OLD RECOVERED FILE
The county of Gloucestershire is steeped in ancient folklore and boasts a veritable who’s who of spooks and spectres. Headless horsemen and hooded monks, white ladies and black dogs – you name it, we’ve got it. There are probably more ghosts to the square mile here than anywhere on earth.
Practically every village and hamlet can boast at least one ghostly apparition and no self-respecting historic pub can hold its head up in decent company unless it stocks spirits other than whisky, gin and brandy.
In the city of Gloucester itself, ghost hunter Eileen Fry reckons she has researched more than 100 ghosts and that’s just the tip of the unearthly iceberg. Mrs Fry, with her friend Rosemary Harvey, has written two books on the city’s ghosts and conducts guided tours around its more haunted parts.
“Everywhere I go I keep meeting people who tell me about their experiences,” she says. “I have no choice but to believe them because in most cases the stories are so extraordinary that they could not have been invented. The strange thing is that most of these ghosts are quite kindly and not frightening at all. At the same time I would not tamper with the supernatural and I have nothing to do with Hallowe'en. But I can usually tell when a building is haunted. There is a definite atmosphere you can smell. It is often an indication of a ghostly presence if electrical equipment plays up.
“I remember some years ago when the radio presenter Freddy Grizewood came to Gloucester to present Down Your Way[radio show G¬]. They set up their equipment in the cathedral cloisters but they couldn’t do it because the equipment wouldn’t work there. Freddy also felt hands around his neck. Two years later he came back on his own and he felt the same hands around his neck again.”
One of the city’s most haunted buildings is 37 Westgate Street, a shop now lying empty. Mrs Fry says a professional medium some years ago made contact with the spirit of an angry old man and that shop workers had seen an old man with long hair and a beard. She also recalls that two men kept a vigil there on Hallowe'en some years ago and reported a hair-raising night of bangs, bumps, crashing noises and lights going on and off. “The two former sceptics came out at the end of their experience convinced that very strange things indeed were going on in the room, activities for which they could offer no explanation,” she said. “They said they would definitely not repeat the experience.”
Haunted pubs in the city include the Whittington Inn (plague victim), the Fleece Hotel (blue lady), the Greyfriars Inn (poltergeist), the Kingsholm Inn (phantom landlord) and the New Inn (Lady Jane Grey and coach). Other spooky spots include Bell Walk (poltergeist), Bearland House (White Lady), Blackfriars (wounded monk), Archdeacon School (tragic school-master), Gloucester Docks (Spanish galley with bodies hung by their feet from the yardarm), Llanthony Priory (women paupers and children), Kings Barton Theatre (hovering man), The Dukeries (kindly cavalier) and of course the cloisters of Gloucester Cathedral (various).
Other notable ghosts around the county include:
• Prestbury, near Cheltenham, claims to be the most haunted village in Britain with no fewer than 26 ghouls said to patrol the midnight streets. In one lane alone there are so many spectral horsemen they have stand patiently in line awaiting their turn for a gallop through the moonlight.
• In Wotton-under-Edge the former Ram Inn is said to be haunted by a number of ghosts including an angry poltergeist.
• In the Old Bell at Dursley a team of ghostbusters recorded psychic traces of at least five phantoms jockeying for position. Two of the ghosts are of tortured innocent souls sentenced to death in the old assize court here – one is of a chambermaid who hanged herself out of shame at being made pregnant by a local squire and another is of an old man locked up and left to die after contracting an infectious disease.
• On Minchinhampton Common, Tom Long the highwayman, who was hanged for his crimes at the Cross is said to have returned to the nearby Amberley Inn after his death to be near his lost love, the landlord’s daughter.
• Another pub on the common, the Ragged Cot is said to be haunted by the spirit of a former landlady who died trying to prevent her husband committing highway robbery.
• In Newent, regulars at the Black Dog regale visitors with tales of the lavender lady or Charlie the headless cavalier.
• Littledean Hall, reputed to be the most haunted house in England, is home to a whole colony of ghosts including a headless horseman, a lady in yellow, a white monk, two brothers who killed each other in a duel and a diligent gardener sweeping up leaves.
