It is a dark, stormy night. You find yourself riding an old mare along a dark, windswept and somewhat unkempt country lane. The wind whistles in the tress and leaves and wisps of thick mist blow across the potholed dirt thoroughfare ahead of you. An owl hoots, spooked by the noise of your horse’s tired footsteps, and darts in front of your face. You heart is suddenly racing, and you think you hear something behind you. After all, this is an ancient land, a land of ghosts, pixies, goblins, and all sorts of mythical creatures of the night.
Looking around all you can discern is a deep, foreboding blackness that seems to be following you, as if it is alive and in pursuit. You dig your heels into the old mare and she starts at a canter, whinnying as she does as if she too can feel some sort of evil in this frightening and suggestive atmosphere.
You are new to these parts and have heard the legends and stories and the tales of dark creatures that haunt these woods. But surely these are nothing more than the insane rantings of simple, superstitious country folk. Ghosts and spirits cannot exist, can they? But then again …
The wind suddenly drops and your senses are heightened. Indeed, you can hear your very heart beating in your chest as the old horse continues to canter forward into the night. The mist suddenly becomes thicker, although you don’t remember when or where this happened. You glance furtively from side to side but the dark shadows of the woods hide their secrets. You are alone, so alone.
Your breathing is now quicker, and the old horse seems to be labouring. Surely your destination cannot be that far away? You stop and listen intently. Something rustles in the bushes not far from your position and you sit upright, rigid with adrenaline coursing through your veins. You laugh a strangled laugh—an animal, of course. Yes, of course. After all, this is the country. In the distance a lonely bird cries a lament to this most foul of nights.
You goad your horse onward even though she seems to not want to move. And as you do you hear a peculiar but distinct sound behind you in the gloom. You stop and listen intently, but the noise ceases. You permit yourself a quick glance back in the blackness. Now you are imagining things.
You continue on and again you become aware of the noise. It is following you. Stalking you in the night like some foul ghoul or demon escaped from the burning pits of hell. There! What was that?
A small, indistinct shape scurries across the path in front of you, causing the horse to suddenly hesitate. You draw a quick breath and smile. It is nothing more than an animal. You continue your furtive journey, heart pounding, eyes wide open in expectation, nerves jangling like overwrought guitar strings screaming on their limits. You feel a deep, hard lump in the pit of your stomach, a feeling of indescribable dread, of death and misadventure, of loneliness and fear.
But worse, you are sure that you can hear footsteps behind you … ghostly unseen horse hooves that quietly clip-clop on the road behind you and echo in your brain. No, surely it is the wind in the trees or rushing through the bulrushes that line the swampy creek banks that run parallel to the road.
But now there is no wind. Now there is nothing but the darkness. And in that darkness the hooves continue to sound closer and closer, louder and louder. Each step seemingly closer than the last until you believe you can feel the hot breath of a horse breathing down your neck.
And with this you panic, urging your tired old steed onward. You grip the reins in white-knuckled fear and push your body against the saddle as the horse careers forward, now as frightened as you. Ahead of you appears a bridge that leads to a ruined castle, gray and dreary in the dull moonlight. You feel some apprehension at approaching this crumbling relic of the past, but you know that you have no choice as whatever it is that is behind you is infinitely more frightening, infinitely more evil. And it is getting closer. You gulp and cross the bridge riding onward until you reach the overpowering gray bulk that is the castle. You are safe for now …
Everyone, it would seem, even hardened sceptics and disbelievers, has a ghost story. For some reason, in the back of their minds, ghosts may be real. Everyone has known the feeling of their heart racing for a second when they see a shadow moving in the corner of their eye or they feel some sort of presence standing over them as they try to sleep. Or worse still, a tortured face in a window that paralyses their body and retards their breathing to the point that they can hear the blood pumping around their own body.
We can dismiss the supernatural as simply an overactive imagination, a trick of the eye, a lucid waking dream, or a simple illusion or misinterpretation of the facts. We can tell ourselves that the scraping sound at the window is simply a branch being blown in the breeze and that the footsteps heard in the hallway are old timbers creaking and groaning with a change in the air or weather. We are sure that the scratching in the wall is nothing more than mice and that rasping sound you hear sometimes from your bed late at night is nothing more than a bird, perhaps an owl, outside your window.
This is where suggestion takes over, and the imagination, if allowed, runs wild. Indeed, it is a very childlike feeling lying under the covers, eyes straining to see in the darkness that surrounds you, ears tingling at the slightest sound, your body frozen and your breathing almost nonexistent. You see, in this environment, ghosts are very real and frightening.
Science has tried in vain to explain ghosts and hauntings and yet, as much as science tells us that they cannot possibly exist, we still can’t quite dismiss the notion from our fertile minds that they might just exist. After all, how is it that so many people can report the same phenomena time and time again without ever having met or collaborated their stories? We can explain any ghostly encounter as natural phenomenon, but the doubt still remains; for who of us has not lain quietly in their bed, the blankets pulled up tightly to their chin, their breathing ragged and strained as something sounds as if it is in the darkened room with us?
