Horrific Hauntings : The Hellfire Caves

  Did you know that the Hellfire club on Netflix’s Stranger Things is an actual secret society of the 18th century? The real Hellfire Club has a much darker and creepy status in history than the harmless Dungeons and Dragons fan clubs shown on the show. The actual Hellfire Club is enveloped in darkness, secrets, tales of dangerous rituals, satanic worship and devilish sacrifices. Today, the remains of the Hellfire Club's mystery underground temple in west Wycombe, England, is said to be an extremely haunted place.

 Founded through Sir Francis Dashwood, the club became one of the most terrifying ones, unfolding across both England and Ireland and recruiting many individuals with most of them being high-profile politicians or socialites. The club was recognised for mocking the church, mainly by committing immoral acts, doing rituals, carrying out sex acts and orgies, and satanic worship.

History

 At some point in the 1740s, to try and fight neighbourhood poverty, Sir Francis Dashwood commissioned an ambitious mission to supply chalk for a 3 miles road between West Wycombe and High Wycombe. Nearby farm workers, impoverished by a series of droughts and dreadful harvests, were employed here. The cave is thought to have taken 100 workers and 6 years to dig out. The caves had been excavated between 1748 and 1752 for Fir Francis Dashwood who formed a cult-like club. The club motto became Fais ce que tu vodkas ("do what thou wilt").

 Members of this club included numerous politically and socially essential 18th-century figures which includes William Hogarth, John Wilkes, Thomas Potter and John Montagu. They were called ‘monks’. They did have ‘visitors' who were 'nuns’, prostitutes, local ladies, wives, mothers, sisters, and other women of the society.

 Even though not believed to have been a member, Benjamin Franklin was recognized as a pal of Dashwood and he was reported inside caves on more than one occasion. The Hellfire club previously used Medmenham Abbey as an assembly location, however, the caves at West Wycombe were used for meetings in the 1750s and early 1760s. The caves had an entrance hall, stewards chamber, banquet corridor and a temple.

 It is believed that the underground temple, which lies directly under St Lawrence's church, was made as a mockery of the church. The temple is stated to represent Hell, wherein the church symbolizes heaven. Many symbols linked to the church and Greek mythology can be seen inside the caves. Adding to the secrets of the caves, loads of eerie face carvings can be seen inside the caves.

 In line with Horace Walpole, the members' "practice was rigorously pagan: Bacchus and Venus were the deities to whom they almost publicly sacrificed; and the nymphs and the hogsheads that were laid in against the festivals of this new church, sufficiently informed the neighbourhood of the complexion of those hermits"

 Even when it was functional, Sir Francis' institution was not recognized as the Hellfire Club and it only got this name after quite some time. His club used different names, including the brotherhood of St. Francis of Wycombe, the Order of Knights of West Wycombe, and The Order of the Friars of St. Francis of West Wycombe.

 Meetings were held a couple of times a month, with an AGM lasting a week or greater in June or September. The meetings had been stated to be terrifying, pagan, and full of debauchery and occult rituals in which they consumed extreme amounts of alcohol. 

Paranormal Occurrences

 There's an abundance of tales of ghosts and paranormal sightings surrounding the Hellfire Caves. Many site visitors document a feeling of being watched, hearing sounds of shifting furniture, being touched in the hair, hearing the sound of wailing kids, or also having gravel thrown at them by something invisible. Most tales tend to be from women.

 One of the most well-known ghost stories of the Hellfire Club Caves is stated to be that of Paul Whitehead. Paul was a steward of the Hellfire Club and a close friend of Dashwood. Before his death in 1774, paul left 50 pounds to Dashwood to shop for an urn to keep his heart after his demise. Dashwood did as he promised, however, regrettably, the heart was stolen by an Australian soldier a few centuries later. Sightings of a person in 18th-century clothes reported in the caves are believed to be Whitehead, forever and ever looking for his stolen heart.

 Another famed ghost of the haunted Hellfire Caves is that of a chambermaid, Sukie. It is stated that Sukie got lured into the Hellfire Caves by a group of pranksters with a fake promise that she would wed and run off with a wealthy guy she fancied. When she found out she was being pranked, she threw stones at the boys. In retaliation, the lads threw stones back at Sukie, with one fatal strike killing her. Many claim to sight a female in white wandering the caves or report the sounds of a lady crying from deep within the sprawling cave network.

Current State

 After Sir Francis Dashwood's demise, and the dysfunction of the Hellfire Club in 1781, the caves were no longer used and started to rot. The caves were renovated and turned into a traveller appeal during the end of the 1940s and early 1950s.