To celebrate Hallowe’en, we’ve gathered together some of the scariest and most haunted places in the UK to make up a rogues gallery of macabre locations.
Borley Rectory in Essex stands on the setting for a doomed love story. According to legend, the 12th century church and monastery that was built before it was the home to a monk who fell in love with a nun from a local convent. They planned to elope, but the monastery’s elders found out about their love. They hanged the monk and buried the nun alive in the monastery’s vaults, which can still be accessed beneath the rectory.
A family in Kent are enjoying a walk in the countryside. As the light fades things get a little eerie and they pick up their pace. Suddenly, as they pass some local woods, a piercing scream fills the night air and terrifies the family. This has happened not once but enough times for this eerie woodland near Pluckley to be nicknamed the Screaming Woods. The town also encompasses fright corner and is frequented by over ten ghosts.
At the other end of Britain, Edinburgh Castle is said to be home to a small orchestra of musical ghosts including the phantom piper, the headless drummer and a dead dog. The stories of these phenomena became so widespread that in 2001, a study was conducted using night-vision equipment, digital cameras, thermal imaging, and 240 carefully screened un-believing volunteers. Nearly half of them reported a range of spooky occurrences including sudden drops in temperature and the sensation of unseen presences tugging at their clothes.