Peak Buildings former home of Buxton Museum is haunted, says staff

Ben Jones is the assistant in charge of the museum and was at Peak Buildings since 1997 and says one of the questions he was often asked was if it was haunted.

He said: “The short answer is yes.

“27 years is a long time and more than enough to get a measure of the place.”

He said back in 1997 he had not long finished university, and after a string of unsuccessful jobs that included selling dishcloths door-to-door and posing as a dead body on stage for two weeks, then he landed a relief contract as an attendant at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery.

Nearly three decades later, he is still here and looks after the staff, the visitors and the building.

But he says as BMAG is in between venues his duties are currently a little lighter than usual.

Reflecting on my time at Peak Buildings, he said: “I’ve been fortunate enough to work with many kind and talented individuals, and I have watched BMAG grow from a place that comparatively few people visited to a trailblazing titan of international cultural and historical importance.”

Over the years, Ben tried to make himself useful and became acquainted with all aspects of the service; admin, finance, exhibitions, marketing, collections care and interpretation, staffing and security.

“You could say that I’m a jack-of-all trades and a master-of-none, which is fair,” he said.

“The security of Peak Buildings and the museum collections brought me into occasional contact with its resident phantoms.

“I hasten to add to that I’m not a firm believer in ghosts, at least not in the traditional explanation of souls coming back from the great beyond.

“I’m open-minded but I have to question whether somebody would bother coming back from the dead just to spook some poor guy in a museum.” Despite leaning towards the rational, Ben says he has lost count of the amount of times he was in the building by himself and heard enough bumps and creaks that he had been convinced that someone else had come in, either lawfully or unlawfully.

He explained: “Being responsible for the security, I was compelled to investigate and in almost every instance, discovered that I was alone, followed by an involuntary shiver.

“There was an occasion where a colleague and I were on the ground floor, under the impression that we were the only ones in the building.

“There was a discernible bang from upstairs in the main art gallery that sounded very much like something very heavy falling over.

“We looked at each other and without saying anything, raced upstairs only to find everything in place and we were left scratching our heads in bewilderment.”

Of course, he says odd noises can be easily dismissed as an old building stretching its walls and timbers but there were also times where he felt like someone was behind him or watching him and he would ‘just get the creeps’ even without anything to trigger the sensation.

Ben said: “It probably didn’t help that some parts of the building were vacant. “The top floor in particular had a very long empty corridor and an attic which to anyone making a horror film, needed absolutely no embellishment.

“Other sections occupied by the museum were filled with bones and stuffed animals.

“In other words, there was a wealth of environmental factors to get your imagination going.”

Human beings, he says, have a strong instinct for self-preservation, retained from thousands of years ago, where getting eaten by a bear or a tiger was a realistic threat and his fight or flight mode being activated by big dark empty spaces is a more natural explanation than a ghost.

He said: “The only time I ever saw anything was when I was in the building by myself and had to answer the call of nature. “Not only did I hear what sounded like someone entering the building but I actually saw a shadow crossing the landing outside, underneath the door.

“I was so convinced that someone was there that I called out, just to avoid giving whoever it was a scare.

“When I opened the door, there was nobody there.

“The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. My blood turned to ice. I decided to leave asap.

“Peak Buildings had got me again.”

Peak Buildings was built in 1875 as a hydropathic hotel, offering cold water treatments.

“By 1915 the Peak Hotel was up for sale.

“The Canadian Red Cross Society secured a lease to establish the Canadian Red Cross Convalescent Hospital, No 2, Buxton.

The hospital opened in May 1916 and there were 11 officers on the staff, 35 nursing sisters and 101 other ranks.

In 1928, the first floor of Peak Buildings was opened as the town’s public library with the ground floor occupied by the museum.

The Buxton Magistrates Court was also based out of Peak Buildings and shut in 2016 and the Green Man Gallery closed at Christmas.

The museum was temporarily closed in June 2023 after dry rot was discovered in the building and, almost a year later, Derbyshire County Council announced the museum would not be reopening and would be put up for sale.

Speaking on his museum blog Ben added: “So there you have it, my time at the former Peak Hydropathic Hotel, former Canadian Red Cross Hospital and Buxton Museum and Art Gallery was in a way, certainly haunted and although I miss the grand old place, that particular aspect not so much.”