Urban Exploration & The Curse of Chillingham Castle

  After a few minutes of nervous driving, crossing my fingers we wouldn't meet a bus coming in the opposite direction (we didn’t), we reached a brown tourist sign that pointed us down an even narrower road. Nothing would be able to pass us on this one. We drove through an open gate with small towers on both sides in to the castle grounds, and were directed to a clearing in the woods to park our car. At the least, that was free unlike many of the places we’ve been to.

  We walked towards the castle, down a tree lined avenue, signposted as the 'Devil's Walk'.

  "You know," said Suze. "I recognise this place. It's been on TV."

  "You and your ghosts," I replied.

  "No really, it was on TV. Think it was on Scariest Places on Earth, you know, the one that Linda Blair hosts. It's supposed to be really spooky." She tried unsuccessfully to swat a wasp away that seemed to be following us.

  "That's all made up," I replied, nevertheless failing to stop a shiver going down my spine.

  "I remember this walk from the show", she continued. "It was the middle of the night, pitch black, but for lit braziers. The family that were going to spend the night in the castle were walking down this road, terrified before they even got to the castle."

  We came out of the shady avenue, back in to welcome sunlight. The castle, we later found out, is still lived in, unlike many other castles in England. We passed by cannons on the lawn, and a huge dirty brown door that looked as though it hadn't been opened in decades.

  The castle building itself was very impressive. Three floors high, with towers at each corner. A weather vane shaped like a bat on the roof. With its rough stone exterior, the place looked oppressive even on a summer's afternoon. It looked like it had history, and as we were to soon find out, it certainly did. One half of the rusty, ancient stained metal front door stood open.

  Climbing the steps, we moved toward the door, then through it. I knocked on it as I went past, succeeding in creating a satisfying bang and bruising my knuckle at the same time. Inside, it felt as though we had moved back centuries in time instead of only a few metres. Only the pay kiosk spoiled the atmosphere.

  To the left, there was a small room leading to one of the dungeons, called the Oubliette. You can look directly down and see the small prison cell below, the only way in or out being the trapdoor in the roof I was looking through. At night it would be pitch black. I took a photograph looking down, remembering to switch on the flash. For a few hundredths of a second, as the dungeon was lit up, I could see bones at the bottom. Chicken bones, I hope, but you never know. A sign says that they are reputed to be the bones of the last victim of the castle, supposedly a young girl who was thrown down there and left for three days and starved to death.

  We emerged into a central courtyard, surrounded on all four sides by the cold, tall stone walls of the castle. No sunlight beat down on us in here. We grabbed a bite to eat from the café and then started exploring.

  ***

  Just over the other side of the courtyard was one of the staples of a medieval castle, the torture chamber. Inside, it was a dingy room, dark even in the height of summer, packed with evil looking metal devices. An old lady, a guide, was stood in the corner. She was just finishing telling a family about the contents of the chamber, so Suze angled over to talk to her. I followed.

  "It's a bit spooky in here with all this stuff," Suze said to the guide.

  "It is indeed," the lady answered. "I never like being in here, but all of the guides here at Chillingham have to know everything about all of the different rooms in the castle and their history. Would you like me to tell you about what used to go on in here?"

  "Go on," Suze said, glancing around. "There's some pretty evil looking stuff."

  "I don't know how much you know about the history of medieval England, but it was a very violent place indeed."

  Looking around at some of the devices, I could well believe that.

  "Are these things real?" I asked her.

  "Of course they are," she replied back, nodding. "Much of it dates all the way back to the most famous torturer in Chillingham's black past, a man called John Sage. During the thirteenth century, if you had come in here, not that you would have wanted to, you would have seen maybe fifty or sixty prisoners. Mainly Scottish. You can see," she said pointing towards a metal cage hanging from the ceiling, "one of the most famous devices from this time."

  I looked over to where she was pointing. A tiny metal cage, looking hardly big enough to keep a parrot in. Definitely not big enough to swing a cat in.

