Embrace the Halloween spirit with a few spooky stories.
A Family Friend
It’s not often that the shouts and screams of playful children and parents are considered ‘peace and quiet’, but for one humble home in 1970s Hartley Wintney, they were much preferred to the noises inside.
As the story goes, a supposed poltergeist would disturb the family with cups clattering and curtains falling down, not to mention parts of the carpet being ripped up! One youngster in the household claimed to have spotted the ‘entity’ – tall, thin, dressed in black – and nicknamed it Fred, as kids do.
There isn’t much documentation to corroborate this story, but there is a Fred closely tied to Hartley Wintney FC just before the 1970s, and a fallen soldier from World War I, Lance Corporal Fred Tocock… make of that what you will.
A Paranormal Postman
Not all hauntings happen in castles and abandoned hospitals. If it is true that spirits tend to haunt places they themselves are linked to, then of course there would be some along our stretches of road. The A30, to be exact.
Take care when driving southbound on this A Road as you may come across a caped crusader – not that one, sorry, I mean a possible Civil War soldier carrying a broken sword. Reports suggest this spirit was simply doing his duty, delivering messages, when Royalists stopped him in his tracks forever. Possibly trapped in a Sisyphean eternity, this figure is surely more determined than Royal Mail.
The Bramshill Bride
An impressive fourteen ghosts have been reported at this one location, a stately home just north of Hartley Wintney. Built in the 1600s, it has welcomed countless visitors through the years, hosting sporting events and becoming a maternity home in the Second World War.
The most famous of the fourteen is that of the ‘Bramshill Bride’. A young wife engaged in a game of hide-and-seek one Christmas Night, choosing a chest to conceal herself in. To her grave misfortune, the chest locked itself shut tight. She was trapped. Frantic searches came up empty, and it was only years later that her skeletal remains were uncovered, a bunch of mistletoe clutched in hand.
ECHOES OF THE PAST
This is an honourable mention, as Hartley Mauditt isn’t in Hart, but it’s considered the most haunted location in Hampshire. St Leonard’s Church is the only complete building that remains in this medieval village; the simple tides of time drove inhabitants away to find fortune elsewhere, leaving only echoes behind. But those echoes are loud.
Multiple visitors claim to have followed distant sounds of a choir into the church, only to find it empty when they opened the doors, day and night. There are repeated reports of hearing a horse and carriage trundle by, with a few asserting they saw an apparition with their very own eyes.