Britain's Ghosts

  ‘'All houses wherein men have lived and diedAre haunted houses. Through the open doorsThe harmless phantoms on their errands glide,With feet that make no sound upon the floors.''            Haunted Houses, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Buckland Abbey, Dartmoor. The crimes of the wreckers, preying upon the North Devon coast, resulting in tragedies too terrible for words and manors that seem to move. In Glastonbury Abbey where Christianity meets legend in St Joseph of Arimathea and King Arthur, monks and women drift down the corridors, echoing a past that still fascinates us After all, the Tor hidden in the mists is one of the most beautiful sights you will ever experience. The Ancient Ram Inn, the Tower of London, Canterbury, Preston Manor, Hampton Court Palace with its Anne Boleyn spectre. Houses so cursed that had to be torn down, battlefields echoing the souls that met their end in blood.
Religious conflicts between Catholics and Protestants that produced some of the blackest pages in European History. Cannock Chase where portals open, lost in the millennia, and a Black-Eyed child terrorise visitors since the 70s. After all, who said ghosts are meant to stay in the past? High Peak District hides the scene of a tragic love and Newstead Abbey is forever sealed by the fate of its famous inhabitant, Lord Byron himself. Beware of the Lantern Man and the terrifying Black Shuck in Wicken Fen, Cambridgeshire and see if you can meet the unjustly perished family of the Boleyns in Blickling. Sutton Hoo and Pendle Hill stand witnesses to a glorious and dark past, from the Anglo-Saxon era to the terrible witch-hunting and the cries of the innocent. In Cumbria you may listen to the cries of the Crier of Claife. In North Yorkshire, in Treasurer's House, spectres appear by the dozen, from ladies to Roman soldiers stuck in the loop of the centuries that go by. The Thackray Museum of Medicine, Bamburgh Castle and Chillingham Castle in Northumberland (with the coolest Torture Chamber ever and the story of a devil in human form that once ‘'worked'' there as a professional torturer.
From Ceredigion and Caerphilly in Wales to Ballygally Castle in County Antrim and the mythical Mourne Mountains in County Down in Northern Ireland, from Glencoe and the Scottish Highlands to haunting Edinburgh, Britain is there to remind us that life beyond the grave DOES exist in various forms. The nay-sayers can go and read a book or something, their opinion is irrelevant anyway.
I have dozens of books on Britain and its hauntings, its spectres and legends. This volume is going to become THE guide to a troubled, violent, yet enchanting past. And Anna Groves is a brilliant writer!
Thank God for the National Trust.