Chillingham Castle by Day
Visited 6 August 2002
Chillingham Castle is widely regarded as one of, if not the, most haunted places in the country. Dating back over 800 years this castle was built for one purpose and one purpose alone – killing. Out in the heart of Northumberland the castle was the first line of defence, preventing the Scots getting over the border to invade England back in the days of William Wallace when the castle was ruled over by King Edward I (Edward Longshanks). It has a truly amazing, yet horrific history and that’s why I decided to start my adventures here – Chillingham Castle, one of the most haunted places on Earth.
I visited the castle with my mate Andy. I have heard a lot about the castle on my local radio station, Metro Radio’s brilliant ‘Alan Robson’s Night Owls’ program: Sunday – Thursday, 10pm till 2am (you can listen to it online). Alan recently did a Chillingham week on Nightowls and he sent 4 listeners into the castle, each on a separate night and they experienced some amazing things. On the final night Alan went in alone and did the show from there and it was fascinating, you can download some audio clips and see some photos on the Metro website. When you arrive at the castle the first sight you are greeted by is the stone gateway leading onto the gravel driveway known as the Devil’s Walk. As you walk along you can see nails in the trees, these are from where witches were ‘pinned’ to trees. You can also see fragments of bones amongst the gravel.
The castle is out in the middle of nowhere, out in the countryside, so I found it unusual that when you take a deep breath you should smell what you’d usually associate with the country, grass, trees, fields and so on, but you don’t. It is a strange smell, not very pleasant, and it certainly makes you feel a bit uneasy about what lies in store when you reach the end of this path and come face to face with the castle itself.
Upon entering the castle we paid our entry fee (£4.50) and put our names down in a book to go on a night time ghost hunt when they decide to open the castle to the public after dark. The first room we decided to visit was the Dungeon leading down into the Oubliette. The Dungeon is a really small room with markings scratched into the wall where prisoners have kept count of how many days they have left to live. The prisoner would have had their arms and legs broken before being thrown 20ft or so down a hole into the Oubliette and left there to die, either from starvation or due to infection to injuries sustained. Sometimes prisoners would start to eat chunks of flesh from their own bodies in a vain attempt to prolong their life. If you look down through the grate covering the Oubliette you can see the remains of a young girl looking back up at you. These are the remains of the last person to be killed here. Many people have experienced things here, either things being seen, heard, or people actually picking up emotions from the room. To be honest I didn’t really sense or see anything although I do feel a great deal of sympathy for what that poor young girl, and hundreds before her, went through all those years ago in this very room.
Upon entering the castle we paid our entry fee (£4.50) and put our names down in a book to go on a night time ghost hunt when they decide to open the castle to the public after dark. The first room we decided to visit was the Dungeon leading down into the Oubliette. The Dungeon is a really small room with markings scratched into the wall where prisoners have kept count of how many days they have left to live. The prisoner would have had their arms and legs broken before being thrown 20ft or so down a hole into the Oubliette and left there to die, either from starvation or due to infection to injuries sustained. Sometimes prisoners would start to eat chunks of flesh from their own bodies in a vain attempt to prolong their life. If you look down through the grate covering the Oubliette you can see the remains of a young girl looking back up at you. These are the remains of the last person to be killed here. Many people have experienced things here, either things being seen, heard, or people actually picking up emotions from the room. To be honest I didn’t really sense or see anything although I do feel a great deal of sympathy for what that poor young girl, and hundreds before her, went through all those years ago in this very room.
Next up was the Torture Chamber, nearly all of the torture implements are in perfect working order and each is as sick and deranged as the next. The room is not lit at all so you have to be very careful as the floor is on a slope, this was so the blood could drain away down to one side of the room. For many thousands of Scots this will have been the last place they ever saw. The torturer here was a man called John Sage, he was a major celebrity in his day, before he was a torturer he was one of Edward Longshanks’ best men in the battlefield, he had worked his way up to the rank of Lieutenant. Sage was injured one day while at battle, his leg was wounded and Sage couldn’t fight anymore, he earned the nickname Dragfoot as he dragged his injured leg behind him. Sage begged Longshanks to keep him on in some capacity and he was given the role of castle torturer.
