Buckinghamshire is a county in South East England, bordering Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Hertfordshire. Its dense concentration of country houses, market towns, and Civil War history has produced one of the more extensively documented collections of local ghost stories in the home counties.
Hughenden Manor
The country house is said to be haunted by Benjamin Disraeli, the Victorian Prime Minister who once lived there, reportedly seen walking its corridors.
Claydon House
Claydon House's most enduring legend concerns Sir Edmund Verney, a Royalist standard-bearer killed at the Battle of Edgehill in 1642 while refusing to surrender the King's colours. His severed hand, still gripping the standard, was recovered and returned to Claydon, and his ghost is said to haunt the house in search of it.
West Wycombe and the Hellfire Club
West Wycombe was home to Sir Francis Dashwood's 18th-century Hellfire Club, whose members reportedly held secretive gatherings at nearby Medmenham Abbey and beneath the Hellfire Caves. From 1781, Dashwood's servants and estate workers began reporting sightings of poet Paul Whitehead, a club member, said to haunt the house and gardens after his death.
The Flincher — Taplow
Taplow was once the site of the Canadian Red Cross Memorial Hospital, which treated soldiers returning from the First World War, many of whom died there. A winged black beast known locally as "The Flincher" is said to haunt the site.
Dinton
Dinton is associated with the legend of the "Dinton Hermit," said to be the ghost of a royal executioner believed to have carried out the execution of Charles I, and reportedly still lingering at a property in the village bearing his name.
Notable people
Parapsychologist Ciarán O'Keeffe grew up in High Wycombe and attended school there; he is currently based at Buckinghamshire New University, also in High Wycombe.