Most Haunted: The South of England

Among the most intriguing things I learnt, as it was repeated many times over, was that there were more ghosts per square mile in England than in any other country in the world. But why should this be the case? – Roger Clarke, A Natural History of Ghosts

Pluckley and My Parents

Pluckley in Kent is the most haunted village in England.

The nearby Dering Wood is even known as the screaming woods.

Pluckley was also the prime weekend destination in the 1970s for two teenagers on the hunt for ghosts:

My parents.

At sundown, they’d escape the bright buzz of Portobello Road, back when it was packed full of pubs, their patrons spilling out onto the street, the hot tang of the chippies not quite masking the stench from the public loos.

All to spend an evening in the dark and the quiet, where stars can actually be seen and only the screech of a fox or an owl can shatter the peace, in the hope of seeing at least one of the spooks in their spotter’s guide.

Except...

They saw nothing.

No luck.

Not a peep.

Not a monk or highwayman to be seen.

Spectral safari unaccomplished.

So they went again.

And saw nothing.

So they went again…

You get the drift.

But, of course, in that teenage way, when you just have a bit too much time on your hands and you’re in love, it never seemed like a wasted journey.

And on yet another Saturday night, when other young couples were going to the pictures or the Wimpy bar, my parents went to Pluckley for the umpteenth time, driving through the village to get to the real haunts, down unlit roads, around the corner to the churchyard –

And that was when the car went kaputt.

Outside the churchyard.

Outside one of the most haunted spots in the most haunted village in the entire United Kingdom.

And no.

The car would not start.

Luckily, my late father was a very technically minded man and said he’d look under the bonnet, so if my mother could just sit tight –

My mother did not sit tight.

With the awareness of a horror film final girl in horror films, she stuck to my father as he fiddled with various wires because they had broken down on an unlit road in a haunted village in, quite frankly, the middle of nowhere in those days.

Anyway, they got the car going again.

And they kept on driving, all the way back to London.

You’d think that would’ve been the last of it, but they went back.

Again.

On several occasions.

They even took my father’s mother, a woman who had, to put it lightly, a history of seeing ghosts and experiencing weird stuff.

As it was her first time in Pluckley, my parents acted as hosts, almost, dutifully visiting all the usual haunts, looking out for the iconic phantoms: the monk, the highwayman, the miller, the Red Lady, the White Lady…

Nothing.

Mildly disappointed (or relieved?), they returned to London, to that buzz and that stench, and as my nan got out of the car, my parents, naturally, asked if she had a nice time and said that it was a shame they hadn’t seen any ghosts.

Except they had seen a ghost, or at least, according to my nan.

As they’d been driving out of Pluckley, she’d been looking out of the windows…

And seen a ghost.

The miller’s ghost, covered in flour.

And my nan had assumed, despite being the only person in the car with a clear track record of seeing spooky shit, that everyone had seen it.

My parents did visit Pluckley again after that.

They didn’t take Nan.

But either way, this is a haunted region in a haunted land.

So here are my personal five favourite hauntings in the South and East of England.

Now That’s What I Call Haunted!

1. Blue Bell Hill

Blue Bell Hill in Kent is the main road connecting Medway and Maidstone. It’s also the site of both Neolithic and Roman remains, which could ring alarm bells to anyone who’s ever watched Poltergeist, Pet Semetary or The Amityville Horror.

There have been spooky sightings dating back to at least the 1930s, but the main haunting seems to be a female hitch-hiker, who started to be seen a few years after a horrific car crash in the 1960s.

2. Borley Rectory

The long-since-demolished Borley Rectory in Essex was a mainstay in all of the ghost encyclopaedias I read as a child. Interestingly, the hauntings started in the 19th Century with the Bull family, but the Rectory only became well-known in the 1920s when psychical investigator Harry Price got involved.

Honestly, the Rectory’s a controversial one: while two separate families (the Bulls and later the Smiths) independently experienced spectral sights and sounds, Price’s findings were heavily disputed.

3. Canterbury Cathedral

As a cathedral city with a long history, Canterbury is haunted full stop, but of course, I have to mention the Cathedral itself.

It’s supposedly haunted by a couple of ghosts, but the most famous is Thomas Becket, the archbishop who was famously/accidentally/brutally murdered by Henry II’s knights after they’d overheard the King having a vent and took it a bit too literally.

A photo from 1910 apparently captures Becket’s ghost in front of a cathedral pillar, but…

Well, you can be the judge of that.

4. Chislehurst Caves

The caves, which are actually man-made mines, are probably best known for being used as a shelter during World War II, being in Bromley (i.e. that awkward borderland between Kent and London).

I believe this was when reported ghostly occurrences picked up, as the caves were actually being occupied by a substantial number of people a decent amount of the time – especially at night. There’s a lot of poltergeist activity and, as always, a White Lady, whose (possibly) bones were discovered in the 1940s.

Fun fact: my mother is still convinced that on our visit, a poltergeist pickpocketed her necklace, which she insists had a notably strong clasp.

5. The Tower of London

Okay, it’s an obvious choice, but the ghosts in the Tower reportedly include the Lost Princes, Guy Fawkes, and Anne Boleyn. It’s a location that’s inextricably entwined with the mediaeval and early modern history of England, those huge, country-changing events immortalised in Shakespeare and taught again and again in schools.

We’re talking: screaming in the dungeons, headless figures, and a bear. Add to that the paranoia about ravens abandoning the Tower and it’s clear to see why the place is so iconic (if a bit expensive to actually enter).

Coldharbour

My novel series Coldharbour takes inspiration from many places, but these ghost stories I’ve grown up on are a huge influence. In the series, Coldharbour is a coastal district in Essex and it’s incredibly haunted, which of course means there’s plenty of potential for the Wilde family to get into all sorts of spooky trouble. Here’s how I describe Coldharbour in the first book (to be released early 2026):

Coldharbour was a strange place, really: the name referred to the seaside town, the Victorian part where Alex was being all insistent at that moment, but also the area in general, which included Crossgate, with its Roman ruins under Christianised cobbles, and Northmere, a tiny mediaeval village that was more marshland than civilisation and had more than one story about the Devil himself visiting in the middle of the night and strolling away with a sackful of lost souls. But either way, it wasn’t exactly a prime destination for anything anymore; all that New Labour money was passing it by, that much Alex could see.

Coldharbour wasn’t getting a Millennium Dome any time soon.

Will there be a White Lady visiting Coldharbour…?