Located in Chillingham, Alnwick Northumberland, UK is one of my favorite castles. I don’t as a rule get creeped out by much, but when I first saw this castle on a television show called Scariest Places on Earth, I was creeped. The history of this castle is steeped in horror. It is even rumored that at one point in its history upwards of 90% of people that entered never came out again. With those statistics is it really any wonder why Chillingham Castle is considered one of, if not the most, haunted places in the world?
The history of the castle actually goes back quite a ways, as all good castles should. But when Chillingham was first built it was not a complete castle. It was first built as a tower in the 12th century. The tower was used as a viewpoint of sorts to watch the borders of Northumberland.
In 1344 the owner was given the Royal License to crenellate (supply with battlements). “It was duly strengthened and transformed to provide the usual domestic accommodation, and a stone wall was erected for protection” (quote from www.theheritagetrail.co.uk). After the castle was built onto the tower it became one of the focal points of the border wars that took place around that time period. The castle has never fallen, but it had required constant repairs from attacks. It is thought that during many repairs hidden staircases and rooms were added. There is proof of this if you were to wander the castle today, and during restoration several nooks and hidden byways were found. “Old stairways have been found mounting the deep wells of the southern towers. The original floor of the solar has been traced behind the old hall on the east. Windows and fireplaces, long obscured behind plaster, have been retrieved” (quote from www.touristinformationuk.com).
Several notables in history have stayed at the castle. Among them were King Edward I, King Henry III and King James VI of Scotland. In fact, in preparation for King James’s arrival, it is believed that the main entrance was moved to its current position in the late 1500’s.
The torture chamber (located under the main castle) is perhaps one of the best-known features of Chillingham. Men, women and children of all ages breathed their last in the (then) foul smelling rooms of the dungeon. The majority of the prisoners were Scottish captives though. They were caught and held/tortured in the depths of the castle, and it is known that in several rooms above the yells of those being held below could be heard. The torture chamber didn’t only consist of one or two torture devices. It actually was chock full of various and equally horrible things. There is an iron maiden, a rack, thumb screws, boiling pot, a chair with lethal spikes on the seat, branding irons, items used to gouge out eyes, a bed of nails, leg irons, chains, man traps and an Oubliette – to name a few. In fact, the remains of the last person thrown into the Oubliette are still visible. The bones are of a child. Visitors to the castle can look through the gate and down into the hole and see them. While renovating the castle one of the rooms in the dungeon held a perfectly preserved skeleton sitting in an upright position. Unfortunately though, when the room was opened up a bit more the air turned the brittle bones to dust before the eyes of the renovators. I might also add that the torture chamber floor was built on a slant. This may sound like an accident, or nothing really to be horrified about. But the reason it was built on a slant was so that blood and *ahem* other fluids would all flow down into a trench at one end of the room. One can only imagine the smell of rotting bodies as well as the stagnant pools of bodily fluids that filled the air in the depths of Chillingham castle when the dungeon and torture chamber were being fully used. It is said that for at least three years that the torture chamber was used up to 50 persons were killed each week in those rooms.
Upon arrival to the castle you will see an impressive set of gates. These gates help to hide the castle from the road, as well as protect it when they are closed. On the other side of the gates though is where you may encounter one of the ghosts of the castle and grounds. You see; there was a time when the drive from the gates to the castle had decaying bodies scattered along it (a group of Scots that were attacked and killed). Those bodies were left there, and bone fragments can still be seen littering the drive. They were left as a warning to anyone else foolish enough to try and enter or take over Chillingham Castle. This section of the drive is called the Devil’s Walk. Along it you might also encounter the ghost of the head torturer (John Sage). He accidentally killed his girlfriend while they were making love on the rack (gruesome thought). The girlfriend had connections though. Ultimately a mob attacked this man and strung him up in one of the trees along Devil’s Walk. The mob then proceeded to literally pull the man apart while he was still alive.
The rest of the castle’s grounds are said to have other spirit travelers as well. Several apparitions have purportedly been seen wandering the garden area, including a phantom funeral procession. A few have also been seen strolling about the courtyard. The Lake on the property is said to have been the dumping ground for some of the many dead bodies from the dungeon in the past. Odd noises and at least one apparition have been seen coming from the Lake.
