A Malvern Hills Ghost Story

Would you like to hear a ghost story? It’s true as far as I know. My dad has told me a few times about something extremely strange that happened to him when he was walking his dog on the Malvern Hills many years ago.

Today, I was up there with my own dog and it reminded me that I’ve never shared the story. I’ve asked dad a few times exactly where it happened, but he’s never been able to pinpoint the exact place. Looking up at a cliff face today, I couldn’t help wondering if it happened there.

We’ll never know exactly where it took place as dad would now struggle to walk up to the hills to show us. Sadly, Alzheimer’s is slowly stripping his memories these days too. But here’s the story as dad has told it to me over the years.

A dog walk on the Malvern Hills – Circa 1960s-70s

As a dog lover myself, it always surprises me that dad has only ever owned one dog, a collie that he had for many years from the age of about 12 to his early 30s. When the dog died, dad refused ever to get another one because he’d never known sadness like the loss of his beloved pet. But our story starts in happier times, when dad and the dog were both fit and well.

Dad regularly took his dog for a walk on the Malvern hills, so this was a normal day with the two of them walking together. From what I’ve heard, the dog was always calm and well behaved, rarely panicking about anything or running off. So, the dog was off the lead plodding along beside his owner.

From behind him, dad heard a horse approaching at pace. Worrying that the dog might frighten the horse, dad stepped to the side and grabbed the dog to put him on a lead.

As he was a horse-lover himself and was looking down at the dog when it galloped past, dad stood up and turned to see the horse on the path in front of him.

And this is where it gets weird.

There was no horse there, but dad could still hear the hooves.

He looked back down at the dog, and realised that the dog’s hackles were up and it was clearly petrified.

That’s when the sound of hooves stopped, replaced by an ear-piercing scream.

As you can imagine, dad and the dog ran all the way home, completely unnerved.

Who was the horse rider?

When Dad got home, he blurted out the story to his parents. Whilst they could see he was clearly upset and something had frightened him, they weren’t concerned.

A few days later though, the incident came up in conversation at my Granddad’s work. He was working at RSRE, which was why they were living in Malvern in a house provided by the military at the time.

With people discussing the area and the hills, my Granddad mentioned what had happened to my dad. Although he told it anecdotally, one of the ladies he worked with became quite subdued.

At work the following day, the same lady told my Granddad about a horse riding accident that had happened on the Malvern hills, 50 years to the day prior to my dad’s experience. A rider had been thrown from a horse by a steep drop. Granddad’s colleague thought that the lady in the accident had died.

Was there really an incident 50 years prior to that day?

I’ve always wondered about this story. My dad has told us about it many times over the years, along with other spooky experiences he’s had. But I’ve never found a historical account of a rider being thrown from a horse to her death on the Malvern Hills.

However, in recent times the internet has made research a lot easier. And it turns out, there was an incident in 1908. A female author named Radclyffe Hall lived at Highfield House in Malvern Wells. She was out hunting on her horse with a local pack, when she had a nasty accident.

The fall was serious enough for her to give up riding, and she made reference to it in her semi-autobiographical novel, The Well of Loneliness. This was set in a fictional version of the Malvern hills, and the protagonist suffered a fall based on Hall’s own accident. There’s a fascinating Worcester News article giving details about Radclyffe Hall’s life and her time in Malvern.

Was Radclyffe Hall the Ghost Horse-Woman of the Malvern Hills?

What we know:

• Radclyffe Hall had a serious horse-riding accident on the Malvern Hills that probably happened around 50 years prior to dad’s experience.
• Whilst Hall survived the accident, she died in 1943. This is six years before my dad was born, so she was definitely dead by the time the incident took place.
• Radclyffe Hall owned a house in Malvern Wells from 1906 and was known to ride with the local hunt on a horse she owned named Xenophon.
• No other similar incidents have come to light during my research.

Whilst I’m not sure whether Radclyffe Hall’s accident is connected to my dad’s spooky Malvern Hills ghost story, I also can’t rule it out. I’m not sure we’ll ever get to the bottom of it, but I’ll always be a little bit creeped out when I hear horses on the Malvern Hills when I’m taking Marco out for a walk.