a foot thick to deter armed poachers, it housed the Priory Warrener who managed the rabbit farming and stored the meat and skins inside. At some stage two single story wings and a lean-to were added, but these burned down in the 1930's leaving the original lodge.
It looks old, it feels old and in such splendid isolation - I took a few steps out of the car and then beat a hasty retreat as a torrential rain came down from nowhere for 20 minutes.
As for the hauntings - a Monty Pythonesque "ghostly white rabbit with flaming red eyes guards the doorway to the lodge and is an omen of death to anyone who lays eyes on it" Hundreds have died (or was it none ?).

https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/weird-norfolk-the-phantom-rabbit-of-thetford-warren-lodge-1-5004915

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I've walked around there, peered inside, taken photos, and then gotten lost in the forest. I was struck more by the horror that a whole family used to live in there than by anything supernatural.
 
I wasn't sure where to put this, but I wanted to get it down somewhere and this seemed logical.
This is a story I was told by a security guard in a vacant building in Clydebank, Scotland. He basically just sat in this empty office building on his own all day, usually sleeping or skiving and generally it was a bloody great job he had. Anyway, I used to go in and read the electric meters and chat to him and he told me this story about his childhood.
He's about 65, and it took place when he was in his early teens so I'd guess around mid- to late 60's. He (I'll call him Jim) was walking up from the River Leven, in Bonhill, West Dunbartonshire, towards or on what is now Dillichip football pitch. It was dark, and he was with his father. They saw a man approaching them, who seemed to have appeared from nowhere, and, as he came closer Jim started to panic because he realised he could see through this guy's body. He basically shat himself and ran off, leaving his father behind.
I don't really know what happened after that, in terms of what his father did, or saw, but Jim told me he had never been so frightened in all his life either before or since that event.
Sorry, it's a pretty crap story and he told me it about a year ago so I've forgotten some of it which makes it even worse. I saw him in passing yesterday and it reminded me to get his tale down somewhere for posterity.

TLDR - young boy saw a ghost walking towards them in Bonhill, ran off and left his dad behind to deal with it alone. :willy:
The location can be found here - I imagine he was walking up Dillichip Loan, towards Bonhill where he lived at the time.
https://www.west-dunbarton.gov.uk/l...pitches/vale-of-leven-pitches/dillichip-park/
 
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Yep. Not a place for the classic gothic ghostie type scare. But being stuck behind someone who must ponder over lottery tickets, then scratch them, then ponder and buy more, then scratch, then. . . can be a the stuff of a modern nightmare when you really need to buy gas or cigs in a hurry.
 
Not quite my home town, but certainly in my neighbourhood.
I had the pleasure of attending the Alton Beerfest last night.
Alton, rather like the other nearby ancient town of Farnham, has a reputation for being extensively haunted.
The central church of St Lawrence, in particular, has a very spooky reputation.
In 1643, during the Civil War battle of Alton, there was a desperate last stand by a garrison of Royalists in the church, where they fought to the last man against a far larger force of Parliamentarians.
Holes from musket balls in the walls and oak doors of the church are still visible,
I reached Alton on an earlier train than my mates and had around 45 minutes to spare before meeting up.
As I passed by the church on this wild, and windy night, I couldn't resist taking a short detour through the churchyard and taking a few photos. Disappointingly, apart from the howling of the wind and rustling of dead leaves, I didn't hear anything spooky - certainly not the sound of musket fire and cries of wounded soldiers that some people have reported.
Here are my photos.
 

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blessmycottonsocks said:
Not quite my home town, but certainly in my neighbourhood.
I had the pleasure of attending the Alton Beerfest last night.
Alton, rather like the other nearby ancient town of Farnham, has a reputation for being extensively haunted.
The central church of St Lawrence, in particular, has a very spooky reputation.
In 1643, during the Civil War battle of Alton, there was a desperate last stand by a garrison of Royalists in the church, where they fought to the last man against a far larger force of Parliamentarians.
Holes from musket balls in the walls and oak doors of the church are still visible,
I reached Alton on an earlier train than my mates and had around 45 minutes to spare before meeting up.
As I passed by the church on this wild, and windy night, I couldn't resist taking a short detour through the churchyard and taking a few photos. Disappointingly, apart from the howling of the wind and rustling of dead leaves, I didn't hear anything spooky - certainly not the sound of musket fire and cries of wounded soldiers that some people have reported.
Here are my photos.
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Sweet Fanny Adams is buried just up the road in Alton cemetery.
 
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