Serious records collide with fond imaginings in our tipsters’ memories of the unexplained, from a Spanish Armada smash to a snuffling ghost pooch.
Guardian readers
Chilled to the bone … numerous skeletons have been observed at Winehouse in Yell, Shetland. Photograph: Alamy
Winning tip: Try now not to Yell, Shetland
Winehouse, on Yell, is probably Shetland’s most haunted residence. Last year, two 13th-century skeletons were uncovered at this 18th-century wreck, which is apparently haunted using a girl in silk, a person in a top hat, a servant girl, and a dog. There are reviews of skeletal remains of a lady, man, and toddler located in separate incidents between the Eighteen Eighties and 1900s, as well as the tale of the shipwrecked sailor who spent a night time inside the house one Christmas and had to combat off a monster with an ax. The house can be visited without spending a dime each time – and if you’re feeling brave, the gatehouse is now run as a tenting pod through Shetland Amenity Trust (£12pp, sleeps eight, Mar-Oct).
Charlotte
Leathery antique chap, Northumberland
Woodhorn Colliery Mining Museum.
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Photograph: Alamy
Staff and visitors at Woodhorn Museum have mentioned many spine-chilling sightings across the museum and Victorian colliery background web page. One abnormal sighting is the mysterious Man in a Leather Apron. This intimidating parent has been mistaken for an alternatively eccentric costumed interpreter. Still, the museum doesn’t use costumed interpreters, and notwithstanding many sightings, the man has never been stuck on a digicam. Leather aprons might have been worn through many mine employees, along with the colliery blacksmith. An annual membership pass to Woodhorn Museum costs £7, and children pass unfastened.
Dunluce Castle smash stands like a row of awful enamel on a black sliver of rock that falls all the way down to the Atlantic Ocean. It is on cliffs bridged by a slender spine of rock with super perspectives in all guidelines. Peeping thru empty stone window frames beyond the seabirds circling under, it’s far tough not to bear in mind the stormy night in 1639 while the chefs tumbled to their deaths as the sea wolfed up the castle’s kitchens; or to imagine, over the wind and surf, the screaming of 1,three hundred sailors of the Spanish Armada as the ocean smashed the galley Girona to portions against the Port-Na Spaniagh cliffs on 26 October 1588, swallowing all however 9 souls (who had been obtained by way of leader Sorley Boy MacDonnell and sent to Scotland).
One of the maximum lovely hostelries in Kent, the 14th-century Star, and Eagle in Goudhurst has long been haunted with the aid of a mysteriously invisible dog – a lot so that the owners no longer put guests in the precise room that it appears to inhabit. Previous occupants file hearing a canine whining, snuffling, and scratching at some stage in the night, preventing them from sound asleep. Strangely for a dog, it suggests little interest in the ground-ground pub or restaurant. However, we had it direct from the proprietors that it’s been quite a hassle in the upstairs rooms and that an array of puppy treats and rawhide chews have so far didn’t placate it.
The Prospect of Whitby in Wapping (built around 1520 close to the notorious Execution Dock) is said to be haunted with the aid of the ghosts of Mary Frith (AKA Moll Cutpurse) and the merciless Judge John Jeffreys. Frith was a larger-than-existence virago, crossdresser, pickpocket, and madame in seventeenth-century London and a play situation (The Roaring Girl). Jeffreys frequently drank inside the Prospect, which turned into his local; he died in 1689 while incarcerated at the nearby Tower of London after being recognized by a former sufferer in another Wapping pub. The Prospect became as soon as referred to as the Devil’s Tavern due to its grotesque popularity. There are exquisite views over the river, and a noose hangs out of doors, commemorating Jeffreys’ grisly deeds.
Caroline
The ruins of a vintage priory sit down close to the A41/M5 Junction 1 roundabout in West Bromwich. They are occupied using the ghost of a vintage nun. She offers herself as a hitchhiker and receives into the returned seats of vehicles. She says she is attempting to find her sister and asks to be pushed to the Heath Lane cemetery. Drivers say their vehicles without delay come to be very bloodless. When they look at their rearview, reflect, they can’t see her mirrored image. She lets out a shriek and vanishes. Drivers often revel in mechanical trouble on the roundabout. But it’s now not an excellent area to interrupt down.
Ranjeev Kumar
The stark silhouette of Winter’s Gibbet is an arresting diversion on the lonely climb from Elsdon to the summit of Steng Cross in Redesdale. An abandoned and windblown place these days, the course turned into once a busy move-border drove road. It was right here, in 1791, that William Winter’s corpse becomes left to rot in a gibbet cage following his execution, in conjunction with two woman accomplices, for the homicide of a nearby female, Margaret Crozier. Winter’s ghost is reputed to roam the moorland, ceaselessly tied to the location of his crime and the monument dedicated to his disgrace.
