Episode 359
Haunted Pub Crawl: Discovering Some Of Wales' Most Infamous Ghostly Establishments
Old pubs hit different after dark—low lighting, creaking timber, cellars you don’t want to go down alone… and stories that refuse to die. In this episode we take on a haunted pub crawl across Wales, blending documented history with the legends and witness accounts that keep these places firmly on the paranormal map.
We begin at Cardiff’s Rummer Tavern, often cited among the city centre’s oldest pubs, where reports consistently circle the cellar and toilets and a long-running sailor legend still hangs in the air. Next, we travel to Monmouth’s Queen’s Head, a historic inn wrapped in Civil War tradition and Cromwell-era storytelling, with recurring reports of strange presences that have become part of its identity. Then it’s time for the Skirrid Inn—a pub with a dark past and a reputation for intense paranormal activity that’s earned it “most haunted” status in countless retellings. And to round off the night, we stop in Abergavenny at The Duke of Wellington, because no haunted pub crawl is complete without one more old building, one more story, and one more “did you hear that?” moment.
Note: We discuss hauntings as folklore and personal testimony rather than confirmed fact.
Haunted pubs Wales, Rummer Tavern Cardiff, Queen’s Head Monmouth ghost, Skirrid Mountain Inn haunted, Duke of Wellington Abergavenny, Welsh ghost stories, paranormal podcast UK, Pursuit Of The Paranormal
Transcript
Hey, Ash, how's it going?
Speaker B:Very well, very well.
Speaker B:Looking forward to getting back into our Haunted Poker series, which has probably been over a year since I think we lasted an episode.
Speaker A:At least.
Speaker A:At least.
Speaker A:It's probably 18 months or so, I would imagine.
Speaker A:Crazy.
Speaker A:But yeah.
Speaker A:So looking forward to.
Speaker A:To resurrecting these episodes and we'll.
Speaker A:We'll continue to put these out in between other episodes and.
Speaker B:Yeah, back by popular demand.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:And they're really good.
Speaker A:Fun to research and talk about and sort of delve into because there's a lot of common themes across a lot of these pubs with haunted toilets.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:So I'm looking forward to seeing some more toilets.
Speaker B:Defo.
Speaker B:Defo.
Speaker B:So when we sort of finished this season last time, we were kind of around sort of the northwest, I think, before we headed down, because we started off in Scotland.
Speaker B:Yeah, we did and we moved down the country, got sort of northeast, then across to the northwest.
Speaker B:So for this one we thought we would start back in the very sunny, a very paranormal UFO hotspot area of
Speaker A:Wales.
Speaker B:We are going to Wales.
Speaker A:I wondered what you were gonna hold up.
Speaker B:Which actually ties in because in just over a week's time we will be in Swansea.
Speaker B:Yes, South Wales, giving our talk.
Speaker A:We will indeed.
Speaker A:I'm looking forward to that.
Speaker A:So, yeah, when I didn't even tweak that when you said about let's do whales.
Speaker A:So I'm looking forward to this.
Speaker A:Let's go.
Speaker B:Def.
Speaker B:Defo.
Speaker B:So do you want to kick us off with your first pop?
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker A:So if you're walking along Castle street in Cardiff, with Cardiff Castle looming nearby, you're basically moving through layers of city's oldest footprints.
Speaker A:And tucked right up against the line of the old walls is the Rummer Tavern.
Speaker A:It's a pub that's almost become a landmark in its own right.
Speaker A: b, most often dated to around: Speaker A:1713, if not earlier, is the phrase that you'll see repeated.
Speaker A:A date that's also listed by city historian Dick Morton.
Speaker A:The building itself sits on a narrow medieval style plot.
Speaker A:Long thin burgage shape that you find in old towns where space was measured and taxed.
Speaker A:Street front first and though the frontage looks Tudorish, most write ups describe it as a latter fold Tudor treatment rather than a surviving Tudor facade.
Speaker A:Even the name has an old word ring to it.
