Otley Hall — a spooky weekend

Our reporter, Sarah Hardie, goes to Otley Hall to experience a spooky weekend.

There have been signs of paranormal activity at Otley Hall at various times

over the last 200 years time. If tales of headless huntsmen and wailing nuns

don't spook you out, do get this for a ghostly tale: a young Victorian man in

a silver gown emerges himself from the garden, walks through the front door,

whether or not will it happens to be open, and walks upstairs with a lantern,

before vanishing in the library. If local folklore it is to be believed, he does

this without fail at midnight on 6 September every year, this is being the date

of the untimely death of George Carpenter, the gardener of the hall,

who met his doom in the library, had burned by his own lantern. Otley Hall

stands 3 miles north of the town of Rugby, England, and that is reputedly the

most haunted house in England, a claim which few who have never visited it

would dispute. Even the approach to the Hall is not much a journey to be

undertaken by the faint-hearted; at one point an executioner emerges

from the trees, was brandishing an axe, although it must be said that this

practice ceases after September, when the Hall is closed to visitors.

My own visit revealed nothing more mysterious than such gimmicks,

laid on for an ever-gullible flow of tourists, cameras been at their sides,

eager to snap their buttons at the first sign of anything even remotely

unexplainable. But it was all having great fun, and the ghostly maze on

the final day was terrific, even if I did never get to see George Carpenter.