Ghost sightings — United Kingdom
Ghost sightings — United Kingdom. 8 places in the catalogue, each with coordinates, the story behind it and a danger level from white to black.
The Edinburgh Vaults
Nineteen arches of the South Bridge, built out from within in 1788 as workshops and storage. Within thirty years damp made them unusable and the poor moved in — no light, no drainage, no ventilation. Burke and Hare are thought to have worked here, selling bodies to anatomists. The vaults were filled in and only reopened in the 1980s; tours run through them now, and visitors' accounts are strikingly consistent.
Chillingham Castle
A thirteenth-century castle in Northumberland on the Scottish border, where captured Scots were held and tortured for centuries — the torture chamber survives with its instruments. Its best-known figure is the Radiant Boy, a bluish glow by a wall of the Pink Room; during repairs a child's bones and a scrap of blue cloth were found bricked into that wall. After reburial, the owners say, it stopped.
Borley, 'the Most Haunted House in England'
An Essex village where a rectory stood that the investigator Harry Price declared, in 1929, the most haunted house in England, renting it for a year of observation. Reports included a nun walking the garden, a phantom coach, and writing appearing on the walls. The house burned down in 1939. It later emerged that Price had probably produced a good share of the phenomena himself — but the reputation outlived both the house and the exposure.
Epping Forest
An ancient forest on the boundary of London and Essex, once a highwaymen's refuge — an inn here carries Dick Turpin's name. Over the last century it became known for something else: bodies have been brought here for generations. Police have recovered the remains of several murder victims in it, and the forest has a reputation that makes accounts of figures between the trees sound more plausible than they should.
Highgate Cemetery
An overgrown Victorian cemetery in north London with gothic vaults and an Egyptian Avenue. In the early 1970s a newspaper frenzy about a "Highgate Vampire" drew crowds of hunters to its gates.
Greyfriars Kirkyard
An old graveyard in central Edinburgh with the "Covenanters' Prison" at its far end. Since 1999 visitors have reported unexplained cuts and bruises — the phenomenon nicknamed the Mackenzie Poltergeist.
The Ancient Ram Inn
A 12th-century house in Gloucestershire, said to stand on crossing ley lines and a pagan site. Reputed one of Britain's grimmest buildings — its owners avoided sleeping on the upper floor for decades.
Tower of London
A medieval fortress on the Thames with nearly a thousand years of executions and imprisonments. Legend holds that the ghosts of Anne Boleyn and other prisoners still walk its grounds.