The Paranormal Database

Body in the Basement

Location: Reading - Private house along Baker Street
Type: SHC
Date / Time: 12 November 1978
Further Comments: A young daughter found her mother burnt to death in the basement - some witnesses described the body as charred, while the room itself was barely touched.

Glass Breaker

Location: Reading - Private residence, Kiln Road, Emmer Green
Type: Poltergeist
Date / Time: 18 April 1969
Further Comments: Over a four hour period on Good Friday evening, glass items exploded throughout the house, including Christmas ornaments wrapped up in the loft. Two of the family had gone to see the Yarker family, who experienced a poltergeist outbreak in two months previous which also smashed glass. A spiritualist group claimed to contact a poltergeist which had attached itself to the family's sixteen-year-old son.

Jill

Location: Reading - Prospect Street, house not known
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Mid twentieth century
Further Comments: This ghost of a six year old girl was due to be exorcised, but the owners had a change of heart and called the event off.

Pacing Footsteps

Location: Reading - Roebuck Hotel
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Twentieth century
Further Comments: This ghost can also be heard knocking on doors, and opening locked windows, much to the annoyance of the owners.

Red Ball

Location: Reading - Skies above Basingstoke Road, Whitley
Type: UFO
Date / Time: 14 April 2006
Further Comments: Three teenagers spotted a strange red glowing orb flying overhead as they were out walking.

Moving Items

Location: Reading - Telamite (company, no longer present), Great Knollys Street
Type: Poltergeist
Date / Time: Circa January 1968
Further Comments: A minister was called to this company's premises to bless the site after a poltergeist outbreak which, according to the local newspaper, may have injured one worker. The company denied that seven people had left because of the supernatural outbreak.

Death Gasp

Location: Reading - Unknown house
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 1858
Further Comments: The occupants of this unnamed property were awoken by various sounds at night, including the gasp of a dying person, groaning, and a shill shriek. Floorboards were pulled up to find a trapped animal, but nothing could be discovered. Visitors to the site also heard the noises.

Grey Haired Woman

Location: Reading - Unknown house along Oxford Road
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Mid twentieth century
Further Comments: Returning to her former home shortly after death, this ghost of an old lady took to haunting the kitchen of a house along this road.

Captain Edward Purvis

Location: Reading - Watlington House
Type: Poltergeist
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: Dressed in his red uniform, smoking a pipe, Captain Edward looks out of the window onto the outside world.

Mary Blandy

Location: Remenham - Little Angel public house
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: Hanged for poisoning her father to prevent him from objecting to her marriage, Mary is sometimes seen around the pub where she fled.

Strange Lights

Location: Sandhurst - Ambarrow Court (currently a nature reserve)
Type: Other
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: Used by the Royal Aircraft Establishment before becoming a local nature reserve, lights are said to be seen moving amongst the trees on this site.

Cortege

Location: Slough - Ditton Park Manor House
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Twentieth century
Further Comments: While under control of the MoD, the site had a spooky reputation. During the 1970s, a gardener watched a phantom funeral cortege dressed in eighteenth century clothing pass through the grounds in an area later found to have been a chapel. Guards were said to have refused to patrol certain areas of the building and dogs refused to enter areas. A Jacobean-era man was said to emerge from a painting, and the driveway was haunted by a horse-drawn carriage.

Raining Golf Balls

Location: Slough - Huntercombe Lane North
Type: Other
Date / Time: 2001-2004
Further Comments: Over the three year period hundreds of golf balls have fallen from the sky and landed in resident's gardens along this road, though no golf course is near.

Shadow

Location: Slough - Meadfield Road
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: March 2016
Further Comments: Two people sitting in a car watched a 'shadow' pass by and disappeared up the road. One of the witnesses, who lived nearby, believed it related to a presence in their own home, which creates cold spots and generates the benign sensation of searching for something.

Exploding Blobs

Location: Slough - Skies over the town
Type: UFO
Date / Time: Mid-May 1973
Further Comments: Witnesses observed a black, pear-shaped balloon-like blob in the sky before it exploded into smoke and flame, falling to the ground (although no wreckage was reported). Another object was reported a few days later. Local research stations and their use of balloons were blamed for the UFO, although all the organisations denied knowledge.

Woman Covered in Blood

Location: Slough - Upton Court
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Traditionally Friday nights (reoccurring), but actually 1997-2009
Further Comments: Tradition places a phantom girl at this site who, dressed in her nightdress, has been seen wandering the court covered in red stains, though it is unclear whether the blood is her own. When the Slough Observer newspaper worked in the building, staff would report strange phenomena such as spotting a phantom woman, watching doors open unaided, or hearing weird sounds.

Heron

Location: Sonning - Maiden Erlegh House (demolished 1960)
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: Two animal ghosts were once said to roam here; a phantom heron would fly down into the lake and a spectral horse roamed the surrounding area.

Isabella of Valois

Location: Sonning - Site of Bishop's Palace (no longer standing)
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Summer evenings (last seen late eighteenth/early nineteen century?)
Further Comments: Wife of Richard II, Queen Isabella' drifts around the field where the palace once stood. As the phantom grey woman moves, ghostly music emerges from the ground. George III's organist lived nearby and may have been the last person to witness the phantom.

Lady Philomere

Location: Sonning - The Mill theatre
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: Lady Philomere is said to have thrown herself into the nearby waters to end her life, and now haunts the theatre.

An old postcard showing Sonning-on-Thames.

Child

Location: Sonning-on-Thames - Bridge
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: A young child is said to haunt this bridge. The story hit the headlines in September 2013 after a letterbox appeared in the centre buttress of the bridge.

A phantom farmer.

William Field

Location: South Moreton - Unknown barn in the area
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 1804-1850
Further Comments: William was a farmer who hanged himself in this barn. His ghost quickly returned and haunted the neighbourhood until exorcised many years later by a team of eleven clergymen. The men finally drove the entity into a pond, using a stake to hold it there.

Diana Dors

Location: Sunningdale - Orchard Manor
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 1984 (Dors), 1985 (lake)
Further Comments: Shortly after the death of her employer. and talking to the press, housekeeper Honor Webb claimed Diana Dors' ghost tugged at her arm and gestured at the wardrobe. Webb believed Dors wanted her to empty it of the actress's clothing, but she refused to do so. Six months after Alan Lake, Dors' husband, took his own life in the house, Webb spotted him on a CCTV screen.

Trotting Horse

Location: Sunninghill - Sunninghill Park
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Mid twentieth century
Further Comments: During the Second World War, a soldier on patrol heard a horse pass him by, even though nothing could be seen.

A golden calf.

Calf

Location: Thatcham - Grimsbury Castle (hillfort)
Type: Legend
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: In the nearby woodland, a golden calf is reputedly buried.

A phantom child at Tidmarsh.

Drowned Lad

Location: Tidmarsh - Stream near Tidmarsh Rectory
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: June (reoccurring), clear nights of the full moon - last seen 1880s?
Further Comments: The stream that ran close to this property was said to be haunted by a young boy who once drowned in its waters.