Friday 12 September 2008

Focus On: Pluckley

Another Kentish haunting here, although on a far grander scale. According to the 1998 Guinness Book of Records, Pluckley is the most haunted village in "England" (does anyone in America know England is not a country???). It's also home to my grandfathers estate and is somewhere I know fairly well. Sadly I've never experienced anything spooky there but... plenty have... supposedly.....

Pluckley's village website has several bits and pieces on the many hauntings in the village. Unfortunately I believe all this talk of ghosts in the village is a scam.

The phantom coach and horses seems a bit fishy to me. Not only did most people not get a good look at it, but there are actual horse drawn vehicles in the area and people have admitted to pranks.

And as you read through a bit more of the information on all the other hauntings you find that a lot of the stories appear to be fabrications based on nothing more than pure greed in an attempt to get gullible tourists to come visit this small village. Renaming areas to be scarier like the "The Screaming Woods". Hmm...

I think this website says it best in this paragraph:

Pluckley's ghosts first appeared in print in 1955 when Frederick Sanders wrote "Pluckley Was My Playground", where the Gypsy woman and Highwayman were mentioned. The phantom highwayman is certainly a common motif of sorts and the Gypsy woman may have been an old established story. However, Desmond Carrington who once lived in Pluckley has admitted to "concocting a whole string of them" for an article featured in the TV times written by journalist Bill Evans in the 1950's, so perhaps Pluckley's reputation is not deserved. Of all of the ghosts, there has only been a recent (within ten years) witness for the phantom coach and little evidence to support any of the others, though the monk may have been seen sometime in the last thirty years.

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