Speaker A:Rumma is often explained as coming from the old German word for large drinking glass, which feels fitting for a place that's been serving People for centuries.
Speaker A:So was 315 years old, 312 years old.
Speaker A:And the Rummer wasn't just a publisher.
Speaker A:People drifted into.
Speaker A: By the: Speaker A:Contemporary notices show it operating as a departure point, with services running outward towards places like Worcester and Birmingham.
Speaker A:And even coach links connected to steam packed travel, including routes to Murfet, Tydville, advertising as leaving from the Rummer Tavern and the Steam Packet Hotel.
Speaker A:So when people say this place is stitched into Cardiff's history, it, they don't just mean it's old, they mean it's part of the history's daily pulse.
Speaker A:City's daily pulse.
Speaker A:Sorry, but the reason the Rummer keeps cropping up on haunted lists isn't the age alone.
Speaker A:It's that very specific, very consistent reputation for activity in two particular areas, the cellar and the toilets.
Speaker A:One of the most cited versions of the story repeated across local history and paranormal write ups is, is that the pub is haunted by a spirit of a sailor, a man who in the legend discovered his wife in bed with another man and died not long after.
Speaker A:A paranormal database is often referenced in connection with that tale.
Speaker A:And local history pages, including history points, repeat the same basic outline, that there's a betrayed sailor, sudden death and the presence and never quite leaves the building.
Speaker A:And when you get into the experiences, people report it's not usually full bodied apparition in the middle of the room stuff.
Speaker A:It's the classic skin prickling moments that feel very old pub after hours.
Speaker A:But the details repeat often enough to become part of the venue's personality.
Speaker A:People describe sudden cold drops near the cellar stairs, that heavy someone's behind you feeling when you're the only one down there.
Speaker A:And footsteps that sound slow and deliberate even when the staff are sure the place is empty.
Speaker A:Doors are a big one in the retellings too.
Speaker A:Cellar doors that thud shut when they shouldn't.
Speaker A:Toilet doors that move or click as if someone's just gone in.
Speaker A:The odd rattle of the latch, the sense of movement just out of sight.
Speaker A:There's even stories of a barmaid feeling an icy hand on her shoulder in the woman's loo.
Speaker A:Or a barman hearing heavy footsteps in the cellar when he was convinced he was alone.
Speaker A:And every now and again, you get the visual that really seals the pub legend vibe.
Speaker A:A pale male figure glimpsed near the bar or drifting towards the toilets late at night, usually when the lighting is low and the building is settling into itself.
Speaker A:Now, it's important to say this plainly, but because here it is.
Speaker A:These hauntings remain anecdotal.
Speaker A:There aren't official reports or neat contemporary news articles that confirm anything paranormal.
Speaker A:But what we've got is something older and more interesting.
Speaker A:We've got tradition, repeated tradition, the atmosphere and loads of people personally testimony.
Speaker A:Taken individually, any of these moments could be dismissed as old building quirks, tiredness, or your brain just filling in the blanks.
Speaker A:But what keeps the story alive is how often the reports go back around to the same hotspots, same mood.
Speaker A:So you got the cold, uneasy, being watched.
Speaker A:And that's the Rummer's real power.
Speaker A:It doesn't offer hard proof, but it's a place that when you're in there, makes it feel like you're not alone.
Speaker A:It's a very strange place and it seems like people who experience stuff but not enough to.
Speaker A:To really put down hard and fast.
Speaker B:So when we go Swansea, I'm staying in Cardiff for four nights.
Speaker B:So I'm gonna check out that pub, maybe do a little video for Tick Tock.
Speaker A:Yes, yes, yes, on that pub.
Speaker A:Definitely, definitely.
Speaker A:Because I think we went to on one of these episodes.
Speaker A:We went to the Golden Fleece way back when and I went there the other week and it's as creepy as it is when we told it.
Speaker A:So, yeah.
Speaker A:Be interested to see how you get on at the Rummer Tavern.
Speaker B:Nice one.
