The weird, wonderful, wacky world of Peterborough

Stuart Orme from Peterborough Museum runs regular ghost tours around the city.

A ROYAL ghost is said to prowl the staircase of Oundle's Talbot Hotel, which houses the oak staircase from a castle with a very grisly history.

The Talbot is home to the staircase which once belonged to Fotheringhay Castle, where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned and executed.

Mary took her last steps down them more than 400 years ago, and yet legend has it that on February 8, the anniversary of her death, her ghost returns to retread her last walk.

Over the years a silent gliding figure has been seen on the staircase many times, but in recent years punters who stopped overnight to try to get a glimpse of the hotel's royal guest were disappointed.

FAR from scaring the living daylights out of those of us made from flesh and blood, the ghost who roams the corridors of the Orton Hall Hotel prefers to spend her time flushing the loo.

The hotel is thought to be haunted by a former member of staff of one of the three Marquises of Huntly, who used to live in the hotel. Little is known about her, apart from that she is elderly, has white hair and wears a high collared dress.

CHATTERIS' Cross Keys Hotel is reputedly so spooky that it was named one of the most haunted hotels in East Anglia in 1996.

According to a survey in an AA guide, guests reported wobbly beds being blasted by cold air, and one even said their bedclothes had been tugged at!

When a medium was called into check out the goings-on at the hotel, which dates back to 1540, she reported seeing strange spirits in every room, apart from two which she refused to enter.

Among the unwelcome guests she detected were a cavalier and his two children, a couple of Puritans in the restaurant, a former housekeeper called Mary and a dog.

Proprieter Richard Skeggs told the ET: "You can walk into a room and the TV will turn itself on. Things go missing and then turn up weeks later in an unexpected place.

"Doors that you are convinced are locked seem to unlock themselves."

THE grey ghost of a woman murdered by the wife of a man she had been having an affair with was said to haunt the corridors of former stately home Thorpe Hall.

In the days before it was a Sue Ryder hospice, visitors would often remark on a lonely woman who would rush past them on the stairs, leaving a trail of ice cold air in her wake.

The lady hasn't been seen since the 1980s, but staff and patients at the hospice have often reported hearing babies crying, which makes sense, as the hall was once used as a maternity hospital.

IN 2001 the ET reported a very different kind of ghost story – the landlady of a city pub claimed that her pub's credit card reader was haunted.

Joy Dawson, who was at the helm of the The Crown Inn, in Great Casterton, near Stamford, told us that the machine would start playing up at midnight each evening.

But her suspicions perhaps weren't quite as outrageous as they seemed – her inn is believed to be haunted by the ghost of a young woman whose father was a murderer. He had been buried in an unmarked grave at a nearby church, and had murdered his sister in the pub and was hanged before being buried in the churchyard.

The ghost has also been known to blow heavy double doors open, set the fire alarm off and turn the till off.

Peterborough Museum is a magnet for ghosts

PETERBOROUGH Museum, which was once a hospital, is something of a magnet for ghosts, and has even been a location for an episode of Living TV's Most Haunted.

The story of an ANZAC soldier who died at the hospital during the First World War and has haunted its corridors ever since is well-known.

The Lonely Anzac has been seen floating up the stairs and walking through doors, and his eerily loud footsteps have shivered the timbers of plenty of museum staff over the years.

With this ghostliness in mind the museum has set up its very own ghost-cam in the cellar, which is a part of the building seldom used by staff and never open to the public – making it the perfect lurking place for any ghosts and ghoulies.