Barrock Fell, Cumbria
The Black Swan, York
The Civic Theatre, Darlington
Clifford’s Tower, York
The Coach and Horses Hotel, Chester
Dunstanburgh Castle, Northumberland
East Riddlesden Hall, Yorkshire
Kirkstone Pass Inn, Cumbria
Marston Moor Battlefield, Yorkshire
The National Railway Museum, York
The Octagon Theatre, Bolton
The Old Original, Oldham
Pontefract Castle, Yorkshire
The Prospect Shopping Centre, Hull
The Shakespeare Public House, Manchester
The Snickleway Inn, York
Tynemouth Priory and Castle, Tyne and Wear
Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle upon Tyne
Whitby Abbey, Yorkshire
Winter’s Gibbet, Northumberland
Ye Olde Black Boy, Hull
Ye Olde Man and Scythe Inn, Bolton
I am a northern lad, so how could I not love northern England? I was born in Liverpool in the north-west and that city itself abounds with stories of hauntings and ghostly sightings. I have conducted one or two investigations in Liverpool around the Rodney Street area (as documented in The Psychic Adventures of Derek Acorah) and I can guarantee that anybody who is looking to visit this city on a ghost-hunting expedition will not be disappointed.
Of course there are many other towns and cities in the north of England where a plethora of ghosts walk. Travel north following the M6 to the ancient town of Lancaster with its castle and history of the Lancashire Witches, then go to the Lake District and beyond to Carlisle. Turn right and follow Hadrian’s Wall through Northumberland. How can anybody who is looking for a paranormal experience be short of locations to investigate? But of course my heart will always belong to Liverpool and its haunted history.
Barrock Fell
Barrock Fell, in Cummersdale, to the south of Carlisle, was occupied by the Romans in the late fourth century. They built a small fort and signal station there, possibly to guard the important road to the south.
The fell is not haunted by Romans, however, but by a notorious highwayman, John Whitfield of Cotehill, who terrorized the neighbourhood in the mid-eighteenth century. Finally, in 1768, a young boy witnessed him shooting a man called William Cockburn on the road near Armithwaite and he was caught, tried and sentenced to be gibbeted on Barrock Fell. Hanging in his iron cage and starving to death, he cried out in agony for several days until a mail coachman passing by finally put him out of his misery by shooting him. Now it is said that his ghost can still be heard crying out in torment.
Barrock Fell, Cummersdale, Carlisle, Cumbria
The Black Swan
The Black Swan is one of York’s most traditional pubs. It has a medieval timber-framed exterior and a classical seventeenth-century interior. It was originally built in 1417 and for many years was the home of the Bowes family. William Bowes was Lord Mayor of York in 1417 and 1428, and Sir Martin Bowes became jeweller to Queen Elizabeth I and the Lord Mayor of London. There may have been a secret side to this eminent family, for there is evidence of a secret passage leading from the house to St Cuthbert’s church and of a secret room, which may have been used for cock fighting. The first record of the house being used as a pub was in 1763.
Today the Black Swan offers pub lunches, live folk music and two en-suite bedrooms, each with a separate annex for children. A function room is available for business meetings and special occasions.
Several ghosts have been reported in the Black Swan. A beautiful young woman in a long white dress has been seen staring into the fire, her face hidden by long black hair, and a Chaplinesque figure in a bowler hat wanders aimlessly through the rooms as though waiting for someone. The strangest ghost is a pair of male legs!
The Black Swan, Peasholme Green, York, North Yorkshire YO1 7PR; Tel: (01904) 686911
DEREK’S TIP
I can recommend the use of pendulums in investigations, especially those constructed of quartz crystal. When close to a spirit energy, pendulums have been known to swing or spin. The closer you go to that energy source, the more rapid the movement of the pendulum.
The Civic Theatre
The Civic Theatre, Darlington, formerly the New Hippodrome and Palace of Varieties, opened in 1907. Its first managing director was Signor Rino Pepi, an Italian who was originally a quick-change artist and impersonator. He had a small bed-sitting room and kitchen, now the telephone sales office, behind the door to the left of his box. He would often enter his box through this door, accompanied by his wife and beloved Pekinese dog. He died in November 1927, but is supposed to haunt the theatre to this day, along with his dog. Staff claim he has tapped them on the shoulder in order to make his presence known.
