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Of course, all villages claim their fair share of ghosts and legends. It's just that Woodchester and Selsley have more than fair share. Indeed Woodchester Mansion is said to be the world's scariest place and is constantly on TV as more sightings are reported.

The Arthurian Link
Whilst undoubtedly well-intentioned fantasy, a number of authors have linked parts of the Arthurian legend with the Selsley and Woodchester area. The Anglo Saxon Chronicles, Saxon poems, and the Book of Water have several references to the Woodchester area that have fuelled imagination.
These include the Battle in the Wood of Celadon and it is claimed that Celidon could have a link to Selsley as Celi can be pronounced Kelli or Selli, which means the clearing in the wood.
There is a legend of the Lord of Woodchester Marius, together with Cellus of Selsley, defeated the invading Danes at a place now called Woeful Danes Bottom. Cellus was mortally wounded and committed his infant daughter, Mary, to Marius' care. In turn, when Marius lay dying twenty or so years later, he passed this responsibility to his son Aco, asking him to find Mary a husband who was British. Instead, Aco decided to take Mary as his own bride despite her adamant refusal At the wedding feast in Woodchester, a band of British men led by Leir stormed in, killed Aco and rode off with Mary - much to her delight.
A Welsh poem talks of Celi being burned and a battle taking place some 20-30 miles north of Bath with Arthur being embattled at a villa fighting the Saxons:

When the Stroud- Nailsworth railway was being laid in 1866, a large number of skeletons from Saxon times were found just below the villa, an indication of a battle being fought there.
Ronald Fletcher has spent years researching the old texts and is convinced that the Battle of Arderydd took place at Woodchester and that Arthur was crowned at Woodchester. Unfortunately, his writing is so impenetrable it is almost impossible for any one to follow his line of argument.
Not only has Ronald Fletcher drawn links with Arthur but he has concluded that Woodchester, thousands of years ago, was once a major centre of Druid learning. In his hypothesis, it was the original centre of schooling in languages, writing, astronomy and navigation, learnings that were then disseminated around the world, carried by seaman who left these shores along the Severn. Thousands of years later, the Romans, recognizing that Woodchester was this original seat of wisdom, built the villa and mosaic into which they coded this story.
Chronological History of Woodchester and Selsley

St Paul
The Rev. John Williams, Rector at Woodchester from 1833 - 1857, convinced himself that St Paul had preached at Woodchester arguing that Clement of Rome said that Paul had visited the utmost limit of the west and that Britain was the limit of the Roman Empire. And, if he had visited Britain, he would have visited the Roman Governor and the villa was reputed to be the home of the Governor.
"Therefore at Woodchester in the Propraetor's Palace on the site which now stands the church has St Paul most undoubtedly preached." he wrote.
The Rev. Williams was a reputed scholar; Paul went on several long apostolic journeys and in his writings mentions several people of rank who can be linked to Gloucestershire.

Selsley Church
Geoff Bird, a quest researcher, wrote an article for the magazine 'Gloucestershire Earth Mysteries'. He argued that Selsley church was constructed to certain principles according to the science of gematria. He claimed that the measurements add up to specific values that equate to the universe, various gods and deities, as well as Christ. He acknowledges that these may just be coincidences but he also says that they could work on another level.
Selsley Church

St Innocents Day
The ringing of a muffled peal on 28th December, Innocents Day has been a custom in many churches for centuries. It seems to have survived longest at Woodchester where the practise continued until the 1960s.

A Ghostly Knocking
This story is recounted in Roy Palmers' book The Folklore of Gloucestershire (published by West Country Books in 1994.)

"I well remember my father talking about a man who lived in Box and worked in the Woodchester Valley. One night, in the winter, he didn't return from work during a heavy snowstorm and the next day he was found dead in a snowdrift on Culver Hill. His body was taken to Amberley Inn and he was, it is said, put in to the coffin without removing his clothes or boots. Now in those days, funerals from Box were always walking funerals. Men from the village were rounded up to carry the coffin to Minchinhampton. Well, when his coffin was brought to his home and his funeral started the men were startled to hear a continuous knocking from inside the coffin. They were quite relieved, on getting to the church, to find that it was that rigor mortis had given up and it was his boots tapping the inside of the coffin."
Mrs Ethel Smith talking in 1981.

Mothering
In 1892, Edwin Sydney Hartland, writes of a custom at Selsley that survived from the time of "Merrie England."
Mothering occurred on the fourth Sunday of Lent, which traditionally was a time when families gathered. For young people away from home (mainly servants) they would all gather together under an old tree at Selsley having sought permission from their masters and here they would eat a special cake, coated with white icing and embellished with pink.

Even a simple web-search throws up tens of stories about ghosts and evil goings-on at Woodchester Mansion.

The first authoratitive source was a 1998 story written by Julia Etherington.
Spook Puts Wind Up Mansion Team
Prince's Trust Volunteers who stayed in a haunted building will always wonder whether one of the team moved the glass upstairs – or whether a darker force was at work at Woodchester Mansion! The bold-spirited Team 51 from the trust's base at Heathville Road, Gloucester, stayed the night at the part-built Victorian mansion and raised £300 for the charity CLIC – Cancer and Leukaemia In Childhood. But spooky goings-on during the night have made Team 51 question just how far their teammates would go to give them a fright. A drinking glass left in an upstairs room said to be frequented by a poltergeist was found in a different position next morning. Team member Richard Merriman said: "It was definitely moved. Nobody will admit to it and we thought we stayed together all night. There was a lot of adrenalin pumping because we were all together in this empty haunted building, but I don't think anyone was really scared."
The mansion was commissioned by wealthy merchant William Leigh but was abandoned in 1873. It has remained empty ever since. The gargoyle-encrusted building is set in the ‘lost valley' of Woodchester Park, which is shrouded in superstition. According to legend, Sir Rupert de Lansigny, who inherited it after killing his cousin, once owned the estate. Several locals have reported seeing a headless horseman, believed to be Sir Rupert, near one of the park lakes.

Since that article, Woodchester Mansion has entered the national consciousness as being one of the most haunted and scariest buildings in the country. It is regularly visited by paranormal research groups, and has been the location for several TV programmes devoted to the unworldly, including one three hour special filmed entirely on live location.

The Institute of Paranormal Research has studied the Mansion and has written a comprehensive study of the apparitions they found. These included: the smell of candles in the disused chapel; a small standing man seen appearing in doorways; stones hurtling across rooms; an unknown 'tall man' floating along the main corridor; a maid seen in the scullery, singing a song; a self-starting clock and the bodies of dead servicemen.

Danny Sullivan has investigated the story of the appearance of an angel at the Mansion. This introduction is adapted from his now deleted web-site and no one is quite sure what has happened to Danny.

Woodchester Mansion is full of stories of personal tragedy, murder, ghostly apparitions, bizarre nocturnal activity, and secret wartime experiments. In 1944, some US servicemen drowned in one of the park's lakes, and the mansion has been linked with strange Victorian cults, the Freemasons and satanic worshippers.

In the spring of 1944 US Soldiers were stationed at the Mansion. A pontoon bridge across a lake collapsed under the weight of armoured vehicles and more than 20 soldiers were killed. On the eve of the disaster two soldiers saw an angel hover above where the men would later drown and this is where the William Doidge story picks up, a man obsessed with the Angel of Mons Vision in 1914 where he fought in the First World War. Doidge spoke to one of these soldiers based at Woodchester Mansion and armed with a camera began a vigil at the Gothic mansion and caught on film the ghostly angel image. William Doidge & Doidge’s Angel is shrouded in mystery and many are fascinated by this intriguing story.

The Arthurian link, myths and legends