Month: September 2023

Haunted Libraries: Footsteps and Shushes in the Stacks

Haunted libraries became famous with Ghostbusters. Our heroes investigate disturbances at the New York Public Library and encounter a ghost that tells them to shush. Surprisingly, this doesn’t seem to be so far off the mark if we look at tales of haunted libraries. What stories of ghosts are there from these book-loving spaces of…

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Haunted Prisons: Ghosts of Joliet, Shepton Mallet, and Barlinnie

While schools and universities boast urban legends alongside ghosts, prisons tend to be more like hospitals. You find tales of hauntings, but little in the way of folklore. It’s probably due to the concentration of human life in one place – and the brutality that runs alongside it. Haunted prisons somehow don’t seem so surprising….

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The Folklore of Wales: Ghosts with Delyth Badder and Mark Norman

This month, I’ve got the absolute pleasure of bringing back not one but two previous guests, since they’ve only gone and written a book together! Yes, I mean Mark Norman and Dr Delyth Badder, co-authors of The Folklore of Wales: Ghosts. So in this chat, we’ll be talking about misconceptions about Welsh folklore, types of…

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Haunted Hospitals: Porters, Matrons, and Past Patients

If you go looking for ghost stories, you very quickly stumble across haunted hospitals. In fact, it was finding so many tales about Cardiff Royal Infirmary that prompted this post in the first place. And not all of the stories are necessarily sad. The resident ghost at St Nicholas Hospital in Newcastle upon Tyne is…

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University Folklore: Ghosts and Exam Failure Curses

In a lot of ways, it’s hardly surprising there is a lot of university folklore. People are away from home, often for the first time, in a strange environment with a lot of new places. They’re also often in old buildings where who only knows what has happened in the past. So it’s easy for…

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School Folklore: Ghosts, Black Dogs, and Cautionary Tales

Think back to the schools you’ve attended. Did they have a Grey Lady in a disused corridor? A hell hound in a supply cupboard? A secret tunnel to a neighbouring building? The ghost of a former pupil, forever roaming the halls? Many schools end up with urban legends and folklore attached to them. Yet these…

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