Ghosthunting With… Girls Aloud at Plas Teg

Plas Teg stands near Pontblyddyn in Flintshire, between Wrexham and Mold. It was built around 1610 for Sir John Trevor I, a courtier of James I. Roundheads raided it twice in the Civil War. By the early 1950s it was close to demolition. In 1986 Cornelia Bayley bought it for £75,000 and restored it.

The ghosts came with the house. Lady Dorothy Trevor is said to have drowned in a well while eloping, searching for jewels she had buried there. Drivers on the A541 have reported a grey lady stepping into the road. Judge Jeffreys is said to have held court in the dining room. Local tellings count 15 ghosts.

Autumn, 2006. Four members of Girls Aloud arrived with Yvette Fielding, host of Most Haunted. Cheryl, Kimberley Walsh, Sarah Harding and Nicola Roberts. Nadine Coyle opted out because she was too scared. The psychologist Geoffrey Beattie waited outside in the car, reading their body language from a distance.

Fielding led the tour. Knocking ran through the house. Just before the séance, Cheryl felt something touch her arm. Nicola Roberts left. She retreated to the taxi where Beattie sat waiting.

They gathered in a chintz be-curtained room, said to be where Jeffreys had people executed. Fielding called out, "In the name of God… please come forward to this circle of women." Sarah Harding sensed a man. "He doesn't want us here," she said. Then objects were thrown around the room, supposedly by a squire who used to work at the house.

Years later Cheryl recalled her words at the table. "If you're here, just tap the fucking table! Let's cut the bullshit." Then: "And it did!" After the séance the group split, Cheryl and Kimberley going downstairs while Sarah and Fielding stayed upstairs. When the pair returned, Cheryl's finger was flicked, presumably by the ghost.

The same shoot moved on to Crossley Hospital, an abandoned sanatorium. Fielding used a Ouija board in the morgue. In the basement, stones were thrown at the group. Cheryl, Kimberley and Sarah left for the taxi. Fielding stayed until the stone-throwing intensified.

ITV2 broadcast the special on 12 December 2006 to about 800,000 viewers. No police, scientists or clergy ever examined the house. The broadcast is the only record of what happened. Beattie read the girls, not the ghosts. "Sarah's hair smoothing has nothing to do with vanity whatsoever. It's for self-comfort."

In 2018 the New Statesman wrote of knocks "audible only to them". Doubters often point to Antix Productions, which also made Most Haunted. There, in 2005, the medium Derek Acorah was found to have channelled spirits whose names had been fed to him in advance. Nothing like that has been shown for this episode. Creaking timber, fear in the dark and crew noise remain untested possibilities.

The pilot launched a series that ran until 2011. Most Haunted visited Plas Teg twice. In January 2025, as the contents went up for sale, BBC News still called it the Girls Aloud ghost-hunting mansion.