Blimey! I had gaped at Winston Churchill’s shorn curls inside a palace, loitered in Shakespeare’s birth room, and navigated bleating sheep while hiking through storybook villages in England’s Cotswolds. Feeling peckish one evening, in tiny rural apparently haunted Bretforton, I landed at the medieval Fleece Inn pub, where locals swigged Mad Goose beer and ominous white “witch circles” had long been painted on fireplace floors to keep out evil spirits by hypnotizing them.

Fresh off chime practice, two elderly church bell ringers tippled pints near a pair of circles and assured me that witches who scooted down the chimney got permanently stuck on the hearth. Pet dogs relaxed at their owners’ feet and when a Siberian husky excitedly shot up, I sensed he saw a poltergeist — or smelled the gri

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