In the early 1990s a report appeared in an Olney paper regarding the haunting of the Castle Inn. At the time Sylvia, the wife of the publican, said that she had gone to bed one night after switching on a gas fire and leaving her cat asleep in the lounge. During the night she suddenly woke up with the feeling that a cat was crawling all over her face. By the light of the outside street lamp she could see that there was nothing there. Perplexed by what had happened she got up and went into the lounge to discover that the room was filled with gas. She had turned the fire on but hadn't lit it. Her cat was barely alive, a few minutes more and they would both have been dead. So what had wakened her?

The circumstance by which she woke up could simply have been dismissed as a dream if it wasn't for the fact that she later experienced a physical manifestation of a ghost. The figure she saw was a woman wearing black clothes in what Sylvia classed as an eighteenth century style. She was not the only one to see the figure as one of her customers did too. When Sylvia's daughter, Fiona, was eight years old she came down the stairs and told her mother that she had just seen a man walk through a door in the wall where there wasn't a door. The door had been sealed up some time ago.

Sylvia's husband, Peter, also experienced a strange occurrence when he heard someone walking down the stairs. Not particularly unusual one might feel but it was when you consider that the stairs had been blocked off a long time ago. One of the barmaids also had an unusual experience. One evening she arrived at the pub early, let herself in, locked the pub back up and went upstairs. When she came down again there was a row of bottles on the bar floor, yet they weren't there before and there was no one else in the building.

Sylvia tried to get rid of the ghost by having it exorcised, after which all the creaks and strange noises seemed to disappear. But it did not end there. A number of year's later people were still talking of the ghost which was said to be a woman. Things would get moved around, especially vases of flowers and it seems to have a habit of folding people's clothes for them.

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High Street

In the northern part of the High Street in Olney the apparition of a lady dressed in black has been seen but no further details are currently available. Is this the same ghost who haunts the Castle Inn?

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Market Place

Number 24 in Market Place has seen a number of incarnations over the years, mainly associated with food, and is now Bean Coffee Stop. At one time, when the building was being renovated, a child's shoe was found hidden in the area of the chimney. It was common practise to place a child's shoe on a ledge in a chimney as protection against the Devil (as the chimney was open to the air). The builder who found the shoe kept it and from that point on he had a string of bad luck including an accident, his wife leaving him and he even developed an incurable disease. It was also reported that the sound of a crying child could be heard in the building where the shoe was found. Eventually the show was returned and things settled down.

At one time the building was a flower shop (now in Weston Road) and several members of staff used to feel their hair being touched. In addition cigarette smoke could be smelt and a figure of an old man was seen on the stairs by the child of a member of staff.

In addition a ghostly old man wearing a cap was seen in an alleyway which connected the building to a workroom out the back. A young girl also reported seeing a man but no one else could see him. One worker reported that on two occasions they had felt someone's hand pressing down hard on their shoulder but when they looked round there was no one there.

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One Stop Shop

In High Street North you may encounter a ghost known as the White Lady. She has been seen in the building now occupied by the One Stop shop and has been described a being dressed from head to toe in ‘black'??? She usually appears when work is being done on the fabric of the building, a common reason for hauntings.

It seems that burials once took place on the site as previous owners took a number of gravestones with them to furnish their new garden when they left. When the building work was being done everything seemed to go wrong and the work was significantly delayed. This was blamed on the White Lady who was said to disapprove of the work.

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Whirly Pit

In Olney there is a legend of a bottomless pond called the Whirly Pit which stood near to the Castle Inn. The pond was alleged to have an underground passage running beneath it. Tales tell of coaches drawn by headless horses which career along the tunnel, in one coach the passenger is the Devil himself, whilst in another it is two people fleeing from a murder. It is said that the latter's coach was driven by a headless coachman who kept taking the wrong turn so they kept ending up back at the Whirly pit and so on for all eternity.

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