Pluckley

OVERVIEW

A village on the greensand ridge south-west of Ashford, with a Norman church, the Dering estate's arched windows on every cottage, and a reputation. The Guinness Book of Records listed it in 1989 as the most haunted village in Britain, crediting twelve ghosts; the category has since been dropped. It was the setting of the television series The Darling Buds of May and has been visited by Strange but True?, Most Haunted, Ghost Hunters International and the New York Times.

HISTORY

The ghost list was assembled in the mid-twentieth century from village tradition: the Red Lady, a Dering wife, in St Nicholas churchyard; a monk; a highwayman run through at Fright Corner; a gypsy woman burned in her sleep by the bridge; a schoolmaster hanged in Dicky Buss's Lane; a colonel; a miller; the screams in Dering Wood. A Daily Telegraph journalist who visited in 2008 found the villagers mostly tired of it.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

The tradition is that of a village, not a single event: figures at the church, the woods and the crossroads, and screams in the wood at night. It is recorded in the press and on television; what stands behind each story is not. Pluckley draws ghost tourists every Halloween and the parish has asked them to be civil.

VISITING

A public village; the church is open. Dering Wood is a Woodland Trust wood open on foot. Residents' homes are private and the village has complained of night-time crowds.