Shropshire Star

Whittington Castle's a favourite haunt for fans of paranormal

Tonight's the night when – if you believe in that sort of thing – ghosts, ghouls, vampires, werewolves and other creatures of the night come out to play.

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Shropshire, which is reputed to have more than 500 haunted sites, would seem to be the ideal playground for spooky beings and apparitions.

But despite working in one of the county's most haunted buildings, Sue Ellis is still unconvinced by the plethora of ghost stories.

  • A41 and Chetwynd Hall, Chetwynd Aston, near Newport. Madam Piggott is one of Shropshire’s most well known spirits. Having died in childbirth, she was seen dozens of times carrying her baby and combing its hair. She was eventually exorcised by 12 parsons, but in 1969 two motorists separately reported a white figure on the road near the church. A photo apparently showing a ghostly woman was taken in 2014.

Attingham Park
  • Attingham Park, Atcham. Visitors to a quiet walled garden in Attingham Park have reported being interrupted by “an extremely nosey Victorian-looking lady” walking from the garden cottage into the garden. The lady apparently takes a keen interest in visitors and their belongings.

  • Buildwas Power Station, Ironbridge. Late shift workers at the power station have reported seeing a ghostly black monk walking around parts of the plant that were built on Buildwas Abbey. Another employee reported seeing an apparition of a lady float towards him, then disappear in front of his eyes. Residents in nearby Leighton village also claim to experience audio and visual paranormal activity in the area around the power station.

  • Ludlow Castle. The castle boasts a famous ghost, Marion La Bruyere, who fell in love with an enemy of the castle’s lord. She arranged to meet him and let a rope down from the castle, but it was used by enemy soldiers to get into the castle. Marion turned on her lover and slit his throat with his own sword. Overcome by grief and shame she then threw herself out of the tower and landed on the rocks below. She has been seen and heard in the early evenings in the tower.

  • Prince Rupert Hotel, Shrewsbury. The hotel is home to a number of ghosts, including a man in a nightshirt who disappears through the wall in a hallway, a maid called Martha who wanders up and downstairs outside the Prince Rupert Suite, a jilted bride-to-be who hanged herself in room six and never left, and in room seven, a young man who killed himself when his betrothed ran off with his best friend and continues to stick around.

  • RAF Cosford Museum. The last remaining Avro Lincoln Bomber plane is said to be haunted by a pilot seen in the cockpit, while a tape recorder left on board overnight picked up the sounds of a busy airport, though the hanger and the area were completely empty. The plane’s pilot, Hiller, was reputed to have said that he would “haunt this baby”, before being killed in an air crash near Cosford.

The Stiperstones
  • The Stiperstones. Local legend has it that on December 21 each year all the ghosts in the UK meet at the stones.[/breakout]

Sue is manager of Whittington Castle in Oswestry, which has had enough ghost sightings over the centuries to satisfy even the biggest fan of programmes like Most Haunted.

The castle is steeped in historical tales of bitter warfare, treachery, death, myths, legends and many strange happenings. And as a result it is a favourite haunt of paranormal investigators – or ghost hunters to the uninitiated – who visit several times each year to try to track down some of the castle's ethereal beings.

"We've had some interesting nights," says Sue. "Everyone seems to think there's something here that's unexplained.

"The castle's been here an awful long time and a lot of people have died here and there's an awful lot of history here."

Sightings at the castle include a hooded figure under the castle gateway, a phantom blacksmith in his leather apron, and the faces of ghostly children, which are seen regularly peering out of an upstairs window. Legend has it they died when a cursed Elizabethan chest was opened.

There is also a terrifying guard room that some staff members absolutely refuse to enter.

But Sue thinks there may be a more grounded explanation to this fear than ghosts. She says: "It is interesting what happens, but sometimes you wonder if it's because people are sitting in the dark. I think sometimes that creates a bit of apprehension and perhaps you start seeing things because your eyes aren't used to being in the pitch black. It does get very very dark in the guard room, and so that's a bit scary in itself."

But even sceptical Sue says there are things which have been reported at the castle that she can't explain.

"One of the first vigils we did was in the court room," she says. "It's not well known, but the room was an ironing room at one point.

"We did a planchette, which is where you put a pencil in a block of wood and see if it draws anything. When it had finished, it did look like an old iron, but then the sceptic in me says maybe if the pencil was swinging it would just draw a triangle, and it could have just been a triangle.

"Another curious thing was we had a photo taken during one of our vigils and that shows a spirit person in the corner of our bookshop. There's no room for a person to get into that corner, and I was in the room a minute after the picture was taken and there was no-one there. Then we've had noises and a strange incident where there were a lot of children and we were playing with a ball in the old schoolroom and it was coming back to the same person each time, as though the floor was sloping. There was no real explanation."

The castle hosts up to six paranormal group events each year. Groups come from all over the country. Some hire the castle for the night and organise their own events for members of the public, others are private investigation groups. The castle holds its own ghost tours occasionally.

Shropshire-based Paranormal Friends is planning an investigation early next year.

Sue says: "There's a variety of things the groups do, but I do quite like the private groups because it's more controlled. You know if they find something then it's much less likely to be someone playing tricks.

"Sometimes they've got mediums and they have a walk around to see if they pick up on anything, and then we do a group vigil and go into the old court room for an hour or so.

"That's usually people sitting quietly with equipment like tape recorders and thermometers to monitor any changes. We've done some where we've all held hands as well. It can be quite eerie."

The castle is a favourite with Nottingham-based Haunted Happenings. Paul Dutton, from the group, said: "Whittington Castle is a Haunted Happenings favourite with guests and team alike. We have not really had a disappointing evening there yet."

Sue, however, is still waiting for solid proof before she admits to being a believer.

"I'm interested because I want to find out about the castle's history, and see if there's anything that can verify any part of the history, but so far it's been very general what they've done," she says.

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