Sage was a brutal man, he hated the Scots and he revelled in the role, even devising some devices of his own. There is a boiling pot, gadgets for gouging eyes out, barrels full of spikes that would have had a prisoner tied in and rolled around until the flesh was ripped from the body and they died in agony, there are cages that would have been attached to a prisoners stomach and a starved rat would be put inside and the only way out for the rat was to eat his way out through the victim! Some of the things the prisoners would have endured at the hands of this man are unimaginable.Sage tortured upwards of fifty people a week for the three years he held down this job.
In this room is also a torture rack, this particular device proved to be the undoing of John Sage, for Sage had a girlfriend – Elizabeth Charlton, and one night they were having sex on the rack when Sage started to strangle Elizabeth to heighten her sexual pleasure unfortunately he took it too far and killed her. He now had a big, big problem – Elizabeth Charlton was the daughter of the leader of the Charltons, one of the Border Reivers. They were not to be messed with, of course they wanted Sage killed so they told Longshanks that if Sage wasn’t killed they would get together with the Scots and launch an assault on the castle, although this time the Scots would win because of the backing from the Border Reivers and because Longshanks was virtually penniless due to the war he had just funded against the Scots, he had no choice but to call for Sage to be hung. Sage was brought out to be hung in front of a huge crowd, he was hung from a tree along the Devil’s Walk. As he dangled by his neck – still alive- the crowd started to take their souvenirs, cutting off Sage’s toes, fingers, testicles, nose, literally hacking him to pieces as he hung, although not yet dead.
In this room is also a torture rack, this particular device proved to be the undoing of John Sage, for Sage had a girlfriend – Elizabeth Charlton, and one night they were having sex on the rack when Sage started to strangle Elizabeth to heighten her sexual pleasure unfortunately he took it too far and killed her. He now had a big, big problem – Elizabeth Charlton was the daughter of the leader of the Charltons, one of the Border Reivers. They were not to be messed with, of course they wanted Sage killed so they told Longshanks that if Sage wasn’t killed they would get together with the Scots and launch an assault on the castle, although this time the Scots would win because of the backing from the Border Reivers and because Longshanks was virtually penniless due to the war he had just funded against the Scots, he had no choice but to call for Sage to be hung. Sage was brought out to be hung in front of a huge crowd, he was hung from a tree along the Devil’s Walk. As he dangled by his neck – still alive- the crowd started to take their souvenirs, cutting off Sage’s toes, fingers, testicles, nose, literally hacking him to pieces as he hung, although not yet dead.
The ghost of John Sage is said to wander the castle and many people have said to have seen him, other claim to have heard footsteps followed by the sound of someone dragging something – John Sage dragging his leg.
We checked out the Great Hall next. The Great Hall leads into the Chapel and the Minstrels Gallery. The Great Hall is a long room with lots of artefacts of the wall. There is a life size statue of a horseman on his horse, there is a huge stuffed elephant’s head with chain mail elephant armour on, and there is also a tapestry with a skull beneath it. People have experienced lots of strange things near the tapestry, whether it be cold spots or noises being heard. From the courtyard figures are often seen passing the windows of the great hall when no one is actually in there.
We checked out the Great Hall next. The Great Hall leads into the Chapel and the Minstrels Gallery. The Great Hall is a long room with lots of artefacts of the wall. There is a life size statue of a horseman on his horse, there is a huge stuffed elephant’s head with chain mail elephant armour on, and there is also a tapestry with a skull beneath it. People have experienced lots of strange things near the tapestry, whether it be cold spots or noises being heard. From the courtyard figures are often seen passing the windows of the great hall when no one is actually in there.
The Minstrels Gallery is a balcony overlooking what is now used as the Tea Room. People have been pushed down the stairs here and, while on this balcony, people often suffer from terrible headaches and/or an awful feeling of nausea to the point where they feel like throwing themselves over the top down onto the concrete floor below. There is a story that when Tea Room was being excavated a giant toad-like creature came through a wall before taking the form of a human and then disappearing, it is said that it now haunts the castle.
