Plotting the region's haunted hotspots

Oct 31 2005 By The Huddersfield Daily Examiner

ANDY Owens reckons Yorkshire is one of the most haunted counties.

And he should know - he's a member of the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena as well as author of the bestseller Yorkshire Stories Of The Supernatural.

Now in time for this year's Halloween he's brought out the paperback Haunted Places Of Yorkshire (Countryside Books, £7.99).

As he might well have pointed out, this is only supernatural, considering the battles and bloodshed, poverty and disease, love and romance of Yorkshire's fevered history.

And you have to be impressed by the variety of the county's never-say-die spirits.

We have ghosts in our many castles and abbeys; we have ghosts in our places of entertainment, the Leeds City Varieties, for instance, and BBC Radio's home in Sheffield; we have ghosts in many pubs (perhaps it's the sign that says "Licensed to serve spirits").

We have celebrity ghosts - Friar Tuck (at the Blue Ball in Malton), St Hilda (in the ruins of Whitby Abbey) and Edward II's favourite Piers Gaveston (Scarborough Castle), while King George V expressed royal interest in one of the oldest spectres, the Augustinian canon at Bolton Abbey.

A naked man ghost has been spotted in York Minster, the top half of a female form at Parsonage Country House Hotel at Escrick near York left male guests open-mouthed while the women didn't see her at all. Dishevelled Roman soldiers have turned up in the labyrinthine cellars under the Treasurer's House in York.

Other ghosts can only be said to have a death-wish. One at Spofforth Castle, near Harrogate, makes a suicide leap, others throw themselves under cars and bother motorists.

And why is there a poltergeist threatening to cause heart attacks in the British Heart Foundation charity shop in Otley?

Andy, who is Halifax born and bred, has come across Huddersfield people who have seen ghosts, Huddersfield places that have experienced ghosts and a former Examiner journalist who is now on the track of ghosts.

Phantom footsteps were heard at the old Grand Picture Theatre in Manchester Road, near Huddersfield Town centre.

Andy reports that Derek Parkin was promoter for Ivanhoe's nightclub which later occupied the same site and heard the footsteps twice. Once a police dog was called in but refused to go anywhere near the balcony where the steps were heard.

Another Huddersfield man, Mr G M Wood, had an out-of-town experience at Christmas 1963 with a black figure on the A629 road at Wortley.

Returning to Huddersfield, he had just negotiated the sharp S-bend near Wortley Church when he was convinced he had run over the dark figure, dressed like a vicar.

About 30 years later there were other sightings of a black monk-like figure as the Stocksbridge by-pass was being built, about a quarter of a mile away.

Research showed there had been a small monastery nearby in the Middle Ages.

And then there's ex-Examiner reporter Steve Cliffe, now a psychic researcher, investigating those Romans at the Treasurer's House in York.

He and two colleagues recorded the sounds of a bugle, a steady drumbeat and marching feet.

Places like Flockton, criss-crossed by ley lines - ancient channels of energy situated in the ground - are said to be particularly prone to to hauntings and in Flockton's case the that seems to be backed up by the evidence.

Ask the local policeman puzzled by the number of "strangers" who passed him on his night beat and then "disappeared" or the number of incidents at the George & Dragon pub

Perhaps the strangest was when the long-serving landlord and landlady put the lounge fire on at lunchtime to get the room warm for their afternoon break.

But when they say down the lounge door opened and closed until the room became icy cold. Then after a further while the door opened and closed again and the icy feeling left.

The time, about 3.30pm and curiously that time and not midnight, seems to be the "witching hour".

Ask them over at Heath Farm, Dewsbury on the Dewsbury-Wakefield road.

Heath Farm has a whole variety of ghosts, from a man with a shotgun who stalks the perimeter, to a phantom echo, poltergeist activity in the office making small objects disappear and reappear, and a doppelganger effect which had a dog bounding away over the fields one moment and the next sitting quietly by the farmhouse door.

But strangest of all, is the old man who switches off lights and machinery - at exactly 3.30pm each day.

Spooky, or what?

* Haunted Places Of Yorkshire. Andy Owens/Countryside Books, £7.99.