AN UNEVENTFUL EVENING IN BRITAIN’S MOST HAUNTED VILLAGE

Emma-Louise Rhodes

Pluckley boasts to be Britain’s most haunted village, due to the huge number of ghosts that allegedly reside there. From a phantom coach and horses seen at various locations, to a dastardly highwayman, Pluckley seems to harbour a whole range of apparitions from days gone by. On paper the village is, indeed, filled with menace and devilry, yet on a calm summer’s evening it remains purely an unspoilt and archetypal Kentish province, radiating an atmosphere of peace and tranquillity.

THE ‘SCREAMING’ WOOD

Derring Wood has been renamed the Screaming Wood by locals due to the apparent ‘sudden loud anguished screams’ that ‘comes from deep within the wood and sends birds flapping out their trees’ (1.).

In June 2007, the team from Living TV’s Most Haunted visited Pluckley and investigated certain spots which were claimed to have been prone to paranormal activity. Medium David Wells told of a highwayman, Robert Du Boir, whose presence he first felt in Screaming Woods, the spot where, Wells believed, Du Boir was murdered. This, along with accounts from walkers in the wood who assert to have experienced strange sounds, undoubtedly adds to the legendary belief that Screaming Wood is not only haunted, but also an unpleasant part of the village and one to keep away from. Of course in reality it is an entirely different matter.

In the evening light, the wood is the perfect spot for dog walkers who frequent it and meet along the muddy paths to chat. Even going ‘off track’ and deeper into the wood, no sense of anything remotely sinister is felt and the only sound is that of the wind gently rustling the leaves, or a train passing by in the distance. An EMF reading at various points in and around the wood (taken every minute for ten minutes) revealed nothing and, even as darkness fell on the wood, no feeling of malice was present

Screaming Wood is a perfect example of a local fable passed down through generations which, to a handful of village residents, seems full of truth and meaning. Such stories conveyed to ghost hunters and authors of the paranormal alike, secure the wood with the impression of mystery and gloom. Haunted places seem all the more frightening if they are something that we are told about and warned against from a young age, so Derring Wood (a perfectly pleasant nature reserve) transforms itself into the Screaming Wood for the faint hearted and gullible.

In short, the only questionable presence which might lurk in the wood is that of local teenagers trying to scare passers by on Halloween (and probably only managing to frighten themselves) or an opportunistic TV psychic conjuring up images of death and destruction among the trees.

THE DERRING FAMILY AND ITS GHOSTS

St Nicholas church lies at the heart of the village and, surrounded by a large churchyard, has a small space inside called the Derring Chapel, where numerous members of the family are buried. The sound of knocking has been said to have been heard coming from the family vault, along with the vision of an unknown dog. However, just before dusk the church (and, indeed, the vault) was calm and had the distinct feeling, as is so often the case in religious buildings, of inner peace.

The churchyard outside has the dubious pleasure of being host to two more ghosts – the Red Lady and the White Lady – both members of the Derring clan. The stories surrounding both are that of tragedy and fantasy; the Red Lady’s illegitimate baby died at birth leaving its grieving mother to die shortly afterwards, while the White Lady met a young demise and was sealed up in an airtight lead coffin.

As with any graveyard, the feeling of death cannot be averted as one roams from headstone to headstone reading of the fall of young and old alike. Nevertheless, aside from this very obvious fact, the graveyard, like the church, is serene and undisturbed by anything remotely paranormal. Perhaps both the Red and White Lady felt it inappropriate to appear (due to the fact that it was summer and the Red Lady is said to appear predominantly in autumn) or the evening simply didn’t posses the gloom and/or the requisite thunder storm of the Edgar Allan Poe story that its ghosts seem party to.

OTHER PHANTOMS AND APPARITIONS

Pluckley’s ghosts range from broken hearted souls longing for Heavenly reunion to grizzly stories and gruesome descriptions of the most obvious kind. A hanged teacher has allegedly been seen swinging from the branches of a tree in a remote part of the village and a blazing body of the Watercress Lady, an old gypsy woman, is said to haunt a small stone bridge. Both apparitions have the obligatory terrible tale attached to them. The teacher was found in the 1920s by a group of his students on their way to school, the reason for his suicide unknown, whilst the woman fell asleep with her pipe in her mouth and, within moments, burst into a raging ball of flames.

A handful of Pluckley’s other ghosts are the common or garden kind who tend to appear in a number of ‘haunted’ places – a monk, a miller, a screaming man and a colonel. In light of that, the village pub is, of course, also haunted.

The Black Horse Inn is reputed to have a girl who appears in the fireplace, an unseen hand that lifts cutlery from the dresser and a cold spot in the kitchen. Landlords have complained of glasses on the shelf above the bar moving and dogs barking at something only they can see.

The pub also featured in the Most Haunted programme and a séance was held in the attic. This yielded the ‘fact’ that the aforementioned Robert Du Boir had, in fact, been killed by ‘Gentle’ John Michaels, who later hung himself in an unknown outbuilding. This in itself was something that was new to Pluckley’s haunted history yet which will now doubtlessly be recorded in writings of the village’s ghosts.

The Black Horse is actually a very comfortable English pub which is adorned with artefacts purporting to hop picking, along with photographs of Pluckley’s other claim to fame – The Darling Buds of May. In spite of all that has been written and summoned up, both the fireplace and shelves above the bar failed to generate anything remotely ghostly. On leaving the pub, another stroll around the graveyard in the summer darkness surrendered nothing distantly eerie and so the visit was brought to an unfulfilling yet completely obvious finish.

ROMANTICISM AND REALITY

The beauty of the ghosts of Pluckley is that generally no one actually makes money from them and the village remains just as well known and occasionally visited for The Darling Buds of May as for its apparitions. There are no guidebooks being sold crammed full of ghostly references, no locals tours (although national companies sometimes arrange ghost walks and vigils around the village) and no signposts pointing towards paranormal areas of interest. In fact, if it wasn’t referenced elsewhere as being the village with the most hauntings, Pluckley would seem amazingly placid and positively unghostly.

The only real suggestion of ghosts commercially is at Elvey Farm, a converted hotel, where the website boasts a page on the Most Haunted visit and offers brief outlines of its ghosts. The hotel, which was featured in some depth on the programme, saw a séance conducted where alleged demonic forces were contacted and the Ouija board spelt out words such as ‘DEVIL’, ‘SATAN’ and ‘DEMONS’. On the basis that Elvey Farm also claims to be the perfect spot for wedding ceremonies and receptions, it is not surprising that this particular part of the TV crew’s visit is not mentioned on the site and instead it tempts eager ghost hunters by stating that they too can ‘stay in the same room as Yvette Fielding’.

Of course it might be argued that one could not expect the ghosts to perform during a single evening’s investigation and that the ‘things that go bump in the night’ need careful coaxing in order to produce any signs from the other side. That said, the spirits who were so eager to appear on Living TV are obviously rather shrewd (not unlike the mediums they associate with) and can distinguish a solitary researcher from a TV camera crew promising them nationwide coverage.

Regardless of the Most Haunted ‘special’, the many ghosts of Pluckley, although fictitious, are entirely harmless entities which, luckily for them, have yet to be fully exploited. Maybe due to the fact that the village is discreetly tucked away amongst the oasthouses of rural Kent, its ghosts remain practically undisturbed and - although the object of nationwide curiosity - in essence the stuff of local legend.

REFERENCES

(1.) www.london-walks.co.uk