The Ghostlore Podcast

In our last episode of the series, we celebrate Halloween and you, our lovely listeners, by sharing some of your stories. After asking for spooky stories from your experiences on ghost tours, Lily and Pono read them out and discuss just exactly how creepy are they. The stories harken from all over, and are both fascinating and horrifying as they make us wonder at just how prevalent paranormal presences are and how likely we are to encounter them.

In this episode, Pono shares some spooky family ghost stories and encounters from her home state, Hawai’i. Tune in for stories about a haunted sugar plantation building, an ancient Hawaiian demon, a psychic with a knack for seeing, ghostly apparitions of deceased family members and more. 

This week, we brave the dark, the old and the Gothic as we take a walk through the space and time cupped within the historic city centre of Lincoln, situated in the East Midlands, UK. Saturated with 2000 years of history, from its Roman origins through Medieval Britain to the 21st Century, join us as our footsteps ring on the cobbles from Lincoln Castle, dating back to 1068, to Lincoln Cathedral, one of Europe’s finest Gothic buildings. This week we pay particular attention to the different types of ghosts, so you'll hear tales of murder, gargoyles and highwaymen, Roman soldiers, orbs, a bouncing bishop's head, grave robbers and of the ghostly singing of plague victims from within the cathedral, all linked to highly atmospheric spooky spots.  The tour ends at a site dating from Lindum Colonia, the Roman City of Lincoln founded in the first century AD. This episode also discusses how the ghosts permeate certain materials, so if you're superstitious; volume up!Apologies that the field audio is not the best, but you get the gist!

Join Lily and Pono as they take a tour of Derby Friar Gate, starting at the Gaol where you can hear the screams from inside the condemned cell - as featured on Most Haunted. We will then take you along on the walk to Vernon Gate to visit Derby's third and last county prison where we visit the execution room, before moving down Agard Street to hear all about the bloody murder of Eliza Morrow. We will leave you back at the gaol, having just learned of the details of the last public execution in Derbyshire, resulting from the last armed revolution in England. This is a seriously spooky episode, featuring the only tour of the series to own their site. We therefore discuss the opportunities this affords the tour operators in terms of staging the environment to most effectively interact with our imaginations, which have been primed by our own expectations and the grisly narratives of the tour.

In this episode we visit York, a city founded by the Romans in the Northeast of England. Join as we hear about Dick Turpin, the famous highway man, one of the many executed in this city. We move through the historic city centre, the epicentre of death, past the Blue Boar Inn, to visit Clifford's Tower, the site of a tragic massacre, through the famous Shambles (inspiration for Diagon Alley), past the Golden Fleece pub, to Berdern, a quiet corner of York with a horrifying past. We discuss the variety of ghosts we are confronted with and how the style of delivery of the tale by the tour guide is influenced by the historical context of events. We also discuss the role of media in sculpting the genre and cultural imagination where the spooky is concerned, and how the resulting expectations shape our experience of the ghost tour.