Chingle Hall, Goosnargh, Lancashire
After the battle of Hastings in 1066, the land where Chingle Hall stands was owned by Ughtred de Singleton. By 1260, a descendant of Ughtred’s, Adam de Singleton, built a small moated manor house and named it Singleton Hall.
Chingle Hall stands in the village of Goosnargh, 7 miles from Preston in Lancashire. Goosnargh was mentioned in the Domesday book as ‘Gusansarghe’, which is a combination of Old Irish and Scandinavian, meaning ‘Sheiling or hill pasture of a man called Gussan’. Goosnargh and nearby Trelfal and Newsham were lands held by Earl Tostig as part of his Lordship of Preston. The land contained one carucute of land, which is around 120 acres and a basic unit of taxation and originally the amount of land that a team of 8 oxen could plough each year.
Chingle Hall stands in the village of Goosnargh, 7 miles from Preston in Lancashire. Goosnargh was mentioned in the Domesday book as ‘Gusansarghe’, which is a combination of Old Irish and Scandinavian, meaning ‘Sheiling or hill pasture of a man called Gussan’. Goosnargh and nearby Trelfal and Newsham were lands held by Earl Tostig as part of his Lordship of Preston. The land contained one carucute of land, which is around 120 acres and a basic unit of taxation and originally the amount of land that a team of 8 oxen could plough each year.
Chingle Hall is a grade 2 listed building and a scheduled monument. It first appeared in a document as Singleton Hall in 1354 when it was held by Robert Singleton, son of Adam Singleton, the builder of the manor house. It is one of the oldest brick buildings in the United Kingdom and some of the ceiling timbers have Viking runes carved into them, suggesting that they came from a Viking longship which was a common practice in those days. There are various cavities in the walls of the house that are known as priest holes, hiding places for priests from a time when it was illegal to practice mass in England.
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These priest holes are believed to be the work of Nicholas Owen, famous across the country for installing priest holes in many estate homes including Coughton Court, home to the Throckmorton family and Harvington Hall near Kidderminster. Nicholas Owen was a Jesuit Lay brother during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and James I of England. After his arrest for being behind the installation of the priest holes, he was tortured to death in the Tower of London in March 1606.
The reformation of 1532 transformed an entirely Catholic nation into a predominately Protestant one. The first church in Goosnargh was dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin and from 1539 was no longer allowed to hold mass. The Catholic people had no choice but to hold mass in secret chapels in fear of discovery.
Being a Catholic family, the Singletons used Chingle Hall to hold mass and had 2 priest hides installed one that was discovered in 1970 after Mrs Howarth who lived in Chingle Hall from the 1950’s noticed smoke coming from the ceiling in the chapel area. She called the fire brigade who found that one of the structural timbers in one of the walls was burning from the inside out and extinguished as quick as it lit. Where the fire brigade had to knock a hole into the wall, it revealed one of the priest holes. The other priest hole is located in one of the rooms upstairs. One night some visitors to the hall could hear what sounded like bricks being moved coming from upstairs, when looking at the priest holes the next morning, they could see that some of the bricks had been moved and placed on the floor.
One notable person from Chingle Hall was Robert Singleton who was chaplain to Henry VIII’s 2nd wife, Queen Anne Boleyn. In 1516 Robert Singleton was the vicar of Preston. To further his career he went to Oxford and then Cambridge where he graduated with a Bachelor of Canon Law in 1522. By 1533 he joined the Circle of Avant Garde Evangelicals who gathered at the margins of Tudor Court under the patronage of Thomas Cromwell. On the 2nd of April 1535, he gave a notable sermon at Paul’s Cross. Paul’s Cross was an open air pulpit in the precincts of St Paul’s Cathedral in London which was the most influential of all public venues in Medieval England. On Relic Sunday, 8th July 1543, Robert was recorded as speaking undisclosed words of heresy at Paul’s Cross and was sentenced and executed at Tyburn on 7th March 1544 for stirring up a crowd to rebel against the new found protestant church led by Henry VIII. It is believed that Robert Singleton was not guilty of this charge but that he was maliciously slandered. Robert was once involved in a murder scandal and was believed to have been the murderer of Robert Packyngton but it was dismissed. Robert Packyngton was a wealthy merchant who was murdered outside of his house at Cheapside in London as he left to attend mass at the 13th century Church of St. Thomas of Acre which he attended each day without fail. His murderer is still a mystery.
