A haunted bedroom in Oliver Cromwell’s house and streets lined with ghostly footsteps: Britain’s top 10 most haunted towns revealed
Ely in Cambridgeshire is Britain’s most haunted city – based on analysis of more than 67 million newspaper pages.
Family history website Findmypast analyzed the extensive archive to reveal which of 76 British cities had the most ghost stories to tell.
Researchers studied newspaper archives published between 1710 and 2021 to discover which city received the most mentions in articles about ghosts. The figures were then adjusted for population size, using an average historical figure to reflect changes over time.
Top-ranked Ely had nine mentions of ghosts in newspapers per 100 residents. The eerie Cambridgeshire location was just ahead of other cathedral cities making up the top five: Durham (second), Salisbury (third), York (fourth) and Oxford (fifth).
Ely in Cambridgeshire has been named Britain’s most haunted city, according to an analysis of more than 67 million newspapers by Findmypast
Researchers studied newspaper archives published between 1710 and 2021 to discover which city had the most mentions in articles about ghosts. It showed that Durham came in second place with seven mentions per 100 residents
The medieval cathedral city of Salisbury had six mentions of ghosts per 100 inhabitants. Researchers revealed written reports of ghostly occurrences dating back to 1861
According to the analysis, the cathedral city of York came in fourth, with six mentions of ghosts per 100 residents
In sixth place is Lincoln with five ghost reports, followed by Armagh (seventh) and Cambridge (eighth), with four reports each. Meanwhile, Canterbury (ninth) and Derby (tenth) each had three entries per 100 residents.
Research in the archives revealed a series of eerie stories from the past 300 years that explain why Ely came first.
First there’s the haunted bedroom in Oliver Cromwell’s Houseas reported by the Lynn Advertiser in 1997.
Oliver Cromwell and his family moved to Ely in 1636 and lived for ten years in a 13th-century house near Ely Cathedral. Cromwell inherited the property during his time and was Member of Parliament for nearby Cambridge, well before the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642.
This 13th century Ely house was occupied by Oliver Cromwell between 1636 and 1646. The bedroom is said to be haunted
The house has now become a popular tourist attraction and the bedroom is said to be haunted – some say it is the ghost of Oliver Cromwell himself. According to reports, visitors saw orbs and ghostly figures on the estate.
The following is a story reported in 1866 by the Cambridge Independent Press creepy story about the ghost of Jeremiah ‘Jerry’ Newell.
It is believed that Jerry died after ‘sleeping on a damp manure pile’ after becoming heavily intoxicated. After his death, the residents of Ely claimed to have seen Jerry’s ghost at a place called Potter’s Lane, where he used to live. An elderly lady was the first resident to encounter Jerry’s ghost, and an 1866 newspaper article says she was “frightened out of her mind.”
Newspaper accounts of ghostly occurrences in Ely (above) date back as far as the 19th century
Neighbors stood watch the next night and his ghost appeared again, causing one of the witnesses to faint. After the sightings, several Potter’s Lane residents even considered leaving the area.
Interesting stories for the rest of the top three
The famous castle in second-placed Durham is said to be haunted by the Gray lady – apparently the wife of a 19th century Bishop of Durham – who fell to her death from the highest heights.
Meanwhile, in 1861 the Wiltshire County Mirror reported a story apparently going all the way back to 1669 about a Salisbury doctor and his wife who haunted by apparitionswhile ‘in the room above them great noises were made over their heads’.
The analysis also found terrifying stories from Durham, which is said to be haunted by the Gray Lady, the wife of a 19th century Bishop of Durham who is said to have fallen to her death.
Jen Baldwin, research specialist at Findmypast, said: ‘From Dickens to The Woman in Black, people in Britain have clearly been fascinated by ghost stories for centuries.
‘Whether Ely is truly a hotbed of paranormal activity or has more of a spooky story than most, it remains fascinating to see the forms in which this subject appeared in the newspapers both then and now.
This Hallowe’en makes it easier than ever to discover scary stories from your hometown, thanks to the 70 million historical pages available to search online Findmypast – who knows, you might even find out that one of your own ancestors was involved in a spooky local event there in black and white.’