Description of Place: Three-stories tall with a familiar Gothic Victorian pitched room, turrets and garret windows, the large spacious twenty-four room mansion rests on grounds surrounded by woodland and encompassed by a surrounding iron-wrought fence. The original structure has been extended and rebuilt several times to include an ascending forty-step front stone stairway and an extended walkway from the front porch and veranda that travels over an arch from the house over the old carriage path to the tapering trails of the old garden obscured by the trees, now a jungle of bushes and overgrown foliage. The interior of the house includes a grand entryway with an ascending stairway, a library, ballroom and grand dining room. The upstairs are in uneven states of restoration with open floors, bare walls, razed ceilings and years of old furniture, artifacts, period furnishings in pieces and boxes of old files, papers and forgotten records. Items range from an old merry-go-round horse to old wardrobe mannequins to the remains of an old horse drawn hearse in the basement which includes burial vaults and catacombs connected to an exterior entry disguised as a mausoleum in the family cemetery. The property surrounded by dense woods is surrounded by a stone wall.

Ghostly Manifestations: One is not apt to find much mention of the Ravenhurst Mansion in any of the dozens of haunted house reference sites on the Internet. The reasons for this are many. For one, most of those lists are plagiarized from the same resource. Two, the stories here have only been revealed publicly as late. Three, the partially restored mansion has never had a serious investigation performed here. Four, despite rumors of the structure being haunted for years, no one really knows the house exists.

"If you ask me, I think it could be the most haunted location in all of England." Soft-spoken Charles Stewart is a member of the Ravenhurst Trust, who owns the estate and are trying to refurbish it. "Not that I go around visiting haunted houses, mind you, but I can't think of a week that hasn't gone by where I haven't experienced something out of the corner of my eye."

That something is apparitions and shadows that flit around corners and through doorways going about their business. Voices have been heard from the empty front hall as well as the study. People have felt watched or even touched as they pass through the old edifice.

Ed Brannion, Dawn Rochner and Matt Oh of CGS visited Ravenhurst in 2011 on the invite of British actress Minerva Smith, a close friend of Stewart. Smith had played the role of Emma Ravenhurst, the reputed identity of the Lady in White haunting the house, in a series of short plays when she was starting out as an actress in London's theater district. Although the theatrical plays ignore the ghost stories, it offers up the slanted view of the haunting love story behind them. Telling the team about the location at the haunted Drury Lane Theater Royal, she was able to get them an invite to the exclusive property.

"You are very well going to learn that the location is not without its secrets." Stewart remarks as he unlocks the large marble door of a mausoleum at the house's adjacent cemetery. The mouth of the mausoleum actually leads down to a large passageway linked to a labyrinth of tunnels and catacombs under the old estate. "No one knows why this passageway was built, or how it factors into the known history of the house, but the Trust that owns the house uses it to deter and avoid sight-seers and would-be trespassers that might vandalize the property."

Extending almost seventy-five feet under the brick wall around the grounds, the passageway enters into a huge vaulted catacomb one might see in any of the churches or chapels of London. Adjacent to one end, an iron stairway ascends in a spiral into the mansion which has been immaculately restored to some extent. At first glance, the structure looks regal and carefully preserved, but a closer look reveals tarnished artifacts that need polishing and long curtains furtively drawn shut to conceal windows with factory tape on them. The huge oak staircase ascends to a huge cavernous upper interior flanked by balconies rising higher in the house.

"One of the first stories I heard about the property comes from 2006." Stewart postured a bit before the grand staircase. "It concerns several men who had been hired to carry out the old furniture and furnishings to be restored and make room to work on the walls which badly needed painting. We had wanted to keep the original wallpaper, but it was too far gone.

"Anyway, as I hear it, on the second day of our initial restoration project of the front rooms, the men dropped their tools and left the job, and one of my partners, a wonderful close friend of mine and gentleman named Eric McCellan, came by a week later to inspect the results and found very little of anything done." Charles suspiciously looks up several times to the second and third floor landings above as he speaks. "To find out why the work had stopped, he called the contractor to try and contact him, and, as a matter of fact, it took several calls over almost a month to get the man, and eventually, he learned that the men had been terrified by the sounds of people upstairs moving furniture around and strange voices arguing at the top of the stairs. They left the job because... they knew the house was supposed to be empty, and the second floor was off-limits until the floor could be rebuilt. Over the years, rain had rotted it away until there were just open beams in several places. Certain they were exaggerating or hearing the echoes of their own voices, the contractor got the work restarted and forced the men back to work, but several hours in as they rushed into the night-time hours to catch up on time lost, they were all surprised by the apparition of a woman in a white dress who had come down the stairs and then turned into nothing as she walked away, and that's the reason why restoration was dragged out over three years."

