YORK GHOST TALES - THE MOST HAUNTED CITY IN EUROPE?

York Minster in the fog, haunted by Seamus the dog (Karli Watson/Flickr)

York has a lot of ghosts. In 2002, the International Ghost Research Foundation said it was the most haunted city in Europe, with 504 hauntings within the confines of the ancient walls.

Founded by the Romans in 71AD, the city's violent and volatile history – including Viking invasions, the Norman Conquest and the Civil War – makes its ghostly legacy easy to understand.

The Minster, which stands towering over the city, is said to be haunted by Seamus the dog, whose barks echo through the halls at night. Legend has it that Seamus and his stonemason master worked on the Minster when it was being built. Other workers did not like the pair so one night decided to brick Seamus in behind a wall. With his master unable to find him, Seamus died alone terrified in the darkness, his barks never answered.

In one of the houses behind the Minster, another ghost wanders the upper floors. A family that had moved into the house quickly became aware of a strange presence. A crying sound would come from the children's bedroom upstairs and people who entered would be overcome with feelings of sadness and regret.

The house on College Street where the crying girl haunts the upper floors (Google)

The girl had lived in the house in the late 14th century. Just six years old, her parents had died from the Black Death in the family home. Fearing she too had the disease, the child was locked in with her parents' bodies by locals. However, she was not infected and after the doors and windows were boarded up, she slowly starved to death all alone.

Rachel Lacy, a paranormal historian from York worked in the Haunted House, on Stonegate, before it closed down just a few days ago. As a paranormal historian, she used to lead ghost tours of York and has researched ghost stories from the city for many years.

Explaining why York was so haunted, she said that before the Romans arrived about 2,000 years ago, there were early tribes that had kept the land as sacred ground. "Then the Romans came and built a great city on sacred site. Maybe they disturbed something much earlier," she said.

While working in the Golden Fleece, one of York's most haunted pubs, Lacy said she and many other members of staff saw ghosts or experienced paranormal activity. "The Fleece is weirder than anywhere I've ever worked. I've heard a lot of stories from different people. I saw things there that I've never seen anywhere else."

Staff members told stories of seeing their colleagues walking through rooms only to later discover they weren't there or had only just arrived. People heard furniture being moved around when alone in the pub, while others heard their names being called.

The now closed Haunted House on Stonegate (J Lawrence/Flickr)

Discussing her favourite ghost tale from York, Lacy said she had personally interviewed Harry Martindale, whose story about the Roman soldiers walking on their knees is one of the city's most legendary.

Martindale had been working at the Treasurers House where a Roman road had been discovered in a cellar. He went down on a broken ladder and began work. However, as he came to the end of his shift he heard music coming from the wall he was leaning on. He fell down and scrambled into a corner, when he saw Roman soldiers emerge from the wall and march down the road. He could only see to their knees – however, when they walked over the hole to the Roman road, he could see their full legs. He could hear them talking, but could not work out what they were saying.

"Now I could see them exactly as I can see you now, they weren't no wisp of smoke, they weren't whirly, you know, the atmosphere didn't change, they were human beings as came out of the wall except they were dressed as roman soldiers," he said.

Martindale's story gained legitimacy after describing several aspects about the Roman soldiers' clothing that he would not have known at the time, including how they laced their sandals, their tunics and their shields.

The seance room of the Haunted House(J Lawrence/Flickr)

Lacy said that although a number of popular ghost stories in York have been corrupted over time, there was a great deal of evidence and sightings to support the city's ghostly reputation. The Haunted House has now been bought by a property development group which plans to refurbish and rent out the house.

She said that after Haunted House closes, they will be working to purge the property of ghosts through rituals, including the spirit of a girl cursed by her own mother in York Minster. The girl had been betrothed to a boy living next door. However, she was caught sneaking out from his house and the moral police dragged them to court.

After being questioned, the pair supplied contradictory stories and she was cursed. She ended up marrying a different man who turned out to be "incredibly violent". After trying to flee, he caught up with her during an Easter Parade and beat her so severely doctors believed she would die. However, her ultimate end remains a mystery. "The court records stop before the story ends, so either money changed hands to make it go away, or the documents were lost. But the last documents with the husband's name showed he had married another woman, so she either died or he killed her," Lacy said.

"I can't think of a better reason why she would haunt the house."

Source: InternationalBusinessTimes

IS HQ FOR MAJOR U.K CONSTRUCTION COMPANY HAUNTED?