Pliny the Younger, also known as Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, was a lawyer, author, and magistrate in ancient Rome, and wrote hundreds of letters over his life. In one he described how a philosopher named Athenodoros had rented an allegedly haunted house in Athens in roughly 100 CE. In the letter he described a ghost that was a dishevelled, aged spectre, bound at feet and hands and rattled chains. Apparently after digging up the bones and giving them a proper burial the haunting ceased and normality returned.
These days nothing much appears to have changed when it comes to ghostlore. In the current day, almost every ghost we see on film or television is based upon some heartrending or untimely death of an individual who, unable to move on in death is stuck in some sort of supernatural limbo between life and death and as such, hangs around to haunt the living, sometimes extracting a grisly revenge on those who have wronged them in life, or to raise awareness of their plight such as the circumstances of their death. In essence, programs such as Supernatural and Ghost Whisperer follow the same script as did Shakespeare in a great deal of his writing. After all, what student can forget Banquo’s ghost visiting the horrified Macbeth in the great halls of Dunsinane Castle or Hamlet receiving a ghostly visit from his dead father on the ramparts of his castle.
Popular culture, it would seem, is to blame for the present day stereotypical view of a ghost, which we shall see is if not completely incorrect, at least inaccurate to some extent. In popular ghostlore we are mainly exposed to classic or historical hauntings, that is, traditional or historical reports that have been continually retold over many years and in many cases, hundreds of years or even centuries. An example of this is those stories from the Tower of London. These are the ghosts of history books, tourist guidebooks, tradition and legend. Having said this, it does not mean that they are any less valid than modern reports, as many of them have been investigated numerous times by vast numbers of people over many years.
Of course, even with innumerable first-hand reports and stories of ghosts, there will always be sceptics who snort derisively at those who dare to entertain the thought that ghosts may just be real. And yet, try spending the night alone in one of the most haunted places in the world, say a haunted bedroom in an ancient pub or a darkened cellar in a castle in England, and all the logic and scepticism in the world won’t help you when you hear a rasping breath in the darkness only a few feet from where you stand or lie.
And this leads us to the subject of this book—castles of England. Castles have long been regarded as prime settings for ghosts and all things supernatural due to their long and unusually bloody histories. From wars to executions, to suicide and untimely death from injury, plague or disease, castles are, for all their majesty and splendor, tragic places where death stalked the cold lonely corridors with regular monotony. These are the places of the bloodiest history, whether it be battles for ownership, the executions of traitors, or the torture of prisoners in the depths of dank, dark, rat-infested dungeons. Could this be the reason why castles are seen as places where ghosts may reside? Can this explain why almost every fortress in England, whether a pile of rubble or a magnificent edifice to the medieval times, comes attached with its own ghosts, or in most cases, multiple ghosts that haunt the grounds, hallways, and stately rooms? With such a history of violence and tragedy, it is little wonder that these places are regarded as haunted.
England is a land of appealing features seemingly embedded in the sense of a deep-rooted and permanent history that emanates from almost every corner of the land. It is a feeling that its rustic towns and quaint villages, hulking castles and towering cathedrals, have fostered over many centuries to create a comfortable and pleasing landscape that the visitor recalls like a favorite arm chair.
A journey through England is a passage through history. A real history, one that you can live and breathe, one that you can feel and be a part of. You can walk serenely around three-thousand-year-old megaliths that stand silently on ancient Neolithic plains or walk the corridors and battlements of medieval castles just as they were patrolled by armor clad soldiers many centuries ago. Or one can walk the ancient chalk cliffs of the south and gaze at the brilliant blue waters of the English Channel before heading west to the land of King Arthur, piskies, and ancient, half-forgotten legends and folklore.
It is a place that inspires contemplation and wonderment, whether wandering aimlessly through quintessential medieval market places, climbing thousand-year-old earthworks, gazing upon chalk-cut giants, or comfortably settled in the corner of a wooden-framed, stone-floored country pub with a roaring fire and a refreshing pint of lager in hand.
It is a land of living history, of memories as far back as history recalls. It is a place of myth and legend, of ghosts and ghouls, of giants and dwarves, or mermaids and other half-remembered, half-whispered-about creatures.
It is also a place of great medieval buildings, from stately manors to cathedrals, abbeys, and castles. And it is the latter that we are interested in considering the wealth of material available. Indeed, the Castellarium Anglicanum, an authoritative index of castles in England and Wales that was published in 1983, lists over 1,500 castle sites in England alone. Many of these castles have now completely disappeared and some are no more than a pile of rubble or earthworks. However, for this book we are looking at structures that are still standing. Indeed, some, such as Arundel Castle, are still in use as family homes, whereas others such as Hever Castle are popular tourist destinations.
It should also be noted that a definitive list of castles in England can never be complete, given that there is never complete agreement in every case as to whether the remains of a building are those of a castle, whether a given place is the site of a castle, or whether a surviving building should be considered to be a castle, especially as many sites of Iron Age hill forts or fortifications earlier than the tenth century have become known as castles.
And so, with all this in mind, let us now begin upon a journey of exploration, a journey into the essence of England itself, and visit the castle ghosts of Albion.