Hauntings

The phantom horseman of Wycoller Hall

Also known as: Simon Cunliffe's ghost

Wycoller Hall, Wycoller, Colne

18th century; annual midwinter haunting by tradition

Wycoller Hall, now a picturesque ruin in the hamlet of Wycoller near Colne, was built for the Cunliffe family and is popularly associated with Ferndean Manor in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, whose author is known to have visited the area and drawn inspiration from its genuinely atmospheric ruined state for her own fiction.

Local tradition attaches the hall's haunting to Simon Cunliffe, a landowner said to have met a tragic end, whose ghost is said to ride the grounds around the middle of winter each year, an annual and specifically timed haunting rather than one reported at random throughout the year.

The apparition is heralded, according to the tradition, by the blast of a hunting horn and the sound of a horse's hooves before some family tragedy, though the specific tragedy that supposedly prompted the haunting in the first place is not recorded in any of the sources consulted for this entry, leaving the underlying cause of Simon Cunliffe's restless annual ride genuinely unexplained even within the tradition's own terms.

Wycoller Hall ruins and Wycoller Country Park are open access.
Evidence
Long-standing local tradition
Access
Open ground
Location
53.860, -2.137 (Sited to the village)

Sources: Haunted Hosts, "Lancashire" [other]

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