In Chilwell, close to the Derbyshire border, is a very rare road name. In fact, according to Google Maps, it only shares the first part of its name with two other roads, both on opposite ends of Australia.
It is called Ghost House Lane, and it sits next to the Eskdale Junior School, between a couple of tram stops. What could have happened here, to give it such a vanishingly rare name?
There was a "Ghost House" here once, but it's long gone, and very few will remember it. It was demolished in 1952, around the time of redevelopment in the area.
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To find out what happened, we're going back to the early Victorian era, to 1827. Chilwell was a farming community, numbering in the hundreds, but a legend would soon rise that would see day-trippers streaming into the village.
A pedlar - an old name for travelling salesman - told one of his customers that he was going to be staying the night at a farmhouse in Chilwell. The Nottingham Journal shared the story with other papers in March 1850, and they had his name as McQuince, a "Scotchman" who usually ended his route at Ash Flat House.
The Bagguley family lived there - head of the house John Bagguley with his wife, along with two sons and three daughters, one of whom the pedlar was known to want to marry. According to the paper it would have been a good deal for the unnamed Bagguley daughter, suggesting the pedlar was well-off.
McQuince left his second-to-last customer to head towards Ash Flat, and was never seen again. Nobody ever came for the money that his customers in Beeston and Chilwell owed him.
One man, only known as "Lees", went to the house the following morning, following an "unaccountable and irresistible inclination". He saw Mr. Bagguley working in the garden, but that was all.
A year after McQuince's disappearance, it was noticed that the Bagguleys looked much better off. They had bought pigs, the girls dressed in finer clothes, and Ash Flat House had new furnishings.
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Their good fortune wouldn't last, as the landlord would kick them out ten years after the disappearance of McQuince, replacing them with new labourers. And that winter was when the legend of the Chilwell Ghost began.
At night, a "tremendous bang" could be heard, as though someone were throwing something or hitting the shutters of Ash Flat House. It kept happening, and on the third visit of the puzzled landlord to investigate the noises, he heard it too.
It had snowed, but there were no tracks, nor anything else hidden in the drifts that could have caused it. He put paper over the shutters to see if something was being thrown - another loud bang was heard, but nothing pierced the paper.
It even happened while someone was on watch, with something slightly shaking the house, but no clues as to what the "something" was. A reward was put up for information, and word got out that a ghost was in town, bringing all sorts into the village for some spooky tourism.
The Bagguleys had remained in Chilwell, and some years later neighbours reported hearing arguments. "You know I could hang you any day, I've got your coat of arms upstairs!", Mrs. Bagguley would shout. When asked what she meant, she would say "He knows".
She died, without revealing any secrets, and the elderly John Bagguley remarried. The new wife reported his talking in his sleep, saying that something was going to "seize him".
Another time, he said "The pick is in the book". He died not long after, aged 70. His last words were taken as a confession, an attempt to cleanse his soul as death closed in.
Another tale goes that the murder weapon was an axe, and an axe head was found nearby. But if McQuince's body is somewhere around the lost Ash Flat House, it's never been found.
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