Creepy, Kooky, Mysterious, Spooky! 🎃
A couple of crazy kids spend a night in a haunted castle. 👻
Nestled deep within the beast and fowl-infested hills and dales of picturesque Northumberland towers a mighty, medieval castle known as Chillingham. Daunting and remote, it’s an ancient place with a barbaric, blood-soaked history. Once a destination of kings, today it’s a hotel, of sorts, eschewed by the locals but a hit with the supernaturally sensitive, ghost hunters drawn to the challenge of spending a night in England’s most haunted castle.
Back when I was invited to tour and spend a night there in 2008, my stomach began to knot the instant I accepted. Although I prefer to avoid horror movie situations, as you can’t get eaten by a shark if you don’t jump in the ocean, it was a paid writing gig, so naturally I agreed to go and put the bravest face on it I could. Which I have to admit, wasn’t especially brave.
A stone’s throw from the Scottish border, back in the Braveheart days Chillingham served as the launching point for many an English invasion, doubling as the first line of defence against feisty Scots with an axe to grind. Enemies who fell on the battlefield were at least spared the horror of becoming prisoners of Chillingham, a torturer’s paradise surrounded by hanging trees heaving with the dead and the dying. Not a happy place, by all accounts, but a surprisingly popular venue now for weddings and stag nights.
Refusing to go alone, I dragged along my wife Ruta, though this was back before we tied the knot. She agreed to come as long as I promised to protect her, even though we both knew it was me who needed looking after. Collected from nearby Alnmouth Station by cabbie Ron, we drove towards our fearsome destination. The lanes were quaint, the scenery rolled and farmyard animals seemed to have the run of the place, but despite the pleasing setting I felt uneasy. Possibly because I couldn’t get a signal on my mobile and felt suddenly isolated, or maybe because the opening music from The Shining (1980) kept playing in my head, but mostly I think it was Ron’s fault.
“You’re not the first people I’ve taken to the castle,” he volunteered. “There was this couple once… they called me at two in the morning. Sounded scared. Begged for me to come and pick them up...” I asked Ron if he’d do the same for us, but he shook his head, and with a little smile added, “I turn my phone off at night now.”
Arriving an hour before dusk, we were met by castle caretaker Peter, from Prague, who told us we’d be sleeping in the ominous-sounding Grey Room, actually a very large apartment with a cavernous drawing room decorated to the hilt with mostly Victorian knick-knacks, portraits that stare at you, antlers everywhere and a rather ghastly elephant foot dustbin. Named after the Grey family who came to England in 1066, took a fancy to the castle in the 13th Century and stayed there till the 1980s, the Grey Room is a popular haunt of the castle’s starring spook, Lady Mary Berkeley. Left broken hearted and abandoned by her husband more than three centuries ago, she still wanders the halls, looking for her bloke should he ever return. Personally I think that ship sailed the day he ran off with her sister, and certainly later when he died, but I guess if you’re a ghost, common sense doesn’t come into it.
With a dash of daylight left we headed out and around the castle in search of the Italian Garden, an early 19th Century addition to the grounds which mightn’t have seemed so creepy had it not been teeming with bats. Five different varieties, apparently, none of them vampire but still a worry, especially for those with hair. The dark descending, and by dark I mean the inky blackness of the countryside where you can see the stars but not a foot in front of your face, we scurried back to the courtyard to meet local historian Richard Marsh for an atmospheric night time tour of the castle and its grounds. Just us and twenty other curious souls, with only three torches between us…
Besides the dark there was the cold, the wind screeching through the hanging trees as we walked cautiously down the Monk’s Trail towards a mass grave full of assorted bits and pieces. Even without the lurking dread of a possible ghost sighting, between the elements, the flitting bats, the hooting owls and the shadows, it was an eerily atmospheric setting. Were I more sensitive or suggestible I’m sure I would have seen ghosts everywhere. Every draught would have been an icy finger. Every creak, the interminable wanderings of another restless spirit.
Finally entering the castle itself, navigating treacherous spiral staircases in near-total darkness, we entered the Great Hall. Home to many a medieval banquet, and used in the first Elizabeth movie, it drips with tapestries, portraits, deer heads and armour. Plus there are weapons, heavy ones you’re allowed to pick up and imagine squishing an enemy with. It was there that Richard told us of the Radiant Boy, a glowing blue apparition who stopped haunting the castle, save for the occasional flash of light, after the bones of a wee laddie were discovered bricked up in a wall and finally laid to rest.
Of all the Chillingham spooks, only one could be described as malevolent. Crowded into a London Dungeon-esque recreation of the castle’s torture chamber, we learned of John Sage. For three years he plied his trade as the castle torturer, dispatching up to fifty victims a week in devices designed for maximum torment. The cage, the rack, the iron maiden… Prisoners were boiled, burned, bled, stretched, squashed and starved to death by a man who clearly loved his work, but overdid it one night while doing the nasty with his girlfriend, accidentally administering a fatal choking and earning a death sentence of his own. A celebrity of the day, Sage was hanged then torn to pieces by souvenir hunters, with the remaining meat dismembered and buried at a crossroads so that his ghost “…wouldn’t know the way to Heaven, and would therefore choose the road to Hell.” No wonder he remains at Chillingham.
The tour wrapped with a peek at the original dungeon, at least the part that survived a cave-in years ago. Dank and claustrophobic, there’s only room for four people at a time, and for one girl on our tour, overcome by some strange, evil presence, it was all too much. Tearful and shaken, she wasn’t easily consolable.
With midnight fast approaching we crept up to our quarters and went nervously to bed, but not necessarily to sleep, as neither of us were going to turn the lights off. Contrary to expectations I dozed a handful of troubled hours, but Ruta didn’t grab a single wink, left fretful and alert by strange noises from the floor above. As though someone were pacing around. Yet earlier we were informed we’d be the only people spending the night in that side of the castle…
Not wishing to outstay our welcome, and unwilling to risk a more intimate encounter with Lady Mary, in true Scooby Doo style we promptly scarpered. Never to return to chilly old Chillingham, but happy to have braved it, and made it out alive.
Would you ever spend a night in a haunted castle? Have you ever seen a ghost? Share something spooky with me!