Jules travels - Chillingham Castle

CHILLINGHAM CASTLE


Looming out of the eerie mist, the castle seemed to elicit a chocolate atmosphere like the ghostly Marie Celeste. As I walked through the woodland of the Chillingham estate, the sandy coloured gravel crunched beneath my feet. At its entrance two lit torches framed the doorway, casting long shadows on the steps. Inside this grand entrance the stone floor and walls added an uncanny medieval element.

I turned to my right, then a short path led me into the first large room. Around the room there is a collection of large oak furniture which stood there like it had been there forever. Portraits of former ancestors looked on in interest at me below, their eyes slowly following me around the room.

An old brass telescope took centre stage in the main window, a chinsy red and blue sofa waits for a frightened sitter. The old dungeon with its narrow aperture entrance invited me in further to adventure into its depths. Once inside the chamber a strange unnatural claustrophobia came upon me.

A medieval calendar counted down the indefinite years of the sentence within. A cast iron grill beneath my feet enticed me to peer down it; down in the far reaching dark unearthly depths. a lone skeleton lay on its side on the ground. One can only imagine the misery and the abandonment as this person died alone and frightened in this creepy god forsaken castle that people call Chillingham.

Written by Jules.


Location: Chillingham, Northumberland, England.
Built: 12th century.

Ghostly manifestations: 'Radiant' blue boy, ghost of abandoned wife Lady Berkley ~ Lady Grey, the ghost in the portrait painting, the white pantry ghost, ghost in the chamber, ghosts in the courtyard, ghost of a young officer.

Ghostly anomalies: Bright glow by the fireplace, blue flashes, rustling of fabric, icy draughts, soft halo of light around the four poster bed, voices in the library .

History: Chillingham was first a 12th Century stronghold, it became a fully fortified castle in the 14th Century. The family of the Earls Grey and their relations have continuously owned and lived in the castle since the 1200s. The current owners of Chillingham are Sir Humphrey and the Honorable Lady Wakefield.

The castle was often besieged during Northumberland's bloody Border Wars due to its strategic position, and it is steeped in royal history. The most famous resident of Chillingham, however, is a nameless child.

Residents and visitors of the castle's "Pink Room" (which isn't open to the public) have reported that, just as the clock strikes midnight, horrible cries of a child in pain can be heard echoing from a passage cut through a 10-foot thick wall into the adjoining tower. Apparently as the cries fade, a halo of light appears and the figure of a boy dressed in blue begins to approach the four-poster bed. During some refurbishing a few later years, the bones of a young boy and fragments of a blue dress were discovered in the bedroom wall. Some say his clothes were like those seen in paintings dating from the Restoration period of the 1660s, when Charles II was on the throne. The "blue boy" was given a proper burial, though no one ever knew who he was. It is known that there is also a catacombe of many skeletal remains of those who had been tortured there, I wasn't lucky enough to find it on my previous visit to Chillingham.