Britain's 5 Most Haunted Places: Halloween Special
0:00 / 19:45
It's Halloween, and The Grave Shift is counting down Britain's five most haunted places, from five to one. We tell the real history behind each one and are clear about where the history stops and the legend begins.
We start with the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall and the famous 1936 Country Life photograph. Then come the attic legend of 50 Berkeley Square in Mayfair, the claims surrounding the Ancient Ram Inn in Wotton-under-Edge, and the tragedy of Janet Douglas, Lady Glamis, at Glamis Castle.
Number one is on our own doorstep: Chingle Hall in Goosnargh, near Preston, a moated manor tied to the martyred Franciscan priest Saint John Wall. Oz scores the evidence, Frank defends the ghosts and Adam tries to keep it moving. Frank has also brought a pumpkin called Gourdon.
Tell us the most haunted place near you in the comments, because it might end up in a future episode. Follow Ghost Haunt UK, and Happy Halloween.
The Grave Shift is a Ghost Haunt UK production. Hosted by Adam, Oz and Frank.
Full transcript
AdamIt's the thirty-first of October. Halloween. And tonight we're not doing one haunted house.
AdamWe're doing five. A staircase in Norfolk, an attic in Mayfair, an inn people say nobody sleeps well in, a Scottish castle full of secrets...
Adam...and number one is just a short drive from home. This is The Grave Shift.
AdamWe're on Apple, Spotify and everywhere else you get your podcasts. Follow us so you never miss a shift.
FrankHappy Halloween, lads! Happy Halloween, listeners! Happy Halloween, Gourdon!
OzWho's Gourdon?
FrankGourdon is the pumpkin. Motion-activated. Lights up, cackles. Three ninety-nine from the garage.
OzYou've brought a noise-making object into a studio. Where I am monitoring the audio levels.
FrankIt's festive, Oz! He only goes off if something moves.
AdamEverything moves, Frank. We're three blokes. We gesture.
FrankHe's very well behaved. Look at him. Not a peep.
AdamRight. Halloween special. Five of Britain's most famous hauntings, counted down from five to one. Proper history, proper legends, and we're honest about which is which.
OzWhich means a lot of the word 'allegedly'.
FrankAnd a lot of me ignoring the word 'allegedly'.
AdamAnd at the end, we pick the scariest. Agreed?
OzAgreed. I've made a scoring sheet.
FrankCourse you have.
OzEvidence, out of ten. Spoiler: nothing's getting above a four.
FrankDid you hear that? Gourdon cackled! He disagrees with you!
OzYou leaned forward, Frank. You set it off.
FrankI was reaching for my tea.
AdamNumber five, then.
AdamNumber five. Raynham Hall, in Norfolk. The seat of the Townshend family. A grand country house, and home to the Brown Lady.
FrankGreat name for a ghost. Very understated. Not 'the Screaming Lady'. Just... brown.
AdamTradition says she's Lady Dorothy Walpole. Sister of Sir Robert Walpole, who's generally regarded as Britain's first Prime Minister.
OzWell connected, then.
AdamShe married Charles, the second Viscount Townshend, and she died in seventeen-twenty-six.
FrankAnd then she just... stuck around?
AdamThat's the legend. There are stories that her marriage was unhappy and that she was kept confined to the house. Treat that as storytelling, not as something we know.
AdamAnd the name, the story goes, comes from the brown dress she's said to appear in.
FrankSupposedly walking the stairs in a brown dress for the best part of two centuries.
AdamThere are older sighting stories too. The best one involves the novelist Captain Frederick Marryat, in the eighteen-thirties.
OzThe bloke who wrote the sea novels?
AdamHim. The story goes that he stayed at Raynham, met the figure in a corridor, and fired a pistol at her.
FrankFired at her! Lovely British hospitality, that.
AdamAnd according to the tale, the bullet passed straight through her and lodged in a door behind.
OzAccording to the tale. Is there a door with a bullet in it?
AdamNot one anyone's produced, as far as I know. It's a legend, and I'm telling it as one.
OzNoted. Score's dropping.
AdamBut here's why the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall is on this list. Nineteen-thirty-six. Country Life magazine sends two photographers to shoot the house.
AdamCaptain Hubert Provand and Indre Shira. A proper job: interiors, grand staircases for the posh readers.
FrankAnd one of the grand staircases has somebody on it.
AdamBy their own account, Shira saw a misty shape coming down the stairs and urged Provand to take the shot. Provand hadn't seen a thing.