The entrance to the hall.

Spooky goings-on at Kier, who might be the only listed building firm to have a haunted headquarters — at Tempsford Hall in Bedfordshire.

Staff have reported strange happenings in the basement of the hall, which was originally built in 1769 and then sold to Kier in 1964.

According to local lore, back in 1848 a mysterious white figure was seen and a man in mourning robes looking at roses. Not to mention loud bangs and furniture moving around of its own accord.

New chief executive Haydn Mursell, who took over in July, says he hasn’t seen anything yet though...

Source: LondonEveningStandard

History:

The original hall was built in 1769 for Sir Gillies Payne; it remained in the Payne family until 1824 when it was sold to Colonel William Stuart. 

Following a fire the house was rebuilt in 1898 and in 1933 Kathleen Wynne, who had been born a member of the Stuart family, inherited the house from a distant relative. 

During World War II it was used by the Special Operations Executive as an agent reception and pre-flight preparation centre.  After the War it was acquired by Henry Hales who used it as a clinic until 1964 when he sold it to its present owners, Kier Group.

GHOSTLY ANOMALIES CAPTURED IN HAUNTED HOME IN BLACKPOOL, LANCASHIRE

Occasionally, followers of my Facebook page, or here on the Haunted Earth blog are kind enough to share video or photographs of activity captured either at home, or in some ancient locations.

Here is a report from Angela B, who is able to share some background into the activity caught in her family home. She has given me permission to share this.

`Here are two pictures that my son took while messing with my camera, would love to know what you think  no one smokes in the house and although he took a number of pictures these were the only two that had a strange mist type. He never saw anything while taking the pictures and he was the only person (other than the dog) in the room. 

I live on a pretty new council estate in Blackpool (Mereside) when my parents moved in only two other people lived in the house and from what we've been told there's been no deaths in the house. 

As kids living here we heard the toilet seat slam down we thought it was our dad (as he was a prankster). We've seen a black cat,which I felt walk up my legs to my chest, then felt it do the paw thing they do when they get cozy..we didn't have a cat at the the time. 

My dad was laid up (back) and saw soldiers walk straight past (he didn't believe in ghosts) and said he must of just been seeing things due to the pain in is back. 

In the same room my mum was dragged by her feet by something,in the same room she saw a Victorian girl aged about 13/14 at the foot of her bed and she said (nanna) when my grandad past heard him say angela (behind) me. One christmas I was wrapping my children's christmas presents and I saw from the corner of my eye a little blonde boy in modern clothes peeking round the door frame. 

My mum saw two (modern) kids boy and girl sat in my wardrobe...when my son was about 15 he saw the same (Victorian) girl and got 3 scratches on his arm (one long one in the middle and two small) either side,my teenage daughter got the same on her face and her friend who stayed the same night had the same on her leg....There's so much but think this is enough although my youngest daughter can ask for spirits to come near her and there will be balls of light next to her.`

Here a ghostly form manifests itself

An amazing capture as the spiritual form rises

If you have something similar to share in either photographs or video, and wish to share.
Please contact me (Chris Halton) at my Facebook page or here. I can guarantee your anonymity if you require total confidentiality.

Story: Chris Halton

A GHOSTLY TALE FROM OLD IRELAND

Having more than occasionally ‘encountered’ ghosts during my 40 years in journalism Roamer has never been properly persuaded that they actually exist. But several spooky incidents caused me to speculate!

 Rev. Dr William Bruce

While we lunched on crisp, thinly-cut cucumber sandwiches in her wood-panelled Tempo Manor sitting-room three decades ago, Lady Rosamond Langham recounted a murdered stable boy who haunted her outbuildings.

The wise, eloquent and much-travelled Lady Langham showed me the stone floor under which the lad had been hastily buried several centuries ago.

She seemed quite convinced that his ‘spirit’ panicked her horses into such a frenzy that they threw themselves at the walls of the stable. Several hysterical steeds broke their necks and died.

And last year in Belfast’s Linen Hall Library, where there’s an old oil-painting of former Library President Rev. Dr William Bruce who died in 1841, library staff told me that they often heard doors slamming or creaking, and unexplained footsteps in the empty corridors when they’re working nightshifts.

Canteen staff who’d cleared up and tidied the room the day before regularly arrived for work next morning to be greeted by a half-drunk cup of coffee on a table, and more than a few well-read visitors to the library have seen a vaporous image of Dr Bruce dissolving through a wall.

