dunraven castle

 18th June 2006

Report written by Trudy

Dunraven Castle ruins are situated in the Vale of Glamorgan, this Castle stood on the headland overlooking Dunraven Bay. More a fortified mansion than an actual castle,

it had its own kitchen gardens and landing stage in the bay. It was occupied right up until the 1940's, but was demolished in 1963 as it was badly crumbling and considered to be unsafe. Although only the ruins of the Castle remain, the Castle grounds are still well kept and many rare and exotic plants can be found here.

There are many legends of smuggling and deliberate shipwrecking associated with this dramatic spot.

The Vaughan family once lived in Dunraven castle. The head of the family Walter Vaughan wasted his entire fortune on fast living and a life of extravagance. Three of his children drowned in an accident in the nearby sea. Walter wanted to set up a rescue business, but was refused. He was really annoyed by this, and co-operated with a well known notorious pirate called ‘mat of the iron hand’ (due to his hooked hand) and helped to organise shipwrecks, which he then plundered for treasure. One of the techniques used was to tie lamps on the tails of his sheep at night. As the sheep wandered along the cliff top, they inadvertently lured the ships to their doom.

Another tale associated with Dunraven castle. The castle had been used as a

convalescing hospital during the First World War, during this time the ghost of a young woman, known locally as the blue lady, was seen many times by the staff. They claimed they would know when she was around as her presence was always accompanied by the smell of mimosa.

Group Members Present: - Trudy, Michelle, Russ, G & Dave.

An eventful night was witnessed by the group members at Dunraven Castle but unfortunately not too many incidents of the ‘paranormal’ kind, although even that statement is debateable!

It was a busy night, busy with late night revellers and people sitting around camp fires, not too quietly, getting drunk. Wherever the group wandered in this vast area they found much the same activity in every corner. The only ‘quiet’ secluded place seemed to be the enclosed castle gardens, so the group settled to do what they could in this area.

When studying footage and pictures from the castle gardens there seem to be many strange light anomalies picked up, these pictures can be viewed in our gallery section. The ‘strangest’ lights picked on camera during the night, causing quite a stir amongst some group members, turned out to be the reflection off Russ’ trainers, which I need to throw out before our next investigation!

While sitting quietly in this area the strangest thing occurred, a group of teenagers boys and girls, tipsy but not falling about, decided to walk up through the gardens and walked right past (and I mean right past) the bench where we were sitting. One of our group, admittedly he was all in black, decided to walk in amongst them while they were going past for a laugh, the odd part was they never noticed him amongst their group or us sitting not 6 feet away from them on the bench! They walked right past us, the boys trying to scare the girls as they do, and it wasn’t until they were coming back (on the same path) past our group they actually realised they were not alone in the gardens!

After that we felt it was a waste of time continuing in the gardens we would have no peace to hold an investigation and decided to postpone until a later date. When leaving the area, the cold, tired and hungry male members of our group were suddenly cheered up by the sight of people dancing completely starkers in front of their car headlights!

On that note…………..if anyone wants directions to Dunraven feel free to mail me or G, our mail addresses can be found in the contact section