Tag: ghost story

Dark Chester runs special spooky tours for Chester Heritage Festival

 

Image: Stuart Robinson Photography [www.stuartrobinson.photography] 

Dark Chester ran some special walking tours as part of the Chester Heritage Festival this month.

Each time, we finished the regular tour by doing something we’ve ever done before: going into a Chester building to hear a spooky story first hand.

First up was a visit to the restaurant Carbonara on Bridge Street Row.

Here, the owner, Sam, shared with us his experience of discovering the haunting of the wood-panelled upper room when he first moved into the building.

The second of the special tours took us to Huxley’s, the cafe-bar beside Chester’s famous Eastgate Clock.

Neil, the owner, talked about the history of the building and his family connection to the Freemen of Chester, who had earlier that day joined the city’s Midsummer Watch Parade.

Look out for more Dark Chester special tours coming this autumn as thoughts turn to Halloween.

More from the Chester Heritage Festival in the Our Heritage section.

Liked this? Then read Dark Chester collaborates with My Haunted Hotel.

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.