‘I’m woken at 2am by a tapping at my window’
Jack Rear spends the night in Britain’s most haunted castle in Chillingham, Northumberland
As much as I enjoy ghost stories, I’m not a believer. A night in Britain’s most haunted castle doesn’t scare me. I’ll be staying in Chillingham Castle’s Grey rooms, one of the eight self-catering apartments. I’ll be alone but for a caretaker in a distant wing.
The sumptuous room’s stand-out feature is a huge portrait of Lady Mary Grey, a former occupant. “Guests have seen Lady Mary step out of the painting, but usually we just smell her,” says Chillingham’s ghost expert, Mark Trotter. “If you smell roses, she might be nearby.” Not exactly terrifying.
Trotter assures me that the castle’s ghosts are not generally malevolent. Occasionally visitors feel a tug on their hair or hear someone asking them to leave, but no one has been dragged into the spirit world. Yet.
With a history dating back to the 13th century, Chillingham has had time to accrue plenty of ghosts. As night falls and Trotter guides me through the castle, the eerie atmosphere grows.
We start in one of the oldest parts of the castle, a tower where King Edward I stayed. Only weeks before, a cleaner had seen a “mannequin” dressed in bloody battle armour in the corner – except no one had put it there and it was gone when she checked again. Trotter invites any spirit to make themselves known and suddenly, a cool breeze blows across my face. It was genuinely spooky, but just a gust of wind, I told myself, a draft through a crack in the wall.
Moonlight flits through the darkened windows, but our tour is otherwise unmolested. We visit the dungeon, the torture chamber, the great hall, and the minstrel’s gallery with no sign of any spooks.
By the time we find ourselves in the castle’s chapel, my scepticism feels vindicated. Trotter puts a pair of divining rods in my hands and invites ghosts to move them. Nothing. Next he reveals a detuned radio and suggests a spirit might use that to communicate. I hear the device squeak “Hi Jack” and even answer a few yes-or-no questions, but I’m convinced it’s picking up signals from distant radio stations.
And then a light turns itself on. It shimmers in the darkness for a moment then turns out. I saw Trotter turn these lights off at the mains when we came in. Other lights are on the same circuit so if any bulb is lit they all should be. Yet there it was. Trotter was basically nonplussed. Despite coming to the castle as a nonbeliever seven years ago, he says he sees this kind of thing frequently, even telling me he knows the ghost who was probably responsible. George Bennett, a former owner of the castle, has been known to communicate via the lights.
I’m unsettled, but once back in apartment, I make dinner and watch a frothy rom-com on Netflix. I’ve
calmed down. It’s only when I climb into bed and turn out the lights that my mind starts racing. Every creak and crack echoes around the room. I tell myself it’s an old house, just settling, but the noises do sound like footsteps in the hall.
I am woken at 2am by an insistent tapping at my window, like someone thrumming the glass with their nails. And then a heavier sound, as though something is being dragged across the glass. I pull the covers up and try to ignore it until it stops. What little sleep I get for the rest of the night is fractured.
The next morning I look up at the window from the courtyard below to see which loose cable or gutter was brushing against it in the night: nothing. Once again, I can’t find a rational explanation.
Perhaps there is a reason why Britons are so obsessed with ghost stories.