Ghosts are ubiquitous! This guide has 62 tours, which incorporate over 280 towns and villages, and more than 800 sites. Directions are given in each tour to enable the investigator to find the sites. Map references have been included using Ordnance Survey Maps, together with the map numbers, to enable the investigator to find the haunted sites. The purpose of the guide is to enable the enthusiast to seek and observe. There are notes of interest and history notes as the counties are awash with fascinating stories and legends. So decide which tour you are going to tackle first. You may wish to meet the phantom army at Thundridge Church ruins, the screaming woman in Water Lane, Bishop’s Stortford, the Witchfinder General, Mathew Hopkins at Manningtree, or maybe the ghostly monks carrying a coffin at Belchamp Walter.

From a spectral horse and carriage heard galloping along Church Street to unexplained sightings of the market town’s mysterious Grey Lady, this collection of hauntings from Bishop’s Stortford is guaranteed to make your blood run cold. Featured here are reports of a shrieking woman in Water Lane, the ghost of a Victorian child at the Black Lion pub, an ominous black shape in the graveyard of St Michael’s church, and even a phantom army from the days of Cromwell, among many others. So draw the curtains, dim the lights, choose your favourite chair and immerse yourself in a journey into the realms of the supernatural.

This fascinating book, enriched by archive photographs from private collections, contains a terrifying assortment of true-life tales from Hertford and its surrounding villages.Featuring stories of unexplained phenomena, phantoms and poltergeists - including a blood-soaked policewoman seen in a mirror, the numerous ghosts of Haileybury College, and spectral Cromwellian soldiers - discover what lurks in the shadows of this historically rich county town.Drawing on historical and contemporary sources, and accounts which have never before been published, Haunted Hertford is sure to enthral everyone interested in the supernatural history of the area.

The belief in the reality of demons and the restless dead formed a central facet of the medieval worldview. Whether a pestilent-spreading corpse mobilised by the devil, a purgatorial spirit returning to earth to ask for suffrage, or a shape-shifting demon intent on crushing its victims as they slept, encounters with supernatural entities were often met with consternation and fear. Chroniclers, hagiographers, sermon writers, satirists, poets, and even medical practitioners utilised the cultural ‘text’ of the supernatural encounter in many different ways, showcasing the multiplicity of contemporary attitudes to death, disease, and the afterlife. In this volume, Stephen Gordon explores the ways in which conflicting ideas about the intention and agency of supernatural entities were understood and articulated in different social and literary contexts. Focusing primarily on material from medieval England, c.1050–1450, Gordon discusses how writers such as William of Malmesbury, William of Newburgh, Walter Map, John Mirk, and Geoffrey Chaucer utilised the belief in demons, nightmares, and walking corpses for pointed critical effect. Ultimately, this monograph provides new insights into the ways in which the broad ontological category of the ‘revenant’ was conceptualised in the medieval world.

The most extensive and complete Hertfordshire ghost guide, packed with over 500 stories. Completely revised and updated with many new stories, this latest ghostly gazetteer boasts a bumper collection of Hertfordshire's ghost tales from five centuries of documentary sources as well as contemporary accounts from the people experiencing ghostly phenomena today. Illustrated by dozens of rare and evocative pictures, this new edition includes diary dates of regular hauntings and a gazetteer of haunted inns; perfect for the active ghost hunter as well as the armchair historian alike. Read about grey ladies, poltergeists, floating ghosts, a haunted bed, phantom monks and Civil War wraiths from nearly every town and village in the county. Whatever your belief in ghosts, this book will leave you entertained and chilled and with a much richer knowledge of Hertfordshire and its haunted history.

Presents a history and critique of a selection of the famous ghost stories from different countries, organized by such common themes as spectral armies, phantom women in white, haunted houses, screaming skulls, crisis apparitions, and ghostly lights.