When Peterborough’s Past Won’t Lie Down…

Something old, something new, something beastly and something blue... As Halloween approaches, we take a tour of local spooks with author of Haunted Peterborough, Stuart Orme.

I’t’s an old building, and you get to know its sounds,’ says Stuart Orme. ‘But every once in a while when I was there in the evening on my own I’d hear someone walking around upstairs. It’s just as if there were a visitor or a colleague up there – and yet I knew damn well I was the only one there…’  Stuart is talking about Peterborough Museum – renowned as the most haunted building in the city – where he worked as Events and Programmes Manager for a number of years (he’s now curator of the Cromwell Museum). A historian by training, he is naturally sceptical of anything that is not supported by evidence or reliable testimony. And yet he retains a fascination for the inexplicable – and has himself been witness to things he can’t quite explain, as we shall see.

It is supposed that Halloween is the Christianised version of the pagan Celtic festival of Samhain, when the veil between this world and the next was at its thinnest, and things could drift through. So to get in the Halloween mood – and perhaps sound a note of warning – we present our own pick of local ghost stories from around the region, starting with one that is very old indeed…

Something Old: The Three Living and The Three Dead

For us, ghosts are spirits that appear and disappear and can pass through solid objects. As one goes further back into history, however, they become more solid, more physical. The Three Living and the Three Dead is a medieval zombie story. Whilst not exactly a local tale, it has local connections: at Longthorpe Tower we have a medieval wall painting that Stuart describes as: ‘probably one of the most remarkable and well-preserved depictions of that story’. The story itself, told and retold in many variations, was hugely popular during the 14th and 15th centuries as a reflection on mortality – and as a warning.

One day, three proud kings were out hunting boar. Riding ahead of their retainers, they became lost in a mist, which separated them from the main hunting party. Then, emerging from the dark edge of the forest, they saw three figures. They walked stiffly, as if barely able to move their limbs, and as the figures lumbered closer, the kings drew back in horror. They were dead men, each in a different state of decay. One, only recently deceased, had grey flesh and blue lips. Another was rotting and crawling with maggots. The third – an emaciated cadaver with staring, lidless eyes – was little more than a skeleton. The kings were terrified, uncertain whether to flee or to stand and fight these horrors. Then the dead addressed them. They were not demons, they said, but the kings’ forefathers, whose memory had been cruelly neglected. Each urged the living to live better lives, and to remember them. ‘Such as you are,’ they said, ‘we once were. Such as we are, you will be.’ The dead departed as dawn came, and the kings rode home, where they said masses for their dead ancestors in the church, and had their story written on its walls.

‘This story wasn’t meant to be depressing,’ says Stuart. ‘It came from a time of high mortality, and was more a message of carpe diem – seize the day. It was given some prominence at Longthorpe by the Thorpe family, so obviously was an important message to them. Those paintings date from around 1320- 1340, so within a generation there’s mortality on a massive scale.’ In 1348 the Black Death arrived, and ultimately wiped out a third of the population. Carpe diem indeed.

Something New: The Old Lady of Meynell Walk

Now we shift forward several centuries to more familiar times. Our times. Perhaps you think you are safe because you avoid lonely roads, and the old places? Think again. On Meynell Walk in Netherton – housing built by the Development Corporation in the 1970s – there is a house that never seems able to keep a tenant. The original occupant, it seems, was an elderly lady who died in the property in the mid-1980s, and ever since then has kept coming back.

Stuart Orme takes up the story: ‘Her ghost has been seen in the conservatory at the back of the house on a number of occasions. What is particularly unnerving, however, is her habit of visiting children when they’re in bed at night. That may sound quite sweet, but imagine you are eight years old, tucked up in bed, fast asleep, and you wake up to hear your bedroom door open, and then footsteps come into your room. They walk to the bottom of your bed, and you feel someone sit down on it. Finally you pluck up the courage to pull back the duvet and have a look, but there’s no one there – just the weight on the bed and the depression in the covers where they ought to be.’ Stuart adds: ‘This removes the ghost story from the traditional safe zone of an old building, like a museum, cathedral or castle. It’s a contemporary building, and somebody’s house – one of those “it could be you” moments.

Something Beastly: Black Shuck

It’s not just insubstantial spirits or things in human form that haunt us. Sometimes, there are monsters. There are tales of phantom black dogs in almost every county of Britain. He goes by many names – Barghest, Skriker, Padfoot, Hairy Jack, Galleytrot – and even provided the inspiration for Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles. In East Anglia and the Fens, where he is most active, he is known as Black Shuck, a name believed to derive from the Anglo- Saxon word scucca, meaning ‘devil’ or ‘fiend’ and used in the poem Beowulf to describe the monster Grendel. He is also one of the most persistent phantoms on record; first reported in the Middle Ages, sightings of him continue to be reported to this day. Shuck is huge and black with eyes that glow like fire, and he haunts graveyards and lonely roads – especially crossroads, or where highways cross water. He brings death with him. Some stories speak of his ability to strike dead those he touches, as he did in the churches of Blythburgh and Bungay in the year 1577.

