Shipston-on-Stour's former rectory, since repurposed as council offices, carries a haunting attributed to a former rector named William Parry, believed by those who have reported experiences in the building to have simply stayed on in the home he occupied during his working life rather than departing entirely at death.
The story fits a common and comparatively gentle category of English clergy hauntings, quite different in tone from the more dramatic tragedy-driven ghosts found elsewhere in this collection: a man attached to a house through decades of ordinary, faithful occupation rather than through any violent or dramatic death. There is something almost reassuring in a haunting of this kind, a former rector simply continuing to inhabit the building where he spent his working years, unwilling or unable to fully relinquish a home that shaped so much of his life.
No further detail about Parry himself, the dates of his tenure, or any specific incident behind the tradition has been traced for this entry, leaving the story as a modest but genuine piece of local building lore rather than a fully developed case.
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