Medieval Ghosts, Ghouls and Hauntings
With Dr Michael Carter
Expect winter chills as Senior Properties Historian Dr Michael Carter delves into stories of medieval ghosts, ghouls and hauntings at our sites.
Are you sitting uncomfortably?
The Medieval Origins of Ghosts
Hellish hounds, drummer boys, ethereal monks – even a flapping bit of canvas in a bundle of burning hay.
Almost every one of our sites has a link to a ghost story. So where do these stories come from and why are we so fascinated with them?
Just like today, many people in medieval England believed in ghosts and the paranormal. Throughout the Middle Ages, one can find countless references about the spirits of the dead wandering the land of the living. While at times they were things to be feared, these ghosts were usually not interested in haunting. Instead, they often needed help.
Dr Michael Carter says: “Most of the ghosts that you find in monastic ghost stories are ethereal spirits, and they appear to somebody with an explicitly religious and pious purpose – i.e. say prayers for my soul or right a wrong on my behalf so I can escape the pains of purgatory and find peace in heaven”.
Purgatory by the Limbourg Brothers
Purgatory by the Limbourg Brothers
The stories about ghosts from medieval England (and other parts of Europe) were often connected to the Catholic idea of Purgatory. Firmly established by the twelfth century, this was the belief that many souls did not go directly to heaven or hell – instead, they would find themselves in an intermediate state, where they had to cleanse themselves of their sins before entering Paradise.
“By and large, you'll see that medieval monastic ghost stories reflect these core religious beliefs, these core monastic beliefs. The ghosts appear as the troubled spirits of the departed who need a little bit of extra help on their way to paradise.”
'Say prayers for my soul so I can escape the pains of purgatory and find peace in heaven.'
Byland Abbey's Ghost Stories
Among the numerous stories of paranormal activity written down in medieval England, many are from Byland Abbey in North Yorkshire.
It was here, in about 1400, that an anonymous monk wrote down one of the most important collections of ghost stories to survive from medieval Europe. To the most part, the ghosts in the Byland stories are not the evil forces which seek to harm humanity in many modern horror tales. They are generally people from the community who have died with the stain of unforgiven sins on their souls, or who still need to right some wrongs. The ghosts cannot get to heaven until these issues have been resolved, so they rise from their graves to seek help from the living. The sins in question tend to be relatively mundane. Story IX tells of a ghost whose crime is ‘a matter of a sixpence’. In Story VI, the ghost of a canon of Newburgh Priory is tormented for stealing silver spoons. In Story VII, a hired hand is punished for overindulging his oxen, feeding them on his master’s stolen corn.
The ghosts try a variety of tactics for persuading people to help. Story I tells of an enterprising ghost in the area of Rievaulx who helps carry a sack of beans in return for absolution. In Story III, the rather forlorn ghost of Robert of Kilburn wanders around the village at night, standing at windows and doors, waiting to see if anyone would come out and help. Eventually the priest hears his confession and he is able to rest in peace.
There’s no doubt that the stories’ living characters found their supernatural experiences genuinely terrifying. But the beliefs of medieval Catholicism provided both comfort and protection. The hero of one of the sagas is a tailor who rejoiced in the name Snowball. Confronted by not only a ghost but also several demons, Snowball assembled a formidable spiritual armoury consisting of a crucifix, gospel books, manuscripts with holy texts upon them, and the relics of various saints. He sickened for several days after his petrifying experiences. Indeed, in many of the Byland stories, the human protagonists are left in a terrible state of malaise, languishing in bed, sometimes gravely ill after their ghostly encounters.
But this harm was nothing when compared to the malign deeds of the fiend in the most disturbing of the Byland stories, a figure who, unlike the ethereal spirits in the other tales, takes solid, bodily form. This ghost can therefore be classified as a “revenant”, one who returns; the undead. Revenants were believed to be evil to their rotting cores and have their origin in the supernatural beliefs of early medieval northern Europe and Scandinavia.
Dr Michael Carter explains: “They rose from their graves and were capable of doing physical harm. They had characteristics in common with vampires, who were very much an invention of the Enlightenment of the 18th century. But you can see threads of continuity there. They gorged on blood. They tried to dig themselves out of graves. They were associated with horrible, terrible smells. They agitated dogs. They really were evil. And they neither sought nor could be appeased by the kinds of pious services that the ethereal ghosts were seeking”.
One of the chilling stories tells of a local priest called James Tankerley, who after his death is buried in the cloister walk at Byland, by the entrance of the chapter house. His corpse is described as rising at night, and travelling six miles to gouge out the eye of his former mistress or concubine. As you can probably imagine, all this leaves the monks rather troubled and scared, and the story recounts how they exhumed Tankerley's corpse and coffin, and plunged it into a nearby lake, Goremire. The oxen dragging the cart with Tankerley’s foul remains upon it are described as being so frightened that they bolt and almost drown.
'They gorged on blood. They tried to dig themselves out of graves. They were associated with horrible, terrible smells. They agitated dogs. They really were evil.'
Other Ghostly Goings-On
Tangible evidence of people's belief in these revenants can be found in the deserted medieval village of Wharram Percy, about 25 miles away from Byland in North Yorkshire. The evidence is provided by analysis of human remains recovered from archaeological excavation of unconsecrated ground on the fringes of the settlement, dating from around 1100 to 1400. The remains had been disarticulated. One of the explanations for finding the remains in this condition had been scavenging, or cannibalising of people who've died as a consequence of famine, which sadly did happen in the Middle Ages. However the pattern of butchering doesn't conform with that, and instead shows post-mortem treatment that suggests the deliberate removal of the heart, decapitation and dismemberment. This is all consistent with descriptions in written sources about how the bodies of the corpses of supposed revenants were treated.
Many of our other monasteries have blood-curdling tales of ghosts and demons that date right back to the Middle Ages.
From the time of the Venerable Bede (d. 735) onwards, monks were prolific recorders of ghost stories. The main reason was that the stories affirmed the value of prayers said at the monasteries, and also acted as a warning to monks and nuns about the purgatorial pain that awaited them if they infringed the strict rules that governed their daily life. But it seems they also enjoyed the 'pleasing terror' and wonder provided by spooky tales as much as we do today. For instance, Matthew Paris, monk of St Albans Abbey, recounted in his chronicle a tournament of ghostly knights near Roche Abbey, South Yorkshire, in 1236.
The 14th-century chronicle owned by the Augustinians at Lanercost Priory in Cumbria has also got several ghost stories in its pages, some of which are genuinely horrific.
And of course, there are many chilling ghost stories from our more recent historic sites.
As Dr Michael Carter picks up: “There is supposedly a spectral drummer boy at Richmond Castle in Yorkshire. And one that I was already aware of was the sighting of ethereal monks at Hailes Abbey; some people claim to have captured them on film and photographs. Then this is my absolute favourite, actually: Lord Howard de Walden apparently gave up his tenancy of Audley End in 1912, when he saw a dog appearing through the walls of his billiards table, which then danced around the room to the terror of all those there. And his wife Margarita found Audley End so creepy that she insisted on moving out shortly after they wed in 1912. And in fiction, a few years ago, English Heritage published a collection of ghost stories inspired by sites such as Kenilworth, Audley, Dover and even York Cold War nuclear bunker. So this association with ruins and historic sites really flourishes to this day.”
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