Legend has it that simply seeing him upon the road means you will know death by morning. Peterborough’s place in the history of this fiend is a special one, for, according to some traditions, it was an Abbot of Peterborough Abbey who unwittingly unleashed him upon the world. In the year 1127, Henry of Poitou was appointed Abbot by Henry I, and immediately proceeded to start milking the Abbey for personal gain. From the moment of his arrival, however, the portents were bad, as the contemporary Peterborough Chronicle (a continuation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written at Peterborough Abbey) describes: Let no-one be surprised at the truth of what we are about to relate, for it was common knowledge throughout the whole country that immediately after [Poitou’s arrival] many men both saw and heard a great number of huntsmen hunting. The huntsmen were black, huge and hideous, and rode on black horses and on black he- goats and their hounds were jet black and loathsome with eyes like saucers.

This was seen in the very deer park of the town of Peterborough and in all the woods that stretch from that same town to Stamford, and in the night the monks heard them sounding and blowing their horns. Reliable witnesses who kept watch in the night declared that there might well have been as many as twenty or thirty of them blowing their horns as near they could tell. This was seen and heard from the time of his arrival all through Lent and right up to Easter. It was said one of these black hellhounds remained as punishment for allowing the Abbey to fall into the hands of so evil a man – and a warning that it must never happen again.

Something Blue: The Lady in the Corridor

This one has a special place in our tour – because it is something Stuart saw with his own eyes in the Museum, one night in 2013. ’We were setting up the Belle Epoque exhibition showing original Edwardian costumes,’ says Stuart, ‘and myself and two colleagues were working late one Thursday inside the gallery, getting ready for the opening. One of us was on the other side of the room setting up some graphics; the other was fixing a wall hanging up a ladder, and I was footing the ladder for her. Nothing out of the ordinary.’ As Stuart stood there, he happened to glance across at the door leading out onto the ground floor corridor.

‘This woman walked past the doorway. I’d never seen her before in my life. She wasn’t a member of staff or a visitor. The building was all locked up and I knew we were the only people in it.’ This ghost did not fit the stereotype, however. ‘She wasn’t a grey, misty figure – she looked like a living, breathing person. She was about 40 years old, hair pulled back in a bun, dressed in a dark blue Victorian style dress with a white apron or pinny on the front. And she just walked past the door. My colleagues were looking in the other direction, so didn’t see anything. I sort of coughed and they said: “Are you all right?” I said: “Hang on a minute…” shot
to the door and looked out into the corridor. But there was absolutely nobody there. The door was locked.’

He shrugs. ‘It’s just one of those things. Buildings have memories.’ As with so many ghosts, this one seems tied to a specific location. ‘Lots of colleagues over the years have reported footsteps in that corridor, or glimpsing someone moving past the doorway, and then they look and there’s nobody out there. When we’ve had ghost hunters stay in the building overnight, sometimes they’ve reported similar experiences.’ Could something similar happen to you? Upon a lonely road? In an empty building at night? Safely tucked in your bed? Perhaps it could. Happy Halloween!

STUART ORME’S BOOK HAUNTED PETERBOROUGH IS AVAILABLE FROM AMAZON

‘It happened to me…’
True Spooky Tales from The Moment Readers! 

Readers of The Moment and our followers on X share their ghostly experiences for Halloween. Read on… if you dare!

‘About 20 years ago, I was working late, in a new job so I didn’t know the building well. I was sure that I was the only one there (like a mug!) as it was gone 9 pm. Suddenly, I heard running feet in the room above me, just once, but it happened about three or four times in the next hour. I felt uneasy after it happened the second time, and after the last time I’d had enough, shut down my computer and left for the night. Imagine my discomfort when I casually enquired about the history of the building the next day, to be told it used to be an orphanage in the 1950s! I hadn’t told anyone about what I’d heard – as the new boy I didn’t want the proverbial ripped out of me, so the tale of the orphanage was not told to wind me up further.

‘For unrelated reasons, I wasn’t in the job long – I wasn’t sorry to leave!’
Steve, Peterborough

‘When I was little, we lived in quite an old house, late Georgian I think. There was a cellar, and my parents never let me go down there as it was packed with junk and the light wasn’t great. It was quite extensive, too, there were several ‘rooms’ down there, connected by brick arches.

‘One day, curiosity got the better of me. I was eight, my father was at work and my mother had nipped out to the local shop. I had actually decided a few days previously that I was going to break the rules and wait for an opportunity to go down in the cellar – the urge to see what was ‘forbidden’ was irresistible!

