8C Video

A haunted castle

Hi, I’m Ned. Welcome to Portchester Castle. Portchester Castle is over one thousand seven hundred years old. It’s near Portsmouth, a city on the south coast of England. The castle is part of English Heritage. English Heritage is a charity, which manages over four hundred old buildings and monuments in England.

With so many old buildings, there are also lots of reports of ghosts. And ghosts are sometimes a problem for staff and visitors at English. Heritage. In fact, some staff members decided to leave their jobs because of the ghosts. I’ve come here to Portchester to find out more about reports of not one, but four ghosts! And many of the ghosts come from different times in Portchester’s long history. Portchester Castle dates back to Roman Britain; the Romans built the original castle here in the year two hundred and ninety. The first ghost report also comes from

Roman times. Visitors report that they see the ghost of a Roman soldier guarding the walls, but they say they don’t feel frightened. In the Middle Ages, Portchester became a favorite castle for the kings and queens of England. During this time, a small monastery was built.

There’s a church here now in place of the monastery. People say that they see a man dressed in black here and they think he is the ghost of a monk from the monastery. Surprisingly, people don’t feel frightened when they see him. They say that he disappears when they look at him.
Our first two ghosts are not frightening, but the next ghost really frightens people – the White Lady. Some people believe that this is the ghost of Charlotte White. She was a woman who visited the castle in the nineteenth century. Charlotte’s baby fell into the water and poor Charlotte also died when she tried to save her child.

The most frightening ghost of all is a man on a black horse. Both castle visitors and staff members say that they see him. One of the staff who saw the ghost said, “It got bigger and bigger. It started to come towards me and I screamed and ran away.” People also say they hear the sound of horses; one visitor even heard the sound of horses on a video he filmed. One of the strange things about the man on the horse is that we don’t know who he is or which part of Portchester’s long history he is from.

I was quite sure I didn’t believe in ghosts before I came here, but, after a day at Portchester, I’m not so sure.