AdamThey develop it, and there it is. What looks like a pale, veiled figure on the staircase. It's published that December.
FrankIt's one of the most famous ghost photos ever taken. If you've seen one ghost picture in your life, it's that one.
OzIt's also one of the most argued-over.
OzSceptics say double exposure, or something smeared on the lens. Thirties camera, long exposure. It's not hard to get a ghostly blur.
FrankOz, it's shaped like a woman. In a veil. On the stairs she supposedly haunts. That is a very specific smear.
OzThe human brain sees people in everything, Frank. You saw a face in a crumpet last week.
FrankThat crumpet was looking at me!
OzAnd they were working in a house that already had a famous ghost story. The story was there before the photo was.
FrankOr they were professionals who didn't fake things for a living, and they caught something they couldn't explain.
OzFair. I'm not saying they faked it. I'm saying a camera can lie by accident.
AdamAnd it's never been settled. Nearly ninety years on, people still blow that photo up and stare at it.
OzEvidence score: three. One photograph, and it's disputed.
AdamA ghost you can photograph. But what about a room nobody would even sleep in?
AdamNumber four. Fifty Berkeley Square, in Mayfair. Central London.
FrankMayfair! Poshest square on the Monopoly board. Even the ghosts are minted.
AdamIt's a Georgian townhouse. Elegant, respectable, the sort of place you'd walk past without a second glance.
AdamBut in Victorian times it picked up a reputation as the most haunted house in London.
OzBased on what?
AdamTalk, mostly. By the eighteen-seventies the house was being discussed in the periodicals of the day.
FrankSo, the Victorian comments section.
AdamPretty much. People knew the address, and they said it in a hushed voice.
OzSo the earliest evidence is people talking about people talking.
AdamThat's fair. And everything I'm about to tell you is legend. None of it is documented.
FrankThe best bits always are.
AdamThe heart of the Berkeley Square legend is an attic room. People who spent the night up there, the story says, were found dead or driven mad with fright.
FrankFrightened by what?
AdamThat's the thing. The stories never agree. A shape, a presence, something nobody could describe, because nobody was in a fit state to describe anything.
OzVery convenient for the storyteller. The witness can't talk.
AdamThen there's the sailors. Two sailors, the tale goes, in London on shore leave and needing somewhere to kip.
FrankOh no. Don't go in the empty house, lads.
AdamThey find the house standing empty, get in, and bed down for the night. Up in that room.
AdamIn the night, something comes in. In the most-told version, one of them flees and dies, falling onto the railings outside.
FrankOh, that's horrible.
AdamAnd the other, so the story says, is found wandering the street out of his mind.
OzNames? A ship? A date? An inquest?
AdamNo. Nobody's ever found a record that pins it down. It's a classic London ghost story, and that's how it should be told.
OzTwo unnamed sailors, an unnamed year, an unnamed thing. I've had more detailed dreams.
FrankYeah, but why that house, Oz? London's full of old houses. Why does this one get the reputation?
OzA house that's empty or a bit neglected, with odd comings and goings, gets a name. Stories breed around empty buildings.
FrankOr there was something there, and the stories were people trying to explain it.
OzI'll give you this much. A reputation that strong, that early, means something spooked people. I just don't know it was a ghost.
AdamAnd here's the bit I love. For many years, Fifty Berkeley Square was home to Maggs Bros, the antiquarian booksellers.
FrankA haunted bookshop! Adam, that's your dream job.
AdamOld books, old house, sinister reputation. Apparently I'm the only one here who reads, so yes, I'd take that shift.
OzWould you go up to the attic?
AdamI'd... send Frank up to the attic.
FrankWith Gourdon.
OzEvidence score: one. It's all story.
FrankBut what a story.
AdamA house where nothing can be proved. Number three is the opposite: a place people say is drowning in evidence.
AdamNumber three. The Ancient Ram Inn, in Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire.
FrankEven the name sounds like it's got a draught.
AdamIt's a very old former inn, reputed to date in part to the twelfth century.
OzReputed.
AdamReputed. Old buildings get generous with their dates. But it is genuinely ancient.
AdamFrom nineteen-sixty-eight until his death in twenty-seventeen, it was owned and lived in by a man called John Humphries.
FrankNearly fifty years. That's commitment.
AdamAnd over those years it became famous, mainly through paranormal TV. Crews, investigators, cameras, the lot.
OzAh. The telly.
FrankHere we go.
