Mrs Ann Pritchard
Sergison, a member of a Cuckfield family, died in 1848 aged eighty-five.
She was known as 'wicked Dame Sergison' on account of her foul temper.
After her death, ghost stories began to circulate about her. There are
reports of her haunting the avenue to Cuckfield Park and also in the
corridors and on the main stairway. Apparently she objected to her
daughter's marriage and was seen as a ghost at the wedding reception in
1890. People said she was too wicked to rest, and her spirit swung on the
oak gates at the entrance to Cuckfield Park. After some time, three local
churchmen were supposed to have held a service of exorcism in Cuckfield
church at midnight. The story continued that the ghost was then drowned in
the font, and the manifestations came to an end. An alternative theory for
the cessation of her hauntings were that the grandson replaced the old oak
gates with new spiked ones mde or iron. Dame Sergison was not the only
Cuckfield ghost by any means.
There was also
Geranium Jane who was said to haunt the local pub, The King's Head.
Geranium Jane was a young girl in the 19th century who was having an
affair with the licensee. After a lovers' quarrel when he found out she
was pregnant, he killed her by dropping a flowerpot planted with geraniums
on her head as she passed beneath a window. She was buried in the
churchyard but returned as a ghost always accompanied by a strong smell of
geraniums. Dogs were said to growl and raise their hackles when she
appeared. She stayed away when geraniums were banished from the inn.
At Ockenden Manor
Hotel (formerly Ockenden House) a phantom grey lady has been seen in one
of the corridors and also in the Elizabethan bedroom. It is believed to be
that of a chambermaid who was killed when one of the tunnels leading to
the Kings Head Inn in South Street collapsed in the 19th century. She is
known to have used that route to meet her lover, but one evening, after
the manor "shook as if affected by an earthquake" her crushed
and mangled body was discovered in the rubble beneath the building.
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