The Catholic Martyr, Saint John Wall is believed to have been born at Chingle Hall in 1620. He became a priest in 1641 and he allegedly used Chingle Hall as a place of worship during the Catholic Reformation on his return from Rome in 1656 where he settled in Harvington Hall in Chaddesley Corbet in Worcestershire, another Catholic household well known for its many priest holes built by the infamous Nicholas Owen. After 22 years of ministry to the Catholics of the area, he was caught at Rushock Court near Bromsgrove in 1678. He was taken to Worcester Jail, where he was offered his life if he would forsake his religion, which he declined. John Wall was hung, drawn and quartered at Redhill on 22nd of August 1679. His quartered body was buried in St. Oswald’s churchyard. A Mr Levison however allegedly acquired his head and it became a holy relic at Worcester until the dissolution when it was removed and sent to France. His head is said to have returned to England and buried within the land of Chingle Hall. John Wall was canonised by Pope John Paul VII (6th) in 1970.
Legend has it that during the battle of Preston in 1648, Oliver Cromwell visited the hall and climbed one of its chimneys to spy on the Royalists below. It is also believed that he left his axe mark on the door, a mark he would leave to show his men that Catholic mass was practiced in the building.
Chingle Hall stayed within the Singleton family until 1585 when Eleanor Singleton, the last in line died. It then passed to the Wall family through the marriage of William Wall and Anne Singleton who passed it on to there son, Anthony Wall, the Mayor of Preston who died in the hall in 1601. The Wall family owned the house until the mid 18th century when the house passed to a local branch of the Singleton family. From 1794 it was owned by the Farrington family for around a hundred years and then bought by the Longton family. In 1945, the house was rented to the Howarth family who bought the house in 1960. After the death of the Howarth’s, the house stood empty for numerous years until 1986 when Sandra and John Coppleston-Bruce bought and restored the hall. The modest manor house of Chingle Hall became a working farmhouse between the 17th century to the early part of the 20th century.
Ghost Stories
When Margaret Howarth lived at Chingle Hall from the 1950’s, she lead a very social life. Legend says that she loved Chingle Hall so much that she has never left, despite her being dead. It is thought that Mrs. Howarth is the grey lady that makes an appearance on occasions.
A couple who were visiting the area and had heard about Chingle Hall whilst in the local pub. They wanted to visit the hall so they knocked the door. The door was answered by a little old lady and they asked her if it would be ok for them to have a look around, as they’d heard so much about the place. She told them to come in and took them for a tour of the house, explaining in detail about the history and ghost stories in each room. When they finished and were about to leave, the old lady said that her name was Mrs. Howarth. After leaving Chingle Hall, they returned to the pub that they were in on the previous night. They started telling the locals that they’d been to Chingle Hall and that Mrs. Howarth was a charming old lady and was very kind to show them around her house. They were then told by one of the pubs customers that Mrs. Howarth had died 12 months ago.
Chingle Hall became very popular with tourists during the 1990’s so a tour guide was employed to show people around. A group of tourists form New Zealand were taken around the hall. One of the party noticed a white figure that seemed to be wearing a habit standing against a wall. She told the rest of the group and they all saw it. They said that they couldn’t see his features and his hand was up against his face as if he was guarding his face. The same guide saw a monk in the doorway of the John Wall room. He was described as being around 5 feet tall, wearing a white habit. 5 feet tall would be average height in the past, some people even smaller.
1n 1980, Terry Whittaker set up some recording equipment to see if he could record any paranormal sounds for a local radio show. It was around 12:40am, when he and his colleague could hear the sound of footsteps in the corridor upstairs. They both rushed to take a look and they could see the floorboards moving as if someone was walking across them. They followed the footsteps to the end of the corridor, when they came to the end they looked up an saw a hooded figure that looked like a monk with his arms tucked inside of his sleeves. Thy said that he was solid looking, not transparent as you would imagine a ghost to look. After around 30 seconds he drifted towards a huge cupboard and straight into the wall. They later found out that behind the cupboard was the entrance to a priest hole. They’d been recording the radio show for 12 weeks and hadn’t experienced anything until that night.
A central heating engineer was working in the house. After working for 2 or 3 days he was getting behind in his work so he asked another engineer to go with him and help him finish the job. In the great hall, he had plumbed in a new central heating system which just needed to be connected. He looked at the job to see what needed to be finished and went to tell his colleague that it just needed to be connected to the boiler and to go with him so that he could show him the correct pipes to connect. When they got to the heater there were no pipes to connect, all of the pipework had gone. They went to tell the owner about it to see if she knew what had happened. She went with them to look for herself and all o the pipes were back in place, like they hadn’t been touched.
