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 ittledean Hall sits on a desolate hill, its stark, imposing facade looming over the medieval countryside of the Royal Forest of Dean. Sections of the house date back to the fifth-century Saxon occupation, leading the Guinness Book of World Records to designate it the oldest continuously occupied house in England. Age is not its only distinction. In his book The Journal of a Ghost Hunter, Simon Marsden called Littledean Hall the most haunted house in England.
The manor is located near the Welsh border in Gloucester, within sight of the mystical horseshoe bend of the River Severn. It's built over the ruins of an ancient Roman temple originally used as a Celtic shrine to the river goddess Sabrina. The site has a legacy of ritual and magical use reaching back almost to the beginning of recorded history.
Most of the current structure was erected in the thirteenth century. During the English Civil War, it was headquarters for Royalist troops under Prince Maurice. It was attacked and its occupants slaughtered by Parliamentary troops in 1644. Numerous violent deaths have occurred within the house, including the murder of an illegitimate infant whose body was concealed inside one of the manor's walls.
Since the 1950s the house has belonged to the Macer-Wright family. Family members, along with house staff, neighbors,and guests, have experienced a plethora of haunting and poltergeist activity over the decades -- some amusing, some disconcerting.
Donald Macer-Wright has felt a malevolent influence enveloping the house, exuding a toxic atmosphere that causes physical illness and depression. A few years ago, in desperation, he called in British ghostbuster Eddie Burks. But the man's activities, Macer-Wright said, only resulted in stirring things up even more. In the spring of 1996 Macer-Wright sent out a new call for help, this time for an interdisciplinary team of paranormal researchers he hoped would get to the bottom of the ghostly infestation and neutralize it.
I arrived at Littledean as team leader, accompanied by parapsychologist Nicholas Rose (Dr. Susan Blackmore's assistant at the University of the West of England); ley line and
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earth energies expert David Furlong; respected clairvoyant Maureen Conway; and Reverend Tom Willis, a paranormal specialist from the Church of England -- one of only six such specialists within the Church.
I interviewed witnesses, village historians, residents, and staff to get a handle on what types of phenomena we might encounter. Some of the documented auditory phenomena included screams, clashing swords, pistol shots, rappings, and slamming doors. Among the olfactory phenomena were unattributable odors of decaying flesh, burning toast, and roses.
Visual phenomena included animated gray-and-black mists, light orbs, and apparitions. Among the latter were a monk, Royalist soldiers, two brothers who shot each other over a woman, and the spirit of a young servant who murdered his master in 1774 and was subsequently executed.
Some witnesses have reported dizziness, nausea, palpitations, encounters with psychic cold spots, and an almost overwhelming sense of a presence. People have also been shoved, jerked, or punched by unseen hands.
It isn't just two-legged beings who have noticed something unusual. Dogs at the manor have gone into unprovoked fits, foaming at the mouth and snapping at invisible intruders.
Chairs, tables, and wall hangings in the manor have been mysteriously rearranged and overturned. Flowers in vases have been regularly found shredded and tossed about. Doors open and close on their own initiative. Various objects are playfully hidden and returned. A bloodstain in the dining room, from the impaling of two Royalist soldiers during the Civil War, has continually reappeared despite centuries of being scrubbed away. In the nineteenth century the floorboards were replaced, but the stain continued to materialize.
"I try to keep pragmatic about things here, and not attribute every unusual occurrence or report to the presence of ghosts," Macer-Wright said. "I am aware that the very location -- the look and feel of the place -- can create an atmosphere of expectation of supernatural phenomena, and certain things can be misinterpreted. Some things, however, are less ambiguous."
Donald related one such incident. "I was
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