Category: folk tale

  • The East Halton Hob-Thrust

    One morning, so this story goes, a farmer in East Halton got up early to bring his sheep to the barn for shearing – a task he had meant to do the night before – and noticed they were already in there, with a hare among them. He looked up to see the hob-thrust on…

  • Greestone Stairs Ghosts

    Several ghost stories are associated with the location, including that of a nun who allegedly lays a baby in a flowerbed, the stolen head of St Hugh bouncing down the steps after being dropped by a thief, and a cleric standing under a lamppost…

  • Billy Shuffler & the Witches

    Billy Shuffler & the Witches

    A small boy is stolen by witches, ‘to be boiled in their cauldrons for the purpose of making charms of his bones’…

  • The Thornton Abbey Ghost Monk

    The skeleton of fourteenth-century abbot Thomas de Gretham is said to have been discovered in the 1830s, sitting at a table in a bricked-up alcove, before an open book, with a pen and ink beside it. According to legend…

  • The Irby Boggle

    On 1 November 1455, All Saints’ Day, betrothed couple Neville Randall and Rosamund Guy allegedly met in this beauty spot, and Rosamund was murdered by her fiancé. Both went missing, and stories arose that he had murdered her and fled.

  • Fiddler Fynes

    This legend concerns a wise man known as Fiddler Fynes. A farmer is robbed, and approaches the wiseman asking for help to find the robber. The wiseman tells the farmer to look into a mirror, and he will see the thief’s face…