Ancient Ram Inn Gloucestershire: Why So Many Ghosts?

The Ancient Ram Inn Gloucestershire is one of the UK’s most haunted places. DARREN SARSFIELD visits to discover its ghostly secrets…

The Ancient Ram Inn is known as one of England’s oldest and haunted locations and is found in the village of Wotton Under Edge, Gloucestershire. The Inn dates back to 1145.

During the 20th century, the Inn changed hands several times until it was bought in 1968 by its current owner John Humphries, who to this day still resides there.

The Inn is an incredible place to visit; John lives in a small section of the Inn surrounded by an array of items he has collected throughout his life.

On entering the doorway, you are immediately taken back to a time long gone and the atmosphere feels heavy with the stories held by its walls.

John is a charming man with a gentle hush voice, which only makes the activity he claims to have happened over nearly half a century more chilling.

One claim is that he has been dragged and pulled across a floor and that an evil entity has climbed into the beds of guests, including himself.

John has found evidence of Devil worship and ritual sacrifice on the property. He found the remains of children, centuries old with broken daggers next to their remains under the staircase.

Haunted activity upstairs at Ancient Ram Inn Gloucestershire

Upstairs is where John tells us most of the activity occurs.

As you walk up the stairs, the walls are covered with articles recording the many visitors John has received.

The two rooms we are to focus our investigation on are the Bishop’s Room and the Witches’ Room.

We asked John not to give us the information as to why the rooms had been given their names, as already the way the whole building looked made it easy to assume activity to be associated with the many items before us.

On occasion we are asked to help on investigations, as was the case at the Ancient Ram Inn.

A small group of six people asked myself and fellow Manchester Paranormal member Ian Landregan to attend and help them.

We started the investigation in the adjoining old barn.

Although we heard or saw no activity in there, one of our group, Paul, entered the barn on his own after the vigil.

He reported that his camera, with which he was trying to take photos with, was malfunctioning.

Every time he left the barn it would be fine but when he tried to use the camera in the barn, the same problem occurred – he could find no explanation for this.

We decided to do a group vigil in the downstairs area, near where the children’s remains were found.

Ian asked for any person present in spirit to come forward.

Small knocks were heard but due to the age of the building, this could have been the natural sounds of the many wooden floors and stairways creaking due to temperature changes.

When we finished the vigil, one of the group reported that she had felt uneasy during the vigil and that she had a burning sensation on her neck.

On checking her neck, she had a strange staple shaped scratch.

We asked if she had leaned against anything or had put her hand there, to which she replied she had not.

She was very shaken by the experience and had to take a break outside to gather her emotions.

Myself and Ian decided to focus the remaining part of the night in the two rooms upstairs, the Witches’ Room proved to be uneventful but what was to happen in the Bishop’s Room was to astonish us.

It was decided to focus the vigil on a paranormal device known as the Ovilus 4.

Ovilus 4 seeks information from haunted Ancient Ram Inn

This device takes information from the environment and converts, through the use of its dictionary, its readings into words displayed on a screen.

The device splits opinions, some saying it is random in its information, whilst many claiming it is successful in spirit communication.

We settled in positions around the room and Ian asked could any spirit present answer our questions by using the device.

A series of words appeared on the Ovilus, these were EGYPT, FLOWERS, RABBIT, and BIKE.

We immediately commented that these were indeed random words which had no significance, to which the Ovilus responded OBSERVE.

We decided to take a short break and then we realised that the Ovilus was telling us to observe the room.

Next to a statue of an Egyptian Pharoah’s head were a bouquet of plastic flowers and a toy rabbit- was somebody in spirit trying to prove their existence by telling us to observe these objects?

The only word without significance was BIKE.

I decided to return to John who was in his living area of the Inn.

I asked him if he had ever owned a bike.

He took me to the bottom of the stairway to where a section, which was off bounds to us, was covered by a large curtain.

John pulled the curtain back and to my astonishment, a gleaming vintage motor bike stood proudly.

Were the words that appeared on the device simply random, and that by amazing coincidence, match objects in the Inn?

Or had we received communication from one of the many spirits said to haunt the amazing Ancient Ram Inn?

We thanked John for letting us investigate his home and looked forward to returning again.

Have you been to the Ancient Ram Inn Gloucestershire? Tell us about your experience in the comments section below!