The Old Bell on Sadler Gate is one of Derby's oldest surviving coaching inns, a Grade II listed Tudor-style building dating to around 1680, with the dark woodwork and shadowed corners that come naturally with a building of that age and type. It closed its doors in March 2012, its owners citing a difference of opinion over the building's future, and has stood empty since, which has if anything only added to its reputation as a place worth being curious about from the outside.
While it was still trading, the Old Bell had built up a genuinely varied set of ghost reports. Most frequently described is a woman in blue Victorian dress, seen standing in one of the downstairs bars, generally without any specific name or backstory attached to her beyond the description of her clothing. Alongside her, the pub had a reputation for a mischievous poltergeist blamed for flinging coathangers around, a piece of activity distinctive enough to be repeated consistently in local accounts. The most poignant reported figure is that of a serving girl, said locally to have been murdered at the inn at some point in its history, whose ghost is described as appearing only to children rather than to adult staff or visitors, a detail that gives the story an unusually specific and slightly unsettling shape compared with many generic pub hauntings.
With the building closed since 2012, there has been no opportunity for new sightings to be reported in recent years, and its haunted reputation now exists largely as a piece of remembered local history rather than an active ghost-hunting venue, tied to a building that visitors can currently only look at from Sadler Gate rather than enter.
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