The Paranormal Database

Man in Top Hat

Location: Cambridge - New Court, Trinity
Type: Unknown Ghost Type
Date / Time: 1922
Further Comments: Author T C Lethbridge reported seeing a ghost during his time at university. He mistook the figure as a porter, though upon reflection realised that the man was wearing a top hat (which porters only did on a Sunday, and it was not Sunday!). Lethbridge's friend, present in the same room during the sighting, failed to perceive the figure.

Newmarket Road, Cambridge.

Large Furry Penguin-Like Creature

Location: Cambridge - Newmarket Road
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: Once seen in Merton Hall, this strange creature has been more recently reported waddling along the Newmarket Road. A local paranormal group examining the case came to the plausible conclusion that the ghost may be that of a doctor in a cloak, wearing a beak-like mask which they believed would protect them from the plague.

Peterhouse. Cambridge.

Francis Dawes

Location: Cambridge - Peterhouse
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 1997
Further Comments: Dawes was a former Peterhouse bursar who hanged himself in September 1789 after an election scandal resulted in an unpopular fellow becoming Master of Peterhouse. In April 1997, a butler and a waiter spotted a white figure as it moved between the spiral staircase and the centre of the Combination Room, the location where Dawes is thought to have committed suicide. In November of the same year, unexplained knocking was heard and once again a strange figure was spotted by butlers. Around the same time, Andrew Murison, the college treasurer, also heard knocking prior to seeing a benign figure in the dining room. At the time an exorcism was considered if the entity appeared again, but Dawes appears to have fallen silent once again.

Newmarket Road, Cambridge.

Man Moaning

Location: Cambridge - Private building along Newmarket Road
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 1996
Further Comments: A former student who stayed in this residence reported that one room (her bedroom) was always freezing cold. The witness also reported hearing a moaning sound close to her head as she lay in bed, unsettling her so much she could not stay in the room any longer, and moved out of the building soon after.

Woman in Green

Location: Cambridge - Private house along Trumpington Street
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 1890s
Further Comments: Several witnesses were said to have encountered a ghostly woman wearing a green dress with a red feather in her hat. One man commented on a portrait of the woman that hung in a room he had just left, only to be told that no such painting existed.

Dark Figure

Location: Cambridge - Private house off Hills Road
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: November 2023 - February 2024
Further Comments: A resident here felt the bedroom had an extremely eerie feeling, as if someone wanted them to leave their house. Eventually the resident moved their bed into the living room to avoid the presence, although on one occasion they spotted a dark shadowy figure standing in the living room doorway.

Montague Road, Cambridge.

Frail Young Woman in a Hammock

Location: Cambridge - Private residence, Montague Road
Type: Post-Mortem Manifestation
Date / Time: 1924
Further Comments: A witness saw a young lady in the summer house lying on a hammock. Sometime later he was told the description matched that of his aunt, who had died of tuberculosis a few months before his visit.

Young Boy

Location: Cambridge - Private residence, Petersfield area
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Late 2014
Further Comments: A residence who started seeing a young boy in mid-twentieth century clothing researched her neighbourhood and found ten people, including children, died in a bombing accident.

Goat Headed Monster

Location: Cambridge - River Cam close to Stourbridge Common (or not, as the case may be)
Type: Cryptozoology
Date / Time: 1276
Further Comments: Lady Eveline Camilla (Newton) Gurdon claimed this monster encounter possibly happened in Suffolk, while the 'Every Day Book' placed it in Cambridge. They were both wrong - it comes from Poland; the story is from 'The Doome Warning All Men to the Judgemente' and reads: Fishers toke a disfigured divell, in a certain Stoure (which is a mighty gathering togither of waters from some narrow lake of the sea), a horrible monster with a goat's head, and eyes shyning lyke fyre, whereuppon they were all afrayde and ranne awaye; and that ghoste plunged himselfe under the ice, and running tippe and downe in the stoure made a terrible noyse and sound.

Abbey Road, Abbey House, Cambridge.

A Nun and Brown Dog-Thing

Location: Cambridge - Abbey Road, Abbey House
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Further Comments: It is claimed that Abbey House is, or at least was, the most haunted house in Cambridge. While I'm not a fan of 'most haunted' titles, when you look at the number and type of the ghosts supposed to haunt the site (a poltergeist, ghostly echoes of chains, a butler, a woman in white, a grey lady, a squirrel, a dog, and a hare all amongst the entities which have popped up), one can understand why the title has been applied here. An exorcism was performed in the 1980s, which may have laid the entities.

Drug Induced Ghost

Location: Cambridge - Addenbrookes Hospital
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: The story is that a ghost appears to those who are being administrated morphine; the psychological effects of the drug would appear to be ignored in this tale...

Arbury Road, Cambridge.

