Ramhurst Manor
"Haunted House Story"

Ramhurst Manor, Leigh, Kent, England

Ramhurst Manor was once owned by the Culpepper Family and was bought, in 1857, by a retired Indian Army officer. From the time that they moved in, Mrs. R (the Victorians reveled in the use of initials) and the staff were disturbed by knockings, footsteps and mysterious voices. The voices were normally heard coming from an empty room, sometimes raised, sometimes not much more than a murmur. On occasions there was the sound of screaming.

Up to this point the manifestations had only been aural, but servants began to feel the touch of invisible clothing brushing past them as they were at work. This was accompanied by the sound of rustling silk.

On two separate occasions, Mrs. R’s brother, a young officer in the British Army, who was at Ramhurst for the shooting, heard the sound of screaming coming from his sister’s bedroom. Thinking that she was in distress, or being attacked, he rushed to her bedroom with his revolver, only to find her on both occasions sleeping peacefully.

Shortly after this, Mrs. R went to the railway station to meet her friend, Miss S, who was to spend some weeks as a guest at the house. Miss S was blessed with psychic powers, and as they returned in the coach to Ramhurst, she saw an elderly couple standing at the front door, dressed in clothes of days gone by. Miss S did not say anything to her friend, in order not to cause her alarm. In the next two weeks, Miss S saw the couple three times in the house. They told her that they were husband and wife and that their name was Children. They were devoted to the house, that they had spent much time and effort in improving, and it troubled them that it was no longer in the family, but in the hands of strangers who had not the same care for it.

Mrs. R, sensing that Miss S knew something of the haunting, tackled her about it and was told of the meetings with the Children and what they had said. It was shortly after this that Mrs. R was to have her first meeting with Dame Children.

While the guests were already sitting at the dining table, waiting for Mrs. R to appear, she was putting the finishing touches to the combing of her hair when she looked around, and there at the doorway stood Dame Children. Hearing a call from her brother to “hurry up”, she closed her eyes and walked through the ghost, hurrying towards the dining room.

Miss S had several more meetings and conversations with the couple and learned that the husband’s name was Richard, and that he had died in 1753. However, a mystery appeared when it was discovered that there was no trace of any family called Children ever having lived at Ramhurst. A former family nurse, who had been at the manor for many years, knew vaguely of a man called Children, but not at Ramhurst.

Fourteen months after the hauntings commenced, a ghost-hunter, Robert Dale Owen, became interested and conducted a thorough research into the subject. After painstaking investigations he discovered that a Richard Children had inherited the house from his uncle in 1718, and was the only member of the family to live there. He had died in 1753, at the age of 83. The house remained in the family, but was not lived in again until 1816.

Shortly afterwards the R Family left Ramhurst, and nothing more was heard or seen of Richard Children and his wife, although they are probably still quietly there, earthbound to the house they knew and loved so much.

Source: Ghosts of the Southeast, a web site describing haunted houses in Southeastern England.

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