I’ve been ghost-hunting in the wilds (and some urbans) of Yorkshire and my home turf of Lancashire to pinpoint a few scary places on the Google Earth gawk-o-sphere. If you’ve got the GE program, you can pick up the post here. If not, the following is the best you can hope for.

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A tour of some of the many places in Lancashire and Yorkshire, in the great north of England, that have been haunted by various spirits – fairies, goblins, huge hounds, poltergeists and something uniquely northern called “boggarts”. ‘Eee by gum!

The Cottingley Fairies

Hollywood, as is its wont, produced two movies in the same year (1997) about the seemingly immortal tale of the Cottingley Fairies, with “Fairy Tale: A True Story”, starring Peter O’Toole and Harvey Keitel proving superior to “Photographing Fairies” with Ben Kingsley. This little gully, Cottingley Beck, holds the creek that runs past the village of Cottingley outside Bradford, Yorkshire, and past the home of schoolgirl cousins Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright, who became famous in 1920 when The Strand magazine published the photographs they’d taken there of “actual” fairies.

The accompany- ing article was written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose Sherlock Holmes mysteries were also featured in the magazine. Although the five pictures presented to the public are clearly fakes to modern eyes, photography was still in his infancy then and spritualism enjoying a renaissance. Doyle was convinced they were genuine, as were many in the reading public, and backed up by photography experts and the consensus that such young girls couldn’t possibly have concocted a hoax, he wrote a bestselling book “The Coming of the Fairies”.

There were plenty of sceptics, but the story remained a matter of debate for decades, until 1983, when Elsie and Frances finally admitted the fairies were cutouts they’d arranged for the prank photos. Frances, however, maintained that she had seen real fairies, and that one of the five photoswas not a fake.

Barcroft Hall

Barcroft Hall, a farmstead near Cliviger built in 1614. The place was supposedly already afflicted with “The Idiot’s Curse” because a son of its founder, William Barcroft, was imprisoned in the cellar by his inheritance-minded younger brother, who told everyone his sibling was insane, only to be surprised in mid-soiree one evening by his prisoner. The older brother, also named Bill, had had enough of scratching up with the cellar walls and emerged to pronounce the family accursed. He predicted the estate would soon fall into strangers’ hands, and so it did within 30 years.

The “Barcroft Boggart”, who came along many years later, was actually a helpful sprite around the house. The farmer’s wife would find the washing, ironing and various farm chores done efficiently by unseen hands. Then one night one of the farmer’s sons caught sight of a withered old barefoot man happily sweeping the floors, and decided to reward him with a tiny pair of clogs. The boggart showed his appreciation by ceasing all labours and making a complete nuisance of himself, not least by somehow getting the farmer’s prize bull up on the roof.

See also Ormerod.uk.net.

Extwistle Hall

Extwistle Hall is a manor house built around 1580, left in ruins of three centuries. One of its occupants, Captain Robert Parker, was crossing a small bridge near the hall on a night in 1715 when he heard “the incantations of a goblin funeral”. He sneaked a peek and discovered with a jolt that his own name was etched on the brass nameplate of the coffin. Parker had been on his way home from a meeting at which the Jacobite political uprising was discussed, and decided against joining what turned out to be a doomed insurrection.

He held onto the house another three years, though, until one St Patrick’s night he returned from a rainy shooting and laid his greatcoat out in front of the fire, forgetting to remove his gunpowder flask. The explosion seriously injured Parker and two of his daughters and wrecked a good chunk of the manor, and the old boy died of his wounds a month later. His family moved, and Extwistle was abandoned until the early 1980s.

Legend has it that some local citizens once managed to “raise his satanic majesty” at Lee Green, near Extwistle. They persuaded the devil to perform a series of tasks, but then realised they’d have to pay a hefty fee for his labours and in terror fetched a priest from Towneley. The pastor’s arrival put Satan to flight “in a flash of lightning”, but somehow the story still has the priest “laying the foe of man with bell and book at the foot of Lee Green Scar, where he rests till this day”.

Hobstones Farm

Hobstones Farm’s very name is an abbreviation for hobgoblin, and the stones were apparently a meeting place for fairy folk long before it was erected in 1700, but no one got into any real trouble until 1959. A tenant was sitting inthe outdoor privy when a friar “wearing a hideous expression, nursing an amputated hand” paid him a visit.

It’s believed there had once been a monastery in the area, especially since there used to be a “Kirk Rise” on the maps long before St Michael’s church was built in Foulridge in 1905. Renovations to the farmhouse in 1974 awakened a poltergeist who began hammering on the outer walls, making quite a racket despite their being three feet thick. Soon bottles were being thrown across rooms and windows smashed. On the night of September 29 the house was besieged by the spirit world. The walls and ceilings shook and ornaments and furniture were hurled around. The vicar of Colne was summoned, and he in turn called in an exorcist, who drove out “Hob”.