The theatre is also haunted by the ghost of a flyman who hanged himself there. A flyman is a technician who raises or lowers – or ‘flies’ – the scenery by means of ropes. Many of the techniques used are similar to those used on sailing ships and it was once common for former sailors to work as flymen. There have also been sightings of the ghost of a young ballerina in the theatre.
A team of psychic investigators from Yorkshire recently spent a night carrying out tests on the premises and apparently detected several ghosts, including those of Signor Pepi, an unhappy young girl and a dog. The body of a dog was later found buried near the building.
The Civic Theatre, Parkgate, Darlington, County Durham DL1 1RR; Tel: (01325) 486555 (enquiries), (01325) 486555 (box office). Guided tours of the theatre are available on request and ghost tours are run from time to time.
DEREK’S TIP
If your investigation is to take place at night, ensure that you have warm clothing and the facility to make hot drinks. Remember that even the warmest of summer days can turn chilly after the witching hour.
Clifford’s Tower
York is reputed to be one of the most haunted towns in Britain and Clifford’s Tower, one of its most famous landmarks, is notorious for the strange phenomena that have taken place there.
The tower was originally built in wood by William the Conqueror during his campaign to subdue the north of England. In 1190 it was the scene of one of the most terrible events in York’s history. Anti-Semitism swept through the town and many of the large Jewish community fled their homes and sought refuge in the tower. However, the mob caught up with them there and offered them the choice of being baptized or murdered. Most chose to commit suicide and the remainder were massacred when the rioters stormed the tower and set it on fire.
In the thirteenth century the tower was rebuilt by Henry III, using stone from a nearby quarry. Not long afterwards people reported a red fluid oozing from the walls. It was thought to be the blood of those who had died there, though scientific tests have since revealed that it was probably the result of iron oxide in the stone. Yet strangely none of the other stone taken from the quarry contained iron oxide.
Staff in the tower today often feel they are being watched, even when they are on their own, and in the chapel several people have felt the touch of a ghostly hand on their shoulder. A team of psychic investigators recently held a ghost watch at the tower and claimed to have found the spirits of a young boy, a man and two dogs there.
Clifford’s Tower, Tower Street, York, North Yorkshire YO1 9SA; Tel: (01904) 621756 (event line), (01904) 621756 (info line)
The Coach and Horses Hotel
The Coach and Horses Hotel is a traditional pub and hotel in the heart of the historic Roman city of Chester. It has a very strange tale of haunting.
One hot summer’s evening in 1988 an old gentleman in a tweed suit came into the pub and sat down near the side entrance. He ordered a drink and sat quietly for a while on his own. When the barmaid asked if he was alright, he said he was, then came over to the bar, ordered another drink and started to talk to her. He explained that his wife had died suddenly and he wasn’t looking forward to going home, because everything there reminded him of her. He asked if there was a room free at the hotel. There was, so the elderly gentleman paid cash and the barmaid booked him in and gave him his key. He drained his drink and said he would take a walk around the city walls before coming back. With a smile, he left the inn.
When he hadn’t returned by 2 o’clock in the morning, the hotel staff began to worry that something had happened to him and rang the police. After searching the city in vain, the police went to the address that the man had given in Birkenhead. Neighbours told them that he had lived there and his wife had died suddenly, but so had he – eight years ago!
The Coach and Horses Hotel, 39 Northgate Street, Chester CH1 2HQ; Tel: (01244) 325533
DEREK’S TIP
If nothing happens on your first investigation, do not be too disappointed. Spirit people are not performers and will only appear if and when they want to. Just because you have had no success on one investigation does not mean that you will fail on others.
Dunstanburgh Castle
The windswept skeleton of Dunstanburgh Castle, the largest castle in Northumberland, lies nine miles northeast of Alnwick, dominating the coastline from its position high on an outcrop of the Great Whin Sill. It was built in the fourteenth century during the border wars between Scotland and England by Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, nephew of King Edward II. Unfortunately relations between the two broke down and Thomas eventually led a barons’ rebellion against the king. He was captured and executed at Pontefract Castle (see page 100) in 1322, but the executioner was inexperienced and took 11 strokes to sever his head. Even soldiers fainted at the sight. Now his ghost is said to walk the ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle carrying his mangled head.
