Clifftop ruins, a haunted pub and a prison you can sleep in — Guardian Travel readers have shared their favourite eerie corners of the UK, and the list is a proper road trip of the weird and wonderful.
Topping the picks is Dunnottar Castle near Aberdeen, a fortress stranded on sea cliffs where more than 160 prisoners were crammed into the Whigs Vault in 1685. Wind whistles through the stonework and, on a grey Aberdeenshire day, the past feels uncomfortably close. Not far up the same coast sits Slains Castle, another North Sea ruin dripping with gothic atmosphere — though the popular rumour that it inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula is, apparently, unfounded.
In Pembrokeshire, Pentre Ifan is a Neolithic burial chamber with a 16-ton capstone balanced on three pointed stones. One reader arrived at dusk in November with his dad and describes an unexplained low hum and a decidedly brisk walk back to the car.
If you prefer your spooks indoors, Shepton Mallet prison in Somerset dates to 1625 and once held the Kray twins. There are daytime tours, night-time ghost tours, and even the chance to spend a night locked in a real cell. In Staffordshire, on the edge of Cannock Chase, the Four Crosses Inn bills itself as England's most haunted pub — it's tours-only these days, but the cellars and attics remain.
Further north, Heptonstall above Hebden Bridge has the roofless shell of St Thomas à Becket church, a 13th-century ruin destroyed by an 1847 storm that shares a churchyard with its Victorian replacement. In Northern Ireland, the abandoned Cooneen Ghost House near Fivemiletown is famous for old poltergeist tales — it's private property, but you can glimpse it from the road and pair it with a misty ramble through Crocknagrally Forest.
Wales adds two strong entries. Nant Gwrtheyrn, a former quarrying village at the foot of Yr Eifl on the Llŷn peninsula, is free to visit and reached by a fearsomely steep road; local legend tells of a bride-to-be found dead after a game of hide and seek. And in West Sussex, Chanctonbury Ring is an iron age hill fort where folklore says running the ring seven times summons the devil — writer Robert Macfarlane described terrifying screams in the trees during a night there in his 2012 book The Old Ways.
Rounding things off is Whitby Abbey on the Yorkshire coast, the one place on the list with a genuine Dracula connection. The ruined arches above the harbour are dramatic enough by day; at dusk, with sea mist rolling in and the town's lamps flickering on, it's easy to see why Stoker set his novel here.
Why it matters: if your idea of a good holiday involves history with a chill, this list covers nearly every corner of Britain and Northern Ireland. Several sites are free (Pentre Ifan, Nant Gwrtheyrn, Chanctonbury Ring), while others — Whitby Abbey, Dunnottar, Shepton Mallet — offer paid tours ranging from family-friendly to genuinely after-dark. Most work best in autumn and winter, ideally under grey skies.
