Monday 5 November 2007

Most Haunted Mansion


In a Halloween publicity stunt, the National Trust has published a list of its top ten most haunted properties. Blickling hall, the Jacobean mansion near Alysham in Norfolk has hit the number one spot. But how was this list arrived at? Was it done by carefully counting and collating reports and giving them a verification weighting, or did the National Trust dowse Sian Evans abdomen with a pendulum in order to get a gut reaction? The house manager at Blickling provides a few clues:

We are absolutely delighted to be at the top of the most haunted chart. This will give Blickling a very scary five skull rating in the national guide to haunted halls. The house staff always look forward to coming in and being scared witless by our team of ghosts who have worked hard for this position and put in a very spirited performance. They are good workers who enjoy their work and always moan about their tasks, although they are sometimes difficult to distinguish from the cleaning staff who also do a lot of moaning (especially on pay day). With a celebrity ghost like Anne Boleyn we definitely have a head start here at Blickling, but we will be giving all our hard working ghosts a Halloween bonus and pay rise.

So, if you are an employee at Blickling your best bet is to take a white sheet with you to work and scare the living daylights out of a visitor of two - you might get a pay rise and bonus. Not a ghost of chance of that I suppose. I wonder if anyone has spotted my pay slip lurking in a dark corner at Blickling? I wouldn’t believe it if they said they had .....there I go again, moaning; must have caught the habit from the spooks.

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