By the sixteenth century the castle had fallen into decay, but according to legend when a knight called Sir Guy sought shelter there in a storm, the drawbridge was lowered and a hideous figure in white appeared and asked him to enter and find a ‘beauty bright’. Sir Guy entered an ornate chamber where he found 100 knights and their horses lying asleep. In the middle of the room a beautiful woman lay sleeping in a crystal casket. On either side of her were two serpents, one holding a sword, the other a horn. The ghostly figure told Sir Guy he could wake the woman but must choose whether to use the sword or the horn to do so. He chose the horn, but as he blew it, the knights woke instead and rushed towards him. Sir Guy fainted clean away and when he came round the vision had gone. For the rest of his life he searched the ruins for the beautiful maiden, but he never found her again. Now his ghost continues the search.
Dunstanburgh Castle, Craster, Alnwick, Northumberland; Tel: (01665) 576231; www.english-heritage.org.uk
Open daily April–October and Thursday–Monday November–March. Closed 24–26 December and 1 January.
The castle can be reached by foot from Embleton and Craster. Car parking is available at both. There is a small shop.
East Riddlesden Hall
East Riddlesden Hall is a seventeenth-century merchant’s house a mile north-east of Keighley. It stands in its own grounds, which include gardens, a duck pond, an orchard and one of the largest medieval tithe barns in the north of England.
The hall is haunted by four ghosts. Perhaps the best known is a Grey Lady who was starved to death by her husband and who now rocks an ancient cradle. The other ghosts are those of a Scottish merchant murdered by a steward for his money, a White Lady who haunts the pond where she drowned and a Blue Lady who haunts the grounds.
East Riddlesden Hall, Riddlesden, Bradford Road, Keighley, North Yorkshire BD20 4EA; Tel: (01535) 607075; Fax: (01535) 691462; E-mail: eastriddlesden@ntrust.org.uk; Website: www. visitbrontecountry. com/erh. htm
Open April–November. The hall is run by the National Trust. It has free parking, a shop, tea room, children’s play area and educational facilities. Regular costumed tours and a variety of events are held through the year.
Kirkstone Pass Inn
Kirkstone Pass Inn is a well-known inn dramatically situated on the Kirkstone Pass between Ullswater and Windermere. At 1,500 feet, it is believed to be the third highest public house in England and it is a favourite with walkers and other visitors to the Lake District.
The inn is said to be haunted by a seventeenth-century coachman. He hangs around the bar as if reluctant to go back out into the hills and continue his journey. Travel was often hazardous in past times, as shown by the fate of the other ghost at the inn, a young woman who died of exposure while travelling over the pass during a blizzard.
Kirkstone Pass Inn, Kirkstone Pass, Ambleside, Cumbria LA22 9LQ; Tel: (01539) 433888. Food served. Accommodation available.
Marston Moor Battlefield
Marston Moor lies beyond the southern end of Nidderdale in the Vale of York, about a mile north of Long Marston and to the east of Tockwith. It was the site of a major battle in the Civil War.
On the evening of 2 July 1644 a Royalist army of 15,000 soldiers under the command of William Cavendish, later Duke of Newcastle, and Prince Rupert of the Rhine, King Charles I’s nephew, met an army of 25,000 allied Parliamentarian and Scots troops under the overall command of Alexander Leslie, Earl of Leven, and Generals Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell. The Royalist commanders had been convinced that battle would not take place until the following morning and been surprised by the Allied attack. The battle lasted for two hours, lit by moonlight. After initial success, the Royalists were defeated and their northern army destroyed.
As night fell, 300 Allied soldiers and 4,000 Royalists lay dead. The Allied dead were respectfully buried by their comrades, but the Royalists were robbed and stripped and the Parliamentarians forced the villagers of Tockwith and Long Marston to dump the bodies in a pit. Marston Moor is now peaceful farmland, but the ghostly battle continues to this day. Royalist cavalry has been seen charging across the fields and there have been many sightings of phantom soldiers walking along the road between Long Marston and Tockwith which runs across the centre of the battlefield. A monument commemorating the battle has been erected halfway along this road, next to a layby.
Marston Moor lies off the B1224 to the west of Tockwith, Vale of York.
DEREK’S TIP
It is pointless to shout and scream at every little noise. Put yourself in the place of the spirit person. If somebody standing next to you were suddenly to jump and yell out, what would you do? I am sure that you would beat a hasty retreat! And that is exactly what spirit people do when confronted with such behaviour.