The identity of this ethereal woman in white is believed to be Emma Ravenhearst, the mistress of the house who passed away here in 1895. She has been reported several times over ten years floating through the halls, peeping through windows to witnesses outside or just sitting silently in chairs through doorways to other rooms. Ephemeral in nature, it is not unusual for someone to look into a room, noticed her by lamp light then look back quickly to notice she is gone and the light not even burning.

"I think I might have what you might call a psychic sense." Charles adds. "For one thing, I can sometimes tell people things about themselves, occasionally seeing something about them from their past, or something from their future. When I'm here, I get this feeling of what we have to do next, like a window that has been left open or a piece of furniture that needs to be moved. I think it's Emma speaking to me, telling me what to do. I hear her voice even when I'm away at home in nearby Thornton, and sometimes, I have this strange compulsion to drive by the place. Once, on my way home, I swung by here, stopped at the gate and shone my car lights in, scaring away several kids trying to get in here. Apparently, they got in over the fence, and Emma wanted me to know they were up to no good."

The library in the house seems to factor into several stories here. Guests have heard books sliding out and hiding the floor by themselves, and its not unusual to see figures sitting in there who vanish a second later.

"Several of the books here are original to the house." Stewart mentions. "But several of them were purchased cheaply from a used bookstore to fill the shelves and make it look more like a library. Those are the books that tend to fall out by themselves. It's as if the ghosts don't care for the additions."

In the ballroom beyond the library, visitors have heard the sounds of voices in conversation, glasses clinking and far away music as if a party was going on in the house, but nothing is ever happening. Chairs and sofas also creak and groan with the sounds of invisible witnesses watching people passing through. Similar sounds come from the second floor, particularly from the main bedroom over the South Wing.

"Sometimes you get this sound like someone rolling around in the bed." Rudy Coltrane mentions. Another partner of Stewart, he has oft times stayed at the house in an unofficial capacity as a security guard keeping an eye on the place or just trying to catch an eye on activity. "You hear sounds of coughing from outside the door, look in and you see is this room in the process of being painted, the furniture pushed to the center and under a tarp, so you close the door, start walking away and by the sixth or seventh step, you hear the coughing and moaning again like someone with a case of the snots."

Since the room was completely restored, and the bed assembled and dressed down, an imprint of a person has been seen in the comforter on the bed. Some describe it as just the pattern in an antique mattress, but others think its a sign of Emma Ravenhearst returning to her room. Several have straightened their bed trying to smooth it out, only to return later and find it again settled. Minerva recalls trying to straighten it, but it wouldn't budge.

"It felt like someone lying on the bed." She says. "I tugged and tugged, but it wouldn't move."

"It was about this time that a man came from the County Historical Commission to check on the state of the house and why the restoration was taking several years." Stewart adds at this point. "We tried to stay off topic of the ghosts as much as possible, because we didn't want him thinking we were nuts..."

Stewart once more glances top floor landings along with Coltrane pretending to be distracted.

"And, believe me, at times we weren't sure of it ourselves." He adds.

"But we showed him the house, the progress, we told him we were encountering damage we hadn't considered." Stewart adds. "But while we're walking through the hall to show off the ballroom, and we heard a loud crash from upstairs as if... I don't know, like half the house had caved in on itself, but we headed up, expecting the worse and didn't find a thing. There wasn't a single thing. My friend, Albie, is there, arms crossed like this." He postures to establish the scene. "And he's trying not to speak, but inside you can tell he's really nervous. Here we have this loud noise like a plane crashing into the house, and we can't find what caused it. Nothing at all, and the inspector's looking at us for answers and we have none, except these stunned looks on our faces."

"Albie" is retired playwright Albert Gambon, an acquaintance of Stewart and Smith who was invited by them into donating money to the Trust and becoming a member. He became intrigued by the stories of the hauntings at Ravenhurst and started checking them out almost regularly for a play on ghosts he was writing. Among others, he has heard the voices and seen the vague figures dashing out of of his eye line, but he also had a rare opportunity to almost interview the ghosts himself.