AdamEverything that made it famous is a claim, so let's go through them properly.
AdamClaim one: it sits on ley lines. Supposed lines of energy connecting ancient sites.
OzWhich no instrument I own has ever detected. And I own a lot of instruments.
FrankYou don't own the right one.
OzI'll have a look online.
AdamClaim two: remains were found under the floor. It gets repeated everywhere, but treat it as a claim. I can't point you to a proper record of what was found.
FrankThat's the one that gets me. Under your floor. Right where you're standing.
OzIf it's true, those were real people, and it deserves proper documentation, not a TV voiceover.
FrankYeah. I agree with that.
AdamClaim three is the one the Ancient Ram Inn is best known for: reports of an incubus.
FrankGo on, explain that one for the listeners.
AdamIn old folklore, an incubus is a demon that attacks people in their sleep. People claim they've felt themselves pressed down in the night at the Ram Inn.
FrankThe pumpkin! Gourdon just went off! Nobody moved!
OzAdam did a big arm-wave on 'pressed down in the night'.
Adam...I did do a little mime.
OzThat sounds a lot like sleep paralysis. You wake up, you can't move, and it feels like something heavy is sitting on your chest.
OzIt's really common. And for centuries, cultures have explained it as a demon sitting on you.
FrankSo why does it keep happening in that one building?
OzBecause people go there expecting it. Poor sleep, a strange old room, and they've been told it's haunted. Perfect conditions.
FrankThen why doesn't everyone have the same experience in a Travelodge?
OzBecause nobody's put a Travelodge on telly with spooky music.
FrankThat's actually a fair point.
OzWrite that down, Adam.
AdamNoted. Frank conceded a point on Halloween.
FrankBut I'll say this. John Humphries lived there through all of it, for decades. Whatever you think, he stayed.
AdamHe did. And it's still one of the best-known names in British ghost hunting.
OzEvidence score: two. Lots of claims, not much on paper.
AdamThree down. Now we head north, to a castle where the real history is worse than any ghost story.
AdamNumber two. Glamis Castle, in Angus, Scotland.
FrankSpelled G-L-A-M-I-S, said 'Glarms'. Took me years to stop getting that wrong.
AdamIt was the childhood home of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and Princess Margaret was born there in nineteen-thirty.
OzSo it's not some ruin up a hill. It's an important place where people actually live.
FrankAnd in Shakespeare, Macbeth is Thane of Glamis. Literary credentials as well.
AdamTrue, but that's a play. Let's not haunt the place with Shakespeare's plot.
AdamHere's the real history. Janet Douglas. Lady Glamis.
AdamShe was accused of witchcraft, and of plotting against King James the Fifth.
FrankOh no. I know where this goes.
AdamShe was burned at Edinburgh in fifteen-thirty-seven.
OzAccused of witchcraft, and burned for it.
AdamMany historians think it had more to do with her family. She was a Douglas, and James the Fifth had serious grievances against the Douglases.
OzThat's the documented bit. And it's worse than any ghost.
FrankWe've done enough episodes about accused women to know how that story goes.
AdamNow the legends. Glamis has more than almost anywhere.
AdamFirst, the Grey Lady. The story goes that she's Janet Douglas herself, said to be seen around the castle, sometimes in the chapel.
FrankI half hope that one's true. It'd mean she came home.
AdamSecond, Earl Beardie. The legend says he played cards and refused to stop, even on the Sabbath. Then a stranger turned up to play. The devil.
FrankClassic. Never play cards with a stranger who's suspiciously good at cards.
AdamThe story goes that he lost his soul, and on certain nights you can still hear the cards slapping down and the swearing.
OzOld stone buildings make a lot of noise, Frank. Wind, pipes, settling.
FrankPipes don't swear, Oz.
AdamThird, a secret room. One tale claims guests hung towels from every window they could find, then went outside and spotted one window without a towel.
FrankThat's genius. That's exactly how I'd find it. Towels.
OzOr somebody miscounted their towels.
AdamAnd fourth, the 'monster of Glamis'. A legend that something, or someone, was hidden away in the castle. Whispered, repeated, never proven.
OzAnd that one's gossip with a castle attached. There's nothing to back it up, and it's about real families.
FrankYeah, I'm with you there. The monster's a story. The Grey Lady I'll argue for.
FrankBut four big legends in one building, Oz? Something's stirring them.
OzOld, powerful, private families make stories. Big house, locked doors, staff talking. You'd get legends at Glamis even if nobody had ever died.