The National Railway Museum
The National Railway Museum is the largest railway museum in the world. It traces the history of the railway industry from the early nineteenth century, when George and Robert Stephenson developed Rocket. Alongside a large collection of photographs there are millions of railway artefacts and many railway vehicles, including the famous Flying Scotsman, Mallard, which holds the world speed record for a steam train, the only bullet train outside Japan and a host of royal carriages, including Queen Victoria’s.
There are often special Thomas the Tank Engine days for children, and rides on the miniature railway or full-size trains are usually available.
There are also rumours of ghostly activity in the travelling post office, where mail used to be sorted and then dropped off at stations in sacks as the train raced through the country.
The National Railway Museum, Leeman Road, York, North Yorkshire YO26 4XJ; Tel: (01904) 621261; Fax: (01904) 611112; Website: www.nrm.org.uk
Open all year, every day except 24, 25 and 26 December. Admission free except for some activities during special events.
The Octagon Theatre
The Octagon Theatre, Bolton, was established in 1967. It presents two seasons of shows per year with a wide range of both home-produced and touring productions, including musicals, classics and comedies. Although the theatre is actually hexagonal, the main auditorium is an elongated octagon. It seats up to 380 people. The building also houses the Bill Naughton Theatre (an 80-seat adaptable studio theatre), the Spotlight Café and a theatre bar.
The theatre’s ghost is its first wardrobe mistress, Fida, who died while she was working there. She has been seen strolling across the gallery and in the stage control box and has even appeared to operate the sewing machines from time to time!
The Octagon Theatre, Howell Croft South, Bolton BL1 1SB; Tel: (01204) 520661; Website: www.octagonbolton.co.uk
The Old Original
The Old Original is a traditional pub in the former mill town of Oldham. It is haunted by a woman called Eliza Jane MacKay, who lived in the area in the nineteenth century and was a regular drinker at the inn. She came to a bad end one night when she was murdered and thrown down the local well,800 yards down the lane from the pub. Each year on a certain night in May people in the houses nearby can hear the sound of screaming. This may be a re-enactment of Eliza being dragged screaming from the pub to the well. The inquest took place in July and the Oldham Chronicle’s account of it is on the wall in the pub today. Eliza herself is also still around her old haunt, appearing as an ill-defined shadowy shape and always passing through the same part of the inn. It seems she haunts the cellar too, as things are often turned on and off down there.
The Old Original, Thurston Clough Road, Scouthead, Oldham, Lancashire OL4 3RX; Tel: (01457) 874412. Food served.
Pontefract Castle
Pontefract Castle, built in 1090, was one of the most important fortresses in England during the Middle Ages. It became a royal castle in 1399, upon the accession of Henry Bolinbroke to the throne. He imprisoned his predecessor, Richard II, in the castle and had him murdered the following year. During the Civil War the castle was held by Royalist forces through three sieges, but was largely demolished by the victorious Parliamentarians at the end of the war.
No one has yet seen the ghost of Richard II at the castle – though a photograph of the keep once showed a ghostly figure wearing a crown – but it is known to be the haunt of many other ghosts. Visitors have often seen a black monk walking from the kitchen towards the steps up to the Queen’s Tower at around 5 o’clock in the afternoon. A grey monk has also been seen and a woman wearing grey walks regularly from Stoney Hill to the castle gates, sometimes holding a lantern.
Another ghost has been seen reflected in a mirror at the visitors’ centre. She is a young girl with long brown hair, dressed in ragged clothes. Unexplained sounds of a girl crying and screaming have been reported in the ladies’ toilet which adjoins the visitors’ centre.
Strange knocking has also been heard in the castle’s underground magazine, which held gunpowder and prisoners during the Civil War. A shadowy figure has been seen descending the stairs to the magazine and cavaliers have been seen coming up them and walking off to various parts of the castle. Two phantom children have been seen playing near the entrance, while on top of the keep a man dressed in black has been observed reading a parchment. Though the castle is now in ruins, it seems there is still a lot going on there.
Pontefract Castle, Castel Chain, Pontefract, West Yorkshire WF8 1QH; Tel: (01977) 723440. Open daily.
