Haunted Places in England
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England has been telling ghost stories for longer than most countries have existed, and it shows. Norman keeps, plague pits, coaching inns and Victorian asylums sit within a few miles of one another, and the records reach back far enough that many hauntings arrive with a name and a date attached. If you like your ghost stories with documentation, this list of haunted places in England covers the castles, pubs and hospitals where the tales have outlasted everyone who first told them.
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Pockets Full of Pebbles: the Borley Rectory Ghost Story
Every Borley Rectory ghost story has one awkward feature in common: the house is not there any more. The large Gothic parsonage that psychic…
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A Bride in a Chest: Bramshill House Ghosts in Hampshire
Fourteen is the number usually attached to the Bramshill House ghosts, a figure credited to a police officer who worked at the training college…
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The Lady Tanfield Ghost in a Bottle: Burford’s Fiery Coach
Of all the stories attached to this Cotswold wool town, the one that sticks is the Lady Tanfield ghost: a flaming coach carrying a…
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The Blue Boy and the Bone Box: Chillingham Castle Ghosts
Talk of Chillingham Castle ghosts almost always begins with a boy in blue and ends with a marketing claim: the owners of this medieval…
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Tarred, Caged and Rumoured to Walk: Haunted Durdham Down
Most of the people crossing this grass on a windy afternoon are flying kites or walking dogs, which makes the reputation of haunted Durdham…
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The Gibbet on Gallows Acre Lane: the Durdham Down Ghost
The Durdham Down ghost is not a house ghost or a hotel ghost. It belongs to open grass, wind and a road junction, and…
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Edge Hill Phantom Armies: the King’s Commission of 1643
Few English ghost stories carry an official seal, but the Edge Hill phantom armies do. In 1643, after printed accounts of ghostly sightings began…
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Headless Monk and My Lady’s Walk: Furness Abbey Ghosts
Red sandstone walls still stand to the wallhead in a wooded hollow north of Barrow-in-Furness, and the stories that cling to them are older…
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The Durdham Down Gibbet and the Ghost That Emptied a Widow’s Rooms
Most of the ghost stories attached to open ground in England are vague by nature, but the Durdham Down gibbet leaves a paper trail.…
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Six Featherbeds and a Bell Tower: Haunted George Hotel Glastonbury
Pilgrims walking to Glastonbury Abbey needed beds, and in the late 15th century somebody built them a house for the purpose. That house still…
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Macbeth’s Tower, Roaring Meg and Goodrich Castle Ghosts
Two stories carry most of the talk about the Goodrich Castle ghosts, and both of them grew out of things that genuinely happened on…
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Beneath the Church: the Haunted Hellfire Caves, West Wycombe
Dug for road stone and later used for the private rituals of some of the most powerful men in Georgian England, the haunted Hellfire…
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The Cauld Lad of Hylton: Sunderland’s Stone Gatehouse
Ask anyone in Sunderland about the ghost of Hylton Castle and you will be told about the Cauld Lad of Hylton, a murdered stable…
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Two Black Dogs on the Fen: the Littleport Black Dog Legends
Most places in the East of England make do with one phantom hound. Littleport, in Cambridgeshire, has two, and the Littleport black dog stories…
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A Builder’s Fatal Dream and the Netley Abbey Ghosts
Most of the Netley Abbey ghosts arrived long after the monks left. The stories attached to this roofless Cistercian shell near Southampton, in Hampshire,…
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Old Jeffrey and the Epworth Rectory Haunting, Lincolnshire
The Epworth Rectory haunting is unusual among English ghost stories because the family at the centre of it went on to change the religious…
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A Broken Heart in 1599: the Ordsall Hall Ghost, Salford
Most of the stories told about the Ordsall Hall ghost lead back to one woman: Margaret Radclyffe, whose brother Alexander died in Ireland, and…
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Twelve Ghosts and a Guinness Record: Haunted Pluckley
No village in England has been counted quite so precisely as haunted Pluckley. This scattered agricultural parish in the Ashford district of Kent earned…
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Priests’ Fortified Place: Haunted Prestbury, Gloucestershire
Ask around the paranormal circuit and you will hear haunted Prestbury described as the most haunted village in England. The claim is repeated widely,…
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The Skeleton Behind the House: Preston Manor Ghosts
The roll-call of Preston Manor ghosts is unusually long and unusually specific: a grey-clad woman, a blonde figure said to have identified herself as…
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Punch Bowl Inn Ghost: the Pub Demolished Overnight
Most haunted buildings outlive their ghost stories. At Hurst Green in the Ribble Valley, Lancashire, the opposite happened: the Punch Bowl Inn ghost, said…