Beyond the Gates
Ghost walks are uncovering the Welsh capital’s most fascinating folklore. We experience the growing tourist trend to find out what secrets exist beneath Cardiff Castle…
It’s raining, hard and constantly, over the Welsh capital of Cardiff. The wet licked stones that make up the gothic castle at the city’s beating heart are grey under the oppressive clouds that hang above backlit by a faded moonlight. It’s a fitting setting for a ghost story.
Cardiff Castle is one of a series of ghost walk tours that are offering tourists visiting the city new and very strange experiences. “Most come for the atmosphere and the thrill of being in a dark location,” began James Cowan, the founder of tour operator Cardiff History and Hauntings, “they come to see how creeped out they can get as they hear the stories.”
In an effort to explore Wales’ more unusual experiences, I thought I’d try and heed Cowan’s words and see just how creeped out I could get by some of the stories. Spoiler alert: a lot.
We enter the castle and are greeted by our guide for the evening, John Hutch, a bearded man with a refined English accent that would go on to add an air of Hammer horror to the evening’s proceedings. After being handed a torch and turning off our phones, to ensure nothing interferes with the ghost tour, we make our way to our first stop.
Our guide began telling us that Cardiff Castle, for the better part of its history, was a prison. The famed Norman keep was home to the more affluent prisoners with their cells offering, what the guide described as, “a sentence with a view.”
The tower directly above the huge wooden gates to the castle was home to the less lucky prisoners. The conditions were poor, violence and torture commonplace and thus the stone structure was labeled with the moniker the Black Tower.
The Black Tower is said to be the home to the screaming souls of former inmates desperate to escape their eternal incarceration.
The Black Tower now remains locked, used only as storage, and is no longer part of the tour. “The only thing you’re likely to be greeted by when you open that locked door,” began Hutch, pausing for dramatic effect as he would commonly do throughout the tour, “is a reindeer because that’s where they store their Christmas decorations.”
We laughed. The world of paranormal tourism has become a huge draw for Cardiff, a city whose history is rich and medieval, filled with ghosts. As Cowan said, “Many people seem to want something to happen, even if they are not sure whether they believe in ghosts or not.”
We then found ourselves inside the Clock Tower. Originally built by the 3rd Marquess of Bute, John Crichton-Stuart’s father, the Clock Tower sat on, what the guide described as, “virgin soil,” a fact a that will become important later in the tour.
At this point in the story, Hutch stopped speaking. “Did you hear that?” he asked. At the start of the tour he had assured us that this was a history tour and that nothing was staged.
We all paused. The silence was intermittently broken by the sound of the traffic outside. Then we heard it. A series of bumps. Too frequent to be the house settling. A tapping, low and rumbling, on the floor beneath us.
“Weird,” he said, before continuing with the story. Weird? That’s not how I’d put it. The 3rd Marquess lost both his parents young leading to an obsession with the afterlife. “This obsession led the 3rd Marquess to become involved with the Centre for Psychical Research,” he continued, “and he would go on to lend the castle to the centre as a base for their research.”
Now, you’ll remember that our theatrical guide made a point of the fact that this particular part of the castle was built on “virgin soil” which is to say, nothing had been there before.
“If nothing was there before,” he began, “where did the ghosts come from?”
This leads us onto the next room in the tour. Directly above the bedroom was a room whose name seemed like it had been taken from the script of the latest Conjuring movie. The Seance Room.
Inside the huge room were effigies of the four winds, astrological signs, astronomical depictions of constellations, a huge ornate chandelier that would mimic the sun in the sky and, of course, a round wooden table at which the seances were performed.
It is at that this point our guide explains the two types of ghost. One is a recording of a moment. A powerful emotion or an event such as death that attaches itself to the building. The other, and the most famous is a physical apperiation.
The Seance Room is home to one ghost. A man standing on the balcony looking at the people below. Thankfully nothing seemed to be in the room with us at that time. That is because the ghosts were waiting for us elsewhere.
We stood outside the door to the Guest Tower. “I hope nobody is afraid of children,” he began, “because this is the Nursery.”
As I entered the room I was greeted by an ornate rocking horse as though we had stepped into a horror movie. Huge shutters blocked out the light, leaving the room, with its dolls houses and old family photos, in total darkness when we turned off our torches.
“This is the most haunted part of the castle,” added Hutch, “one particular resident of this Tower would have an experience in this tower that would never leave him for the rest of his days.
“While sleeping, a guest in the room directly below us awoke suddenly to find he wasn’t alone. He saw something standing in the corner of the room. Something larger than a human.”
To tell you the rest of the story would rob you of the experience I had. Standing in the same building, hearing stories such as these was enough to spook even myself, a hardened skeptic.
The castle was often occupied by a caretaker who would maintain its hallowed walls. One such caretaker would be awoken by the sound of his dog barking late at night. He and his wife were asleep in the guest bedroom in the basement of the guest tower and when he turned his light on he found his dog terrified, growling at the wardrobe. Dogs, it has long been understood, can see ghosts.
The caretaker stood and approached the wardrobe, opening the doors to find a strange grey mist which dissipated into the air. We weren’t allowed in that room.
Following a brief walk through the main, and oldest, section of the house, where we were told tales of a spectral horse and coach said to be a harbinger of death, we arrived in the banqueting hall.
A vacuous room filled with Canadian pine wood ceilings and painted gold walls, the banqueting hall was home to the sighting of a grey lady dressed in a regal gown, who appeared by one of the widows before disappearing.
After being led down through a set of the beautifully decorated stairs, coated in red velvet carpet, we arrived in our final room. The library.
I was quickly overcome with a sense of dread. The guide would go on to tell us that, between the drawing room and the study sat a room whose true purpose remains a mystery.
It is believed that due to the decoration within, it used to be a chapel. Now, the room sits at the end of a long corridor, behind a fireplace. That is the location for our last ghost story.
The fireplace is large and to its left is a door that leads to the narrow corridor down to the supposed chapel. One evening, the 2nd Marquess had been entertaining guests that included the Mayor and the Surgeon General, discussing plans to expand the docks.
After their meal, the 2nd Marquess left the room hurriedly and never returned. His guests took their leave and began to filter out of the house. Surprised that her husband wasn’t thanking his guests, the 2nd Marquess’ wife went searching for him.
Unable to find him she sent her valet to look and it was in the chapel, he made the horrifying discovery. Sprawled across a lounge chair, his face contorted in horror, the 2nd Marquess’ dead body was found.
Since that day there have been multiple sightings of the 2nd Marquess inside the library. At some point during our guides’ retelling of this story I felt a powerful and terrific cold come over me. I turned to my companion and she felt the same. Then we heard it. The sound of a creak. A foot stepping on the boards behind us. We turned. Nothing.
Then came a noise I’ll never forget. Towards the back of the group, where Matthew, the other guide stood, we heard a loud tap on one of the bookcases. It was as though someone was trying to take a book off the shelf.
“Fantastic,” said the guide, “perhaps he’s come to visit us.”
We didn’t share his excitement. Was this the 2nd Marquess, forever trapped within the walls of the castle following his untimely demise? I’m still not sure I wholly believe in ghosts but one thing is certain, I was certainly creeped out.