The Prospect Shopping Centre
The Prospect Shopping Centre, Hull, has a wide selection of high street and department stores and places to eat. The site was once the venue for public executions. Subsequently the Hull Royal Infirmary was built there. It opened on 1 September 1784 and remained on the same site for 183 years until the new Hull Royal Infirmary opened in Anlaby Road. The old building was then demolished and the land allocated to the development of a new shopping centre.
The new complex opened in the mid-1970s and ever since there have been reports of strange events taking place on the premises. Canteen utensils and waste bins have been strewn around, stock has been moved inexplicably and several items have appeared in unusual places and been uncannily cold to the touch. When one shop opened the staff posed for a photo and when it was developed they saw that an extra person no one recognized had been standing there with them.
It is believed that the ghosts haunting the shopping centre are those of hospital patients and workers. Staff working late in the offices have seen the shadowy figures of hospital porters dressed in ‘whites’. One porter is said to have been around since the 1930s, when he committed suicide in the porters’ lodge. A nurse in an old-fashioned uniform was also seen by a woman working late in one of the shops, but when she approached her, she walked behind a column and disappeared.
The Prospect Shopping Centre, Brook Street, Hull HU2 8PP; Tel: (01482) 324619; Fax: (01482) 325640
DEREK’S TIP
A more sceptical member of the group is useful in providing ‘the voice of reason’. It is very easy to attribute every squeak or groan to spirit activity when in fact the source could well be something as mundane as the building cooling down at night or the floorboards relaxing after constant use during the day.
The Shakespeare Public House
The Shakespeare is now located in the centre of Manchester, but in the 1920s the entire pub was transported from Chester, where it was known as the Shambles. It dates back to 1656 and still has the original black and white façade, old wooden floors and oak beams.
It also still has its ghost. She is said be a kitchen maid who lived in the nineteenth century and died after being raped by the chef, who later hanged himself. The rope marks are still there on an old beam.
The Shakespeare, 16 Fountain Street, Manchester M2 2AA; Tel: 0161 834 5515
Food is available in the pub or upstairs in the restaurant, which can also be booked for private parties.
The Snickleway Inn
A snickleway is an alleyway, and the Snickleway Inn in York is a traditional pub in a building which dates back to medieval times, when the old town was full of narrow passageways. It was renovated around 1580 and the timber framing of the Tudor and Jacobean rooms can still be seen. Rumour has it that it was once a brothel, but it has been linked with the pub trade since the seventeenth century.
As may be expected with an old building with a colourful past, there are several ghosts haunting the premises. An old man has been seen entering the pub through the old back door – which is now blocked up – and sitting down before disappearing into thin air. He ran the pub at the turn of the nineteenth century. The current licensees have seen him twice. He is not always visible, but can often be heard grunting. Another former licensee and her cat also apparently haunt the bar and an Elizabethan man in a blue doublet has also been seen there.
The stairs are said to be haunted by the ghost of a four-year-old girl who was killed by a brewer’s dray and by a young nun who broke her vows and had a child. A baby has been heard crying in the pub when there are no children present.
A feeling of evil has been reported in the cellar and a medium who once investigated the premises sensed a presence there.
Sometimes the whole pub is pervaded by the smell of lavender. During the Great Plague, which killed 3,512 people in York in 1604, lavender was used to mask the smell of rotting corpses.
The ghost of Marmaduke Buckle is said to roam between a first-floor room in the Snickleway and the house next door, which is now a restaurant and tea room. Marmaduke lived a sad life in the seventeenth century – he was physically handicapped and was accused of witchcraft, so he spent most of his life shut away. By the time he was 17, he had had enough. He carved his initials, birth and death dates on a beam and hanged himself.
The Snickleway Inn, 47 Goodramgate, York, North Yorkshire YO1 7LS; Tel: (01904) 656138.
The Snickleway has possibly the smallest beer garden in England. Food is served at lunchtime.
Tynemouth Priory and Castle
Tynemouth’s castle and priory church stand on a headland looking out over the North Sea and guarding the approach to the River Tyne. The priory was founded in 617 and was the burial place of the early Northumbrian kings. It was destroyed by the Danish invasions of the ninth century and the present building dates to 1090. The castle was added in the fourteenth century for defensive purposes. Over the centuries both priory and castle have been used as landmarks and served as important fortifications against the Vikings, Scots and the armies of Napoleon. There is a monument here to Admiral Collingwood, a local Battle of Trafalgar hero. During both world wars the castle was used as a coastal defence and the restored magazines of the gun battery can still be seen.
