St Mary’s Church Ruins, Clophill

You’re going to have to indulge me just a little on the strict City of Secrets parameters because today’s location isn’t in Milton Keynes – although it does have an MK postcode… so forgive me but for this visit, I’ve ventured just over the border into Bedfordshire and oh boy, it was worth a wander.

Life’s really weird sometimes. If you’d told me a year ago that my plans for a bleak and bitter February Sunday afternoon would be to spend it wandering around a famously haunted ruined church rather than curling up with an audiobook and a knitting project, I’d have laughed and put the kettle back on. I certainly never expected to be this excited to go and look around, but I’ve been getting steadily more tingly ahead of this visit, especially after my original plans to go in January were called off because, well, it was January and snowing and I’m keen but not that keen.

Actually, this time last year I’d never even heard of St Mary’s Church, although say that to anyone round here who’s interested in the spooky and the supernatural, and they’ll goggle at you. It’s got quite the reputation, apparently – on Friday, I casually mentioned my unusual weekend plans to the team at work in our morning chat, and got an instant reaction of ooohs. People knew it alright, and one colleague has even promised to share her own stories of unusual experiences there, although she refused to go into detail until after I’d been myself. A time-slip was mentioned, among other unexplainable goings-on, so of course, that ratcheted my anticipation up by a good few notches.

To be fair, I’ve not helped myself here because this morning I spent a few hours revisiting the sources that got me so intrigued in the first place. You see, I’m pretty new to the whole paranormal podcast world but I’ve immersed myself rather swiftly, and it’s through a couple of those that I’ve become so interested in this particular place. If, like me, you’d never heard of St Mary’s then go and watch parts one and two of this excellent exploration of the church and its history, and if that’s caught your interest as much as it did mine, follow it up with a listen to all three parts of this as well. It’ll take you a while, but I’ll wait – do remember to come back because you might end up down a proper rabbit hole if you follow up on everything else that YouTube will recommend to you! Given its associations with black magic and generally grim reputation, there are a lot of videos and stories out there about this place but Peter and Nat definitely set the scene better than any of the other accounts I’ve seen – to the point where I’m not even going to try covering the history and backstory, they do it much better than I would. There’s certainly something very spooky and unsettling about the site and I couldn’t wait to go and take a look myself.

Are you back? Good-oh. Reader, it was awesome.

From the eerie long path up the hill to the worn gravestones, to the melancholy snowdrops bravely peeking through the dark earth, to the looming ruin itself – I loved every little detail. It was disappointingly sunny when we arrived but as the afternoon wore on, it got progressively gloomier and my photos got more appropriately toned. I wasn’t expecting crowds of people to be there, but we pretty much had the site to ourselves all the time we were there. Yes, ‘we’ – for a change I wasn’t exploring solo but had roped in two very understanding friends who have had to put up with me going on about spooky-stuff for the last few months, and they’d agreed to drive me over to this random spot for the afternoon. It really is a bleak, isolated place. The wind in the trees combined with the far-off drone of traffic on the main road to make an eerie moaning that I could almost convince myself was distant singing. (I totally admit to being beyond primed for this, of course – and I suck at audio recordings.)

We split up for a while to take pictures, and when we got back together, we were chatting before we posed for the obligatory timed group shot. One of my companions mentioned a strange moment she’d had while taking close-up photos of the snowdrops in front of the church – she was absolutely sure that she’d seen a guy in a grey coat, walking around the side of the church. She’d stopped and looked, wondering if it was just me wandering around in the background – but of course, when she looked properly, there was no-one like that there. My coat’s dark green, and anyway, I was out of sight at the time round the back. Hmm?!

The other rather odd thing I noticed… my phone had been charged to 100% when I left home and that usually gets me easily through a whole day out walking, listening to podcasts and taking pictures. When we got back to the car and I was checking the route to the pub, it was below 10% – way more drained than I would have anticipated for a couple of hours of photos. There was another exciting moment when we thought we spotted a scampering cryptid over by the gravestones near the fields, but it turned out to a particularly hefty squirrel.

It’s ok. I wasn’t really expecting to come face-to-face with a spectre, not at half past two in the afternoon and there’s no way I’d go poking around at night even if there weren’t CCTV cameras and stern warnings about out-of-hours exploration. I still had a blast, and I’ve been enjoying going through my videos and photos this evening to post here. And this is where things get just the tiniest bit spooky. Have a look at this…

…This was a ‘live’ photo – the ones you can do on iPhones that take very short videos rather than just a static shot. I’d been using them all afternoon with the vague idea that if anything did crop up, it would be better to have extra frames to look at. I have absolutely no idea what that flash is. It looks like it’s down by the gateway where you come into the site, and while it could be a reflection off one of the information boards, the angle doesn’t look quite right and anyway, what would it be reflecting? I just sent it over to my companions, and they have no idea either. They weren’t taking any photos with flash, and no-one had brought torches or anything. Very weird.

So, what did I make of my first deliberate ‘paranormal’ excursion? 10/10. I’m left with a lingering tiny sense of spookiness, some atmospheric photos and great memories of a cracking day exploring somewhere new. I’m most surprised by how much fun it was – I guess I really do like creeping myself out. Who knew?!