Cooks Wood
Visited 31 October 2005
For centuries people have believed that on the night of All Hallows Eve the deceased return to Earth and roam unnoticed amongst us. That makes Hallowe’en the perfect night to carry out an investigation at a location not very well known but with an amazing story and a history of strange happenings – Cooks Wood in Washington.
In the 1700s there used to be a huge house in a place that is now a wooded area called Cooks Wood in Washington. It belonged to John Taylor, a solider who fought for British interests in America. Over 6000 soldiers, including John, were captured at Saratoga in October 1777. Despite being well treated while imprisoned, he caught a severe fever and died.
On receiving the news, several months later, some of the family members tried to claim the house as theirs. Taylor wasn’t married but he was engaged to a local farmer’s daughter, Elizabeth Gill. Although she was living in his house, Dorothea and Marjorie Taylor, John Taylor’s sisters, has decided that they would share the house between them once they’d managed to get Elizabeth Gill to leave.
Elizabeth Gill was devastated at losing her true love, who she hoped to spend the rest of her life with, living in their home which she had just been stripped of. As Elizabeth was gathering her belongings together to leave the house for the final time, she was in an upstairs bedroom when Dorothea shouted across to her that she couldn’t believe that her brother could have fallen in love with a common peasant like her. Elizabeth snapped, she ran at Dorothea and punched her square in the face knocking her flying to the ground. Marjorie appeared and threw Elizabeth up against a door and screamed obscenities in her face. Elizabeth, unfazed, rammed her knee into Marjorie’s stomach and then punched her in the back of her head. Elizabeth stood before the battered sisters, smiled at them, then said “You want me to leave this place? This place that should be my home, yet I’ll be here a thousand years after you’ve left”. With this she turned towards the staircase and threw herself down, the sisters looked on in disbelief as Elizabeth laughed out loud as she fell to her certain death. The laughter ended suddenly as Elizabeth impaled herself on the banister fifty foot below.
The sister’s brought in the authorities but everyone knew how much the sisters wanted the house for themselves, and with Dorothea sporting a black eye and Marjorie with her split lip, so it was presumed they had thrown Elizabeth to her death after a struggle. However, nothing could be proven. Life returned to normal and the sister’s lived happily in the house, up until the first anniversary of Elizabeth’s death. Dorothea was downstairs when she heard a laugh coming from upstairs, but there was no one upstairs. She slowly climbed the stairs and as she neared the top she saw Elizabeth Gill, wearing a long red gown, walk towards her. Dorothea was dumbstruck and rubbed her eyes, when she looked again she saw the figure, which looked solid, walk into a bedroom. Dorothea ran from the house to find her sister, the pair of them returned and cautiously entered the bedroom. At the opposite side of the room was Elizabeth staring directly at them, she glided across the floor towards them both, as she neared they could see that her skin was almost see through, they could see her cracked skull plainly and her hollow eye sockets chilled them to the bone. “I told you this is my house, get ye gone now”. As she got closer the two sisters both had the same idea and turned to run out of the room and crashed into each other. They got back up and ran out, Marjorie stood on the hem of her own dress and tumbled forwards into Dorothea and into the balcony rail. The sheer weight sent the pair crashing through the rail, Marjorie screaming as she fell to the same fate that met Elizabeth just one year previous. Dorothea had managed to cling onto the broken rail dangling in the air, over her sister’s lifeless corpse. Elizabeth left the bedroom and walked towards the terrified sister, “What are you waiting for?” asked the phantom. “I’m waiting for you in hell!” Dorothea’s face turned white and she seemed to lose the will to hang on as one by one her fingers gave up on her grip, she fell in silence and died instantly as she landed atop of her sister’s broken body.
No one ever lived in the house again and it was demolished in the early 1800s. Cooks Wood, the area that the house once stood in, is still haunted to this day by the ghost of the lady in red.
The sightings of strange red lights are common in the area, and it has been reported that a full apparition of the lady in red has been seen on many occasions, she seems to be laughing but no noise is heard.
On receiving the news, several months later, some of the family members tried to claim the house as theirs. Taylor wasn’t married but he was engaged to a local farmer’s daughter, Elizabeth Gill. Although she was living in his house, Dorothea and Marjorie Taylor, John Taylor’s sisters, has decided that they would share the house between them once they’d managed to get Elizabeth Gill to leave.
Elizabeth Gill was devastated at losing her true love, who she hoped to spend the rest of her life with, living in their home which she had just been stripped of. As Elizabeth was gathering her belongings together to leave the house for the final time, she was in an upstairs bedroom when Dorothea shouted across to her that she couldn’t believe that her brother could have fallen in love with a common peasant like her. Elizabeth snapped, she ran at Dorothea and punched her square in the face knocking her flying to the ground. Marjorie appeared and threw Elizabeth up against a door and screamed obscenities in her face. Elizabeth, unfazed, rammed her knee into Marjorie’s stomach and then punched her in the back of her head. Elizabeth stood before the battered sisters, smiled at them, then said “You want me to leave this place? This place that should be my home, yet I’ll be here a thousand years after you’ve left”. With this she turned towards the staircase and threw herself down, the sisters looked on in disbelief as Elizabeth laughed out loud as she fell to her certain death. The laughter ended suddenly as Elizabeth impaled herself on the banister fifty foot below.
