All this week we are proud to present you our very own ‘Haunted Guildford’ series from in-house blogger Charli Aisha Harris where spine-chilling stories of haunted folk and places in Guildford are recounted for your displeasure! Learn a little bit more about Guildford’s darker past with spectres, royalty, celebrity and of course plenty of death to share with you. Thought that Guildford was a sleepy market town…? Well think again as we uncover some of the scarier stories from our town’s history.
The woman in white is a legend famous around the world, and eerily similar in every case. She is known as the woman in white, the wailing woman, the lady in white and in Mexico, La Lorena. She is a spectral woman clothed all in white, and whenever she is spotted she seems to be searching for something, opinions differ on whether it is her lost love or her missing children. In every case she is seen near a body of water.
Now, if you have ever found yourself perhaps walking from Quarry Street to the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre or the River Wey, then maybe you will be familiar with Rosemary Alley. A romantic cascade of steps leading down towards the river overhung by Tudor and Georgian architecture; it seems to be but another of Guildford’s quaint features.
But Rosemary Alley was not its original name, it used to be known as ‘Pisspot Alley’, for it was essentially an open sewer.
Stretching back for many years there have been reports of a ghostly woman, dressed all in white, walking from one building, No. 8, through the air above Rosemary Alley and into the other building, No. 6. It is unknown what this haunting figure is searching for but if you are ever travelling down what was once Pisspot Alley at night, keep your eyes open for Guildford’s very own ‘Woman in White’, a tragic and mysterious figure.
It is also worth mentioning that at the foot of Rosemary Alley, where the drama studios once sat, there was in fact a mortuary, closed as recently as the 1960s. But you have to wonder, how many of the poor deceased that passed through those doors are truly at rest and how many still wander that ground lamenting their fate like the poor woman in white?
Charli Aisha Harris
With special thanks to Philip Hutchinson, author of Haunted Guildford