Haunted Britain and Ireland: Over 100 of the Scariest Places to Visit in the UK and Ireland. Derek Acorah
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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 unusually 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
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