  "People were locked into this tiny metal cage, and a fire would be lit below. Sage would use bellows until the fire was well alight, roaring away, hot as he could make it. The prisoner would be naked, slowly cooking. Look, you can see the manacles on the wall where people used to be hung, upside down, and left, starving to death."

  "Sounds like a thoroughly nice chap," I joked.

  "Don't joke," she admonished me. "See over there, a bed of nails. Sage lived to cause pain and death. He boiled people alive. He gouged their eyes out. This barrel," she said looking left and indicating," is covered with spikes on the inside. He would roll his victim around until the flesh literally fell from their bodies in chunks. They were begging him to kill them, and he was only too happy to oblige."

  "That's awful," Suze said, her face pale. "And all of these are real."

  "Every one of them. No reproductions here. Yes, Chillingham has a long and bloody past."

  "What's the worst?" I asked the guide, checking out a cute brunette in a short black skirt as she came into the room with a skinny boyfriend.

  "Oh, there's no doubt about that," she replied. "Has to be the rat trap."

  "The rat trap?" Suze asked. "Do I really want to know about this?" Thoughts of what it may be going through her mind.

  "Well, what Sage did was first get a live rat. There were always plenty around here, gnawing away on the dead and almost dead bodies. He would catch the rat, that took some skill, and put it into a barrel. The inside of the barrel was strong, reinforced, but for a small section. He would string up his victim and attach the barrel to their stomach. The only way out for the rat, desperate to escape, was for it to break through the barrel, the soft part, straight into the stomach of the prisoner, and eat its way out, through the barrel, through the prisoner."

  "That's just, I, er, I can't find the words," Susie said. "Wish we hadn't just had lunch."

  "If you want, you can touch the devices, such as the rack we have over here." Looking at the rack, if you asked me to describe it in one word, I would say 'evil'. If you asked me to describe it in two words, I would say 'really evil'.

  "No thanks," we replied in unison.

  "There's more," she said. "Would you like to hear how Sage met his end. As you might expect, it was brutal."

  "Go on then, I’m all ears."

  "Picture the scene. It's the thirteenth century, twenty or so prisoners are in here dying, wounded. A quiet day. Sage had a girlfriend, Elizabeth Charlton she was called, and they were here in this very room. As I told you, John was a violent man in everything he did. He had got in to the habit of tying Elizabeth to the rack over there when he was making love to her, that very rack, and half strangling her. One night, he went too far and couldn't stop himself. He had his hands around her throat, gripping on tightly as he did his stuff with her. She died on the rack. It took him over ten minutes to notice."

  "Dear God. That's just disgusting," Suze said. "I hope he was punished."

  "Life was cheap in those days, but you’ll be glad to hear he was. See, Elizabeth's father was one of the Border Reivers who were active at this time. They were basically gangs from the borders who would raid both the English and Scottish unless you paid them not to do so. They mainly attacked the English though. The Reivers contacted King Edward, who was on the throne of England at that time, and they demanded that Sage be put to death. Sage used to be a soldier for Edward before being injured and turning into the executioner here
, you see. They threatened to team up with the Scots and attack and destroy Chillingham Castle before moving further south, rampaging through the countryside. They demanded that Sage free all of his Scottish prisoners. Edward did indeed order Sage to do this, but Sage didn’t do it straight away. Oh no! Instead he went on a rampage of his own, killing every Scot around and outside of the castle grounds that he could find. He rounded up men, women and children alike and took them to the central courtyard, just behind you there. Most of the Scots ended up in a huge bonfire. It burnt for days."

  I looked back, seeing a family with two young children dressed as knights running around the courtyard. The brunette was still in the chamber, bending over, examining a metal suit in the shape of a body that prisoners used to be locked in. She was giving me a nice look at her firm, tight backside without realising she was doing so. Suze spotted what I was looking at and gave me a dig in the ribs.