Bee Hole Boggart

Not far from the home turf of Burnley’s Clarets football club lived a fairy called the Bee Hole Boggart that once kidnapped and murdered an old woman, leaving her skin to be discovered on a rose bush. The phenomenon, whatever it is, has alternatively been described as “shreds of fairy clothing”.

Oakes Hotel

The Oakes Hotel, which rather startlingly has a huge stained-glass window above its reception hall, is listed in the AA inns guide, and so is its ghost. Built in 1883 by Abraham Altham, who went on to found Altham’s Travel, “Oakleigh” went unhaunted until 1984 when work started on converting it into a conference hall and hotel. Rousted from her eternal rest was a young woman in a long white dress, believed to be Altham’s maid, whom hotel staff have seen “floating” around the premises, but she’s a friendly ghost.

Roggerham Gate

At the spring that rises at Calf Hey Well at Roggerham Gate, fairies were often spotted dancing about in the moonlight in days gone by. “Hey” is apparently old Saxon for “hedge”. In West Yorkshire there’s a called Lamb Hey. The placemark sits atop Roggerham Gate Inn, a small stone house dating from 1876. Roggerham is thought to derive from the highwaymen (rogues) who once frequented the area.

Rowley Hall

Rowley Hall, for many years the residence of the Halstead family, was said to be haunted by a female boggart dressed for the ball. She evidently prevented people from getting on with what they were supposed to be doing, usually by making doors impossible to open. Eventually she was dissuaded from hanging around and a headstone was set out in her honour.

Clowridge Reservoir

In a slightly different spooky vein, UFOinfo.com records the story of a 19-year-old camper who awoke from his tent here on the edge of Clowridge Rservoir before dawn on July 28, 1977, to encounter a strange figure with a beard and bushy hair 100 yards off, who was at least eight feet tall and dressed in a white robe. The figure stood motionless, staring out over the water, and did not seem to noticed the youth. He vanished when the teen called out to a camping companion.

Brownside

Brownside is another hangout for fairies, its name actually credited to its association with brownies. A local woman was on her way into Burnley one midnight in 1829 to fetch a doctor for her ailing husband when she came across a brownie smoking a pipe.

Towneley Hall

Towneley Hall’s 62 acres used to be roamed by a big old dog variously called “Trash” and “Shriker” who, if followed, would retreat while keeping its saucer-sized eyes constantly on his pursuer. The moment the chaser’s attention was diverted, he’d vanish. Towneley Hall itself still has the ghost of a lady who floats above the battlements or strolls the woods out back.

Bay Horse Inn

The original Bay Horse pub in Worsthorne was once owned by a man who also leased Extwistle Mill, the remains of which can still be seen below Swinden Reservoir. His wife helped out at both places and graduallysaved up a bunch of money, which she hid from her husband at the inn. She was on her way from mill to pub one winter’s night when she fell into the swollen stream at Heckenhurst and drowned.

Soon strange noises could be heard coming from a disused room at the tavern, and rumour spread that she’d returned to claim her hoard. The door was sealed to confine the spirit, and the noise ceased until, in the early 1900s, the landlord reopened the doorway so his family could use the room. “Old Thrutch” reseumed her nightly visits, wearing a rustic silk dress, sometimes stealing the children’s bedclothes. The room was soon sealed once more. In the top right of photo above, by the way, you can see The Square, where I was born. Hey!

Also in Worsthorne is (or was) a spring called Jam Hole Well, where legend has it that fairies could be observed using little milk cans and making little pats of butter, but they haven’t been seen since 1883.

Paulinus Cross

The Godly Lane Cross, aka Paulinus Cross, was moved here from the bottom of present-day Ormerod Road in 1881 when Godly Lane was being reconstructed. Of the type traditionally erected at markets to keep traders honest, this stone cross proved of no value to the builders of St Peter’s Church, whose materials were stolen each night – by a gang of pigs. The “demon pigs” kept hauling the stuff elsewhere, so that’s where they ended up building the church – elsewhere – complete with carving of a pig on the south side of the church tower. The fearsome black dog of Townley Hall known as “Trash” has also been sighted here.

St Peter’s Church

The church was going to be built at the bottom of present-day Ormerod Road in 1881 when Godly Lane was being reconstructed, but night after night Satan – in the form of a mob of pigs – moved all the building materials, until finally the builders decided to go with the demon flow and build the church here, where their gear ended up every morning. The fearsome black dog of Townley Hall known as “Trash” has also been sighted here.

