7 Creepy Places To Visit In The South East Of England When Lockdown Ends

Pluckey in Kent holds the title of the most haunted village in the UK, and the local woods, known as the Screaming woods, contribute to this claim. Witnesses have reported hearing screams coming from the woods at night, as well as hearing disembodied footsteps and seeing strange lights in the sky.

Some of the woods resident spooks include an 18th century colonel who committed suicide in the woods, the spirit of a highwayman who was executed in the woods, and the ghosts of many walkers who have gotten lost in the woods. The most recent disappearance was in 1998 when four students went into the woods in search of some strange lights they had seen, their bodies were never found.

The woods are said to have connections to satanic rituals, believed to be performed by a religious cult from the nearby village of Smarden. When a private investigator, Robert Collin, tried to get to the bottom of the cult in 1964, his investigation was cut short after his untimely death in a car accident.

Clapham Woods in West Sussex is one of the most active paranormal sites in the UK, it was the location of a spate of UFO sightings during the late 1960s and 1970s. This single area of Britain has more reports of weird goings on than anywhere else in Britain.

During the peak of the reports the woods, which were once used for rituals by a satanic cult, were said to have seen alien abduction, and be the base of alien aircraft that had come to Earth to collect chemical elements including sulphur.

People have reported UFOs in many forms, from a moon-sized light descending from the sky, to flying saucers hovering above the woods, as well as plenty of accounts of unexplained lights in the sky, many of which seemed to beam light down into the trees below.

The most notable event took place in 1967 and was witnessed by Paul Glover, a member of the British Phenomenon Research Group. He and a colleague saw a black boomerang-shaped craft moving across the sky while they were walking through the woods. This sighting was followed by a strange display of lights in the sky. They saw two bright lights, one of which released a small object, which travelled to the second and entered it.

The woods are a place of death, with four recorded cases of bodies being found in the woods, most of which were missing persons who were later found in the woods.

This ancient woodland in Berkshire surrounds Bisham Abbey, which is said to be haunted by the ghost of Lady Hoby. The story goes that she beat her slow son to death out of frustration, before riding off into the woods. She spent the rest of her life in misery and regret, but since her death in 1609, her ghost has been spotted in the woods, as well as the abbey, trying to wash the blood from her hands.

Today Chislehurst Caves are a tourist attraction and although they are called caves, they are entirely manmade. The intersecting tunnels cover a total distance of 22 miles and there's said to be paranormal activity on every turn.

Despite an unsuccessful exorcism, the strange goings on continue. Most of the reports involve claims of poltergeist activity, including rocks and chalk being thrown at visitors.

The Hellfire Caves are a manmade network of chalk mines, which extend a quarter of a mile underground near the village of West Wycombe. The caves have a past of satanic rituals, worship and sacrifice, making them a terrifying place to visit today.

The Hellfire Caves are said to have many resident spooks, including the spirit of Benjamin Franklin, who was a regular visitor to the caves in the 18th century. Another apparition regularly spotted is that of Paul Whitehead, a former steward of the notorious Hellfire Club from which the caves take their name.

There's also the spirit of a young girl called Suki, she's said to have been tricked into meeting a man at the caves, the visit resulted in her murder.