Nowadays much of the priory church remains, though most of the domestic outbuildings of the monastery have disappeared. Coastal erosion has played its part, but concrete piers have been erected to prevent further destruction.
The ruins are haunted by the ghost of a Viking called Olaf who was badly wounded in a raid and nursed back to health by the priory monks. He stayed on and joined their community, but soon the marauding Vikings were back, and Olaf’s brother was with them. He was killed in the fighting and Olaf was said to be so heartbroken that he died soon afterwards. Now his ghost can be seen looking wistfully out to sea, gazing back towards his homeland.
Tynemouth Priory and Castle, North Pier, Tynemouth, Tyne and Wear NE30 4BZ; Tel:0191 257 1090; Website: www.english-heritage.org.uk.Open daily 24 March–30 September.
There is no parking on site, but the town car park is nearby. Many special events take place at the castle, including Twilight Tours where guides in medieval costume invite you to take a tour of the castle and priory and learn something of the myths and legends of this area.
Tyneside Cinema
Tyneside Cinema, as it is known today, opened as the Bijou News-Reel Cinema on 1 February 1937. The News Theatre building which houses it stands at the northeastern edge of a site occupied as early as 1267 by Franciscans, or grey friars. Their monastery was a spiritual home to which many people flocked, hence the street upon which it stood being called Pilgrim Street. The entry lane which the box office entrance currently opens onto is called High Friar Lane. After Henry VIII suppressed the monasteries in 1539, the land was granted to the Earl of Essex. Shortly afterwards, the monastery was razed to the ground.
The next building to stand on the site was the Newe House, a mansion used by General Leven as his headquarters during the Civil War. Charles I was held there for 10 months until he was handed over to the Parliamentarians in 1647. The building in which the Tyneside Cinema is located is called the Newe House to this day, and this name can be seen above the Pilgrim Street entrance.
The Tyneside Cinema has a rich and varied history of ghostly sightings. In 1996 a mysterious monk was spotted simply standing in an office corridor, and when staff, thinking that he was a lost member of the public, asked if they could help, he simply disappeared. The cinema auditoria have also been places where strange things happen regularly. In 2005, two members of staff on different levels of an auditorium noticed a hunched figure sitting in the stalls area of the Classic cinema screen. It would not respond to them and disappeared into thin air…
In the early 1990s the cinema’s cleaning team refused to come back due to paranormal activity and sightings in the Electra, which is the Tyneside’s second screen. Almost every morning a single seat would be set in the ‘down’ position until the cleaners approached it.
Other strange experiences have ranged from staff names being called out to lights being turned on when nobody was there to do it and the mysterious presence felt by a medium at a late-night vigil in 2003 – at the very same spot where the monk was seen in 1996.
Tyneside Cinema, 10 Pilgrim Street, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 6QG; Tel:0191 232 8289; Fax:0191 221 0535; Website: www.tynecine.org
Whitby Abbey
Whitby Abbey is situated on a cliff overlooking the town and harbour. It dates back to the seventh century when Oswy, King of Northumbria, sent a princess named Hilda to found an abbey. She did so in 657 on the site of a former Roman signal station. She is now known as St Hilda and the abbey contains a shrine to her. The religious community, housing both women and men, became a busy cosmopolitan centre. It was destroyed during a Viking invasion in 867, but rebuilt by the Normans in the late 1070s. Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the sixteenth century, it became the property of the Cholmley family, who plundered it for building materials for a mansion.
Today the ruined abbey is a stark and beautiful place. It is Whitby’s most popular attraction, but it has an eerie reputation. St Hilda herself is said to haunt the ruins. Her ghost, dressed in a shroud, has been sighted in one of the windows.
The other ghost haunting the abbey is also believed to be a nun, Constance de Beverley. She fell in love with a knight named Marmion and broke her vow of chastity. As a punishment she was bricked up in a cell and left to die. She is said to appear on the steps leading to the dungeons and to plead for her release.
Ghostly voices can also be heard at the abbey on the old Christmas Day, 6 January, when a phantom choir is said to sing in the ruins.
Whitby Abbey, Whitby, North Yorkshire YO22 4JT; Tel: (01947) 603568; Website: www.english-heritage.co.uk.Open daily.