"It was the oddest experience I'd ever had." Sixty-eight years old, he speaks with the vigor and verve of a Shakespearean actor. "Charlie, Rudy and I had decided for some reason to venture out to the old manor house, as I call it, to pass the time and see if we could... possibly sneak up on the ghosts. We always believed they were more active at night, and we thought if we showed up here after midnight, we might see these ghosts and entities frittering about the place like people have claimed. Well, we showed up, it was pitch black, and after a sherry or two each, none of us didn't want to take the long way through the underground, so we came in through the front which by then was unsealed and better lit by the lights beyond the trees.

"Anyway," He continues. "I had the crazy notion of going off by myself, and as Charles and Rudy went upstairs to check a light they said went off in the master bedroom on approach, I wanted to see the library. There are dozens of books left behind in there from before the turn of the century, and I thought I might find an original Dickens or some sort, but as I passed from the front hall through the partially open sliding doors, I saw this presence. He looked like a genuine person... pale skin, large open brown eyes with a thick mustache and combed slicked back dark hair... sitting behind the desk. I don't think I was conscious of him at first; I just looked up and he was there, his head slowly alighting to acknowledge my presence, and I, being the proper gentleman I was raised to be just responded, "Good evening there, sir, I'm so sorry to bother you."

"After saying that, I just watched him fade away, the kerosene light on the desk that was illuminating him fading away along with itself, leaving me in this cold dark blackish darkness. I never told my story to Charles or Rudy for several years because I thought it should have been a special moment between I and this spirit, but eventually, I realized I just had to share it."

Back at Ravenhurst, Charles and Rudy revealed the house and the numerous objects and belongings left behind there over the years by former occupants and tenants, including chairs and tables stacked to the ceiling, books and antiques filling every crack and crevice, old doors stacked to walls in droves, old bird cages, broken picture frames, rolls of old landscapes, antique tea sets covered in layers of dust, porcelain figures aging from time and even stuffed animals deteriorating from passages of age. Rudy points out a portrait of Charles Dalimar in the dining room that seems to watch guests enter and depart, and Charles points down a corridor to the playroom where the Lady In White has been seen passing from room to room. The house even has an old Séance Room, a sitting room even more cluttered with boxes and furniture, it's window covered by a heavy inaccessible curtain blocking the light from entering. Returning to the front of the mansion through the vast portrait gallery and past the library, Rudy sneaks a look up to the top of the stairs. Matt finally asked them about it.

"Oh," Charles chuckles a bit. "You see, the stairway winds up to the attic which is accessed by this door which is only three feet high. It's been heard opening and closing itself at times, sometimes three times right after each other. Not only that, but there's a rumor that when you overstay your welcome here, the ghosts start to get impatient and start peeking over and through the railings up there. Sometimes, you can hear the attic door pop open and see this strange head peeking over the edge and with it at times, other heads peeking out from other points until you have what looks like ten to twelve angry impatient faces staring disgruntled at you to leave. Of all the stories reported here, I think this is the one part that scares me the most."

"You have to understand..." Gambon mentions in closing. "The manor house is haunted. It's not your Hammer films knock-you-on-your-side haunted with demons pouring from the cracks haunted, but it's a more.... atmospheric haunting. We never feel alone here. There is an activity here we don't understand, and it seems to progress the more the house comes together. It's like the place is coming to life and bringing its past with it. You can't avoid it; it's happening, and if you try to deny it, it can lash back as a child demanding attention."

Before departing England, the members of CGS asked to leave a camera rolling upstairs at Ravenhurst to see if they could catch footage of anything going on in the house. As Ed Brannion describes:

"What we did was take a regular digital camera and put it on a short tripod shooting the length of the upstairs hallway into the open door of the master bedroom where Emma once stayed. It was my decision that this was the best possible place to catch anything happening in the house overnight. We set the camera up, left it and departed with plans to retrieve it the next morning. Problem was it didn't work. The camera shut itself off! According to Charles, I had permission of the owners of the house to film inside the house, but I never got the permission from the ghosts! So, I tried again, I set up the camera and before leaving I said out loud, "I'd really like to meet you, and find out if you're really here. So, if it's okay, could you show yourself to the camera?""

"Unfortunately, I couldn't come back to get the camera because I had to catch my flight that night." Ed continued. "So, I called Sidney Rickman, I guy I had recently met during the investigation at Eel Marsh House and asked him to collect the camera and mail it to us here in the States. He sent us the footage and gear back, and after sitting around a week, I finally watched it.

