Hopefully, your move to Cheltenham will see you making lots of living and breathing friends before too long. While you wait for your new chums to come into your life, however, you might want to go looking for some interesting characters who have long since shuffled off this mortal coil.
As an older town, Cheltenham has its fair share of ghost stories and quite a few paranormal investigators have tried to root out its secrets over the years. Will you be the one to solve a spooky mystery? Visit these places and keep your eyes, ears and mind open…
The village of Prestbury
A couple of miles out of Cheltenham is Prestbury which claims to be one of the UK’s most haunted villages. The most infamous spirit is that of the Black Abbot, who is believed to have wandered the aisles of St Mary’s Church, until an exorcism banished him to the churchyard.
The Charging Horseman also puts in an appearance (with his white horse) at Easter and Christmas, several centuries after taking a Lancastrian arrow during the Wars of the Roses.
Pittville in Cheltenham
This famous Regency area of Cheltenham has a few other-worldly goings on too. In fact, a house in Pittville Circus Road was the scene of one of the first big investigations performed by the Society of Paranormal Research.
Back in the 1880s, the SPR looked into sightings of a ghostly woman, dressed in mourner’s clothes, who appeared several times between 1882 and 1886. The Morton Case, as it became known, is still featured in ghost tours in the town today.
Ye Old Black Bear in Tewkesbury
After taking a beating during the 1471 Battle of Tewkesbury, lots of defeated soldiers took refuge at Ye Old Black Bear pub on Tewkesbury High Street.
Among them was a particularly unlucky fighter who’d been decapitated but hadn’t quite realised this and so is still hanging around the pub, rattling his chains (he’s probably wondering why he’s not getting served…).