A news producer attended the hall to film an article about a charity event that was being held at the hall. What he thought would be a fun evening turned out to be a nightmare. Eight nurses were on a sponsored sitting overnight in the house. It started out as fun but it turned nasty. They were all sitting in the John Wall room which has the reputation of being the most haunted room in the house. One of the nurse’s was a complete sceptic but she said that could see someone stood behind one of the other nurses above her shoulder. The nurse on the right-hand side said that she could feel someone stood there but didn’t see them. The other nurses said that they could see a figure in a hood standing over her.
After the death of her parents in the 16th century, Eleanor de Singleton became the new owner of Chingle Hall at the very young age of 6 and would be the last in the line of the Singletons to be in possession of the property. She was took into the so called care of her two uncles whom are rumoured to have locked her up in a room where she was the victim of sexual abuse from them until the end of her short life at the age of 18. It is alleged that she became pregnant numerous times by the uncles and many of the children were still born. She gave birth to four living babies who were all murdered by the uncles. The last baby being a hydrocephalic child with an enormous head which was te cause of Eleanor’s death in 1585. Many people have said that thy have felt the emotional trauma in the room as if it has been locked into the atmosphere. Many have also had an overwhelming rush of emotion when walking into th room, breaking down into tears and feeling faint and have had to be helped out of the hall. The fragrance of lavender is often smelled in the room which is believed to have been Eleanor’s favourite aroma.
Over the years, Chingle Hall was a favourite for paranormal investigators, until the hall was sold, when the new owners closed the doors to the public.
A group of paranormal investigators decided to hold a séance in the great hall. One of the team members said that he felt a cold shiver down his back, not long afterwards his back warmed up again but he felt a tremendous pressure on his back, as if someone was pushing him from behind and he had to push himself against it. He said that it felt like it went straight through his body and as it came through the front he felt a great relief but had to gasp for breath. As soon as it left him, two of the other team member experienced the same exact thing. Afterwards they all said that they felt an overwhelming feeling of sadness and that they all burst into tears. Throughout the night the group tried out different experiment. One of these experiments involved just sitting in the great hall in silence to listen out for any unusual sounds. They heard the sound of canting that was unmistakably in Latin and they could feel an oppression in the room. One of the team felt so scared that she had to leave. She described that it felt like something terrible had happened there and it had been captured for a moment. They were sat in a circle when one of the team shot forwards, her face was pure white as if the blood had drained from her. They all said that they could feel a psychic breeze, as if someone was walking around and in between them all. After it stopped, there was a loud bang on the front door, that was so hard that it shook the whole house. After opening the door there was no one to be seen.
Late one night, an investigator was in the great hall and heard a crashing type noise coming from the main front entrance area. He opened the door towards the chapel and shined his torch. To his amazement, he witnessed a chair physically moving on its own, rocking back and forth and side to side, banging on the hard stone floor violently. He shouted for his friend to see it. His friend rushed to the chapel, turned the light on and he witnessed it too for about a minute before it stopped.
There was once a dog show on the car park of the hall. One of the guests asked where the local monastery was as they’d like to visit. When it was explained that there isn’t a monastery, she asked why have monks been coming out of he house, across the bridge and walking off into the distance.
In the early 2000’s, a group of ten paranormal investigators made up of people from all over the United Kingdom, held a vigil in Chingle Hall over aa whole weekend. Three of the team were the first ones to walk in following the guide. They were saying how it felt so welcoming and was very homely, when they felt a person barge between them and heard a woman saying “sush” but they couldn’t see anyone there. After a brief tour of the property, the investigation began. They were in the great hall discussing plans for the night when they could hear a loud banging coming from upstairs. On inspection, they found that it as just trapped air in the central heating system causing a pipe to hit against the wall. The group leader wanted to try an experiment using trigger objects scattered around upstairs while they were downstairs. The experiment involved putting coins on small pieces of card and drawing around the coins, placing them in various places and checking them at a later time to see if any of them had moved. As he was handing the coins out to another member, he suddenly received a small cut on the back of his hand! This was in the John Wall room where it is a well known haunt of a cavalier. There are two cavities in the John Wall room that were once feed holes for the chains that raised and lowered the draw bridge. They held an EVP session in that room and placed there recording devices in the two cavities, pressed record and went back downstairs. After an hour, they retrieved the recording devices and examined them to see if the had recorded anything significant. To there amazement they heard the sounds of a church bell ringing, a baby crying and a chain rattling. At 11pm they took a break and sat around the dining room table in the great hall. The group leader was cleaning the lenses for his camera when his chair was pulled backwards, throwing him against the wall behind him as if an invisible force had pulled him across the room, travelling about a metre. After the break, they held a séance while sitting at the dining table, when within minutes, the table lifted for about 30 seconds and then suddenly dropped with no possible way any of the group could have lifted it. During the séance they all witnessed a foggy silhouette walk through the door near the private part of the house. It walked across the room and through the door towards the chapel, they could all see the shape of his head and shoulders. As there have been many sightings outside the hall, they decided to investigate. Upon going outside a few members of the team said that they saw three children running around in the trees near the car park. Nothing was caught on camera until walking around the gardens at the back of the property when they captured a series of photo’s of what looked like a woman in a white dress walking along the lawn. Another photo was taken towards the witches window and they could see a candle was lit when the photo was developed but there wasn’t a candle in the holder during the night.
