Room with a spook!
Each issue we investigate the most ghostly buildings in Britain. Here we take a look at The Mermaid Inn in Rye, Sussex
Staying the night at the Mermaid Inn in Rye, Sussex, can be a hair-raising experience because it seems many of the inn’s guest bedrooms are haunted.
Spooked visitors report waking to see a rocking chair eerily moving on its own, spirits walking through walls and even two ghosts fighting to the death in a vicious duel.
Set among the cobbled lanes of the historical coastal town, the original hotel building dates back to the 1100s, the cellars from back then surviving to this day.
After the inn burned down, the present building was constructed in 1420 and boasts atmospheric crooked ceilings, secret passageways and creaking doors and floorboards.
Guests as well as staff, regularly report paranormal activity in six of the Mermaid Inn’s guest bedrooms.
The inn’s proprietor, Judith Blincow, who has worked there for 40 years, says: ‘We have 35 rooms but it’s always in the same rooms that people see and feel things. The spirits in these rooms really are part and parcel of the building.’
Room 16, the Elizabethan Bedchamber is one of the spookiest. Says Judith: ‘Guests say they’ve been woken in the early hours to find the spirits of two men dressed in doublets and hose duelling with swords. One is killed and the victor throws the body down a secret staircase next to the room.
‘Once a guest staying in the room left his camera running all night. At 2.15am the camera filmed what appeared to be swords flashing and you could hear the clash of metal on metal. The camera also picked up a shadowy figure standing in the corner of the room.
‘Then, just a short while later, another guest took a photo of a figure standing in the same corner – also at 2.15am.’
But that’s not the end of the spooky happenings in the
Elizabethan Bedchamber. Once, a pair of guests returning from a walk looked up at their room from the street and saw figures silhouetted behind the curtains. But no one had gone into the room while the couple had been out.
Room 19, called The Hawkhurst Suite after infamous band of smugglers the Hawkhurst Gang who used the inn as their base during the 1700s, is also haunted.
While staying in the room, one startled guest woke to find a man in old-fashioned clothes sitting on her bed. She was so spooked, she pulled her mattress into the adjoining room and didn’t dare come out until the following morning.
In Room 5, The Nutcracker Suite, a ghostly woman dressed in white has been spotted.
And one couple had a super-spooky experience while staying in Room 10.
Judith explains: ‘One morning I came on duty to find a couple asleep on a couch in the lounge downstairs. They told me that during the night they’d both seen a figure walk into the bedroom through one wall, then disappear again through another. They were so terrified, they refused to go back to the room. We had to fetch their belongings for them and they got dressed in the public toilet downstairs.’
In Room 17, the air suddenly turns icy cold and the rocking chair starts rocking all on its own. Chambermaids are too scared to be in the room alone so they clean it in pairs.
Legend has it the room may be haunted by the spirit of a former maid who fell in love with one of the Hawkhurst Gang. Afraid that her lover had told her the gang’s secrets, members of the gang brutally murdered her to ensure her silence.
In Room 1, there have been numerous sightings of a woman who sits in a chair by the fireplace. Many customers report that when they left their clothes on the chair overnight, they woke to find them soaking wet. And one client was lying in bed when he spotted a man, a woman and a child walk through the wall.
Mermaid Inn secretary Claire Spacey had an otherworldly experience during a séance in Room 15, known as Dr Syn’s Bedchamber after the leader of the Hawkhurst Gang.
Claire says: ‘Around six members of staff were sitting around a table. The man running the séance told us we’d been joined by a lady ghost, who he thought once worked as a chambermaid in the inn.
‘He told me to go and stand next to the fire, then he got the ghost to walk through me. Judith told me when that happened my face changed and I didn’t look like me any more. And I could feel that something wasn’t quite right, I didn’t feel like myself.
‘Then he told me to put my hand down and asked me if I could feel anything. I said I could feel something rough, like fur. He said: ‘Yes, you’re stroking a dog.’ It was very strange.
‘On another occasion, I was sitting at reception when I had the feeling someone had walked across the foyer, past the reception desk. I looked up but there was no one there and it was late at night, all the guests were in their rooms.
‘I know about all the ghostly things that have happened here and I’ve never been frightened but – well, it makes you think!’
As haunted hostelries go, it seems the Mermaid Inn is one of the spookiest.