The Old Lodge & Stouthall

I went to a school in Wimbledon called Ricards Lodge. Part of the school was an old lodge that was used as some sort of house years ago. I dont have any history of the school, like how long it has been there etc., but I do know that the lodge is rumored to be haunted, especially one of the classrooms on the top floor called L17 (thats what it is now). As the stories go, the top floor of the lodge was used as a nursery and room L17, a young girl committed suicide by throwing herself from the window.

Anyway, on with my story. After completion of our GCSE exams in 1990 the school threw us a party/awards evening. Bored with the fact that there was no alcohol (even though we were 16) myself and some friends got talking in the main corridor. One of them wanted to have a "quiet chat" with me, about what I can't remember but I know that we walked down the corridor to the Lodge part of the building.

My friend then said she needed to go to the toilet and she walked up the stairs to the toilets to find the door leading to that floor locked, so she went off to the other toilets in the main building while I waited for her. I was sitting on the old creaky stairs that lead to the first floor of the Lodge and I could hear footsteps and the sound of people running about on the floor above me, also childlike giggles. I knew that the door at the top of the stairs was locked and that there was no way anyone was up there. I swear I ran for my life, totally freaked out. I'm glad to say I never once set foot in that school again and was glad to have left.

Another story was of a trip I went on to an old Georgian Mansion in 1986(ish) with my middle school. It was to a place called Stouthall, in Mid Glamorgan in Wales. Before we went there we were told by the older kids that the place was haunted so our first night there was spent staying up spooking our dorm mates out with ghost stories.

Anyway, some of the teachers played pranks on us, one dressing as "the white lady" (who supposedly haunted the top floor on which our dorms were).

As stated the girls dorms were on the very top floor. These were used as a nursery, sick bay and bedrooms for the Georgian inhabitants of this old mansion.

I swear to you, we were laying in our beds in one of the dorms one night and we could hear the sound of childrens footsteps outside and also in the attic above us. A few girls from the dorm next to ours said they heard childrens cries some nights, like children in pain.

No one ever went to the toilets (which were right next door to our dorm) at night on their own.

Outside the mansion were some huts in which we had our social studies lessons (the whole meaning of the trip). We were off on a field trip one day when I'd forgotten to bring my camera along so I asked if I could go and fetch it from our room. That feeling of being watched was overwhelming when I went to my dorm to get my camera and I ran as fast as i could back to the huts.

The whole trip was one big long nightmare for all of us, we were there for 10 days and in that time everyone had nightmares, fell out with everyone else and there was just a general feeling of uneasiness. One of the boys in the dorms below us even went so mad as to threaten to throw himself from his dorm window and had to be coaxed out of doing so by one of the teachers.

Wether this was just a case of mass-hysteria I don't know, but I do know I would NEVER go back there again in a million years.

Thanks for reading.