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	Have you ever felt a shiver down
	your spine as you walked
through one of Leicesters museums?  Don't let the excited kids and exhausted parents distract you....if you concentrate you might pick up on one of Leicester City Council's spookiest resources....nearly all of the museums in Leicester are haunted.

In the depths of the nineteenth century an engineer plunged to his death at the Abbey Pumping Station, falling over 50 feet from the top balcony of the pump house down into the depths of the engine room and has haunted the place ever since.  Some nights staff have been in such a hurry to get out of there that they haven't even been able to stay long enough to lock the doors.

As these winter nights draw in and the shadows of twilight fall through the window at the top of the main staircase in the Newarke Houses Museum you might catch a glimpse of a figure in a long, dark cloak.   Or maybe, like so many of the staff, you'll just move aside to let someone pass, before you suddenly realise that there's no-one there....

Read more about our hauted museums at the Museum Ghosts web site.

SPIDERGATES

Ghost stories from a graveyard in Leicester, Mass, USA said to be the Eighth Gate to Hell. . The Spooky Stories The Sensible Investigation The Movie

Ghosts of Castle Park 
Friday 28th May 2004 at 8.00 p.m.
£4.00 (includes glass of wine/fruit juice)

Monday 25th August 2004 at 8.00pm
£3.00

Join guide Virginia Wright and tread with fear as you follow the trail of shadowy hunchbacks, spectral monks and other phantom figures around the heart of Medieval Leicester.
Starts at St Mary de Castro Church.  Just turn up on the night. 

Belgrave Hall
Back in 1998 Leicesters most famous museum ghosts  were caught on CCTV at Belgrave Hall.  Members of staff who studied the tape saw two figures in Victorian clothing, surrounded by a halo of light, come through the courtyard wall.

The siting was investigated by ghost hunters far and wide including Living TV 'Most Haunted' presenter Derek Acorah who came as part of the the International Society for Paranormal Research (ISPR) team.  Their DVD 'The ISPR Investigates Ghosts of England and Belgrave Hall' won the Best Horror Documentary Award at Screamfest 2002.  

The Belgrave Hall ghost footage was also investigted by an East Midlands based paranormal research group called Parasearch.   After carrying out a series of tests they completely failed to get carried away by the spookiness of it all and concluded that the ghostly images were actually falling oak leaves....

Read an interview with David Taylor, one of the founders of Parasearch, where he talks about the investigation on the Mysterious People site.

Haunted Pubs
If you are looking for somewhere spooky for a drink you might want to try The Talbot in Thurcaston Road, Leicester.   The story goes that condemned men came here for a final meal before going to the gallows. They returned as corpses to be dealt with in an outbuilding housing a mortuary.  

Read about lots of freaky happenings at The Talbot as Ghosts UK investigator Adam Wakein joins our local paranormal investigation outfit SPECTA, to check it out: Pub Spirits In Big Measures

Or how about the Black Dog Inn in Oadby.  The Long Skittle Alley is still officially listed as a Morgue which may explain why Black Dog boasts it's own ghost! 

BLACK ANNIS

	Up on the Dane Hills lives
	Black Annis, an old blue faced
woman with one eye.  Her home is the cave she dug out of the sandstone with her long, sharp nails.  She waits in the woods on the hills to pounce on unsuspecting children and carry them back to her cave. Once she has them there they are doomed.  She drinks their blood and eats their flesh and hangs their skins out to dry on the branches of the oak tree outside the entrance.  When the skins of her human prey are dry she sews them together to make her skirts. Stories of Black Annis, the bogeywoman of Leicester, were told to local children for hundreds of years and were still being told as late as the 1940s, even though the cave was finally covered up when the Dane Hills housing estate was built in the west of the city just after the first world war.  Her cave led to a tunnel that ran all the way to Leicester Castle where she waits to this day as a ghost in the Castle Gateway! Find out more in the At the Edge archive article Black Annis of Leicestershire