Chingle Hall isn’t open to the public anymore, the recent owners decided to close it to the public.
The reformation of 1532 transformed an entirely Catholic nation into a predominately Protestant one. The first church in Goosnargh was dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin and from 1539 was no longer allowed to hold mass. The Catholic people had no choice but to hold mass in secret chapels in fear of discovery.
Being a Catholic family, the Singletons used Chingle Hall to hold mass and had 2 priest hides installed one that was discovered in 1970 after Mrs Howarth who lived in Chingle Hall from the 1950’s noticed smoke coming from the ceiling in the chapel area. She called the fire brigade who found that one of the structural timbers in one of the walls was burning from the inside out and extinguished as quick as it lit. Where the fire brigade had to knock a hole into the wall, it revealed one of the priest holes. The other priest hole is located in one of the rooms upstairs. One night some visitors to the hall could hear what sounded like bricks being moved coming from upstairs, when looking at the priest holes the next morning, they could see that some of the bricks had been moved and placed on the floor.
One notable person from Chingle Hall was Robert Singleton who was chaplain to Henry VIII’s 2nd wife, Queen Anne Boleyn. In 1516 Robert Singleton was the vicar of Preston. To further his career he went to Oxford and then Cambridge where he graduated with a Bachelor of Canon Law in 1522. By 1533 he joined the Circle of Avant Garde Evangelicals who gathered at the margins of Tudor Court under the patronage of Thomas Cromwell. On the 2nd of April 1535, he gave a notable sermon at Paul’s Cross. Paul’s Cross was an open air pulpit in the precincts of St Paul’s Cathedral in London which was the most influential of all public venues in Medieval England. On Relic Sunday, 8th July 1543, Robert was recorded as speaking undisclosed words of heresy at Paul’s Cross and was sentenced and executed at Tyburn on 7th March 1544 for stirring up a crowd to rebel against the new found protestant church led by Henry VIII. It is believed that Robert Singleton was not guilty of this charge but that he was maliciously slandered. Robert was once involved in a murder scandal and was believed to have been the murderer of Robert Packyngton but it was dismissed. Robert Packyngton was a wealthy merchant who was murdered outside of his house at Cheapside in London as he left to attend mass at the 13th century Church of St. Thomas of Acre which he attended each day without fail. His murderer is still a mystery.
The Catholic Martyr, Saint John Wall is believed to have been born at Chingle Hall in 1620. He became a priest in 1641 and he allegedly used Chingle Hall as a place of worship during the Catholic Reformation on his return from Rome in 1656 where he settled in Harvington Hall in Chaddesley Corbet in Worcestershire, another Catholic household well known for its many priest holes built by the infamous Nicholas Owen. After 22 years of ministry to the Catholics of the area, he was caught at Rushock Court near Bromsgrove in 1678. He was taken to Worcester Jail, where he was offered his life if he would forsake his religion, which he declined. John Wall was hung, drawn and quartered at Redhill on 22nd of August 1679. His quartered body was buried in St. Oswald’s churchyard. A Mr Levison however allegedly acquired his head and it became a holy relic at Worcester until the dissolution when it was removed and sent to France. His head is said to have returned to England and buried within the land of Chingle Hall. John Wall was canonised by Pope John Paul VII (6th) in 1970.
Legend has it that during the battle of Preston in 1648, Oliver Cromwell visited the hall and climbed one of its chimneys to spy on the Royalists below. It is also believed that he left his axe mark on the door, a mark he would leave to show his men that Catholic mass was practiced in the building.