‘After making sure that my mother had definitely left the house, I switched on the light at the top of the cellar steps, and started to descend. Each ‘room’ of the cellar had a filthy, dim bulb hanging from the ceiling, but they were the only light source. I crept into the first room. It was quite ordinary, and stuffed with old items my parents had shoved down there: my old pram, DIY bits, kindling. On I went to the second room. This was practically empty, and any residual light from the doorway was all but gone so the only light came from the bulb. I say practically empty, because in the corner was a heap of what looked like clothes. I stood and stared at it, and as I did, it shifted. I froze and held my breath. The heap shifted again, not in a way that suggested mice or rats were inside, but the whole mass of it rocked from side to side. Then – and I remember this very clearly – I heard a cough, in the room with me.

‘I shot back upstairs as fast as I could, switched off the light and slammed the door. My mother couldn’t understand why I was so subdued for the rest of the day and actually I think she kept me in bed the next day, as she thought I was ill.

‘A few months later, with a torch and a school friend (and while my mother was busy in the garden) I went back down there. The second room was empty.’
Jon, Stamford

‘It started like every other scary story – I moved into a new house. At first everything was fine, and then the weird stuff began.

‘My husband and I moved into the house in September 2013. It’s not a particularly old house, no chance of creepy Victorian tenants, and it was in excellent condition when we moved in – apart from a rusty back door, whose wood had expanded in its frame, making it nearly impossible to open and close.

‘Then, one day, the back door slammed open and closed in quick successions of three – onetwothree, onetwothree, onetwothree – and then stopped. It started happening more and more – didn’t make a difference whether it was windy outside or not. After a while I realised that the door only slammed open and closed when I was home alone.

‘Jump ahead a couple of months. The door was still playing its old tricks, only now there was creaking upstairs too, and our dog kept staring fixatedly at the fireplace. I even pulled out our stove and took a look up the chimney, thinking maybe a bird had gotten in there. Nope, only spiders the size of my face.

‘My mother told me it was a ghost. I thought that was absurd. She told me that it would be a good idea to tell the ghost – very firmly – to leave the house. I told her I’d think about it. As soon as I got off the phone with her, the door began slamming again – onetwothree, onetwothree, onetwothree – so I tried out my mum’s advice. I said (very firmly): “If you’re a ghost, you can get lost.”

‘Never had a problem with the door since. Creaking’s stopped too, and the dog doesn’t seem so interested in the fireplace anymore.’
Amy, Cambridge

‘About seven or eight years ago, I went to visit Royston Caves with my husband and some friends. For those who don’t know, Royston Caves aren’t natural caves, but manmade, although their
origin is shrouded in the mists of time. They were discovered in the 1700s I think, but are far older, some say a hiding place for Templars when they were persecuted in the 1300s. The walls are covered in ancient carvings, some pagan, some early Christian – some just very old grafitti!

‘Anyway, we went down there and were looking around, when I suddenly started to feel very, very odd. I wasn’t ill at the time, I have no problem with dark or enclosed spaces, and I hadn’t gone down in the caves with an empty stomach. I felt extremely faint and nauseous, plus short of breath, and I had a very pronounced metallic taste in my mouth. The only solution was to go back ‘up top’ and find a bench to sit on, which I did, whereupon I quickly recovered. Within minutes I was back to normal.

‘Now, whilst many might say it was a panic attack or lack of air, all I will say is that the only other time I have felt like that, physically, was when I attended a reading by a psychic medium…’
Victoria, Bassingbourn

PETERBOROUGH MUSEUM GHOSTS – A TERRIFYING TOP TEN
Seeking spooks in the Museum’s corridors? Here’s a handy guide for ghosthunters…

1 A grey figure, said to be the ‘Lonely ANZAC’, First World War soldier Thomas Hunter who died in the building in 1916 from wounds received in France. His ghost is seen on the stairs or first floor corridor, and has most recently been seen in June 2009. A strange figure was also caught on camera on the stairs in August 2010.

2 A ghostly kitchen maid who fell to her death on the back stairs (which are not open to the public except for pre-booked tours) – did she fall, did she jump, or was she pushed? Female visitors report the impression of being pushed from behind by invisible hands, many people feel unwell in this area and strange noises have been heard.

3 A dark male presence has been seen and felt lurking on the first floor. Footsteps have been heard here.

4 A ghostly Roman soldier is said to be connected for eternity to his sword, on display in the archaeology gallery. He has most recently been seen in September 2006.

5 A white lady who follows visitors around the upper floor of the building.

6 Poltergeist activity has been reported in one of the ground floor rooms – furniture has
been found mysteriously moved overnight.

7 A little girl returns in spirit form in the Geology gallery, leaving messages on tape
recordings as well as terrifying a workman. She has also been seen on rare occasions.

8 The eerie ancient cellar – now open to the public as Priestgate Vaults – has a particular
reputation, where slamming doors, strange noises and a threatening male presence have been reported. Items have been thrown at some ghost hunters.

9 In one particular chamber of Priestgate Vaults – included in the tour – a hooded
figure has been seen that appears to be a monk or priest.

10 In 2013, Stuart Orme saw a Victorian lady in blue with a white apron in the doorway
of the exhibition gallery. An echo from the building’s former life as the city’s first hospital?