DrGaz’s House of Horror

A few years ago I had the pleasure of working for a technology company that was based in a 19th century manor house in Essex (pictured). One day I was chatting to the receptionist, who gave me the following account of how she’d once seen a ghost there:

“I was sitting at reception one winter afternoon, just before Christmas. It was approaching the end of the day and the light outside was fading. As I sat there in front of the PC, I could feel that someone was watching me. I turned around to see a young girl staring at me incredulously. I’d say she was perhaps in her late teens, and was dressed in a maid’s outfit. She had curly, golden hair. She peered at me and my computer for what seemed like a very long time before turning to study the Christmas tree in the same way. She then turned her back on me and walked straight through the wall. The whole experience lasted for about a minute”.

A pretty intriguing little story I thought. I took a look in the room behind reception, and there was a doorway exactly in the area that the girl had supposedly walked though. It was sealed off and paneled over on the reception side.

I found out later that there were all sorts of ghostly rumours about the building. Artifacts from as far back as the Bronze Age have been found on the site indicating that the area had been inhabited for a long time before the manor was built. The manor itself started life as an 18th century farmhouse. Over the years it was extended and embellished, gradually mutating into a mansion. Some of the original farmhouse exists at the heart of the building. These areas are reputed to be the most haunted, the focus being a particular corridor at the centre of the mansion.

Naturally, I didn't stay too late for overtime.