FrankBut somebody did die. Horribly. That's the difference.
OzEvidence score: three. For the history, not the ghosts.
AdamA burned woman, a card game with the devil and a room with no door. So what could beat that?
FrankSomewhere you could reach before your brew goes cold.
AdamNumber one. Chingle Hall, in Goosnargh, near Preston. Lancashire.
FrankHome turf! Lancashire!
OzCalm down.
AdamIt's a short drive from where we live. Which is either brilliant or terrible.
AdamChingle Hall is a moated manor house with medieval origins. Moat and everything.
FrankA moat! In Goosnargh! I didn't know Goosnargh did moats.
AdamIt's associated with the Wall family, a Catholic family, at a time when being openly Catholic in England was dangerous.
OzPractising the faith could mean fines, prison or worse.
AdamAnd that brings us to John Wall, a Franciscan priest. Tradition says he was born at the hall.
AdamHe was caught up in the anti-Catholic panic of the late sixteen-seventies and executed at Worcester in sixteen-seventy-nine.
FrankFor being a priest.
AdamEffectively, yes. Much later, he was canonised. Saint John Wall.
OzSo again, a real man killed for his faith. That's the documented heart of it.
FrankIt always is, isn't it. There are real people at the bottom of every one of these.
AdamNow the legends. First, priest holes.
AdamHiding places built into old Catholic houses, so a priest could vanish if the authorities came knocking. Chingle Hall is said to have them.
FrankImagine sitting in one. In the dark. Listening to boots on the floor above you.
OzThat's real terror. Ghost or no ghost, places like that held frightened people.
AdamThe second legend is a grim one. The story goes that after his execution, John Wall's head was brought back and hidden at the hall.
FrankBloody hell.
OzAnd is there any record of that?
AdamNo. It's a legend, and nobody's ever produced proof. But it's the story the house is famous for.
FrankAnd in the nineties it got called the most haunted house in England!
AdamFrank, we've already heard 'most haunted' once tonight. It's a popular label.
FrankIn Lancashire! Not Mayfair, not some castle. Goosnargh!
OzA reputation isn't evidence. Plenty of places got that label in the nineties. It sells tickets.
FrankSo go and test it. That's what we do. You've got all the kit, and it's practically on the doorstep.
Oz...I'll admit, I'd want to take the kit there.
FrankHa! Oz wants to go!
OzI want to measure things. There's a difference.
AdamHonestly, we all want to. Ghost Haunt UK would love to investigate Chingle Hall. We haven't yet, so there's no footage and no investigation.
AdamBut if the owners are listening, we're local, we're polite, and Oz brings his own extension leads.
OzLabelled.
FrankAnd Gourdon.
OzNo.
AdamThat's the countdown. So which one actually scares us the most?
AdamRight. Verdicts on the scariest of the five. Oz, read out your scores.
OzRaynham three, Berkeley Square one, Ram Inn two, Glamis three, Chingle Hall... two. For now.
FrankFor now!
OzPending a visit. Don't get excited.
OzThe scariest for me is Glamis. Not the ghosts. Janet Douglas, burned on charges a lot of historians don't trust. That's the real horror.
FrankMine's Raynham. There's a photo. I can look at her, and she's looking back.
OzShe's a smear, Frank.
FrankShe's a smear in a veil.
AdamAnd there's John Wall's story. A man tradition says was born round here, killed for being a priest. That stays with you.
FrankWith boots on the floor above.
OzFine. Overall winner: Chingle Hall. On the 'we might actually have to go' factor.
FrankGourdon agrees.
OzGourdon doesn't agree with anything. I took his batteries out during number four.
Frank...Then what cackled during the incubus bit?
Oz...Adam's mime.
AdamMimes don't cackle, Oz.
Oz...Moving on.
AdamHappy Halloween, everyone. Now it's your turn: what's the most haunted place near you?
AdamDrop it in the comments. Seriously, it might end up in a future episode.
FrankAnd follow Ghost Haunt UK, so you're with us if we ever get through the door at Chingle Hall.
AdamThis has been The Grave Shift. I'm Adam.
FrankI'm Frank. Happy Halloween, and check the stairs before you take a photo.
OzI'm Oz. And I'll be checking that pumpkin.
AdamFive places, five stories. And the one closest to home is still waiting for us.
AdamYou can listen to this episode and every other episode of The Grave Shift on all major podcast providers -- link's in the description below.
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