Tag: ghost story

How ghost stories reveal the dark reality of life for Yorkshire’s ancient monks

A Halloween trip to the North Yorkshire Moors this autumn.

I took a trip back through time to Rievaulx Abbey [pictured above] to try a new ghost-story-inspired tour of English Heritage properties.

Revenants and Remains is a 90-minute walking tour of five monastic sites across the North of England, ranging from Cumbria to North Yorkshire.

The idea is to peer into the supernatural shadows, using ghost stories to shine light into the darker corners of the medieval sites.

Here’s a sample of the story:

The resident monks drew on ancient beliefs and local folk legends to compile a series of ghost stories, fused with medieval mysticism and the hellfire-brimstone of the Holy scriptures. The tours interpret these stories to explain the symbolism of the medieval belief system, a world dominated by terrifying tales of the afterlife and spooky stories of the undead.

Tour leader, Dr. Michael Carter, Senior Properties Historian at English Heritage, said:

“The stories reveal the lives of medieval monks were epitomised by a constant state of moral vigilance for the sin-stained souls of their patrons, easing their path to Paradise.”

Read the full story via i Travel, The ghost stories and medieval ruins that shaped the North York Moors

 

 

 

Dark Chester: a walk through the shadows of our dark-tourism history

We took a walk on the dark side a few days ago.

It was the inaugural outing for my new Dark Chester tour [pictured above], a walking tour through the shadows of Chester’s 2000-year-old history.

Think Horrible Histories meets Inside Number Nine with a dash of the Uncanny podcast.

In other words, an evening storytelling stroll with tales of plague, persecution and poltergeists.

For some more background, read this blog I penned for the British Guild of Tourist Guides:

Chester: take a walk on the dark side.

This first tour was an exclusive event for the Chester Heritage Festival, which runs until July 27 with lots of free activities, as well as paid-for tours.

As well as leading the tour, I also worked with the Heritage Festival team to livestream stories from two of the tour stops.

You can watch the livestream from Chester’s Roman Amphitheatre here.

The livestream from The Bear & Billet is here.

Plus I had some great initial feedback, including this comment:

 

The plan now is to take Dark Chester weekly.

So join me. Let’s take a walk on the dark side.

Facebook Live ghost tours live-streamed for the Chester Heritage Festival

The Chester Heritage Festival kicked off last weekend with a series of live and online events across the city.

My contribution was a pair of short Facebook Live videos from two haunted locations around the city.

It was based around my Haunted Chester audio tour, bringing a frisson of ghost-story spookiness to the heritage-fan proceedings.

Check out the videos:

And catch up with all the video content from the Chester Heritage Festival here.

Then download my self-guided tour to your smartphone via the VoiceMap app and explore Chester’s dark side with just my voice and a detailed map to accompany you.

It’s the ultimate in social distancing.

More about Haunted Chester.

Lockdown loafing: the truth about Chester’s favourite ghost story

It’s one of the Chester’s favourite ghost stories.

The tale of a mystery figure, dressed as a monk and spotted on a winter evening, walking along the spooky passage by St John’s Church — the one with the coffin in the east walls [pictured above].

The figure has been seen many times over the years, patrolling the passageway beyond the westerner facade, which leads towards The Groves, the riverside walkway.

His presence is linked not with the church, however.

The Hermitage, the hidden building on a sandstone outcrop between the city walls and the river, is alleged to be his home.

The mysterious building, now privately owned and a reputed hotbed of poltergeist activity over the years, is also known by the name on its tucked-away entrance gate, The Anchorite Cell.

The story suggests the mystery man could be King Harold Godwinson, the vanquished Saxon king who got something in his eye at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

It’s a story we all know from school history classes and one made famous by the Bayeux Tapestry.

Waltham Abbey in Essex claims the last resting place of King Harold. There’s even a stone marked with the words:

“This stone marks the position of the high altar behind which King Harold is said to have been buried in 1066.”

But Chester offers a different version of the story.

Local historians suggest that Harold’s mistress, Edith Swan Neck, rescued her lover from the battlefield and brought him to Chester to live out days in The Hermitage.

Disguised as a monk, he blended into the local community of holy men, who made their home at St John’s since the 7th century.

Edith cared for him during his final days, bringing supplies to his secret Chester hideaway.

It’s easy to dismiss the story as ghost-tale tosh but the sightings over the year offer first-hand accounts.

And excavations of the collapsed western facade years later unearthed two human skeletons entwined together in an eternal repose.

It’s a story I look forward to retelling when Chester Ghost Tours return after lockdown, especially if I’m leading a tour around King Harold’s Day, the nearest Saturday each year to October 14th.

Could the mystery monk behind Chester’s favourite ghost story be a long-lost King?

That would be one in the eye for Essex.