A paranormal expert has shared details of England’s ‘most haunted house’ which is said to have ghostly monks and a woman in black stalking its walls.
Chicksands Priory, in Bedfordshire, dates all the way back to the 12th Century when it was set up as a Gilbertine Order monastic house and was home to nuns and monks.
Over the years it had various uses, including being home to a US Air Force base between 1950 and 1995, and now sits within the perimeters of the Ministry of Defence Chicksands.
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Sightings at the creepy estate include monks, a woman in black, a woman in white, a ‘tall man’, ghostly children and a 'naughty nun', according to one report from the 1980s.
Paranormal historian Damien O’Dell says that the secretive and spooky house is one of the most haunted spots in the UK and has numerous ghosts that have been seen over the years.
He spent two nights doing an investigation at the priory in 2005 where three of his team reported seeing a long-dead monk.
Damien told LADbible: “Without doubt it is the most haunted house in England - by any definition.
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“What surprises me is that it’s not well known - because there’s been so much recorded, so much activity, by really first-rate witnesses.”
Opening up about what sort of apparitions people have reported, Damien says there’s been ‘many, many different things’ seen over the years.
“Monks have been sighted; they were seen three times during my two-night investigation,” he said. “There is a tall man in old-fashioned clothes. One woman said she saw a lady in black and a servant who used to work there saw a lady in white. There have been many, many different sightings of different things.
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“The building is getting on for a thousand years old - so there’s ghosts from every single era, too, which is what makes it particularly interesting.”
Damien says that reports are still coming in about ghostly sightings at the house, including plenty from American servicemen who were based at Chicksands.
He said: “One of the most amazing things I’ve heard was a spirit possession of one man.
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“It pushed his friend off the bridge into the river - luckily he wasn’t badly hurt - but afterwards, the man said his friend seemed to be taken over by something and he really wasn’t with it.”
Others have said their sleep was disturbed while at the house, with claims that something would attempt to pull them from their beds by the ankles.
During his two-night stake out at the spooky gaff, while his team had three sightings of the ghostly monk, Damien himself didn’t see anything but did hear a ‘distinctive scraping sound, like a shoe scraping along the floor’ when he was downstairs by himself.
After investigating he found that a sandbox the team had filled with stone to allow spirits to interact with ghost hunters had been moved around, with all the stones now on one side.
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The team also heard coughing and other strange sounds, as well as cold spots and door jambs that had been pushed aside despite none of the team touching them.
Damien spent ten-years researching Chicksand Priory gathering together reports and evidence for his book Chicksands Priory, England's Most Haunted House?
But since the publication of his book, the reports have continued to come in, so much so that Damien is now working on a second edition.
You can find out more about Damien’s work - and order a copy of his book - here.
Claire Reid