On half a dozen occasions, guests have had strange marks appear around their necks
In 2005, when my wife Sharon and I saw the Skirrid Inn in Monmouthshire was looking for new owners, we didn’t think twice. We had been running a pub in Hertfordshire and looking for an opportunity to return to our Welsh roots; the Skirrid offered that. With its reputation for paranormal activity, it couldn’t have been more different from the beautiful thatched pub we were leaving; but I love places full of history and intrigue. I enjoy horror films, too.
Walk in and it’s like entering a castle, with stone-flagged floors everywhere. It’s said there was a building here as early as 1110 and, though it’s impossible to verify, we do claim to be the oldest pub in Wales – most of the main bar dates from the Tudor period, and upstairs, where our guests stay, was a courtroom until Cromwell’s time. Many of the alleged ghosts are connected to that room. Local legend has it that George Jeffreys, the notorious 17th-century “hanging judge”, may have heard cases here, and that 182 people have been executed in the building. We keep a noose on the staircase, hanging from the beam that was supposedly used; it has score marks on it said to have been caused by the weight of hanging bodies.
