The Cross Keys Hotel has a strong reputation within the town as possibly the most haunted building in Saffron Walden, along with the Youth Hostel down the road and also possibly Millets & Currys accross the street from us. Over the years many ghost hunting groups have stayed the night with hope of finding some truth in the rumours. Having personally accompanied a few of these groups (and hopefully many more to come) this section of our site is dedicated to the search for the paranormal, the ghostly entities which walk our halls, and maybe give an answer to who or what it actually is that goes bump in the night at the Cross Keys Hotel.

This photograph was taken by one of the ghost hunting teams we had visit us in late 2006. To the right of the photo, there is a blurry apparition along with many orbs (orbs appear fairly frequently in photos taken in the pub, although mostly up in the supposedly haunted rooms) This particular photo was taken in Room 6 (The Cromwell Suite). The apparition appears to be between the edge of the four poster bed and the window suggesting it could be one of the spirits picked up on by a later team (GHT) who named 3 possible spirits in that part of the room, a woman (Virginia) who died of pneumonia aged 30, a man (her husband possibly known as George) who mourns her, and a little girl (Violet, their daughter) who stares out of the window. Interestingly two other spirits with definite names were picked up on during GHT's vigil. One was Matthew Hopkins (The Witchfinder General) who made his presence known on more than one occasion that evening, and Elizabeth Tollermarche who after further research has been linked to Oliver Cromwell (reported to have stayed at the cross keys hotel during the civil war)