Living in the haunted house at Sharpley Rocks
“IT WAS a creepy old place, it even makes me shiver now.”
There are numerous ghost stories and rumours about Gunn Hill House, High Sharpley, Whitwick, or the place that Looking Back readers might know it better as ‘the Haunted House’.
The house is famous for its tales of crashed World War II bombers, and ghost stories of Lady Aslin drowning in the pond at Sharpley.
Now Looking Back has managed to speak to one lady who used to live there.
Elaine, 78 of Loughborough said that she lived in what used to be the huntsman’s house for a few months when she was nine or 10, and her mother and father are believed to have been the last known habitants of the house on the rocks.
Elaine recalls one scary night that still sends shivers down her spine.
She said: “One night we went to bed and it was a really windy night.
“Really rough and we lay in bed and heard this horrible noise and my mum said “don’t tell your dad he’ll think we’re making it up” - it was a loud whooooing noise and we just lay in bed shivering because I was that scared.
“My dad and my brothers slept upstairs and my mum and my sisters and me slept downstairs, it was a tiny old place, really cramped.
“And then a minute later dad runs down the stairs fully dressed - and shouts to my mum “Are you there? Did you hear that noise?”
“After a moments discussion my dad decided to go and try and find out what it was, so he climbed all the way up the rocks in the terrible weather and onto the flat roof that used to have turrets and climbed up some big rocks but couldn’t see anything.
“He looked down the chimney and said he still couldn’t see anything.
“The next morning he wouldn’t let it go and went to investigate and he thought it must have been just the wind coming down the chimney but I am certain it wasn’t.
“It was a creepy old place, it makes me shiver even now.
“I think the tale goes that this lady from Whitwick - she was the wife of the Lord and although they married he never really wanted her and he would go off with other women.
“So she would go help the milkmaids and then one day she was so unhappy that she drowned herself at the pond at the bottom of Sharpley Rocks.
“It was the pond where we had to go and fetch water to use in the house, and my dad and my gran would often go down at different times in the night and sit on the rocks to see if he could see her but they never found her.”
Elaine said that she lived in the house with her mum Nellie Cook, and dad Eric Cook along with her two brothers Harry (yes the Harry, of Loughborough in Bloom fame) and George, and her sisters Betty, while her other sister Margaret lived with her
Elaine said that one of her favourite memories and a far less scary one of the house at Gunn Hill was that one night when her and her dad were walking back from her grandmother’s farm at the bottom of the hill - Hermitage Farm - that they stopped and sat on the wall in between the two fields, and looked up at the “millions” of stars in the sky as he explained the different constellations from Orion’s belt to the three bears and she said “my dad knew the universe.”
Elaine remembers her adventurous younger sister Erica, who she said found tunnels under the house that apparently lead to the former site of Mount St Bernard’s Abbey and she said that her brothers used to say to her “the monks come and watch us through the windows you know. They come down the tunnels and watch us - but I think they were only doing it to try and creep us out.
“Whether it was true or not you just never know!”
Do you know anything more about Gunn Hill? Do you know anything more about the ghost stories?
Maybe you have lived in a place that you thought was haunted?
Maybe you know any other rumours about the area?
Please contact Liam Coleman on 01509 635806 or email liam. coleman@trinitymirror.com