Inside Britain's 'most haunted' town where 'every home has a ghost'
An ancient village has claimed to be Britain’s most haunted town - and locals even say that each home has its own ghost.
Locals of Dunster in Somerset say that spirits of monks, witches, soldiers and even animals roam their abodes, in the sleepy town filled with houses, a castle, pubs and hills.
Sues Toogood, 55, a pharmacy dispenser, bought a cottage in Dunster and says that shortly after she moved in, she began to hear voices in her home.
"[The cottage] was a wreck, the heating didn’t work at all and a tiny fireplace was the only source of heat," she explains. "I soon realised that all the smoke from the fire was coming out of a crack in the chimney in the upstairs bedroom. I had nowhere else to go so I slept in the spare room.
"In the early hours of the morning, I woke up in the middle of the night to voices. I was a bit scared at first but I walked through and realised it was the radio. It was a battery radio that I had put out for the builders. I thought it was strange but I switched it off and went back to bed, but then it happened again the next night.
"I realised that if I had stayed asleep I might not have woken up because of the smoke and carbon monoxide coming in from the other room. I felt like the ghost was saving me from dying, it was a kind presence. I truly believe the ghost was saving me."
Janie Deeming, 59 and Nigel Deeming, 57, run the 15th-century Stags Head Inn, the oldest pub in Dunster, which has its own resident ghost.
"Nearly every building in Dunster is believed to have a ghost or two," Janie says. "The house that we live in is very active, and we’ve only just managed to settle it down.
"I nearly didn’t move in here because they gave me merry hell, but now they’ve started to work with me rather than against me."
Janie adds that before she and Nigel moved into their current home five months ago, they were staying at another home in the area where the ‘spirits were awake’.
"On the first night, a door on the dresser clicked open, and we didn’t think much of it but then it opened two or three more times," she says. "I then put my hand on it to keep it closed, and it pushed back, and I knew that wasn’t normal.
"The next night a book flew off the bookshelf and fell open on a ghost story, and we all joked about it, but later that night when I was washing up, I could feel a presence behind me. We fell in love with Dunster and I love my house. I’ve managed to bring the spirits on my side, but it took some work."
Fellow local Benedict Yeandle, 56, says when he first moved into his shop, strange things would happen which customers would always notice.
"A smell of smoke could always be smelt even though there was no explanation for it, and one day a can of coke flew from one side of the room to the other, completely intact, just with a small dent in it," he says.
"I think whatever is living with me here is female, because it has only happened when I’ve employed female staff to work for me. 'I’m a bachelor and I think it got a little bit jealous. But now there hasn’t been any women coming here, she’s settled down."
Carol Bowden, a regular visitor to the village, says that her usually calm dog would bark at the trees and at the mantle of the fireplace in the hotel they were staying in.
"The following night it happened again, and the receptionist said the [ghost of an] old lady stands there by the mantle at that time," Bowden says.
"The manager then asked where the dog had been barking and I said about the mound and he said that was where the roundhead and cavaliers were buried."
A local author has even written a book on Dunster’s hauntings after moving to the village from her native Finland 12 years ago.
Nina Dodd, 66, wrote ‘Witches, Giants and a Ghost Cat' - a 'travel guide to the mystery tales of Dunster’ after becoming fascinated by the British ‘obsession’ with ghosts.
"I started researching this book years ago after hearing stories about how haunted Dunster is," Dodd says.
"I find the British fascination with ghosts very interesting. In Finland, we do not have anywhere near as many ghost stories or 'haunted' places. I think a big part of it is that England has so many older homes and buildings. In Finland, we built our homes out of timber and wood for a long time - we still do. But in England, they are all old stone - so they last a lot longer."
Dodd adds that everyone she speaks to in the village has some kind of ghost story to tell.
"We get people coming into our shop all the time telling us stories about your traditional grey ladies, or children ghosts. Quite often I hear about Roundheads, soldiers from the English Civil Wars, too," she adds.
"One very common one we hear is about ghost monks, because there was once a Benedictine chapel in Dunster which was destroyed when Henry VIII was King. People always say that they see or hear them. There is also apparently a ghost horse who haunts the hilltops around the village."
Despite Dunster local’s claims, the village of Pluckley in Kent had long held the title of Britain’s most haunted place after it featured in the 1989 Guinness World Records.
Some of Pluckley’s supposed 14 ghosts include a phantom coach and horses, the spectre of the highwayman hidden in a tree, a colonel in Park Wood, and the ‘Red Lady’ who reportedly haunts the churchyard of St Nicholas’s Church.
This story was first published in October 2023.
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