DEREK’S TIP
If lone vigils are undertaken, ensure that people are in rooms far enough apart. Noises carry and are intensified at night. You do not want to confuse the footsteps or movements of another investigator with those of any possible spirit presence.
Winter’s Gibbet
Winter’s Gibbet stands on a wild moorland road above the village of Elsdon in Northumberland, a severed head still swinging from it. The head is a fibre-glass one. It is a grisly memorial to William Winter, the last man in England to be gibbeted.
Winter was a gypsy and noted criminal. In 1791 he was charged with the brutal murder of an old woman, Margaret Crozier, who lived in a tower at Raw Pele, just north of Elsdon, and was reputed to have a secret hoard of money. He and the two women arrested with him, Jane and Eleanor Clark, claimed they had robbed the old lady but not killed her. However, evidence given by a shepherd boy, Robert Hindmarsh, condemned them all and they were hanged in Newcastle. The women’s bodies were then sent to the surgeons’ hall for dissection, but Winter’s was hung on a gibbet at Whiskershields Common. It remained there for months, until the clothes had rotted away, then it was cut down and the bones scattered.
In Northumberland a gibbet is known as a stob and it was believed that rubbing slivers of wood from one on the gums would cure toothache. Bit by bit, pieces were taken off the original gibbet and finally it decayed completely. Around 1867 Sir Walter Travelyan of Wallington ordered a replica with a wooden body to be erected on his land. The body was often used as target practice and eventually only the head remained. Even that was frequently stolen and in 1998 the entire gibbet disappeared for a while. A joker left a miniature one in its place with a sign proclaiming that it would soon grow, given the current amount of rain!
Though Winter’s body has long gone from the gibbet, it is said that the sound of rattling bones can often be heard there, especially on stormy nights, and that the ghosts of Winter and Jane and Eleanor Clark can been seen running from the old tower at Raw Pele.
Winter’s Gibbet, Elsdon, Nr Otterburn, Northumberland
Ye Olde Black Boy
Ye Olde Black Boy is a traditional public house in Hull’s old town. It dates back to 1720, when it was a pipe shop. Later it served as a coffee shop and a brothel before finally opening as a pub in the 1930s. It is well known for its real ales, ciders and fruit wines. It is thought that the name refers to a Moroccan boy who worked there in the 1730s, when it was a coffee shop.
There have been many rumours of ghosts in the pub. Bottles of malt whisky have apparently jumped off shelves by themselves and a pair of spectral hands has reached out from the panelled walls to grab customers round the neck!
Ye Olde Black Boy, 150 High Street, Hull, East Yorkshire HU1 1PS; Tel: (01482) 326516. Live music on Thursday nights. Function room available free of charge.
Ye Olde Man and Scythe Inn
Ye Olde Man and Scythe Inn in Bolton is the fourth oldest public house in England. The vaulted cellar dates back to 1251, while the rest was rebuilt in 1636.
The pub saw dramatic times during the Civil War. In the Massacre of Bolton in 1644 between 100 and 500 soldiers and civilians were killed, mainly in the centre of town, in front of the pub. Horses were used to kill the soldiers. Then after the war, on 15 October 1651, the Royalist Earl of Derby, James Stanley, whose family had originally owned the pub, was beheaded outside it for his part in the war. The chair he sat in before he was taken outside is still in the pub today and some say that the Earl is still around as well.
Other ghosts are also believed to haunt the pub and many different paranormal phenomena have been experienced there. One woman once left her seat to find her hands covered in blood. The barman believed it had dripped through the ceiling, but there was no blood to be seen there at the time.
Even though Ye Olde Man and Scythe Inn has a bloody, troubled past and, it seems, bloody and troubled ghosts to match – with James Stanley’s chair lurking ominously in the corner as a constant reminder of their silent, watchful presence – the staff are keen to point out that the pub is a happy, lively place to visit with great food, drink, music and banter.
Ye Olde Man and Scythe Inn, 6–8 Churchgate, Bolton, Lancashire BL1 1HL; Tel: (01204) 527267; Website: www.manandscythe.co.uk
The pub serves both traditional Lancashire food and more exotic dishes. The execution of the Earl of Derby is re-enacted every 15 October.
DEREK’S TIP
An obvious item for investigating at night is a torch but remember to take a supply of batteries too – mischievous spirits like nothing more than to drain battery power, leaving you literally in the dark!
