Hauntings

The unjustly executed of the Old Bell

The Old Bell, Gloucester

Building dates from the 17th century

Assize courts of the 17th and 18th centuries genuinely and routinely handed down death sentences for offences that would today be considered minor, wrongful or disproportionate convictions a real and well documented feature of the period's judicial system, giving this haunting a plausible historical basis even without any specific named case or individual traced in the sources consulted for this entry.

The claim of specifically unjust executions, rather than simply executions in general, is a notable framing choice within this tradition, suggesting either a genuine remembered local grievance about a particular miscarriage of justice or a more general modern sympathy projected backward onto the harsh legal standards of an earlier era.

This haunting sits alongside several other Gloucester locations recorded separately in this register, including Café René, Blackfriars Priory, HM Prison Gloucester, and the Dick Whittington, together giving the city an unusually dense concentration of institutional and judicial hauntings, its long history as a significant regional centre of law, religion, and commerce evidently having left a correspondingly rich body of ghost tradition across several quite different types of historic building.

The Old Bell operates as a working public house in Gloucester.
Evidence
Dubious
Access
Open ground
Location
51.865, -2.247 (Sited to the building or field)

Sources: SoGlos, "20 of the most haunted places in Gloucestershire" [other]

View on the map →

Comments

Loading…