The Calverton Ghost

A Ghost Story for Christmas

This story concerns an old abandoned rectory which, during the winter of 1961 was being demolished by a gang of workmen.

 The once graceful Georgian residence had been the home of the Seely family and was only converted into a rectory in about 1912.

 As workmen started to dismantle the crumbling rooms they began to suspect that they were not alone.

 Their labours were continually interrupted by the sound of slamming doors in the upper rooms, long after the doors themselves had been removed.

 A strange voice was also heard emanating from the top floor, while most mysterious of all was the unmistakable sound of footsteps pacing backwards and forwards.

 Mr Walter Davis, the foreman of the demolition gang, told the Newark Advertiser newspaper how he first heard the footsteps late one afternoon when work had finished for the day.

 He said “It was already dark and when the others had gone when I heard a shuffling noise in an upstairs room.  At first I thought it was one of the workmen who had returned to collect fire wood.  But as there was no reply to my calling I went upstairs to investigate”.

 Mr. Davis found that the noise was coming from a bedroom which had been converted into a bathroom.  Although he could clearly hear footsteps pacing up and down inside the room, he knew that earlier that day the workmen had entirely stripped the room of all its floorboards.

 Mr. Davis listened to the footsteps for some time until they faded away into a wall….. only to be replaced by the sound of breaking crockery.

“it would be rash to say outright that there was nothing in this ghost story”.

 Similar ghostly occurances continued at the rectory throughout the period of demolition, and came to be accepted almost as the norm.

 Meanwhile some villagers actually reported sightings of  a ghost in the rectory grounds.

 Others not only reported seeing a ghost, but were able to describe how it disappeared into thin air before their very eyes.

 Still more residents told how their pet dogs refused to walk beneath the boundary wall of the rectory

 Even the vicar of Calverton, the Rev. Thomas Hoyle, had to admit that, in the light of his parishoners’ testimonies, “it would be rash to say outright that there was nothing in the ghost story”.

 With the demolition of the old rectory at Calverton, reports of the ghost and its antics appear to have faded away.  To those who witnessed the haunting, however, the impressions left by the rectory ghost have remained fresh in their minds to this day.