Dark Chester runs special spooky tours for Chester Heritage Festival
June 27, 2023Image: 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… Read more
Dark Chester highlights dark tourism trend in Cheshire Life magazine feature
May 9, 2023Dark Chester was featured in the April issue of Cheshire Life magazine [pictured above]. I wrote a feature about the rise of dark tourism in Chester and how my tour taps into this trend to explore the darker side of our history. Here’s an extract: Dark Chester is a storytelling… Read more
Take a walk on the dark side for the British Guild of Tourist Guides blog
May 9, 2023When Dark Chester first launched, I write a guest blog post for the British Guild of Tourist Guides (BGTG) to explain my ideas behind the tour [pictured above in Chester]. Here’s an extract: I wanted to compile a 90-minute dark-tourism tour, exploring some of the favourite folk tales, legends and… Read more
Dark Chester collaborates with My Haunted Hotel for paranormal tales of Chester
May 9, 2023Dark Chester joined forces recently with My Haunted Hotel, the paranormal investigation team based at Ye Olde King’s Head in Chester. We talked about the dark-tourism heritage that inevitably comes with living in a 2,000-year-old city like Chester. The team used my tales of grisly murder and witchcraft in Chester to… Read more
A preview of my Dark Chester tours for Halloween with the travel blog Go Eat Do
October 9, 2022An interview with the travel blogger Stuart Forster for his blog, Go Eat Do. The feature is about ideas for a weekend visit to Chester but, with Halloween approaching, previews my new Dark Chester tours [pictured above]. The tours run Saturdays at 6pm and delve into the dark-tourism heritage of… Read more
Dark Chester: a walk through the shadows of our dark-tourism history
June 21, 2022We 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… Read more
How to discover hidden Manchester on an alternative city tour
February 13, 2022I’m always on the look out for an alternative city walking tour. It’s a great way to see a city in a new light and gives me with inspiration to help design my own themed tours of my home city of Chester. I was introduced recently to Hayley Flynn, whose Skyliner… Read more
Facebook Live ghost tours live-streamed for the Chester Heritage Festival
June 24, 2021The 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… Read more
A walking tour of historic Edgar’s Field Park in Handbridge, Chester
June 15, 2021This site is one of Chester’s hidden gems. Indeed, I used to regularly take my children to this local park, but it was ages before I realised there was a 2,000-year-old historical artefact just behind the swings. The park is Edgar’s Field in Handbridge and the carving is the Roman… Read more