Hypnogoria: THE GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS ADVENT CALENDAR - Door 3

In Hythe, Kent you can find the marvellously named Slaybrook Hall. This grand old place was built in the 1400s, and extended in Tudor and Edwardian times. It also has a colourful history. For example, local legend says that the knights who slew Thomas a Becket hid out there after the ghastly deed. Furthermore the house was used as the setting for the movie version of Noel Coward's ghostly play Blithe Spirit.

However it is, of course, haunted. A dark figure has been seen in the gardens, while in the study people have reported hearing sounds like soldiers in armour marching past. Also strange lights are frequently reported in the grounds of the house. And some, or perhaps all of these hauntings relate a particularly blood-soaked piece of the house's history. Apparently the land was home to a tribe of Britons in Roman times, who had fled into the forests to evade the occupation. This tribe would rob Roman wagons travelling from Canterbury to the port of Lemanis, now Lympne.

Eventually the Roman commanders struck back, sending two legions to the settlement. It was a great and bloody massacre, so violent that the site was called Slaybrook. However as the Romans slaughtered the inhabitants and burnt the settlement to the ground, the dying chief of the Britons laid a curse on the Romans, and all future generations would be reminded of the massacre. And so, every year, in December, eerie flickering lights are to be seen in the trees and gardens of Slaybrook.