Haunted Gwrych

Mark Baker returns to tales of his favourite building in his new book, Myths and Legends of Gwrych Castle. Here's just a taster of some of the spooky goings on in the Abergele folly.

Stephen Sharpe's father was once the organist at Gwrych during the late 1960s and during the summer holidays he would stay in one of the flats in the Castle. He and his family would regularly see and hear the ghost of a woman in white, although they never once felt threatened by her presence.

In the early 1980s, a guest of the owners was staying in the Telescope Bedroom with her little dog on the second floor of the Round Tower, which had one window facing the sea and another facing the West Terrace. Only certain parts of the building had electricity at this time, but luckily this particular bedroom was lit unlike the other rooms on the second floor.

The door to the room had no handle so a piece of wood was used to lean against it to keep it closed, and so it happened on windy nights that one of the windows would fly open forcing a draught to open the door. Sometimes, she would walk the corridors late at night with a torch, checking that all was locked and sound before retiring to bed.

But often the guest of the owners had the feeling of 'some presence' which was never malevolent so it did not instil fear. The little dog was not so friendly towards the unseen forms and would growl or bark at thin air!

One night, the lady visitor was woken up by the strangest sounds from the corridor outside. It was a swishing noise, like someone stroking a feather against the wall and a whisper-like 'shhhhh'. Frightened, there was not just one sound, but hundreds of little sounds that were like a wave reverberating along the whole of the corridor, back and forth.

Lying in bed for a few moments, too afraid to move, her courage returned and she removed the wood stop, took a deep breath and opened the door. The corridor was black with flying bats! Fortunately, in the morning all the bats had disappeared but she paid closer attention to what she heard in future.

During the later years, people staying at the Castle would report strange noises emanating from various parts of the building, but they could never find the source of these happenings. Tony Kennedy was manager of Gwrych for five years and he recorded that from his first floor flat, which was previously named 'The Rhuddlan Suite', he heard creaks and rattles filter down the halls to his rooms. He is quoted as saying, 'You hear a lot of noises, but I usually dismissed them as being bits of plaster falling off the walls, which is a common enough occurrence here.'

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