Hereford is known as one of the most historical Cities in the UK. This is certaintly no surprise, everywhere you look in Hereford is historical from the old black and white timbered buildings to the imposing Norman Cathedral, the City is a historical treat and with its own fair share of ghostly tales to tell the City is very popular with tourists.The most haunted building in Hereford is believed to be The Black Lion Inn (picture is above right) , the pub is situated on Bridge Street and is next to the river Wye. Not only is the inn the most haunted pub in Hereford,it is the most oldest and has a date from the 1500's. There is much speculation that the building was once used as a brothel and a orphanage, this cannot be confirmed but its use as a Monastry has been ascertained due to a tunnel that was discovered underneath the building, this tunnel leads to the cathedral.Many tunnels are underneath the streets of Hereford, all these tunnels lead to the Cathedral and were used by monks.
One of the most impressive discoveries found in The Black Lion was in a upstairs room, magnificent wall paintings were found in this room in 1932, the wall paintings are of people breaking the ten commandments, these are still on show today and have are believed to be as old as the building.The building has had many uses, it eventually became an inn in 1778 and the first ever landlord was Thomas Drew. There is believed to be 14 ghosts in the pub and ghostly occurences happen on a day to day basis, many paranormal investigations have also taken place in this inn. Ghostly apparitions have been seen in the pub along with the sound of footsteps, objects being moved,doors closing and cold spots.
Another building that is famous in Hereford for its haunting is an old building that is above the New Look store in High Town (picture on the left), this building is from the 15th century with a original old timber structure, the building was originally a chemist and has always remained in the same place. When the building below was having alterations to it in 1965 they had't to move the old building that was above and place it on wheels and store it on bricks and wood in the centre of High Town for several months(picture below), then when the work was finished they moved the building back to it's original place. Now there is no access to the building, the only way you can get inside this building is through the staff area upstairs of New Look, there is a door that is locked up there and when the door opens you can see into this old building, I was extremely lucky to have this access, the building inside is
small , old and dusty. There is only one ghost story that is attached to this building, when the building was a chemist there was a accidental death of a young apprentice boy who was staying in the building at the time, the apprentice boy complained of tooth ache late at night, so the apothecary who was in charge of the boy mixed up some medicine but as it was dark he failed to notice that he mixed the wrong ingredients and so the medicine was actually poison, the boy drank the medicine and suddenly died, the man was so distraught over his unfortunate mistake that he hung himself in the building on one of the top wooden beams and now his tormented soul is said to still to haunt the building, many people have seen these ghosts or have heard strange noisescome from the building.Hereford has many chilling ghost stories, another extremley haunted building is a hairdressers's called The Best Little Hair House in Hereford, this hairdresser's has been at the recieving end of strange, frequent paranormal activity that has also been witnessed by customers. One day a lady was sat having her hair cut when she saw an empty cup slide across the shelf in front of her and smash on the floor. Other spooky happenings have been objects being thrown at staff, the smell of pipe smoke, chairs spinning, cold spots, a ghostly cat and mysterious hand prints.
For more haunted Hereford ghost stories please visit
www.haunted-hereford.co.uk