Speaker B:Well, for my pub I'm gonna go to a one you may have heard of.
Speaker B:This is quite a famous one and you can do ghost haunts and stuff there as well with certain companies.
Speaker B:So that is the Skewered Inn in Abergavani in Monmouth.
Speaker B:Share.
Speaker A:Very good.
Speaker B:The history of this pub dates back to the Norman conquest.
Speaker B:The building seen executions and some believe, also witchcraft.
Speaker B:It's the oldest and some would say the most haunted pub in the whole of Wales.
Speaker B:Work undertaken by the Glamorgan Gwent Archaeological Trust concluded that the present building is of mainly mid late 17th century construction.
Speaker B:However, the inn has stood on the site previously due to it being situated upon a pilgrim trail that led to Luffoni Priory, although there was no evidence to actually confirm that fact.
Speaker B:A popular, although equally unverified legend is that the inn was used as a rallying point for local supporters of the Glinda Air rising against the rule of Henry V. The uprising led by Owen Glinda.
Speaker B:He is said to personally rallied his troops in a cobbled courtyard before raiding nearby settlements sympathetic to the English in the 15th century.
Speaker B:Another undocumented claim to fame is that the first floor of the inn was repeatedly used as a court of law where capital punishment was imposed for certain offences, including sheep stealing.
Speaker B:At least it's just sheep stealing and not anything else.
Speaker B:No other.
Speaker B:The Welsh have a stereotypical use this one.
Speaker B:Legend has it that as many as 180 criminals were judged guilty of crimes serious enough to warrant the sentence of death by hanging.
Speaker B:A sentence that was allegedly carried out in the inn itself from an oak beam over the well of the staircase.
Speaker B:Stories gained the reputation for being haunted by several ghost or spirits and been said to be the scene of numerous supernatural occurrences or paranormal activities.
Speaker B:The inn was featured in Series 1 of the television show Extreme Ghost Stories and in season two of Most Haunted with Yvette Fielding.
Speaker B:So the ghost that reportedly inhabit the inn.
Speaker B:These include a helmeted soldier from centuries past appears on the staircase that leads to the guest rooms.
Speaker B:In addition, two distinct spirits.
Speaker B:A desperate man who took his own life to avoid the gallows and the shadowy ghost of a former jailer haunting the area near an old jail cell door at the top of the stairs.
Speaker B:Among the most active areas are the inn's three guest rooms, each with its own supernatural reputation.
Speaker B:Room one features an unusual split level bathroom with the lower section believed to be a former jail cell.
Speaker B:Some guests feel sudden cold spots and the unsettling sensation of invisible hands touching them while using these facilities.
Speaker B:Again, another haunted toilet.
Speaker B:Similar to to the rumor in many locals and guests at the Inner felt the overwhelming sensation of an invisible noose being slipped around their necks and have been alarmed to feel it getting tighter and tighter.
Speaker B:Although they always manage to break free from the strange grip, they bear the distinct impression of the marks of the rope for some time afterwards.
Speaker B:Another ghost that haunts the inn is that of a woman who, although never seen, is both felt and heard by staff as she rustles invisibly past them, her progress marked by a distinct chill in the air.
Speaker B:This lady is supposed to be a Victorian landlady called Fanny Price.
Speaker B:You can still visit her grave in the local graveyard.
Speaker B:One of the most remarkable incidents involved a ten pound note with coins stacked on top of the bar that allegedly levitated across the entire length of the counter before dropping to the ground with the coins still nearly piled.
Speaker B:Other sort of incidents have happened.
Speaker B:Phantom footsteps across the slate floor and the spooky sounds of lute music drifting through the air, but with no known source.
Speaker B:On a ledge about the fireplace sits what is referred to as the Devil's Cup.
Speaker B:Legend has it that each night of closing at closing, the cup should be filled to satisfy and ward off the devil.
Speaker B:It's not always upheld.
Speaker B:Apparently you're supposed to take a pint, fill up the cup, put it back towards the fireplace.
