Most haunted village in Britain
I went to Pluckley looking for a Halloween outing, but the village made it surprisingly difficult to feel scared. In my October 2021 video, I followed part of a ghost walk through this Kent village, stopping at a church and houses with stories attached to them. The day was dry, the autumn weather was lovely, and I kept getting distracted by how much I liked the buildings.
You don’t need to believe in ghosts to follow what I found there. By then I had lived in Kent for almost six years, and I still enjoyed seeing another village. I used Richard Jones’s Pluckley walking route to give the outing a direction. The ghost accounts below are stories from that guide, rather than things I witnessed.
A churchyard that refused to be creepy
The walk started at St Nicholas Church. One story in the guide describes researchers spending a night there and reporting nothing unusual except the vicar’s dog. The vicar’s reply supplies the spooky part: he didn’t have a dog. It is a neat little ghost story, although I wasn’t finding the surroundings particularly alarming.
Standing in the churchyard, I thought it was peaceful. It was one of those autumn days that felt just right for being outside, and I was pleased it wasn’t raining. The church gave me something to look at while I wandered around. I wasn’t getting much of a haunted feeling from it.
Beautiful houses, unhappy stories
Farther along was Greystones, where the guide attaches a ghost story to a monk who fell in love with a neighbouring girl. The story ends with her death and his broken heart. I felt a bit uncomfortable standing there filming someone’s house, so the supposed haunting wasn’t the only thing on my mind. I wasn’t sure what I believed about it either.
Rose Court came with another unhappy love story, involving the monk and a woman who died by suicide. Again, this was the guide’s account. My reaction to the place itself was much less dramatic: it was a beautiful home, with a lovely setting. I still wasn’t feeling creeped out.
That kept happening as I walked. I would introduce somewhere as haunted and then immediately want to say how cute it was. Some of the older-looking homes were the kind of places I would have been happy to live in. Coming from Canada, I still found all that stone and the village buildings interesting, even without a ghost attached.
The pub had its own ghost stories
The Black Horse Inn was another beautiful building with a story to tell. Jones’s guide recounts tales of things moving, cutlery appearing neatly arranged and dogs refusing to go upstairs. Those were accounts he had collected, not disturbances I saw during my visit. I liked the look of the pub and thought it sounded like a nice place for lunch or a cider.
There was also an old bakery with stories of footsteps and a chilly spot after renovation work. The guide added a phantom coach nearby, heard rather than seen. I could repeat the stories as I went along, but they hadn’t made the village feel frightening to me. Mostly I was enjoying being out on a beautiful day.
I walked part of the route
I didn’t finish the whole walk. While editing, I explained that the full route was roughly three hours, with what I thought were around eleven places to stop, and I hadn’t allowed that much time. Much of the section I covered was along roads, which also meant cars and background noise. My video was a selection of stops rather than a complete tour.
The editing process brought another discovery. I had misread Pluckley’s name and spent the outing pronouncing it incorrectly, which was embarrassing once I realised I had put it on the internet. As for finding a ghost, I wasn’t convinced I had. What I could say was that I had loved the village, its buildings and those stone walls. I had even managed to get out of breath on a small incline.
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