While showing me photographs taken around Bruce’s oil-painting during a nightlong scientific investigation, Paranormal Ulster’s head investigator Mike Hirons told me “there was something in the vicinity. There was something strange.”

So when knowledgeable, level-headed, rational people admit to the possibilities of ghosts existing it causes me to wonder!

A reader has forwarded Roamer a curious but persuasive ‘other worldly’ account told by a former Rector of Derriaghy Rev. Philip Johnson and corroborated by a number of eminent parishioners.

The spooky story was reported in the Lisburn Standard on Friday, December 22, 1916, in a column called ‘Records of Old Lisburn’, and is compiled for posterity on Edward Connolly’s intriguing website ‘Eddie’s Extracts’.

Mr Connolly has kindly allowed me to share the story today.

In the early part of the 19th century the rector of Derriaghy Rev. Philip Johnson lived a few miles away at Ballymacash.

One night in the late autumn of 1808 Rev Johnson awoke and told his wife: “I have had a bad dream. I thought I saw the church on fire.”

Later he awoke once more and said “I have dreamt it again. I saw the church in flames. I saw the roof fall in and the walls crumble down. There must be something wrong.”

His wife said that he’d probably eaten too much dinner, and should go back to sleep. He did, but almost immediately he awoke a third time and jumped out of bed. “The church is in flames,” he cried, “I saw it distinctly. I must go at once!”

The rector flung on his clothes, rushed out and in a few minutes was galloping cross-country in the direction of Derriaghy.

Reaching the village he was startled to see in the dim light, standing in the centre of the road on the crest of the hill near the church, a figure in white.

According to the newspaper report “the figure in white resolved itself into a young girl, apparelled in a kind of bridal array, and the moment the rector approached, she grasped him frantically and excitedly by the arm, sobbing out ‘Oh! I am so glad you have come. I was so frightened. He is waiting for us down by the church. He said he had asked you to come tonight to marry us.’”

The girl, whom the rector recognised, grasped his arm and wailed “he looked so strange, I am frightened!”

Wondering if he was still dreaming the perplexed Rev Johnson said to the girl “who is the man you are going to marry?” Tremblingly violently she whispered in his ear the name of a well-known citizen of Lisburn.

The rector hastened to the church where he saw a faint and dim glimmer of light and then “he received a dreadful shock” reported the newspaper, adding “by the dim and ghostly light of a lantern resting on a tombstone he saw, digging furiously and frantically in a shallow grave, the man the girl had named.”

The man, who the rector recognised, was shovelling into the ground “with desperate energy, perspiration flowing from every pore.”

Rev Johnson moved closer, stood over the frenzied grave-digger and “looked down upon him. For one long minute, in utter silence, they gazed into each other’s eyes, and the rector shuddered at what he saw in that frozen stare. He saw mirrored there - terror, horror, murder. Then the spell was broken. The man threw down his spade, sprang out of the grave, clambered over the wall, and without a word disappeared in the darkness.”

Returning to the girl the rector found her “almost in a state of collapse.” He brought her home to her father and advised

“Be good and gentle to her, ask her no questions tonight, see her safely into her bed, and when you retire to your own room, go down on your knees and thank your Creator that she is safe under your roof this night.”

Shortly afterwards the man that the Rev Johnson had encountered in the graveyard left Lisburn for New York, from whence came the news that he “died a lonely and miserable death.”

The Lisburn Standard’s report in 1916 confirmed that the ghostly incident was “common talk” in Lisburn, and “the chief actors in it were well known.”

Eddie Connolly

Source: NewsLetter

ACTOR GARY BUSEY CLAIMS TO HAVE BEEN CONTACTED BY GHOST OF PATRICK SWAYZE

Busey (left) Reveals All

Gary Busey fans were left worried by his somewhat erratic interview on the way into the Celebrity Big Brother house on Monday (18 August).

But their concerns over the actor showed no signs of being appeased after he sensationally claimed he was visited by the ghost of his late Point Break co-star Patrick Swayze just days before he entered the TV show.

Speaking to Strictly Come Dancing star James Jordan and Gogglebox’s George Gilbey, he explained that he developed a connection to the spiritual world after his heart briefly stopped following treatment for a motorcycle accident in 1988.

“He came through me the other day... Patrick Swayze's spirit came right through me...,” he said, leaving his fellow housemates bemused.