Publicity hunter

The Burnley Express newspaper building on Bull Street has a ghost all its own in the form of one Edward Fishpool, a former printer there who evidently died before he managed to complete a certain project and feels so bad about it that he’s hung around ever since.

Rosehill House Hotel

Easily the most recent supernatural phenomenon in the region occured here just a few years ago. The hotel is old, but when the roof was being extended a man was seen sitting on the end of a bed in a room otherwise occupied. The living guest declined to twin-share and was given a new room, but the ghost apparently yearned for company and was later seen on the staircase.

Eagle’s Crag

This rocky outcrop, part of Cliviger Gorge and so named because it resembles an eagle about to take flight, is visited each October 31 by the ghosts of Lord William Towneley and his dog, seen giving chase to a nimble doe. Or is the hunter someone named Gabriel Ratchets? Or is it a man and his wife, still bickering over the fact that he killed and buried her here? Whoever it is, they’re here on Hallowe’en, or rather All Hallow’s Eve as it’s more traditionally observed in Britain.

The first and third interpretations, at least, turn out to be entwined. Lord William, a member of the locally prominent Towneley family and the big cheese at Hapton Tower, is said to have buried his wife, Lady Sybil, there in 1633. She was the witch of Bearnshaw Tower, and liked to run about in the form of a white doe or cat. She only agreed to marry William after he had another witch intervene. Mother Helston told him to hunt the doe on the crag at All Hallows, and was assisted by a magical hound (Mother, of course) and an enchanted silken rope.

By the next morning, at Hapton Tower, the doe changed back into Sybil, and she agreed not only to marry him but to give up sorcery. Of course she didn’t give it up, and the following year got her hand chopped off while mucking about at Cliviger Mill in the shape of a cat. She died as a result of the mutilation, having failed to magically reattached the paw, er, hand. William buried her at the foot of Eagle Crag.

Half a mile from the crag is the former site of Bearnshaw Tower, which apparently collapsed in 1860 when people started frenziedly digging beneath it for a rumoured pot of gold. For more on the story, see NorthernEarth.co.uk.

Janet’s Foss

Just outside the village of Malham, which provided the inspiration for Charles Kingsley’s classic children’s novel “The Water Babies” and paintings by Turner, is the pixie-intensive Janet’s Foss, a picturesque waterfall downstream of fabled Gordale Scar. Janet was the Queen of the Fairies in these parts, and “foss” is a Nordic word for waterfall. On the far bank of the creek is Janet’s Cave, a dark hole which actually leads nowhere.

Hameldon Hill

As well as its much-beloved Radio Lancashire antennae, Hameldon Hill has on its lower slopes the slim ruins of Hapton Tower, the home of Lord William, a member of the locally prominent Towneley family of Towneley Hall, whose ghost haunts Eagle Crag each Hallowe’en in perpetual pursuit of his wife, the Witch of Bearnshaw Tower at nearby Cornholme.

Boggart Hole Clough

The clough was in former times said to be haunted by a boggart, an imp that can be quite helpful to human neighbours unless it’s crossed, and there are a number of stories attached to this place, although some were probably imported here from other locales. These days the only verifiable spirits come from the Boggart Hole Cliff Brewery, founded in the neighbourhood in 2000. “Are you brave enough to ‘exorcise’ your right to join the latest Boggart drinker’s cult?” the brewers taunt on their website. “Perhaps you will discover that the Boggart’s beers are better that any ’spirits’.”

There’s another Boggart Hole in Oldham outside Manchester, also thought to be haunted.

Forest of Pendle

The case of the Pendle (or Lancashire) Witches was for centuries the most famous in English legal history. It culminated with 10 men and women being hanged for witchcraft at Lancaster jail in 1611. They were convicted of using sorcery to murder 17 people in and around the Forest of Pendle.

There were in fact 13 Pendle witches. One died awaiting trial, another wastried and hanged in Yorkshire the following year and the last was merely jailed because she hadn’t killed anyone. Four of the accused confessed to, among other things, making clay effigies of intended victims and then crumbling or burning them over a period of time.

Scotland’s James VI brought a hatred of the supernatural to the English throne when he became King James I in 1603 and launched a campaign of persecution against those who practised witchcraft, giving magistrates throughout the realm a chance to make their name by exposing witches in their area. Shakespeare would soon pander to the paranoia with “Macbeth”.

In a field near Tawden, Alizon Device allegedly cursed a beggar and he promptly died of a stroke. His son accused Alizon of being a witch. Under interrogation, Alizon not only confessed, she said her grandmother Elizabeth often consorted with a demon and had killed a girl with witchcraft. More such claims and the discovery of human teeth and witchy paraphernalia in the homes of the accused led to a series of arrests and ultimately a show trial at Lancaster. It lasted three days, and the 10 were hanged on August 20.

