Chillingham Castle

Chillingham Castle stands in rolling country a few miles from the Scottish border. A monastic site turned stronghold in the late 12th century, it served as a staging post for English armies in the Anglo-Scottish wars — Edward I stayed there in 1298 on his way to fight William Wallace — and was licensed by Edward III to add battlements in 1344. After the Union of the Crowns in 1603 the need for a frontier fortress faded and the Grey family, later Earls of Tankerville, turned it into a country house. Its park still holds the famous herd of wild white Chillingham cattle.

The castle was used as an army barracks in World War II and afterwards fell into decay. In 1982 it was bought by Sir Humphry Wakefield, whose wife descends from the Greys, and he has spent decades restoring it — and promoting it, with relish, as “Britain’s most haunted castle,” complete with a dungeon and a torture-chamber display. Sky History notes that the castle’s haunted image seems to date from the early 20th century, when Leonora, Countess of Tankerville, who married into the family in 1895, wrote about her own uneasy experiences there.

The best-known ghost is the Blue Boy, or Radiant Boy, said to have haunted the Pink Room. Guests reported a wail of pain or fear, then a blue flash or halo of light near the bed where a small figure appeared. According to the castle’s story, the haunting faded in the early 20th century after a child’s bones, with scraps of blue cloth, were found inside a thick wall and given a proper burial. Another ghost is Lady Mary Berkeley, wife of Ford Grey, Lord Grey of Warke, who ran off with her own sister Henrietta in a notorious scandal of 1682; the rustle of her dress and a faint floral scent are said to follow visitors along corridors. In the Inner Pantry, a pale woman in white is said to have begged a footman for water while he was locked in guarding the silver.

Visitors on night tours describe touches on the arm, whispering in the King Edward Room, men’s voices in the chapel and orbs in photographs, and the castle has appeared on Most Haunted and with YouTube ghost-hunting channels. As Sky History puts it, none of the stories can be definitively verified.

A wailing child and blue light in the Pink Room, rustling skirts and a floral scent (Lady Mary Berkeley), a pale woman asking for water in the Inner Pantry, voices in the chapel, whispering, touches, cold and oppressive feelings, and orbs in photos — reported by guests, staff and paying ghost hunters.

The Pink Room (Blue Boy), the corridors and staircases (Lady Mary), the Inner Pantry, the chapel beside the Great Hall, the King Edward Room, and the dungeon and torture chamber visited on night tours.

Chillingham features on Most Haunted, countless YouTube investigations and lists of Britain’s most haunted places; its Great Hall stood in for Scottish scenes in the 1998 film Elizabeth, and it inspired Eva Ibbotson’s children’s book The Beasts of Clawstone Castle.