The Haunted History of Britain

Ghosts, Legends and the Places That Refuse to Forget

Across ancient roads, ruined abbeys, battlefields, castles, mines, railway stations and ordinary homes, generations have reported footsteps without bodies, phantom processions, spectral animals, warning apparitions and the restless dead. Some ghosts return to reveal murder or injustice. Others guard graves, repeat the moment of their death or linger because the living have never allowed their stories to disappear.

The Haunted History of Britain explores how British ideas about ghosts have changed across two thousand years. Discover the walking corpses feared by medieval communities, the souls believed to escape Purgatory, the apparitions that survived the Reformation and the royal spectres said to haunt castles and palaces. Follow phantom armies across old battlefields, black dogs along lonely roads and ghostly coaches through the darkness, before entering haunted houses where bells ring by themselves and figures wait upon the stairs.

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The journey continues into industrial Britain, where mines, mills, railways and factories produced new legends of warning spirits and disaster. Along the way, the book examines witches, curses, cunning folk, protective charms and the many ways people attempted to defend their homes from forces they believed were very real.

This is not a catalogue of haunted places. It is the story of how invasion, religion, war, family violence, industry and folklore created the supernatural Britain we recognise today. The ghosts changed as the country changed, but they never entirely went away.
Atmospheric, richly detailed and steeped in history and legend, The Haunted History of Britain reveals the hidden country beneath the familiar one: a landscape where the dead still walk, old roads remember their travellers and the past is never quite finished.