Unlucky Shuck

Location: Cambridge - Arbury Road
Type: Shuck
Date / Time: Twentieth century
Further Comments: This road, and area, are said to be frequented by a shuck that brings ill luck to all that see it.

Haunted studios of BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.

Womaniser

Location: Cambridge - BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, studio 1a
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 2003
Further Comments: The studio is reportedly haunted by an old man renowned for his womanising ways - he was never seen, though his presence felt. In the early 2000s the BBC invited local ghost hunters and psychic mediums to investigate. Armed with crystals, dowsing rods, a piece of paper on a string, and an EMF meter, the attempt to reach the other side resulted in both male and female presences being detected.

Second World War Pilot

Location: Cambridge - Cambridge Airport
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Late twentieth century
Further Comments: A few buildings on this site have reports of phantom pilots in their flying gear or RAF uniforms. Sounds of footsteps in empty areas are not uncommon, and there is also a story of ghostly singing.

Police Officer

Location: Cambridge - Chesterton Road
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 21 August 2012, 14:30h
Further Comments: Taking a shortcut through a car park and past an office block, this witness looked up to see a police officer in 1940s uniform with a gasmask case slung over his arm. The officer was floating. The witness froze briefly in terror before taking haste.

Christ's College, Cambridge.

Mr Round

Location: Cambridge - Christ's College, Mulberry Tree in Garden
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Midnight on nights of the full moon (reoccurring)
Further Comments: A tall, elderly gentleman wearing a beaver hat, Round is said to have murdered the only doctor who had the skill to save his dying girlfriend - thus his ghost walks the grounds in the area around the mulberry tree in regret.

Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

Dr Butts, Dark Mark on Throat

Location: Cambridge - Corpus Christi College
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Easter 1904, onwards (Butts), lover unknown
Further Comments: Doctor Butts took his life on Easter Sunday 1632 (found hanging by his garters in his room), after suffering from what now would be identified as depression. The Doctor has appeared several times during the early 20th century; described as being dressed in white, having long hair and a gash around his neck. The story goes that an exorcism was attempted, but it failed. The kitchen of the building is reputedly haunted by the lover of Dr Spencer's daughter - he suffocated in a cupboard while hiding from the Doctor.

Open Window

Location: Cambridge - Eagle public house
Type: Curse
Date / Time: Window still present, poltergeist late 1970s?
Further Comments: One story says a window in the upper part of the pub is cursed; if it is ever closed then ill fortune follows. Like so many other pubs, the site was also once home to a poltergeist, and is also said to be haunted by the ghosts of two Second World War airmen.

Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

Heavy Stamping Footsteps

Location: Cambridge - Emmanuel College
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: September 2020
Further Comments: Rumoured to have been a suicide victim, the stamping footsteps of the deceased plagued several families that lived there over a period of years. The original building no longer stands, and it was said that the replacement had yet to yield any phantom footsteps, until 2020 when a student tweeted that he had heard someone walking around the empty site.

White Lady

Location: Cambridge - Sherratt & Hughes, Trinity Street (closed in 1991)
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: Once said to be the oldest bookshop in the UK, the building claims to have a white lady who walks silently down the aisles. Her history is unknown. There are also reports of a man in Victorian evening dress.

Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.

Pale Yellow Head without Ears

Location: Cambridge - Sidney Sussex College
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 1960s
Further Comments: Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. A spectral pale-yellow head without ears was apparently spotted floating around Chapel Court in 1967 by John Emslie. The head is said to be that of Cromwell; his skull was finally laid to rest under the college's antechapel in 1960, its exact location a secret. As far as I can tell, the head was only encountered once, although around the same time other students were said to have experienced cold spots and the smell of rotting meat. The other ghost reputed to haunt the site, somewhat lacklustre compared to Cromwell, is that of an elderly University Don dressed in grey who moves from this campus towards Christ's College.

St. Johns College, Cambridge.

College Cat

Location: Cambridge - St. Johns College
Type: ABC
Date / Time: November 1996
Further Comments: Both a caretaker and the groundsman saw a massive black cat on the grounds. It has been speculated the creature was the so called 'Fen Tiger', a large cat-like cryptid for which sightings around Cambridgeshire date back at least 30 years.

Sounds of Murder

Location: Cambridge - Sweet Shop, East Street
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 1970s
Further Comments: A sweet shop was supposed to be haunted by the sounds of screaming from someone being murdered with an axe. As a side note, around the same time two other shops along the road were also said to be haunted, although one had been demolished and the other was empty and run down.

Old Man

Location: Cambridge - The Haunted Bookshop
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 2000s
Further Comments: A phantom old man is reputed to haunt the basement of this bookshop.

Flying Bird

Location: Cambridge - Unnamed site, Storey's Way
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Late 1970s?
Further Comments: A black bird would be seen flying through glass without smashing it. The site was also haunted by a man wearing a white coat.