Top 50 Most Haunted Places in Britain – 34

Another entry in Uncanny UK editor Richard Holland’s chart of the most haunted places in Britain.

34. BREDE PLACE: Brede, East Sussex

A horrible legend attaches to Brede Place: that it was formerly the home of a cannibal: the gigantic Sir Goddard Oxenbridge who had the habit of eating babies. He was eventually done away with, by the outraged villagers, who sawed his enormous bloated body in half.

Stephen Crane (pictured), the young author of ‘The Red Badge of Courage’ lived here for a while and he wrote a play based on the idea of the fiendish Sir Goddard returning as a ghost. A group of his literary friends, including Henry James, H G Wells and Joseph Conrad, performed it here in 1899.

Perhaps disappointingly, the baby-eater does not haunt Brede Place, but there are many other ghosts, earning it its place in this chart of the most haunted places in Britain.

These include a woman in Elizabethan dress and a maid who was hanged in the grounds. The chapel is haunted by the headless Father John, a priest who may have died during the persecution of Catholics. When Brede Place was used as a garrison for soldiers during World War 2, officers reported ghostly monks and the mysterious moving about of furniture.

Please note Brede Place is a private home and not open to the public.

[SOURCE: Haunted Houses by Joseph Braddock; Phantom Britain by Marc Alexander]

Text © Richard Holland 2011