York: Ghost Tales from the Most Haunted City in Europe

York: Ghost Tales from the Most Haunted City in Europe.

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 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.

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.

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 contadictory 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."

Article > International business Times

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Ghost Box Creator Frank Sumption Has Died

Ghost Box Creator Frank Sumption Has Died.

Frank Sumption, the inventor behind the paranormal investigating device known as "The Frank's Box" has reportedly died of a heart attack.

The "ghost box" Sumption invented in 2002 was claimed to be an instrumental trans-communication (ITC) device that allowed users to speak to the dead The Others in real-time. The box swept the AM radio band and supposedly the sounds that were being picked up on the constant scan included spirit voices.

Sumption was a fan of electronic voice phenomena, an interest he developed after reading a 1995 Popular Electronics article. Although the Colorado resident did not seek out celebrity for his invention, the "purple princess" (a moniker he picked up after communicating with spirits, who told him he was a female alien from Pleiades) was famous within the paranormal community.

He did not really dedicate himself commercially to selling his devices. Instead, he randomly distributed them to those he and the voices saw fit. A genuine Frank's Box is a sought after novelty in the paranormal community, and his Sumption's creations, of which he made only 180, led to a ghost box/ITC craze.

While his work had its detractors and many claimed the sounds from the device were subjective (and the results untestable), there is no denying the man had an enormous impact on paranormal investigations. A variation of a Frank's Box -- adapted by other researchers and inventors -- can be found in the basic tool kit for most modern ghost hunters.

Personally, Frank sometimes had a prickly persona online but was considered a warm and quirky guy known for being a dog lover.

Tim Woolworth of ITC Voices has an interesting profile of Sumption, along with audio recorded in April on a Frank's Box where The Others were said to be calling the man home.

 Huffington Post

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Dream of burning church led to ghostly graveyard encounter

 Dream of burning church led to ghostly graveyard encounter


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!

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.”

Article > Newsletter

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Ghostly axeman caught on camera on military frigate.

‘Ghost with axe’ spotted on old military ship will freak you out
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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?

Article > The Metro

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Fox 43 news crew attacked by a ghost while filming at a haunted house.

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Paranormal Activity caught on CCTV at Brookside Theatre, Romford.

Is this theatre haunted? CCTV footage captures the spooky moment a chair moves all on its own... hours after a medium's show

• Chair moved mysteriously in a hall hours after a psychic show finished

• It was recorded on Sunday at the Brookside Theatre in Romford, Essex

• Psychic Roy Roberts says: 'Now we have direct proof of the paranormal'

• Jai Sepple, who runs the theatre, said it was only the latest ghostly visit

Get ready to feel a ghostly shiver down your spine.

This is the haunting moment a chair was caught on CCTV apparently moving on its own in a closed theatre hours after a psychic finished his show.

It was recorded at Brookside Theatre in Romford, Essex, at around 4am on Sunday.

Hours earlier the theatre, housed in a former war memorial building, was packed with people attending a show by the medium Roy Roberts.

He told MailOnline he now believes the video could prove there's a resident ghost.

'When I saw the footage I jumped up and said, "yes, now we have direct proof!"

'I had a feeling earlier that there was the presence of something, a playful presence of a child, to one side of the room and it seems that must have been it,' he said.

'It doesn't surprise me, it's that sort of a place - it's really active - so when I heard about what had happened I was really excited.

'To me there is no way there is anyone in that theatre when the chair moves and there's no way anyone can say it is staged. I've never seen anything like this directly caught on camera, this is something that is paranormal.

'People can't dispute that, they will try, but they can't dispute it. I am 100 per cent sure that is energy.'

Mr Roberts said he now plans to take a team of paranormal investigators to the theatre to investigate further.

Jai Sepple, who runs the 140-seat volunteer-run theatre, told MailOnline the ghostly goings-on were not a surprise.

The building is a former Second World War memorial and social club for senior citizens, and in the two years since it was converted into a theatre he says it's had plenty of unexplained events.

'The only reason we checked the CCTV was because we came in on Sunday morning and the chair was out of line,' he said.

'One of the last things I do when I close up is line-up all the chairs so I knew something had happened. It had clearly moved.