  "It's hard to imagine, I know, but there's more,” the old lady continued. "He had a special fate for the younger children. They were too much of an opportunity for him to simply burn. He led them up to the Edward I room, high in the castle and imprisoned them there. You can go in to this room later. When you're up there, look down, you'll see there is a fantastic view into the central courtyard. The children were locked in there, able to see their mothers, fathers, older brothers and sisters burn. They could see the sheer terror on their faces. They could hear their screams. They could smell their burning flesh. It must have driven them mad."

  "Sage was not finished with them yet though. Once the carnage outside was over, he marched up to the room with his axe. He did not stop for one hour until every child was dead. Dismembered. He didn't want them to grow up and return for revenge. He needn't have worried about that. He hacked them all to pieces. Every one of them. Some of them were babies, as young as one. By the way, don’t have children yourself do you?"

  Suze gasped. "No, we don’t. And this is all true? It's just hideous."

  "Oh, absolutely true. Every word. And as you would expect, the axe is still up there today. It is displayed just outside the Edward I room. Have a look on your way up. There's still more though. Sage still wasn't finished. The day he was supposed to release his prisoners came. There were over one hundred captives. Poor souls. So as not to disobey his King, Sage did indeed release the prisoners from the torture chamber. But they didn't get far. The path leading out of the castle is called The Devil's Walk. You walked up it on your way here. Never has a name been more appropriate. The prisoners left the torture chamber, some of them seeing the sun for the first time in weeks, and walked or crawled down the Devil's Walk. Not a single one of them, man, woman or child made it all the way down the path. They were slaughtered, their bodies left to rot where they were hacked down. Every now and then, even to this day, bones are still seen creeping up through the surface."

  I shuddered. Surely this can't be true. The brunette's boyfriend looked over and saw my wandering eyes. Scowled at me.

  "Sage was eventually hung in public along the Devil's Walk, in front of a large crowd. As was common at public hangings at the time, the gathered crowd cut off souvenirs, keepsakes from Sage's body, his toes, fingers and nose and so on, all while he was still alive apparently. It is not known how long Sage survived after the mutilation occurred, but it can't have been long enough in my opinion. His body was dismembered and buried at the crossroads where you drove into the castle grounds. The villagers believed that this would stop his ghost knowing the way to heaven. He had precious little chance of getting there, let me tell you."

  A fitting end, I thought.

  ***

  Back outside in the courtyard, with families eating their lunches, laughing and giggling, it was almost impossible to imagine what must have gone on here over seven hundred years ago. We wandered through the castle. Through the pantry, the banquet hall, living rooms and bedrooms. Saw the priest holes, hidden staircases, medieval swords, suits of armour.

  In many of the rooms, you can reach out and pick up the antiques. Most of them anyway. You can sit on the ancient furniture. You can hold solid metal cannon balls that were fired centuries before. They’re a lot heavier than you expect, but I guess they had to be to get through ten foot thick castle walls. It's not like most places where you are kept behind ropes, forbidden to do anything, even to take photographs. No, photography was encouraged here, and I was building myself a nice little collection.

  Entering the chapel, there was another attendant, another old lady. Suze walked over to her, said hello, and asked her if there were any ghost stories. I was surprised it had taken her this long to ask someone.

  "Where do you want to start?" the old lady said. "The castle was built in the twelfth century. There is so much history here. We have more ghosts than I can remember. You Americans love your history and your ghosts."

  For the next fifteen minutes or so, we both listened as we were told one story after another.

  We were told about the voices in the chapel we were in. When it's quiet, visitors often report hearing men talking. Any attempt to try and find where the voices come from results in them stopping. I was half expecting the old lady to surreptitiously click a button and start off a recording to try and scare us. I think it's all rubbish. There's no such thing as ghosts. It would take quite something to convince me there is.

