BLOG WRITING
I’ve written a huge number of blogs on some wildly different subjects, from haunted houses (see below) to architecture and design, buyer behaviour and the latest rental regulations. It’s easy to make haunted houses and design engaging. It’s far trickier to do the same with the more technical articles. I am lucky, though, because my inner geek means that I actually like writing about such things. I read endless news and data feeds. I am fascinated by how much of people’s incomes are spent on their mortgages or what happens after Section 21 Notices. And it shows in my work.
Below is the blog I mentioned earlier – the haunted house one - but whatever type of blog you need, be it technical or not, I will give it some joy and a good helping of SEO.
BLOG SAMPLE: BRITAIN'S MOST HAUNTED HOUSES
With Halloween on its way, we thought we'd take a peek into some of the country’s most haunted houses. And there are plenty to choose from, as the UK is positively overflowing with ghosts and ghoulies. There’s even a haunted village – Pluckley in Kent - where there are almost as many ghosts as there are inhabitants. As you’d imagine, there are also plenty of haunted castles and palaces. At Hampton Court, for example, a ghostly medieval figure has even been caught on CCTV. However, we’re going to concentrate on more domestic dwellings, where the bumps in the night and the weird goings-on are happening in the kinds of places we call home!
1) Wymering Manor, Hampshire
Like all good haunted houses, Wymering Manor is old and comes with a rich and colourful history. As Portsmouth’s oldest house, it was mentioned in the Domesday book of 1042 and was originally owned by King Edward the Confessor. In more recent years, it became a youth hostel but was later gifted to the Wymering Manor Trust after its infamy as a haunted house made it unsaleable. There are a number of different ghosts associated with it, the most famous being the brilliantly named Reckless Roddy.
According to legend, in medieval times, Reckless Roddy rode to the manor to have his wicked way with a new bride after her husband had been called away on an emergency. Unfortunately for Roddy, her husband returned early and, in a rage, ran him through with his sword. It’s said Reckless Roddy now makes an appearance every time there’s a new bride in the house. Another of the manor’s famous residents is the Bloody Nun. It is said the attic was once used for illegal abortions - mostly the result of illicit unions between nuns and monks - and now the ghostly figure of a nun appears at the top of the stairs, with her hands covered in blood. Visitors also report hearing the cries of children, sudden changes in temperature and unseen hands that reach out and touch them.
2) Woodchester Mansion, Gloucestershire
Woodchester Mansion is a vast Victorian gothic pile, built over a much older building known as Spring Park. Unusually for a haunted house, Woodchester was never occupied, its original owner running into financial problems before it was completed. With its missing floors, stairs that lead nowhere and large community of bats, it’s certainly spooky, but it’s the ground on which it sits that’s the true source of the manifestations.
The trouble began before the house was even out of the ground, with 6 workmen dying during its construction and another murdered. After the owner’s death, the house was then abandoned for many years until, just as it was about to be turned into an insane asylum, it was requisitioned as a wartime base for American soldiers. While training for the D-Day landings, twenty of them were killed when a pontoon bridge collapsed into a nearby lake and the tank sank into the freezing waters. Their ghosts are just a few of the many apparitions that inhabit the house. The cellar is reputed to be the most haunted part, although there are plenty of ghosts in the chapel, where satanic rites are said to have been held during the 80s. There is also a young girl who runs up and down the stairs, a woman singing soulful Irish songs in the scullery and a clock that, although it’s not in use, often chimes unexpectedly. It has featured in an episode of Great British Ghosts, so, if you like, you can take a look around it from the safety of your own home!
3) The Ancient Ram Inn, Gloucestershire
Reputedly one of the most haunted buildings in Britain, The Ancient Ram Inn was built in 1145. Originally the property of the nearby St Mary’s Church, it is now owned by John Humphries, who runs it as a place of pilgrimage for ghost hunters and spiritualists. Not only is the house on the intersection of two ley lines, it is also directly above an ancient pagan burial ground. And, to add to its many myths, children’s bones and sacrificial daggers have recently been discovered buried at the bottom of the stairs. It is therefore no surprise to find the place is home to a whole host of malevolent spirits.
One of the best-known is the ghost of a witch who hid in the house before being caught and burned at the stake in the 1500s. She even has her own room – the aptly named Witch’s Room. The most haunted room of all, though, is said to be the Bishop’s Room. There you will be confronted by the sight of a previous innkeeper’s daughter hanging from the ceiling by a noose, a shepherd, several ghostly nuns and, if you are really unlucky, an incubus (male sex demon) and a succubus (female sex demon). There are countless stories of hardened spook hunters running screaming from the place, but what is perhaps most unnerving of all are the physical aspects of the hauntings. Furniture is said to regularly fly around and the owner, John, as well as several visitors, have described being dragged around by unseen forces. During the making of an episode of TV’s Most Haunted, one of the crew was filmed being attacked by a spirit. Some years earlier, the Bishop of Gloucester, having tried and failed to perform an exorcism, described the inn as “the evilest place I have ever had the misfortune to visit.”
4) The Cage, St Osyth, Essex
The Cage was originally a small gaol where notorious witch, Ursula Kemp and six of her coven were kept prior to their trial and execution in the 1580s. It then housed the victims of the plague, after which there was a steady stream of drunks and petty thieves until it was finally decommissioned in 1908. Sometime after that, it passed into private hands, but it seems there remain many echoes of its dark past and it has rarely been owned by anyone for more than a few years at a time.
There is frequent poltergeist activity throughout the house and it is also claimed to produce feelings of suicide and despair in those who live there. One of its most recent owners, Vanessa Mitchell, says that while pregnant, she was pushed to the floor by an unseen force. Another time, she was beaten on the backside. However, it was not until she saw a ghostly figure bent over her child’s cot and blood splatters on the floor that she finally decided she’d had enough. Moving to a friend’s house, she began renting out the Cage. Unsurprisingly, none of the tenants stayed long and a whole succession of spiritualists and paranormal investigators failed to improve things. In desperation, Vanessa put the house on the market, but that proved no easy solution, either, as its notoriety meant it took her 12 years to find a buyer. In the interim, her only recourse was to give tours to ghost hunters and the morbidly curious.