Bestwood Lodge

Ghostly goings-on back in the '80s still haunt a woman to this day. She quit her job as a chambermaid at Bestwood Lodge in Nottingham, after working at the reputedly haunted hall for two years. During that time ghosts were said to stroll around the premises before vanishing into thin air. Spooky voices were heard in the cellar where bodies were allegedly buried, and some staff felt they were being watched. "Although I never saw any of the ghosts," the woman said, "the things I felt and heard about will stay in my memory forever. I always remember when we had to clean the family room. It always smelled strongly of oranges whenever children had stayed there, but there were never any oranges or peels around - and it was only when kids had been in, never adults. Staff saw people dressed in medieval clothes who mysteriously disappeared. Once when one of the barmen went to change a barrel in the cellar, the lights went out and a voice said to him, 'Can I help you, Sir?' I remember him rushing back upstairs with his hair standing on end, his face as white as a sheet and his body shaking with terror and asking which one of us was playing tricks on him. Nobody had touched the light switch or had been down there. But when he went back downstairs the barrel pipe had mysteriously been changed." She finally left in 1985 after two years working there. "The place scared me to death." Bestwood Lodge was originally a royal hunting lodge. It was later used as a love nest by Charles II and his mistress Nell Gwynn. Gwynn, of course, was famous for being an orange seller before becoming an actress and meeting theking. It's strange how you can still smell oranges in her home, 300 years after her death. There are also reports of the sound of children crying in the vicinity of the lodge.