Page 74 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - Late January 2019

74 Best Haunted Sites Around The World

Best haunted sites around

the world

From a ‘hanging-doll’ island in
Mexico to the English estate which
inspired The Turn of the Screw, the
author of A Natural History of Ghosts
picks some of his favourite spooky
sites

by Roger Clarke
Author of A Natural History of Ghosts

Versailles, France
The French are the least susceptible to
believing in ghosts among the world’s
nationalities, according to at least one study. The
visitors who witnessed one of the most famous
“time-slips” of them all were British women
vicarage in Jämtland, with the possibility of originate from non-Venetian sources, including
from Oxford. In August, 1901, Anne Moberly
waking to find three cobwebby phantom females a 2009 US show called Ghost Adventures. City
and Eleanor Jourdain had an experience at the
staring at you? Generations of clergymen have Tours offers trips around the island; it takes 10
Petit Trianon in the gardens of Versailles in
suffered poltergeist activity and the attention of minutes to get there from San Marco square.
which they believed they saw the ghost of Marie
apparitions in this neat little wooden manse – it’s www.citytoursinvenice.com
Antoinette from 1789. Belief in the supernatural
all very Bergmanesque. It has a restaurant and
is susceptible to fashion and this tale started a
you can, in fact, rent the whole house if you Winchester House, San Jose,
trend for “time-slip ghosts” that ran for several
want to. But hurry, it’s closing for the winter in California, US
decades.
a few days. The website is in Swedish.
www.en.chateauversailles.fr Speak to any American ghost-hunting
www.borgvattnet.eu
enthusiast and, sooner or later, the subject of
Glamis Castle, Scotland Winchester House comes up – and the good
Amityville, Long Island, US news is that you can tour 110 of the 160 rooms.
One of Scotland’s most seductive
Please don’t knock on the door of this It is full of dead-ends and staircases going
folkloric haunts, the turreted fortress has more
private home but, from the outside, feel free to nowhere, built under the orders of Sarah, the
historical ghosts than rooks in a rookery – nearly
gaze at the house that spawned a horror guilt-ridden widow of the son of the “Gun that
all of them connected to treachery, witchcraft
franchise and dozens of books. The story of 112 Won the West” manufacturer. It is said she was
and cruelty. Gifted to the Lyon family (latterly Ocean Avenue begins in December 1975, when
Bowes-Lyon) by Robert the Bruce, and standing terrified of the vengeful spirits created by this
the Lutz family moved into a home that had most efficient and deadly of US weapons. The
swathed in Highland mists not far from Dundee,
witnessed a horrific family massacre not long tour lasts two-and-a-half hours; look out for
Glamis has at least 20 apparitions, including a
before; by all accounts some of the furniture was repetitions of the number 13 and spider-web
phantom African pageboy seen by a young
still there. A succession of demonic events and a motifs. Not National Rifle Association
Queen Mother (it was her childhood home), a
plague of flies was the least of it. Recently, approved.
witch in the chapel, a tongueless woman
Danny Lutz was involved in a documentary www.winchestermysteryhouse.com
screaming in the park, a man playing dice with
about his experiences there as a child; the jury’s
the devil in a sealed room, spectres in chain-
very much out on this one. The Tower of London
mail, a gibbering madman on the roof and www.roadtrippers.com
numerous other Halloween-like oneiric tales. I was lucky enough to have a personal
www.glamis-castle.co.uk after-hours tour of the Tower by the man who
Aokigahara Forest, Japan wrote the most famous book on the subject of its
For corner-of-the-eye encounters, this ghosts: yeoman warder George Abbott.
Hinton Ampner, Hampshire, UK
dark and most unsavoury of locations has Recently, Historic Royal Palaces has become
This haunting is one of the greatest of
become the object of great interest for Japanese less strict about letting the public in after hours;
English ghost stories, considered by celebrated demonologists and ghost-hunters. A 3,500-
British academic and broadcaster Sir it now has limited Sunday twilight tours at 7-
hectare forest of dense woodland at the base of 8.30pm in November (nothing in December,
Christopher Frayling to be the source for Henry
mount Fuji is one of the most popular places in sadly). Expect the subjects of spooked sentries
James’s 1898 novella, The Turn of the Screw.
Japan to commit suicide. It’s not advised to stray and Anne Boleyn’s headless ghost to be raised.
Funny goings-on started following the death of
from the official paths because naturally www.hrp.org.uk/TowerOfLondon
the mistress of the house owner Lord Stawel,
occurring magnetic anomalies add both to the
known locally as an “evil liver”, in 1754. The
legend and the likelihood of getting lost. Some La Isla de las Muñecas, Mexico
story was well-known among the Anglican
say this story dates back to Seicho Matsumoto’s
church establishment and it was the Archbishop Travel by train to a place called
1960 novel, Black Sea of Trees, but superstitions
of Canterbury who told James the “true” Xochimilco in the Mexico City suburbs and then
about this uncanny place seem to predate it.
version. In the old Elizabethan house (now convince a barco (barge) punter that you need to
www.jnto.go.jp
demolished), a mother fought tooth and nail to visit the island. A disturbing array of decaying
stop the incursion of a wicked spectral dolls hang in this man-made chinampa (ancient
Poveglia Island, Venice, Italy
manservant and his paramour prowling outside farming island), apparently the work of one
In the news last year, when its 99-year individual who, legend has it, lost his mind
her children’s nursery. It’s now a National Trust
lease came up for sale, the myth of Poveglia when the body of a child washed up on his
property.
includes the story that Venetians are too
www.nationaltrust.org.uk/hinton-ampner island. Or some say it’s a kind of art installation.
superstitious to take you there. In the Venetian Because it looks creepy, rumours abound that it
lagoon and dotted with suitably ruined
Borgvattnet, Sweden is populated by ghosts, making it an unlikely
buildings, tales of plague victims and mad tourist attraction.
Ghost-hunting is sweeping Scandinavia
asylum directors are all part of the story. Most of www.isladelasmunecas.com []
as a secular form of religion, some
the rumours about its spookiness seem to
commentators say. Want to stay in a haunted