The Paranormal Database

Nan Scott

Location: Holme (Nottinghamshire) - St Giles Church
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: A woman who survived the Great Plague but who then starved to death, Nan is said to scurry around the churchyard or can be heard moving around in the upper part of the church.

Ruined Twice

Location: Holme on the Wolds (East Riding of Yorkshire) - Church
Type: Fairy
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: Fairies advised the people building a church here to place it at the top of the hill and not at the bottom. The builders ignored the advice and twice found their church in ruins just before completion. They moved their third attempt to the top of the hill, where it remains.

Moved Materials

Location: Holnest (Dorset) - Church
Type: Legend
Date / Time: During church construction
Further Comments: The first choice location of the church was ruined night after night, when the building materials were taken to the place where this church now stands. A variation of the story has the Devil moving the stones while trying to prevent any construction from occurring.

Money collecting in the bottom of a well.

The Holy Well

Location: Holywell (Cambridgeshire) - Churchyard
Type: Other
Date / Time: Still present
Further Comments: The waters of the well were said to cure sore eyes, and teenage girls would throw money into the pool in the hope the face of the man they would marry would appear to them.

Old Betty

Location: Honington (Warwickshire) - Church
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: Sitting on the wall, smoking a pipe, Betty was a well known character within the community even before she died.

Devil's Stone

Location: Honiton (Devon) - Church Hill
Type: Legend - Old Nick
Date / Time: Still present?
Further Comments: This rock is all that remains after the Devil and the locals threw stones at each other.

Children Playing

Location: Hornchurch (Essex) - Site of RAF Hornchurch (no longer operational)
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 1970s
Further Comments: One witness reported hearing schoolchildren playing on the site, although it was late at night, and seeing pilots walking around the area.

Monk

Location: Horsham (Sussex) - Causeway to the church
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: This spirit often walks between the road and the churchyard, though he vanishes before setting foot on holy ground.

Church Cat

Location: Horsham St Faith (Norfolk) - Church
Type: ABC
Date / Time: April 1996
Further Comments: A large cat was observed by the church, standing around 25 meters from the witness.

Bull

Location: Hyssington (Shropshire) - Hyssington church, and Bagbury Bridge
Type: Unknown Ghost Type
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: This ghostly bull, the animalistic ghostly manifestation of an evil squire, haunted a local farmhouse - a group of clergymen lured it into the church, where it was exorcised. The exorcism was said to have been so fierce that the wall of the church cracked. However, locals once believed the bull was only relocated to Bagbury Bridge, and they always walked their horses across in fear of waking the spirit up.

Thirsty Bells

Location: Ibberton (Dorset) - Church and village pond
Type: Legend
Date / Time: Midday
Further Comments: At midday, the church bells were said to grow thirsty and cross the lane to drink from the village pond.

The Church of St. Botolph, Iken, Suffolk.

Marsh Devils

Location: Iken (Suffolk) - Church of St. Botolph (original destroyed circa AD869)
Type: Legend
Date / Time: Ninth century
Further Comments: St Botolph was said to have battled the strange creatures and demons of the Iken marshes while constructing a place of worship in the ninth century. The entities may have been banished, but Viking raiders laid the site to waste a few years after its construction. In 1977 a piece of stone cross was discovered nearby, thought to be from Botolph's original church.

Ed Golding

Location: Ilmington (Warwickshire) - Church
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Twentieth century
Further Comments: Former parish clerk Golding has been seen walking about in his church, having died in the 1790s. The area is also said to be home to a woman in white, waiting for her husband killed during the battle of Edge Hill.

John Head

Location: Ilsley (Berkshire) - Area around the church
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: After upsetting the Duke of Cumberland, John mysteriously vanished. His decapitated body was discovered many years later. His funeral match is still reported to occur in the village, four tall men carrying his headless corpse.

Cat Attack

Location: Inkberrow (Worcestershire) - St Peter's churchyard
Type: ABC
Date / Time: December 1993
Further Comments: While hunting for the locally named 'Beast of Inkberrow', Nick and Sally Dyke discovered the cat in the churchyard - it knocked Nick over and took a swipe at Sally before running off. She was left with three ten centimetre long claw marks down one side.

Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich.

Sweeping Female Figure

Location: Ipswich (Suffolk) - Christchurch Mansion
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Summer 1995, and prior
Further Comments: Pictures on the walls have been seen turning themselves, while a female witness with her daughter watched a Victorian woman walk by them, passing through a closed glass door. A much older report stated that the mansion was haunted by a maid with two children, who laughed and danced around the building.

Two Spinsters

Location: Ipswich (Suffolk) - Tourist Information Centre (no longer operating), St Stephen's Church
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 1990s onwards
Further Comments: Staff working at this building have reported two elderly sisters who once played the organ in the church before it closed and was reopened as a Tourist Information Centre. They are said to have died shortly after their beloved place of worship shut its doors permanently.

Old Willard

Location: Iver (Buckinghamshire) - St Peter's Church
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 1800s - 1970s
Further Comments: Willard was an eighteenth century verger who was punished for steeling gold coins from the church, despite pleading innocent. Several years after Willard's death, the real thief was found. Willard took to haunting the church but left after a vicar encountered the ghost and forgave it.

Venerable Bede's Chair

Location: Jarrow (Tyne and Wear) - St Paul's Church
Type: Legend
Date / Time: Still present
Further Comments: Newlywed brides who sit in this famous chair soon fall pregnant, according to local legend. Another version of the legend says that anyone to sit on the chair is granted three wishes.

Headless Person

Location: Kegworth (Leicestershire) - Churchyard and Market Place
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Circa 1960
Further Comments: A lorry driver was left slightly unnerved after watching a headless person leave the churchyard, cross the Market Place and vanish through the closed door of a house (that no longer stands).

Green Lady

Location: Kempston (Bedfordshire) - Church Walk
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: The ghost of a green lady is reported to appear when the mist rolls off from the nearby river. She is thought to have drowned in the river, though none can say exactly who she is.

An old woodcut of a knight in armour riding a horse.

Knight in Shining Armour

Location: Kemsing (Kent) - Kemsing Church
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 29 December (reoccurring)
Further Comments: This gallant looking figure rides up to the church, enters the building and briefly prays at the altar before vanishing again until another year goes by.

Raining Money

Location: Kenardington (Kent) - St Mary's Churchyard
Type: Other
Date / Time: 1989
Further Comments: Reports say that it has rained money in this graveyard several times, but do not become too enthusiastic - the coinage is always pre-decimal.

De Clinton Curse

Location: Kenilworth (Warwickshire) - Area around the former site of the abbey and the Church of St Mary (no longer standing)
Type: Curse
Date / Time: Ongoing?
Further Comments: Geoffrey De Clinton promised that if anyone ever tried to take away the land around the church they would be cursed by God - a series of disasters befell many people and companies which tried to redevelop the land during the late twentieth century.

Sailor

Location: Kenovay, Tiree (Argyll and Bute) - Churchyard
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: Washed up from parts unknown, this mysterious sailor was buried locally, and is still seen in the area. The story goes on to say that in addition, the ghost was seen several times in the months prior to the discovery of his body, vanishing if approached.