MANCHESTER’S MOST HAUNTED: The sinister ‘Grey Lady’ of Chetham’s School of Music

While Chetham’s School of Music is renown for being the largest specialist music school in the UK, it is also known for something a little more sinister; the infamous ‘Grey Lady’.

Now, Chetham’s has a vast history and spans all the way back to 1421, when it was built as a college for priests in the neighbouring Manchester Cathedral. A school was then opened in 1653, with music quickly becoming an integral part of the curriculum in the early twentieth century.

Despite its success in the world of music, however, the school – known as the Chets to locals – has a sinister past.

Manchester Local Image Collection at Manchester City Council

Manchester Local Image Collection at Manchester City Council

In 1651, just two years before the school opened, the owner, royalist Lord James Stanley, was executed for an alleged ‘war crime’ which resulted in the massacre of nearly 1,500 citizens in Bolton.

Following his brutal beheading, he had his property confiscated by parliament and the school was eventually bought out by his executors.

Now, while a dark and sinister past is kind of a given in such historic buildings like the Chets, the hauntings from beheaded owners isn’t. 

And, while the ghost of a beheaded Lord hasn’t ever been spotted, there have been numerous ghostly reports and sightings of a spirit that has become known today as ‘The Grey Lady of Chetham’s’. 

Manchester Local Image Collection at Manchester City Council

Chetham’s Library

According to legend, if you enter the medieval building through the dark stone cloister, ring the ancient bell on the heavy oak door and climb the winding staircase to the Library, you will see the Grey Lady hovering through the passage ways and the secret stairwell leading to the Minstrel’s Gallery.  

The sinister ghoul has even been captured on camera, as demonstrated above in this chilling and ‘untouched’ photograph from 1927, taken by local photographer R. Walker Berry.

In a letter to the editor of the Chetham’s ‘Our Journal’, he said: “Knowing the camera’s aversion to ‘terminological inexactitudes’, I exposed a plate on the entrance to the Minstrel’s Gallery, and the enclosed print shows the result.”

A more recent visitor even shared her own experience in the library, writing on the Chetham’s Library website: “When I recently visited the library I was trying to take a picture with my phone of Humphrey Chetham. My phone started to behave irrationally. It’s never done this before… Spooky.”

Manchester Local Image Collection at Manchester City Council

And that isn’t all; Astronomer and alchemist Dr John Dee allegedly summoned Satan himself within the school’s walls. 

As for the evidence? Well, upon an oak table within the school, there is a circular burn mark; a mark which, it is said, was made by the hoof of Satan, after Dee summoned him to seek advice and wisdom.

Whatever the truth of the story, the stain on Dee’s character, like the mark on the table, was immovable, and he was forced to leave Manchester in 1603 in disgrace, returning to his family home in Mortlake, Surrey.

So, when you next happen to be in the Chetham’s School of Music, keep your eyes peeled for the Grey Lady or even Satan himself…