The Chapel is where people would come to pray to their God before going out to kill Scots, or torture them, this is a place of total hypocrisy. On the wall are flags that would have been taken into battle, a huge sword, a spirit bell, crucifixes, paintings of the mother of Christ, Mary, there are a lot of candles in here too. The Chapel was recently excavated and relics and human bones were found under the floorboards. Cameras often refuse to work in this room and I did have this problem but I’ll go into detail about what happened later on.
The Chapel is where people would come to pray to their God before going out to kill Scots, or torture them, this is a place of total hypocrisy. On the wall are flags that would have been taken into battle, a huge sword, a spirit bell, crucifixes, paintings of the mother of Christ, Mary, there are a lot of candles in here too. The Chapel was recently excavated and relics and human bones were found under the floorboards. Cameras often refuse to work in this room and I did have this problem but I’ll go into detail about what happened later on.
The Edward Room (also know as the Killing Room) is on the top floor of the castle. All the way around the top of the room runs a balcony. In the room is a suit of armour holding a two-handed sword, on the walls hang weapons such as swords and pikes, there is a helmet, lots of cow horns and flags. Also on display is the documents that were found walled up with the Blue Boy in the Pink Room (closed to the public). The Blue Boy (also known as the Radiant Boy) found some documents to be given to the Spanish from the aristocrat who owned the castle at the time to help them defeat the English during the time of the Spanish Armada. The boy was walled up alive with the documents and his body was found in the 1920s along with some blue cloth from his clothes. The bones of his fingers were worn away from where he had been trying to scratch his way out. He is the most famous ghost to roam the castle and he also seems to be the friendliest towards the public.
When the war was coming to an end with the Scots John Sage wanted rid of the Scottish prisoners being held in the castle so he rounded up the men, women and older children took them to the courtyard and put them all onto a huge bonfire. The younger children were kept in the Edward room and could probably see their parents being burned alive, they will have heard the screams and will have been able to smell the burning flesh. Sage knew that if he released the younger children they would return when they were older to seek revenge, so he took a small axe and went to the Edward room and hacked the children, some as young as one year old, to pieces. The axe can be seen today on the stairwell.
The Edward room is one of the most active rooms in the castle and people often say they see the chandelier hanging from the ceiling swinging without it being moved. The room has a foul smell and a strange atmosphere.
The Edward room is one of the most active rooms in the castle and people often say they see the chandelier hanging from the ceiling swinging without it being moved. The room has a foul smell and a strange atmosphere.
The last port of call was the lake. The lake is very picturesque, fish can be seen jumping in the water and otters live here too. To look at the lake you’d never know that beneath the surface lie the remains of thousands of Scots killed during the war with the English, the bodies would be bundled onto a cart and then thrown into the lake. The water is rumoured to be cursed, if you put your hand into the water the souls of the dead will pull you under and you'll never surface again.
Conclusion
The castle certainly has an unusual atmosphere and a very strange and unpleasant smell, although not a musty smell at all. I didn’t hear anything unusual when walking around the castle but obviously during the day with other visitors walking about is always going to drown out any noise there may have been. I didn’t see anything either but again, it’d be difficult with people about, to focus totally on what is going on around you, picking up anything that may be there is going to require the chance to be alone, so I’m definitely going to return to the castle, hopefully at night time, either staying overnight alone or going on an arranged ghost hunt. I did have some success however, when in the Chapel I attempted to take a photo of a crucifix and when I pressed the button on my camera – nothing. My camera gives an error message if there is a problem so this was unusual, I tried again – nothing, so I pointed my camera away and tried to take a photo and it worked. When I got home and checked the photos, the one that I took in the Chapel when testing my camera was very unusual (see below).. There is a large white area of ‘energy’ in the photo and coming out of the top left of the energy is what looks like spirit. The ‘face’ is clearly visible, you can see two eyes and a mouth although it doesn’t look human (could it be the toad ghost I wrote about earlier?). Is that a figure on the right of the photo? I can also see two arms reaching upwards on the right as well as a child's face. Nothing was visible when this photo was taken.