So far the grounds alone sound like a wonderful place to do a ghost investigation, but it’s actually the ghosts inside the castle that have made it such a famously haunted place.
In the Library there have been many reports of hearing two men talking. All accounts state that you can’t really understand what is being said and whenever you stop what you are doing to listen to them the voices fall silent.
There is also a pantry ghost of a frail woman in white. The first report was from a footman that had gone to bed for the night “when he was accosted by a lady in white, very pale, who asked him for water. Thinking for the moment it was one of the visitors he turned away to obey her behest, when he suddenly remembered that he was locked in and that no visitor could possibly have entered. On turning round he found the figure had vanished” (quote from http://www.chillingham-castle.com). A psychic visiting the castle (and who claimed to have no prior knowledge of it’s history) also noted the woman in the panty who was thirsty. The psychic said that she thought the woman had “been slowly poisoned in olden times”.
There is one bedchamber in particular that is no longer used, even today. A maid at one point fled the room at night and could not be coerced into returning to the room no matter what. It is believed to be the same chamber of a cook who committed suicide at one point in the castles history.
The Edward room is said to be one of the most active rooms in the entire castle. Named after King Edward I it is one of the highest rooms in the castle (purposefully built high above the sounds and smells coming from the dungeon below). This room has a balcony that runs all the way around it and the view is supposed to be spectacular. There is a chandelier in this room that is seen to swing by it self, even though it is a heavy fixture. There are often times a foul smell to that air and an overall weird atmosphere to this room.
The Lady Mary Berkely is well known by the family and staff of the castle. The woman ended up living a lonely existence after her husband left her and their infant daughter for her own sister (Lady Henrietta). She was said to have wandered the castle in a great depression. The depression seems to have carried over with her spirit to the other side, as she is still known to wander through the halls leaving a bone-jarring chill in her path. There is a portrait of the Lady as well which used to hang in the nursery area of the castle. Nursemaids and children alike ended up complaining that the Lady would step out of her portrait and follow them about, so the portrait was moved. Lady Mary’s ghost is known as either the Grey Lady or the Ghost of the Portrait and even though she isn’t always seen, her cold path is often felt.
One of the most famous ghost’s at Chillingham is that of the Blue Boy (also called the Radiant Boy). Perhaps one of the saddest ghosts of the castle (which is saying a lot in this castle’s case). The boy was often seen in what is called the Pink Room that is no longer open to the public. It was known that as the clock tower struck the hour of midnight cries and moans of a child in pain and in an agony of fear were heard. “Always the noises came from a spot nearest to a passage cut through the ten feet thick wall into the adjoining tower, and as the blood-curdling cries died slowly away a bright halo of light began to form close to the old four-poster bed. Anyone sleeping there saw, gently approaching them, the figure of a young boy dressed in blue, and surrounded by the light. Witnesses say his clothes were like those seen in paintings dating from the Restoration period of the 1660s, when Charles II was on the throne. It was in this wall, during the 1920’s, that the bones of a boy of tender years, and some fragments of a blue dress, were discovered. It was found alongside the skeleton of a man where the fireplace now is, close to a trap door that opened to the stone arches of the vaults below. These poor remains were reverently removed and decently interred in consecrated ground, since when the figure has never been seen again. However, to this day occasional guests in the Pink Room claim to be awakened by strange blue flashes in the middle of the night. Any explanation of an electrical fault can be counteracted by the fact that there are no electrics of any kind in the wall where the flashes were seen.” (quote from http://www.chillingham-castle.com).
The families of the Earls Grey have been the keepers of this castle since 1246 and are still the owners today. The castle is available for all sorts of events as well as overnight stays. For pricing and info you can email them at: stay@chillingham-castle.com. I know that if I ever make it to anyplace near the castle I will make sure that I stop by. This is perhaps my favorite castle to read and talk about, as it is full of history and ghosts. If you happen to go there, please let this writer know what (if anything) you experienced. And if you happen to hear the rustle of Lady Mary’s skirts coming down the hallway toward you, make sure you bundle up and try to stay warm.