'There is also a table that moved but that's harder to make out. I'm quite sceptical about all this kind of thing but my wife isn't, she believes in it.

'There have been several things that have happened in the past, noises and creeks etc, but we've got used to it.

'We've had a child's footprints in the foyer, and one cast member said he saw a strange figure once. He ran after it thinking it was a person, but the figure just disappeared and there was nowhere for it to go. He was visibly shaken after that.

'Another cast member says he was pushed into a toilet, and he's a big chap so we don't think a person could have done it.


'Up until now though we've just kept quiet about all this, what with it being a war memorial.

'It's quite interesting, we don't know whether to laugh or cry.

'Lots of people have been emailing in saying faked it but I can assure you I've neither the time or the knowledge to do that!'

Daily Mail 

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Ghost figure caught on camera at Stanley Place, Chester.

'Ghost of figure standing on staircase' caught on camera at 16th Century Tudor mansion

The spooky appearance of a 'solid person' was captured by a group investigating paranormal activity at Stanley Palace in Chester

This is the eerie footage which apparently captures the ghost of a 16th Century Tudor mansion.

A group investigating paranormal activity took the video which appears to show the image of a person standing on a staircase at Stanley Palace in Chester.

Sefton Paranormal Investigations describe the figure as a solid person with a visible nose, mouth and hair, which looks first at the camera and then up the stairs.

Co-founder Aaron Robinette is seen in the video with team member Joanne May at a location they identified as a hotspot.

Aaron, from Southport, Merseyside. told the Chester Chronicle: “We were informed by the curator that there was a staircase with a door underneath it, where a man died.

“In the video, I’m sat on a chair and Joe is sat on the staircase, and we’re calling out to spirits.

“Nothing happened, but it was only when watching the video back that I saw it. It appears and disappears in shot, all in front of the camera.

“We try to disprove it and if we can’t find a natural explanation, like shadows or reflections, it’s the main reason I believe I can categorise it as paranormal.”

Aaron said that the video had over 7,000 views on its first day online, which has since risen to over 24,000.

The team uses a number of techniques such as laying down trigger objects which are filmed for any spiritual interaction.

Another method is the use of franks boxes which are specialised digital radios that scan on a loop for any spiritual communication.

Sefton Paranormal Investigations has been active for over five years and is a team of five volunteers.

--------------------------

Graham, UK Paranormal Events.


Formally known as Derby House, Stanley Place in the heart of historic Chester was built in the 16th century and is now a Grade ll listed Tudor building. It was built as a town house for a prominent lawyer and Member of Parliament, a Peter Warburton and was constructed in 1591. On his death the house was passed on to his daughter as per the term of his will. Over time part of the property was demolished and rebuilt in the 18th century and further works were carried out on the house in 1935.

The property has many reported paranormal sightings and occurrences.

The Staircase.

The video above is of the staircase where there have been reported sightings of a young girl who has been described by those that have witnessed her as being in a laying down position on the stairs as if she had fell from the top and was lying motionless, as they watched the apparition they witnessed a bright blue light rising from her body to the ceiling above her, after a few seconds the light disappeared, as had the apparition of the little girl. Those who witnessed this sighting described is as very distressing.

Other Paranormal Sightings.

Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir Peter Warburton has been reported as being seen several times around house.

Footsteps are often heard around the property but on inspection of the area the sound were heard coming from there is no one else around who could have made them.

Children’s laughter is often heard around the property and again when people go to investigate the noise they find that there are no children around to have made the sound.

In the second floor gallery a grey haired lady was sighted by a team of paranormal investigators, she was said have been playing Brahms on the piano. At the entrance to the gallery a gentleman dressed in a second world war uniform was briefly sighted before disappearing. Stanley Place was used during the Second World War as a place of recreation for the armed forces stationed in Chester.

A lady who was at Stanley Place for a social function reported seeing a young woman who she described as wearing old fashioned servants uniform, her first thoughts were that this was a member of staff dressed up in period clothes to make the function more realistic. The lady watched the woman for a few moments until she appeared to enter another room through a doorway, the lady followed the woman to the doorway only to find out that there is no doorway where the woman entered, only a wooden panel wall.

Daily Mirror 

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