"It seems about an hour after I had left, sometime around 12:15 that night, a strange glimmer of light passes from an empty bedroom to the left side and goes down the adjacent hall. It looks like it could be car headlights, but there is no window for lights to come inside in that part of the house."

History: Rumors surrounding the Ravenhearst manor in Blackpool have circulated for decades. Most of what is know about Ravenhurst (nee Ravenhearst) Mansion comes from the diary of a young American schoolteacher named Emily "Emma" Ravenhearst, which was uncovered in March 2006 by a bookseller in London going through boxes of old books in a London shop. However, several pages of the diary have been removed and maybe completely lost, leaving sections of the house's history missing, but a few details have been revealed.

Ravenhurst Mansion was built in 1895 by Charles Edwin Dalimar trying to win the love of Emma Ravenhearst and make her his wife. A young girl from Iowa, Emma had arrived in Blackpool, England on August 24, 1894 after graduating from a teacher's college. She was hired as an assistant administrator at the local school by the schoolmistress, often helping with household tasks at the school, later meeting Charles Dalimar at a community autumn party on September 10, 1894. Smitten from the start, Dalimar romanced her, and eventually proposed to her, Emma eventually declining the offer. Charles revisited her a month later determined to win her heart and revealing to her that he has started construction on Ravenhurst Manor, a great house in her honor.

In May 1895, shortly after hearing of her father's fatal illness, Emma fell deathly ill herself and Charles moved her into the completed house to better take care of her. Charles hired a nurse named Rose Somerset to take care of her. Barely able to write in her diary, Emma sometimes dictated to Rose to write for her, and they became friends. In fact, Rose may have kept writing in the diary for years afterward. Charles meanwhile reportedly became more desperate to make Emma his bride and may have dabbled in the occult trying to find a cure for her illness, which may have been consumption (modern tuberculosis). When Emma finally died, he had her buried in the cellar catacombs, but an alternate rumor claims Charles might have murdered her to keep her from leaving her when she showed signs of improving. Rose's next known whereabouts are unrevealed.

Following Emma's death, Charles Dalimar's whereabouts remain confused, but the sordid events and resulting gossip might have forced him to abandon Ravenhurst. It was briefly a Spiritualist Church in 1896 run by a medium named Madame Fate and a school for the early part of the 1930s before becoming a foundling home during World War Two. It stood empty for several years after 1948 and attracted a reputation as a haunted house through the Fifties and Sixties. Now often rented out as a summer home, the estate is often used to host weddings and socialite gatherings as well as murder mystery weekends and interactive plays.

Identity of Ghosts: It is believed that a large number of surviving consciousnesses survive at Ravenhurst, but only a few have been genuinely linked to reputed historical personages. Foremost among them is the ghost of Emma Ravenheart herself who has seen and reported numerous times since the 1930s. She is often joined by the ghost of Madame Fate, whose real name is unknown, making it difficult to identify her. It is conceivable that she was actually the older Rose Somerset, but this is uncertain. Legend claims that Madame Fate was murdered by Charles Dalimar, but there is no evidence for this rumor. Emma was laid to rest in her would-be wedding gown inside the crypt within the mansion's catacombs, the system of arched tunnels under the property.

Another reported apparition is that of a workman named Frank Williams, who has been confused as a spectral caretaker looking over the structure. Records reveal that while working on the house during its construction in May 1895, he fell off through the roof of the ballroom to his death, leaving behind a wife and two children. Garbed in old worn attire with suspenders, baggy pants, plaid shirt and cap, he's been mistaken as the caretaker by numerous people.

The spirit of Charles Dalimar, Emma Ravenhearst's alleged murderer, has also been reported lurking over the property. He's been described as a tall, thin dapper figure with a thick mustache and wide open eyes, dressed in a black period suit and overcoat, carrying a cane which he uses to tap the ground on his approach. Tapping noises from the carriage road have gone back to 1943 when most of the sightings here started.

Source/Comments: Mystery Case Files: Ravenhurst (video-game) (2006-2011) - Activity based on Woodchester Mansion in Nymphsfield, Gloucestershire, Samlesbury Hall in Salmesbury, Lancashire, Longleat Castle in Longleat, Wiltshire, Littlecote Mansion in Hungerford, Berkshire, Crowley Hall in Anchorsholme, Lancashire and the Winchester House in San Jose, California.