The sister’s brought in the authorities but everyone knew how much the sisters wanted the house for themselves, and with Dorothea sporting a black eye and Marjorie with her split lip, so it was presumed they had thrown Elizabeth to her death after a struggle. However, nothing could be proven. Life returned to normal and the sister’s lived happily in the house, up until the first anniversary of Elizabeth’s death. Dorothea was downstairs when she heard a laugh coming from upstairs, but there was no one upstairs. She slowly climbed the stairs and as she neared the top she saw Elizabeth Gill, wearing a long red gown, walk towards her. Dorothea was dumbstruck and rubbed her eyes, when she looked again she saw the figure, which looked solid, walk into a bedroom. Dorothea ran from the house to find her sister, the pair of them returned and cautiously entered the bedroom. At the opposite side of the room was Elizabeth staring directly at them, she glided across the floor towards them both, as she neared they could see that her skin was almost see through, they could see her cracked skull plainly and her hollow eye sockets chilled them to the bone. “I told you this is my house, get ye gone now”. As she got closer the two sisters both had the same idea and turned to run out of the room and crashed into each other. They got back up and ran out, Marjorie stood on the hem of her own dress and tumbled forwards into Dorothea and into the balcony rail. The sheer weight sent the pair crashing through the rail, Marjorie screaming as she fell to the same fate that met Elizabeth just one year previous. Dorothea had managed to cling onto the broken rail dangling in the air, over her sister’s lifeless corpse. Elizabeth left the bedroom and walked towards the terrified sister, “What are you waiting for?” asked the phantom. “I’m waiting for you in hell!” Dorothea’s face turned white and she seemed to lose the will to hang on as one by one her fingers gave up on her grip, she fell in silence and died instantly as she landed atop of her sister’s broken body.
No one ever lived in the house again and it was demolished in the early 1800s. Cooks Wood, the area that the house once stood in, is still haunted to this day by the ghost of the lady in red.
The sightings of strange red lights are common in the area, and it has been reported that a full apparition of the lady in red has been seen on many occasions, she seems to be laughing but no noise is heard.
I was joined tonight by Jo Barclay, a newcomer to the world of ‘ghost hunting’. We arrived at Cooks Wood at around 9pm after a quick five minute drive from my flat not far away in Washington. We parked the car in an estate opposite the wood and made our way over the road to the dark woods. It was very dark and Jo hadn’t brought a torch so I gallantly gave up mine and wandered blindly into the darkness. The wood itself isn’t very big, when you enter from the road you have maybe 100 metres of wood in front of you until it’s broken up by a pathway and a subway, then the wood continues. The night was quite mild and upon entering the wood I didn’t feel fearful, I didn’t feel anything, it just felt like a creepy forest in the dark, I’ve been in this situation before and I wasn’t scared, Jo however hadn’t been in this situation before and followed close behind.
I fired off lots of shots with my digital camera in the hope of catching something unusual, and below is a photo I took which looks to have two strange red dots to the right of the picture, it would be pure speculation to say they could be the glowing eyes of some demonic beast– so I won’t, but I don’t know what they could be.
I fired off lots of shots with my digital camera in the hope of catching something unusual, and below is a photo I took which looks to have two strange red dots to the right of the picture, it would be pure speculation to say they could be the glowing eyes of some demonic beast– so I won’t, but I don’t know what they could be.
The wood was very quiet, very quiet. Normally you’d expect to hear animal noises, but we heard nothing. We wandered through the forest without anything happening out of the ordinary, until something I never expected happened, something I’d never experienced before and hope to never experience again. I fell in a swamp. Well I don’t know if it was definitely a swamp but it was a bog or something of that nature, and it wasn’t water all over my clothes it was black, sludgy ‘stuff’. I soldiered on with shoes full of swamp water and my combat trousers stuck to my legs. We reached the subway and after an hour or so in Cooks Wood we hadn’t experienced anything out of the ordinary. Writing this report I do have a nagging feeling that I should definitely return to Cooks Wood as I’m sure it does have more to offer.
We headed back to the car after a fairly disappointing evening, I had to take off my swampy trousers, socks and shoes and wrapped a lovely tartan blanket around myself as Jo drove back to my flat. Then when I got back to my flat I had to walk up to my flat with a blanket around me and my bare feet covered in black gunk. I’d hoped that with it being quite late no one would be about but unfortunately a lady walked past me on the stairs and the best I could muster was “evening” as I tried to act normally, as soon as she was past me though both Jo and her burst out laughing. This wasn’t what I had hoped for when I left for Cooks Wood a couple of short hours earlier.
Conclusion
I had high hopes for Cooks Wood, but unfortunately neither of us experienced anything unusual during our time there. It looks foreboding from the roadside but once we were inside it felt fine, no oppressive atmosphere, or feelings of being watched or followed that usually accompany my ‘adventures’ into the unknown. The photo I took is unusual and I can’t think of what it could be.