Speaker B:That should get the devil tipsy, ward off any evil spirits that may be happening.
Speaker B:So a very active pub from the Townset was reports if quite an illustrious history updates right through all these hangings and stuff going on there.
Speaker B:So pretty, pretty interesting one.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And it's.
Speaker A:It's one that is.
Speaker A:I think it's on the bucket list of a lot of paranormal investigators to go to the skirting.
Speaker A:I've seen loads of videos on it.
Speaker A:So yeah, it's.
Speaker A:I think we need to get ourselves there, Ash.
Speaker B:We should, we should.
Speaker A:So, you know, you mentioned Monmouth or Monmouthshire.
Speaker A:So we're going to stay around that area now and we're going to go to the Queen's Head on St. James street in Monmouth.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:It's one of the pubs where the building itself does half the atmosphere before you've even heard a single ghost story.
Speaker A:It's grade two listed.
Speaker A:And although it's often casually labelled 16th century, the more careful wording from pub history sources is that the structure isn't uniformly that old.
Speaker A:The listing notes is newer than claimed in places, with only the street gable section regarded as genuinely 17th century.
Speaker A: ubstantially sorry rebuilt in: Speaker A:What makes the detail so useful is.
Speaker A:Is it explains the Queen's Head vibe perfectly.
Speaker A:You're not standing in a museum piece frozen in one day.
Speaker A:You're standing in a pub that's been reshaped by generations, yet still keeps old enough character to feel like history is pressed right up against the modern day.
Speaker A:Writers who covered the building often point to surviving touches, most famously an early 17th century plaster ceiling.
Speaker A:And it's exactly those textured old world details that folklore loves to hook onto.
Speaker A:And then you're hit with a legend that powers almost everything people say about the place.
Speaker A:Oliver Cromwell, the pub's own history page, repeats the tradition that he was a frequent resting visitor during the Civil War years and that an assassination attempt was made, usually told as a royalist cavalier tried to reach him and only to be chased into the bar and shot dead.
Speaker A: n further, pinning to mid May: Speaker A:Whether every detail is historically provable or not the point is that the Queen's Head legend doesn't float in thin air.
Speaker A:It's attached to a real listed building in a town with deep Civil War associations.
Speaker A:From there, the paranormal side tends to present not as one neat Hollywood ghost, but as a handful of recurring presences and repeat pattern experiences that different sources describe in broadly similar ways.
Speaker A:The sort of things that are hard to pin down.
Speaker A:A bit like the past, the last publisher, but also hard to ignore once you've heard it enough times.
Speaker A:One of the most repeated is a period dressed male figure linked to the bar area and fireplace.
Speaker A:Not an aggressive ghost moment, more a quiet unsettling certainty that someone is there when they shouldn't be.
Speaker A:In some talents he's described as sitting as if he's waiting or simply occupying the space like it still belongs to him.
Speaker A:Sightings that last a second or two, then vanish, leaving the witness doubting themselves even whilst they still insist they're sure.
Speaker A:And then there's the detail people latch onto because it's so oddly specific.
Speaker A:The figure is sometimes said to be visible only from the knees up.
Speaker A:The explanation offered is wonderfully old building logic.
Speaker A:Floors change, levels shift, refurbishments, so you're only seeing like the top half his body when the floor was a bit lower.
Speaker A:It's a sort of strange detail that sounds almost too peculiar to invent and that's exactly why it persists.
Speaker A:Then you've got the other recurring report that widens the story beyond one spirit.
Speaker A:Now this one.
Speaker A:I had to double check on multiple sources because I was.
Speaker A:I was a bit like, is that true?
Speaker A:The ghost of a small girl, often described as around four years old, is said to appear in corridors and bedrooms, sometimes as a fleeting glimpse and sometimes as more solid.
Speaker A:There's a child in the wrong place at the wrong time moment, which tends to unsettle people more than a shadowy adult figure.
Speaker A:So I that came up in one place and I thought I need to check that because that's like a classic horror movie thing.