Malkin Tower

Malkin Tower was the home of the family at the centre of the Pendle Witches allegations, and reputed scene of a Witches’ Sabbath on Good Friday 1612, shortly after one of their clan was arrested for inflicting a lethal curse. They plotted to blow up the Lancaster Gaol to secure her release, but the feud they were having with other families in the district attracted the attention of Lancashire magistrate Roger Nowell.

A stone wall believed to be all that’s left of the original Malkin Tower now sits on a hill above Malkin Tower Farm Holiday Cottages, which I can’t place exactly but must be near here. The holday cottage properietors offer three accommodations, two of which are named in honour of the Demdyke and Device families. The third, “The Piggery” (above), sleeps one.

Lancaster Castle

Lancaster Castle was the site of many famous trials, including, in 1612, that of the Pendle Witches. Its notoriety extends to the modern era: This is where the Birmingham 6 were mistried in 1975. It belongs to the Duke of Lancaster, a title held by the reigning monarch.

Roger de Poitou, a relation of William the Conqueror, started building the castle in 1086, and King John is said to have held court here while construction continued (for more than 500 years). It was under seige in the Civil War, nearly destroyed again soon after, and over subsequent centuries witnessed more death sentences handed down than any other court in England except Old Newgate in London, mostly for forgery.

Thousands used to gather to watch public executions outside the walls. From 1614 until the War of Independence many offenders who came beforfe the judges here were deported to America, and from 1788 to 1868 thousands more to Australia. There’s a 500-year-old dungeon, and Hadrian’s Tower has walls nine feet thick, currently housing a display of old weapons and means of torture and restraint, as well as an altar to the Roman god Mars that was unearthed circa 1797.

The Crown Court, the oldest working courtroom in Britain, saw the trial of the Quaker George Fox and the Lancashire witches. The Drop Room, now used by juries pondering verdicts, is where those sentenced to death walked straight out onto the scaffold. The jail, which held 510 prisoners in 1812 but today is restricted to no more than 240, is supposed to close “soon”, at which point it will be opened so the public can gape at the tallest prison walls in the kingdom.

Pendle Heritage Centre

If you want to know what made Roger Bannister run so fast, it may have had something to do with the fact that the man who first cracked the four-minute mile grew up in this building, now a museum devoted to local culture, but especially the Pendle Witches. The 17th-century farm manor house is a popular stop for tourists, who can bone up on the locallore while enjoying tea in the garden.

Mother Shipton

Debate still rages over whether Mother Shipton has been “England’s most famous prophetess” since the 17th century or is a much more modern hoax, but her story is colourfully played out with a Disneyesque flourish here in a Knaresborough theme park on the River Nidd, the highlight of which is a unique geological phenomenon called the Petrifying Well, claimed by the owners to be the country’s oldest visitor attraction, first opening its gates in 1630.

Mother Shipton, the legend goes, raised quite a national ruckus during the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I with prophetic visions that extended, Nostradamus-style, to this day. She was born Ursula Sontheil in a cave here on the river’s edge in 1488, later marrying a carpenter named Toby Shipton. Since 1641 there have been more than 50 different editions of books about Mother Shipton and her predictions, which from the outset rattled King Henry, whose marital chaos she foresaw, and Cardinal Wolsey, whose demise she prophesied. She forecast the death of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the rise of James I and, gazing beyond her own lifetime, the Great Plague, aircraft, boats of metal and, apparently, the world wars.

The Petrifying Well, long known as the Dropping Well, has indeed been a popular attraction for centuries, both for its purported healing powers and the ability of its waters to turn anything to “stone”. The sight of a bird or a leaf turned rock hard used to rouse fear and superstition, but science soon explained that this was due to the spring’s thick calcium, sodium and magnesium content.

For the past century and more, visitors have customarily brought personal items to leave at the well, then return after a few months to reclaim them solidified. The most popular objects are teddy bears and other soft toys, but visitors’ attention is always directed to the two large bumps protruding from the rock face of the well, a gentleman’s top hat and a ladies bonnet placed there by a young couple on their way to York Races in 1853. They never returned to collect them. On display elsewhere at the park are a shoe left behind by Queen Mary in 1923, a handbag belonging to Agatha Christie and a hat “donated” by John Wayne.

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Further reading:
The Paranormal Database
The Cottingley Fairies
The Pendle Witches
Jack Nadin’s boggart lore
And gheywood has posted the Witches Galore shop in Newchurch on Google Earth here, but you ought to also see the shop’s terrific website. Take the kids there on Hallowe’en!