Chingle Hall stayed within the Singleton family until 1585 when Eleanor Singleton, the last in line died. It then passed to the Wall family through the marriage of William Wall and Anne Singleton who passed it on to there son, Anthony Wall, the Mayor of Preston who died in the hall in 1601. The Wall family owned the house until the mid 18th century when the house passed to a local branch of the Singleton family. From 1794 it was owned by the Farrington family for around a hundred years and then bought by the Longton family. In 1945, the house was rented to the Howarth family who bought the house in 1960. After the death of the Howarth’s, the house stood empty for numerous years until 1986 when Sandra and John Coppleston-Bruce bought and restored the hall. The modest manor house of Chingle Hall became a working farmhouse between the 17th century to the early part of the 20th century.
Ghost Stories
When Margaret Howarth lived at Chingle Hall from the 1950’s, she lead a very social life. Legend says that she loved Chingle Hall so much that she has never left, despite her being dead. It is thought that Mrs. Howarth is the grey lady that makes an appearance on occasions.
A couple who were visiting the area and had heard about Chingle Hall whilst in the local pub. They wanted to visit the hall so they knocked the door. The door was answered by a little old lady and they asked her if it would be ok for them to have a look around, as they’d heard so much about the place. She told them to come in and took them for a tour of the house, explaining in detail about the history and ghost stories in each room. When they finished and were about to leave, the old lady said that her name was Mrs. Howarth. After leaving Chingle Hall, they returned to the pub that they were in on the previous night. They started telling the locals that they’d been to Chingle Hall and that Mrs. Howarth was a charming old lady and was very kind to show them around her house. They were then told by one of the pubs customers that Mrs. Howarth had died 12 months ago.
Chingle Hall became very popular with tourists during the 1990’s so a tour guide was employed to show people around. A group of tourists form New Zealand were taken around the hall. One of the party noticed a white figure that seemed to be wearing a habit standing against a wall. She told the rest of the group and they all saw it. They said that they couldn’t see his features and his hand was up against his face as if he was guarding his face. The same guide saw a monk in the doorway of the John Wall room. He was described as being around 5 feet tall, wearing a white habit. 5 feet tall would be average height in the past, some people even smaller.
1n 1980, Terry Whittaker set up some recording equipment to see if he could record any paranormal sounds for a local radio show. It was around 12:40am, when he and his colleague could hear the sound of footsteps in the corridor upstairs. They both rushed to take a look and they could see the floorboards moving as if someone was walking across them. They followed the footsteps to the end of the corridor, when they came to the end they looked up an saw a hooded figure that looked like a monk with his arms tucked inside of his sleeves. Thy said that he was solid looking, not transparent as you would imagine a ghost to look. After around 30 seconds he drifted towards a huge cupboard and straight into the wall. They later found out that behind the cupboard was the entrance to a priest hole. They’d been recording the radio show for 12 weeks and hadn’t experienced anything until that night.
A central heating engineer was working in the house. After working for 2 or 3 days he was getting behind in his work so he asked another engineer to go with him and help him finish the job. In the great hall, he had plumbed in a new central heating system which just needed to be connected. He looked at the job to see what needed to be finished and went to tell his colleague that it just needed to be connected to the boiler and to go with him so that he could show him the correct pipes to connect. When they got to the heater there were no pipes to connect, all of the pipework had gone. They went to tell the owner about it to see if she knew what had happened. She went with them to look for herself and all o the pipes were back in place, like they hadn’t been touched.
A news producer attended the hall to film an article about a charity event that was being held at the hall. What he thought would be a fun evening turned out to be a nightmare. Eight nurses were on a sponsored sitting overnight in the house. It started out as fun but it turned nasty. They were all sitting in the John Wall room which has the reputation of being the most haunted room in the house. One of the nurse’s was a complete sceptic but she said that could see someone stood behind one of the other nurses above her shoulder. The nurse on the right-hand side said that she could feel someone stood there but didn’t see them. The other nurses said that they could see a figure in a hood standing over her.
After the death of her parents in the 16th century, Eleanor de Singleton became the new owner of Chingle Hall at the very young age of 6 and would be the last in the line of the Singletons to be in possession of the property. She was took into the so called care of her two uncles whom are rumoured to have locked her up in a room where she was the victim of sexual abuse from them until the end of her short life at the age of 18. It is alleged that she became pregnant numerous times by the uncles and many of the children were still born. She gave birth to four living babies who were all murdered by the uncles. The last baby being a hydrocephalic child with an enormous head which was te cause of Eleanor’s death in 1585. Many people have said that thy have felt the emotional trauma in the room as if it has been locked into the atmosphere. Many have also had an overwhelming rush of emotion when walking into th room, breaking down into tears and feeling faint and have had to be helped out of the hall. The fragrance of lavender is often smelled in the room which is believed to have been Eleanor’s favourite aroma.
