Muncaster Castle
Ravenglass Cumbria CA18 IRQ
England
Tel: +44 (0) 1229 717 614
Website: www.muncaster.co.uk
Muncaster Castle was once the court of a great fool—Tom Fool to be exact. Thomas Skelton, better known as Tom Fool, was the court jester for the Pennington family during the latter half of the 16th century. Always the prankster, Skelton was known for his humorous antics in the court, for giving bad directions to travelers who came by the castle, and also for performing a murderous deed for his master when required. Tom Fool's presence is still felt at Muncaster, and his ghost has become the scapegoat for almost every little thing that goes wrong inside, be it supernatural or not. But Skelton is by no means the only spirit here.
Built around 1258 c.e. by Gamel de Mulcastre, the castle sits on a picturesque setting in West Cumberland by the River Esk. The castle has served as a fortress to ward off marauding Scots from the north, it was an outpost to protect trade routes from Carlisle, and it's been home to the Pennington family, a family of great influence in the region, for almost 800 years.
"There's always been the ghost stories about Muncaster," Peter Frost-Pennington said, who has been living at the castle since 1987. "At least initially, we didn't really talk about them outside the family at all."
The most profound phenomena at Muncaster occurs in the Tapestry Room. Until the mid-1990s, the Tapestry Room bedroom was part of the main castle and was not used as part of the accommodations the castle rents to guests. Only friends and family stayed in the Tapestry Room, but the practice didn't last very long because so many people who stayed in that room claimed they couldn't sleep because they heard an infant crying for hours— though no infants were anywhere in the Castle. The crying phenomenon at Muncaster has been happening for many years, and the event has been known to happen not for a fleeting moment, like so many paranormal encounters—it has at times gone on for multiple hours.
On the Castle's grounds, there have been numerous reports of a "White Lady"—believed to be the ghost of Mary Bragg, who, in 1805, was a housekeeper in Ravenglass and was in love with the footman at Muncaster. Mary Bragg was brutally murdered along the road to Muncaster by henchman sent by another woman who was in love with the Muncaster footman. Frost-Pennington said, "She's this white lady who appears on the main roads around Muncaster and sometimes in the garden. Some people have even reported that they thought they'd hit someone. They were driving on the road, and this figure in white jumps out in front of them—they hit this young girl in front of them. They stopped the car and there's nothing to be seen.
"People have often seen darting figures, or sometimes she's a solid figure that looks like you or me. Other times, she's just a sort of miasma or mist, but a fairly thick mist. And we do get sort of odd clumps of mist hanging around hills around here on occasion, but people I've talked to are sure it wasn't just a bit of the mist. They say, 'Oh, no. It wasn't like that at all. It was different—it was a definite blob.'"