On our recent trip, my daughter wanted to go on all of the ghost tours, they seem very popular now. The tours mostly just covered local folklore, but each one had spot and story that was worth the effort.
The first one was a walking tour, in York, where the last stop was the most interesting. This was at a main church, but not the main church. I can’t remember what it was called, but there is a statue of Constantine as a young man, outside. The church is currently undergoing a restoration. (Which seem pretty typical for the UK right now. They seem to be in the midst of a lot of preservation and restoration of their historic sites.)
The interesting story for this place starts with a friend of the tour guide. This friend was apparently doing some work in the church before they started the restoration, and he says he clearly saw a group of Roman solders walking through the church. They were only visible from the knee up, the rest being below the floor, and they seemed to ignore the building, walking through objects and walls, and then disappeared after leaving the building. He saw them clearly enough to be able describe their clothing, weapons and armor accurately. Nobody believed him, of course. But later, during the restoration, they discovered a Roman road beneath the church, in the right location and depth to account for the path the solders took and how far their feet were below the current floor level. The guide had more to say, but that was all that I really cared about.
The next ghost tour was on a bus in Dublin. Again, mostly history and folklore on a blacked-out bus. I supposed they wanted it dark and spooky while he was telling his stories. (The summer sun goes down pretty late at those latitudes, so you have to make your own dark.) There were only two stops where we got off the bus, one in the catacombs of Christ Church and the other at a park.
The park was the last stop, and it contained a ruined church. The park is what used to be the church grave yard. The bodies were still there, but the headstones had mostly be moved to the sides and lined up along the walls of the park and the church, roughly corresponding to the places where they had been removed. I saw this more than once on this tour. In Chester, they reused the headstones as paving stones, shades of Poltergeist!
Nothing but the stone walls remain of the church. Apparently it has be burned three times, each time killing people. The first time was after the reformation. Someone got word that a secret Catholic Mass was being conducted there and burned the church with the people inside, killing everyone except a few of the leaders that were then tortured and executed. The second time was a hundred or so years later, when it caught fire during a service and killing everyone inside. The third time took place in the mid 60’s. The church was a ruin at that time, but i guess there was still stuff in it to burn.
The guide told a story that happened about ten years ago, during one of these tours. A Mexican woman was on the tour, and she was a medium. When they got to this point in the tour, she remained outside and refused to enter the church. When asked why, she said that she was not welcome there.
After some time, she did enter the church walls, then gravitated to one corner where she proceeded to have a conversation with a “boy” no one else could see. She described the boy, and his description matched that of a local boy that had died in the fire in the 60’s. At that time, kids of the neighborhood played in the church. Now there is a gate at the one door and it’s locked.
Interestingly, the fire seems to have been set, but it’s still an open case as to who set it and why. Sure, she might have heard about the case somewhere, but the guide insisted that is was a small bit of local news that never made the national or international news.
For myself, I definitely sensed something in that area, inside the church, and especially near that corner. I didn’t want to get to close to it. Later that night, after we returned to the hotel room, I did some remote releasements on entities trapped in and around that church. Sure, maybe I’m undermining a tourist attraction, but I’m sure that the tour will function just fine even if there aren’t any ghosts still trapped in the church. And besides, how can you possibly justify keeping a sentient being trapped in limbo for entertainment? So you can make money? The guides will never know the difference, since they don’t seem to sensitive to this stuff at all, and I really could not, in all good conscience, leave them there.
Perhaps that’s why I was supposed to go on this tour, to free those spirits. I don’t know, but, when it comes to explanations, you pays your money and you makes your choice.
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