The Immaculate Heart of Mary, Tideswell

An ancient stone oratory on the approach to Tideswell, older than the parish church, is said to be haunted by unseen choristers. Locals claimed to hear ghostly voices singing psalms that drifted from the chapel toward the church, fading as they reached the porch, always foretelling a death in the village. Mary Sterndale later wrote that her sister, who lived in the desecrated building, heard the same spectral singing before her husband’s death in 1746, and that a family portrait would slide from its frame as another omen.