English Heritage offer spooks and thrills this October

English Heritage is hosting a new series of ghost story tours across five of its northern monasteries. Created in collaboration between English Heritage’s senior historians and Manchester Metropolitan University’s professor of gothic literature, the tours will use ghost stories to highlight the deeper histories of the sites that would have previously gone unheard by visitors.

The tours will take place at Rievaulx Abbey in North Yorkshire, the first Cistercian abbey in the north of England; Furness Abbey in Barrow; Roche Abbey in South Yorkshire; Lanercost Priory in north Cumbria and Byland Abbey in the North York Moors, which at one time was one of the greatest abbey in England. In fact, Byland is thought to be where one of the most important collections of ghost stories from medieval Europe was written. Originally compiled by a monk, they were later collected and published in the original Latin in 1922 by writer M R James.

The tours are free and do not need to be pre-booked, however there are entrance fees for the sites. Find out more about the English Heritage and the tours on their website.