Speaker A:But no appears in multiple sources.
Speaker A:So I thought I would check that one before I just said it out loud.
Speaker A:Alongside that.
Speaker A:Some accounts mention an older man upstairs or on a landing.
Speaker A:Less dramatic, obviously.
Speaker A:More sense of a presence being noticed in passing.
Speaker A:A figure at the edge of your vision, someone standing just outside again, like you're not alone and as though somebody's there.
Speaker A:I'm wrapping around all of it is the familiar after hours pub layer stuff that starts as maybe it's nothing until it repeats.
Speaker A:Footsteps in rooms no one's in Sounds that seem to travel through your building, that prickling sense of being watched while you're locking up, and little disturbances behind the bar that staff can't easily explain.
Speaker A:None of it on its own is a slam dunk paranormal thing, but when you put it all together, it creates this weird paranormal vibe.
Speaker A:And again, even though there's nothing concrete to prove that it's there, there's so many people witness things that it's hard to sort of shake this.
Speaker A:And you know, you just spoken, you just spoke about the most haunted pub in Wales.
Speaker A:This has been quoted as a third most haunted pub in Wales.
Speaker A:I mean third.
Speaker B:And the nary trouble as well.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:That ranking is an official badge though.
Speaker A:It's, it's revealing.
Speaker A:It shows how completely the haunting stories are fused with the pub's identity.
Speaker A:Not a single tidy ghost tale, but lots of different things as well.
Speaker A:But I don't know how, who, who rates it.
Speaker A:It's like this is the, the most haunted pub in Wales.
Speaker A:And then this one, Queen's Head, is now the third.
Speaker A:So I don't know what the second one is.
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker B:We've seen on social media.
Speaker B:I think it's like Schroeser Prison and Bottom in Jail and like they always claim to be like the most haunted prison and they comment on each other's posts all the time, like, you're not weird.
Speaker B:The most hottest stuff.
Speaker B:And it's like really back and back and say with all the.
Speaker A:I think I've seen a bit of that.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Maybe the prisons and I think even Streamsy Prison jumped on one.
Speaker B:It's like, it's not just you two, it's.
Speaker B:We're throwing our hat in the ring to be the most haunted prison as well.
Speaker A:I wonder if pubs do that though, whether they go, actually we are more haunted because we've got X amount of ghosts or I wonder what the bar is.
Speaker A:Is it like a Michelin star thing?
Speaker A:I don't.
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker B:That's quite cool actually.
Speaker A:Michelin star, like, like I mentioned, the Golden Fleece is like the oldest pub in York and the most haunted pub in York.
Speaker A:So it doesn't claim to be in Britain, just in York.
Speaker A:But yeah.
Speaker A:So, I mean it's quite, it's putting out there to say that you're the most haunted place in Wales or the third most haunted place in Wales.
Speaker A:It's quite a bold statement.
Speaker B:That's cool.
Speaker B:That's cool.
Speaker B:That's my second pub.
Speaker B:Not too much about this one, but the reason why I chose this one is.
Speaker B:There's some CCTV which I've got, which is quite interesting.
Speaker B:So there's not too much paranormal stuff that happens, but there's some which I'll.
Speaker B:I'll briefly mention, but this is the Cho Wellington pub on Old Market street in Neath Port Talbot, sort of sticking around the South Wales area.
Speaker B:And one of the ghosts is of a former drinker at the pub, who Brin, who returned several years after he died.
Speaker B:And the cellar is said to be haunted by a more sinister entity, although we don't really have too many details.
Speaker B:So what the main ghost, is that what they call the Captain?
Speaker B:He's the main person that haunts his pub.
Speaker B:And it could be this character, this entity, this spirit, this person that's captured on the CCTV.
Speaker B:So I'm going to play the CCTV.
Speaker B:Obviously he watched on YouTube, you had to see it.
Speaker B:He listened to the podcast.
Speaker B:This would be on our social medias, Tick Tock, Facebook, Instagram, go and check that out.
