A headless horseman, a vampire in a London graveyard and black-eyed children in the Midlands: the UK horror stories that are scarier than fiction
As Halloween spooks the nation, Sun Online investigates some of the most chilling horror stories to have happened in Britain
A VAMPIRE spotted in North London, black-eyed ghost children in The Midlands and police attacked by a werewolf in Essex.
These spooky headlines all sound like they could be taken from the plot of a horror film, but in fact they’re just some of the scariest horror stories to have taken place in Britain.
Here, Sun Online takes a look the UK horror stories that are scarier than fiction.
A werewolf attacking police in Southend
In 1987, a man named Bill Ramsey, 44, took himself to Southend Police Station and asked to be locked up for his and the public’s safety, claiming he was a savage werewolf.
The officers on duty were reluctant to put him in the cells after seeing he had no criminal history.
But it was at this point that Bill turned, growling and snarling at Duty Sergeant Terry Fisher before grabbing the 6ft tall, 14 stone police officer by the throat and throwing him across the station’s car park.
Chaos ensued and a total of eight police officers were required to restrain the werewolf man, who was fighting them on all fours.
That wasn’t the end of the ordeal though.
Bill then used his strength to smash his way through a re-enforced hatch in his cell’s door, managing to get both his arm and head stuck in the opening before he was sedated with a dose nearly three times the amount of an average person.
PC Tony Belford said that he’d "never seen anything like it before or since" - and the news even made The Sun’s front page – earning Bill the nickname of ‘The Southend Werewolf’.
Black-eyed ghost girl of Cannock Chase
On 18 February 1969, Cannock Chase murderer Raymond Leslie Morris was sentenced to life imprisonment for the rape and murder of seven-year-old Christine Darby.
It's widely thought the corpses of Margaret Reynolds, 6, and Diana Joy Tift, 5, both found in January 1966 were also linked to the predator.
All three bodies were found within a mile of each other in the Staffordshire woodland.
And in the very the same area, there have been numerous sightings of the black-eyed ghost of a young girl, leading many to suspect that it might be the spirit of one of Morris’ victims.
The first report was in the summer of 1982 when a young woman heard a child frantically shouting for help in Cannock Chase forest.
On locating the sound, the woman found a little girl of around six years old on a dirt track.
She had completely black eyes with no trace of white, and quickly disappeared into the woodland.
More than 30 years later, another woman had a very similar experience in the haunted forest. “We instantly started running towards the noise,” the eyewitness told the Sunday Mercury.
“We couldn’t find the child anywhere and so stopped to catch our breath.”
On turning around, she saw a girl of no more than 10 years old with her hands over her eyes.
“She put her arms down by her side and opened her eyes. That’s when I saw they were completely black, no iris, no white, nothing. I jumped back and grabbed my daughter. When I looked again, the child was gone. It was so strange.”
Various paranormal experts have since investigated the area, with the YouTube channel Haunted Finders even managing to capture the ghost on camera in 2015.
A vampire stalking a London graveyard
Cemeteries are creepy places. But in the late 1960s and early 1970s there was an added spookiness to the decaying and decrepit Highgate Cemetery in North London, after numerous people reported sightings of a supernatural being.
One was made by British Psychic and Occult Society member David Farrant, who wrote a letter to the Hampstead and Highgate Express claiming that he had seen “a grey figure” in the cemetery Christmas Eve 1969.
A handful of people claimed that they had also seen a tall, dark figure, floating behind the railings.
These reports caught the interest of another local man Sean Manchester – a real-life vampire hunter – who believed that the ghostly figure was that of a Romanian ‘Vampire of the Undead’ that had been brought to England in the early 1700s.
Finally, after 13 years of hunting, Manchester published a book in which he claimed to have successfully staked, beheaded and burnt the vampire.
But with no photo evidence, some believe the vampire could still be out there.
A poltergeist scratching passers-by in Edinburgh
While the ghost of the young girl in Cannock Chase ran away from people, there have been reports of ghosts who have attacked people in the UK, too.
Greyfriars Cemetery in Edinburgh, Scotland, is home to a number of notable names, including Thomas Riddell – the inspiration Voldemort in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books.
But the cemetery is also home to one resident even more chilling than the Dark Lord himself.
Sir George ‘Bluid’ MacKenzie was a 17th century lawyer who is blamed for the deaths of thousands of men during Charles II’s religious persecution of Presbyterians in Scotland - and his ghost still haunts the area to this day.
MacKenzie laid undisturbed for more than 300 years before his spirit was reportedly first encountered in 1999.
A homeless man decided to take shelter in MacKenzie’s final resting place – the Black Mausoleum – on a dark and stormy night when something terrifying happened.
An ancient coffin allegedly collapsed beneath him, plunging him into a pit containing still decomposing plague victims, and the man ran from the scene covered in dust, startling a passerby that was out walking their dog.
It is believed that the incident disturbed the spirit of MacKenzie, and since then there have been more than 500 recorded incidents of poltergeist attacks on members of the public there.
Volunteer guide Willie Telford told Edinburgh Evening News: “People have been bitten, scratched, kicked, pushed, they get burn marks, they feel sick, they feel cold."
Headless horseman haunting Essex
And it gets worse.
Borley Rectory in Essex is widely regarded as ‘the most haunted house in England’.
There have been reports of strange incidents at the Victorian house for decades, including sightings of a ghost nun and a phantom coach driven by two headless horsemen.
But things really escalated in 1928, when the resident Reverend Guy Eric Smith contacted a national newspaper to report otherworldly activity, including bells ringing and the sound of footsteps.
The paper sent paranormal investigator Harry Price to carry out research, and the activity intensified, with reports including the throwing of vases and stones.
The Smiths soon left the property, with the reverend’s wife believing that Price had been behind it all. But the strange occurrences continued.
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Smith’s replacement, Reverend Lionel Algernon Foyster, also recorded incidents including bell-ringing, writing appearing on the wall and even his wife, Marianne, being thrown from her bed by a poltergeist.
The mystery remained unsolved and the house burnt down in 1939 before being completely demolished five years later.