Nocton Hall (a ruin since it burned down in mysterious circumstances in 2004) is a nineteenth-century country mansion on the site of a fifteenth-century country house, itself built in the once-extensive grounds of a dissolved medieval priory. For much of the twentieth century, an RAF hospital (also now a ruin) existed in its grounds. A ‘grey lady’ has often been reported wandering around here, and the ghost of a young woman was frequently reported walking the corridors of the Hall in tears. She was particularly associated with one bedroom, in which people would apparently often wake at 4.30am to be confronted by the young woman in distress, muttering about a ‘devilish man’. Daniel Codd, in Haunted Lincolnshire (2006), gives the locally-known and unevidenced anecdote of a servant in the early days of the present hall who was sexually assaulted and murdered by ‘a son of the house’.

Nocton Hall Hospital was built in the grounds during the Second World War, and closed in the 1990s. It is also reputed to be haunted, and Secret Lincolnshire had an episode about this in February 2024, which you can listen to here. There are occasionally tours of the hospital site, but it is not otherwise open to the public.

Words by RORY WATERMAN