“And my father's spirit came right through me. I've been to the other side, after my death after brain surgery... So I have a connection to that spiritual world.”
“I don't know if I would want that connection,” a dumbfounded Gilbey responded.

“It's a divine connection,” Busey continued.  “Nothing's bad unless you want it to be... you gotta take it the way it is or you won't get it.”

Did Swayzes` Ghost Contact Busey?

Swayze and Busey famously starred opposite each other in 1991 movie Point Break, which saw Keanu Reeves in the lead role.

Swayze passed away in 2009 after suffering from cancer.

Elsewhere during the evening, Kellie Maloney opened up to White Dee about the doubts she had going public with her gender transition in the Big Brother house.

“I wanted to transition very privately,” she said. “I'm a very private person... Tonight, an hour before I came in here, I was like: ‘I can't do this.’ I cracked, I was crying.”

IN 1916 £35 COULD BUY YOU A GHOST ..

Captured in 1989 - Is this the ghost of Yeats son?

Recently I was thumbing through an old book of Yeats' poetry, as one does on rainy, storm sodden nights, his particular brand of mysticism being well suited to such conditions. While trying to make sense of "The Tower" my mind wandered away to where he lived in Ireland before his death in 1939.

He fell in love with a bleak but beautifully atmospheric castle in Galway which had gradually fallen into ruins during the many centuries since its construction in the lawless times of the thirteenth century. Yeats bought it in 1916 for £35 and thus started a life-long enthusiasm which saw it being rebuilt into what is now a fairly stark tower within which is a narrow winding staircase. This is where our story begins.

Yeats believed strongly in ghosts and the afterlife and swore that he shared the tower with a Norman soldier, perhaps one of the original occupants. Further, this was supported by a more recent curator of the Yeats museum who frequently witnessed a strange shadowy figure gliding up and down the stairs, and whose dog showed extreme nervousness when night was falling. And, most surprising of all, in 1989 a Yeats enthusiast added to the ghostly stories. He had arrived at the tower late in the afternoon when the doors were being shut for the night. The curator, being a kindly soul, allowed him in and left him to take his photographs. But, when these were later developed (in the pre-digital age this took about 2 weeks), there was a strange shadowy figure of a young boy by the window. This was most surprising because the photographer was alone. After much examination, it was generally believed that this ghost was Yeats' son.

The castle is called Thoor Ballylee and is certainly worth a visit ... preferably on a wind tossed winter evening when it is easy to transport yourself back to a more primitive, sensory era. And you will get the added stimulation of revelling in the environment which so inspired one of the giants of the twentieth century.

Written by:  PJ_Cadavori

Source: WesternGazette

Further reading: THE LEGEND OF YEATS` TOWER  AND THE GHOST BOY CAPTURED ON CAMERA


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`GHOSTLY` MAN WITH AXE PHOTOGRAPHED INSIDE EMPTY MILITARY FRIGATE. A GHOST OR A HOAX?

A hoax or a genuine capture?

A man clutching an axe inside an old military frigate doesn’t make for your typical ghost story, nor does it make typical fodder for an internet hoax.

But a photograph showing a ghostly figure with an axe in his hand aboard a decommissioned military vessel on a dry dock has gained a lot of traction on social media sites.

Stevgoldhound, who posted the picture on Imgur yesterday, claims it was taken by a colleague of his called John who works as a dock foreman.

John apparently took the picture while snapping work areas and navigating deep within the ship with a torch. He didn’t see anyone while taking the images.

Another user of the site cleaned up the image and came up with this. Creepy huh?

‘Due to the fact that it was a military vessel the police were called,’ Stevgoldhound wrote. ‘A search was carried out but no one was found. There was one way on and off the ship, and that was by a gangway covered by CCTV. (You couldn’t jump over the side as it was a 25 meter drop on to concrete).’

Stevgoldhound added: ‘I am a sceptic. Maybe its a trick of the flash reflecting off something, but if you really zoom in you can just make out the f—— face, ear, collar of his jacket and the f—– axe in a meaty f—— fist.

‘Now it could be John blowing smoke up my ass, but when he was telling the story he seemed genuinely rattled. And the guy in the pic looks nothing any of the other workers we met at the dock.’

What do you think? A ghost, someone who somehow snuck on the boat or something else?

Source: MetroLondon

My view

Without any evidence to suggest this was paranormal, I`m inclined to believe this was either a vagrant stowaway or a hoax. What do you think?