Speaker B:So I will play the video now.
Speaker B:So there's two clips.
Speaker B: one of them, so be mine is in: Speaker B:So the quality isn't great because obviously it's a bit dangerous, a bit grainy.
Speaker B:But there's two clips of cctv.
Speaker B:One of them shows one of the doors opening.
Speaker B:So it's like a heavy back door just opens on its own.
Speaker B:Then not long after that there's a. I'm talking minutes after this, there's like an apparition.
Speaker B:Then the camera goes to inside the pub now and there's an apparition appears in the bottom right hand corner, walking, kind of walking through the pub.
Speaker B:So I will just play this now.
Speaker B:It's about half four in the afternoon this happened and if you look at the door and sort of to the left of the monitor, you see it open on its own.
Speaker B:So yeah, it's a little bit weird, but could be explained by wind.
Speaker B:So it's later this happens on this.
Speaker B:Got this white kind of thing forming and walking across.
Speaker B:Let's just play that again again.
Speaker B:Look at the bottom right hand corner.
Speaker B:It kind of looks like it's walking sort of from right to left a little bit.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think the first one you like, you said it could, you could put it down as wind.
Speaker A:This one's a bit more interesting.
Speaker A:There definitely appears to be like a thing.
Speaker A:There is this after hours as well.
Speaker A:It looks like the bar's empty, but yes, really weird.
Speaker B:It's a Half four.
Speaker A:Oh, sorry, you did say.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Strange.
Speaker A:It appears.
Speaker A:It appears to me like it.
Speaker A:It sort of gets a shape.
Speaker A:It doesn't.
Speaker A:It sort of like forms and then moves.
Speaker A:Very strange.
Speaker A:Very strange.
Speaker A:I think.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:You can tell it's 33 years old.
Speaker B:That footage is just a bit weird.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:It's strange footage.
Speaker A:I like that.
Speaker A:It's good to have some physical sort of proof of some of the hauntings because a lot of the pubs that we talk about, they are more anecdotal and been passed down over the years.
Speaker A:So to.
Speaker A:To see some CCTV footage, it brings it a bit more up to date.
Speaker A:It's really cool.
Speaker A:I like that one.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:Just weird that these two things happened just moments after each other.
Speaker B:It's kind of like, did the ghost open the door, come in and then walk through the pub?
Speaker A:That'd be weird.
Speaker B:Is that the captain of the.
Speaker B:The Duke of Wellington?
Speaker A:I like it.
Speaker A:Good.
Speaker A:Good find.
Speaker A:Good find.
Speaker A:So that brings us to the end of our first episode of Wales Go Paranormal.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A:Haunted Pub Crawl, Wales edition.
Speaker A:And four pubs that we've gone to.
Speaker A:There's loads of pubs in Wales.
Speaker A:I'm sure.
Speaker A:I've got a whole list of haunted pubs.
Speaker B:We can stay in Wales for a while.
Speaker B:For sure.
Speaker A:We could stay in Scotland for ages.
Speaker A:We stayed in the north of the country for north of England for ages.
Speaker A:We've got a lot of these episodes that we can.
Speaker A:We can put together because there are just every.
Speaker A:Every oldish pub seems to have a story.
Speaker A:Every story has multiple witnesses and there's lots of people that have usually seen it.
Speaker A:There's a pub near me and it's got on the sign outside, friendly ghost on it as well.
Speaker A:So it's.
Speaker A:People like a good ghost story, I think, and it adds to the charm, especially if it's 300 years old and was back in the Civil War and.
Speaker A:And such like.
Speaker A:I think it makes a really good sort of provable fact that it was.
Speaker A:Was in action back then and hundreds of years old.
Speaker A:They.
Speaker A:They are able to recount certain facts as well, these pubs.
Speaker A:But the anecdotal stuff that's been passed down over centuries is really cool.
Speaker A:I like that.
Speaker B:Definitely.
Speaker B:So make sure you carry on checking us out and we will see you all very soon.