Over the years, Chingle Hall was a favourite for paranormal investigators, until the hall was sold, when the new owners closed the doors to the public.
A group of paranormal investigators decided to hold a séance in the great hall. One of the team members said that he felt a cold shiver down his back, not long afterwards his back warmed up again but he felt a tremendous pressure on his back, as if someone was pushing him from behind and he had to push himself against it. He said that it felt like it went straight through his body and as it came through the front he felt a great relief but had to gasp for breath. As soon as it left him, two of the other team member experienced the same exact thing. Afterwards they all said that they felt an overwhelming feeling of sadness and that they all burst into tears. Throughout the night the group tried out different experiment. One of these experiments involved just sitting in the great hall in silence to listen out for any unusual sounds. They heard the sound of canting that was unmistakably in Latin and they could feel an oppression in the room. One of the team felt so scared that she had to leave. She described that it felt like something terrible had happened there and it had been captured for a moment. They were sat in a circle when one of the team shot forwards, her face was pure white as if the blood had drained from her. They all said that they could feel a psychic breeze, as if someone was walking around and in between them all. After it stopped, there was a loud bang on the front door, that was so hard that it shook the whole house. After opening the door there was no one to be seen.
Late one night, an investigator was in the great hall and heard a crashing type noise coming from the main front entrance area. He opened the door towards the chapel and shined his torch. To his amazement, he witnessed a chair physically moving on its own, rocking back and forth and side to side, banging on the hard stone floor violently. He shouted for his friend to see it. His friend rushed to the chapel, turned the light on and he witnessed it too for about a minute before it stopped.
There was once a dog show on the car park of the hall. One of the guests asked where the local monastery was as they’d like to visit. When it was explained that there isn’t a monastery, she asked why have monks been coming out of he house, across the bridge and walking off into the distance.
In the early 2000’s, a group of ten paranormal investigators made up of people from all over the United Kingdom, held a vigil in Chingle Hall over aa whole weekend. Three of the team were the first ones to walk in following the guide. They were saying how it felt so welcoming and was very homely, when they felt a person barge between them and heard a woman saying “sush” but they couldn’t see anyone there. After a brief tour of the property, the investigation began. They were in the great hall discussing plans for the night when they could hear a loud banging coming from upstairs. On inspection, they found that it as just trapped air in the central heating system causing a pipe to hit against the wall. The group leader wanted to try an experiment using trigger objects scattered around upstairs while they were downstairs. The experiment involved putting coins on small pieces of card and drawing around the coins, placing them in various places and checking them at a later time to see if any of them had moved. As he was handing the coins out to another member, he suddenly received a small cut on the back of his hand! This was in the John Wall room where it is a well known haunt of a cavalier. There are two cavities in the John Wall room that were once feed holes for the chains that raised and lowered the draw bridge. They held an EVP session in that room and placed there recording devices in the two cavities, pressed record and went back downstairs. After an hour, they retrieved the recording devices and examined them to see if the had recorded anything significant. To there amazement they heard the sounds of a church bell ringing, a baby crying and a chain rattling. At 11pm they took a break and sat around the dining room table in the great hall. The group leader was cleaning the lenses for his camera when his chair was pulled backwards, throwing him against the wall behind him as if an invisible force had pulled him across the room, travelling about a metre. After the break, they held a séance while sitting at the dining table, when within minutes, the table lifted for about 30 seconds and then suddenly dropped with no possible way any of the group could have lifted it. During the séance they all witnessed a foggy silhouette walk through the door near the private part of the house. It walked across the room and through the door towards the chapel, they could all see the shape of his head and shoulders. As there have been many sightings outside the hall, they decided to investigate. Upon going outside a few members of the team said that they saw three children running around in the trees near the car park. Nothing was caught on camera until walking around the gardens at the back of the property when they captured a series of photo’s of what looked like a woman in a white dress walking along the lawn. Another photo was taken towards the witches window and they could see a candle was lit when the photo was developed but there wasn’t a candle in the holder during the night.
Chingle Hall isn’t open to the public anymore, the recent owners decided to close it to the public.
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