  She told us about the Blue Boy and the Pink Room. At exactly the stroke of midnight - what other time would you expect - the haunting cries of a young boy in pain can be heard. The cries come from inside a wall. In this place, as I said, they are up to ten feet thick. As the cries subside, a blue flash comes from the wall and a young child can be seen walking toward you. Apparently, you can stay the night in this room as it's now a holiday apartment. Years ago, as the room was being renovated she told us the construction workers found a man and a boy dead, incarcerated inside the wall. Apparently, the child had broken all of his nails and worn down the bones in his fingers trying to tear his way out through the wall, trying to escape. The workers left and refused to return. In the open air, the corpses that had been so well preserved in the wall deteriorated significantly. A further insult to the dead. They were given a Christian burial, but apparently this has failed to stop the sightings.

  Even the Pantry in this place has a ghost. She is old and frail and known as The White Lady. Earlier in the century, a servant slept in the room to guard the silver that used to be stored there, and he saw the woman who he assumed was a guest. She vanished in front of him. Yet another ghost, this one called Lady Mary, searches for her missing husband. This ghost wanders the corridors of the castle, never finding her husband - he ran away with Mary’s own sister, leaving her alone and pregnant. She was left in the castle, with only her baby girl as a companion, heartbroken. Visitors to Chillingham often report feeling a chill as the ghost of Lady Mary supposedly walks by. They feel weak, start swaying, their eyes go bloodshot. This sometimes happens to me as well, although only after eight or nine pints.

  Apparently, even the grounds of the castle are haunted. Under the lake lie the remains of thousands of Scots killed during the war with the English. The water itself is rumoured to be cursed, and if you put your hand into the water the souls of the dead will pull you under. Quite frankly, I thought this was getting more ridiculous by the minute.

  As you can tell, by now, I was quite bored with these far fetched fantasies. I wandered off and looked around, just going anywhere, picking up and touching the odd object here and there. I picked up a small bone and put it in my pocket. Suze wandered off to look inside the castle again while I relaxed in the garden. Half an hour later she came back. "Time to go," I said. "We want to be in Edinburgh by five, and we've still got quite a drive on these tracks they call roads over here."

  "And, I saw you checking out that girl's ass in the torture chamber, you know." Suze scowled at me. "Don't let me catch you doing that again."

  ***

  We drove out of the castle and back to the A1
again. We had only travelled for a few minutes before we came up to a traffic jam. We could not see where the head of the queue was - the single carriageway road was full of cars, and there were no vehicles coming toward us either which didn’t seem good. Two children in the back of the car in front of us started making rude gestures at us. I made some rude gestures back at them until Suze stopped me.

  So we sat there, unable to move for about fifteen minutes. And then for another fifteen. And another.

  "Did you enjoy it in there?" I asked Suze.

  "In the castle? I thought it was good. All that history. Don't have that where we come from. Although all that torture stuff was a bit scary. I don’t think I’d be able to spend a night there. What did you think of it?"

  "It was okay," I replied. "Got a bit bored after a while."

  "I know. Saw you walk off. Still, that Sage bloke. Might have nightmares tonight about some of that."

  "Don’t worry. I’ll keep you nice and warm."

  After another ten minutes, the queue started moving, slowly. A policeman - at least I think it was a policeman - directed us on to a side road. Used to six lane highways back home, the single track road was barely wide enough for our car. God help anyone who came towards us wanting to pass. There were no cars in front, and looking in the mirror, no cars behind us either. Had the other cars stuck around us been diverted somewhere else? Never mind. We were moving.

  We continued along the road and slowed as we neared a level crossing. I changed back down a gear and started slowing as the barriers started to come down. The warning lights were flashing with the barriers now fully closed. I increased pressure on the brake pedal. Nothing happened. I started to pump the pedal, and finally the brakes kicked in and started to slow the car down. The front bumper ended up resting against the red and white barrier, so I backed up a few inches. Good job that barrier was there.

  "The brakes just didn't work well," I said to Suze, puzzled.

  "No drama. We stopped."

  "Gonna ring the hire company and give them hell though. Why is every hire car we ever get a wreck?"