HAUNTED HOUSES

A new series on haunted houses entitled Great British Ghosts is due to start soon on the Yesterday Channel. In last Saturday's WEEKEND magazine reference was made to the Old Courthouse Inn in Great Bromley - a former courthouse (where criminals were tried and often taken straight to the gallows) now run as a B & B pub.

Here's an extract from the article: 'It is haunted by a woman in a maid's uniform and guests have complained of being watched. The pub's ghost has been caught on camera by spirit snapper Ron Bowers. He has taken scores of photographs there, which have shown shapes witnesses claim were not visible to them.

Justice meted out at the Old Courthouse may have been rough but at least it was swift. However, debtors banged up in Derby Gaol languished there for months or years, sometimes driven to suicide or despair. The prison, now a museum run by local historian Richard Felix, also claims to be Britain's most haunted building. Richard says the 'torment and terror of its past lingers in the very fabric' of the building. Visitors to the museum have seen the oak cell doors close on their own, have smelled the scent of roses, felt sick and been pushed and shoved by unseen hands.

At a seance held in the jail, a heavy table pushed a visitor close to a burning fire and Richard has seen a ghost gliding along a corridor. He recalls, "I was on the phone in the office and it was 3.20 pm on a bright afternoon. I was so startled I forgot I was on the phone."

Richard believes the man in black 19th century clothes was the unquiet spirit of George Batty, a rapist hanged in 1825 when the jail closed down, or perhaps the spirit of the jail's last warden, Blyth Simpson, who objects to his successor's presence. Richard says, "He still thinks he runs the place - he resents me terribly."'