Tales From Britain's Most Haunted City

Probably the most comprehensive gazeteer of York's ghosts and folklore

York is a serious contender for most haunted city in England. Certainly every pub seems to have a ghost, legend or piece of folklore associated with it. And during the busy tourist season, there are no end of ghost tours across the city – easily identified by the histrionic gents in Victorian dress herding unsuspecting groups of visitors down lonely backstreets.

Yet the stories tell us much about York – and England’s – troubled history. The restless dead are often plague victims, Catholics, traitors, deviants, madmen and outlaws or their victims; men and women at the boundaries of society who represented ‘otherness’.

The ghosts stretch back as far as York’s history: the spectres of Roman legionnaires have been seen across a number of sites. Modern York has its own folk-tradition in the form of black cats – 23 little statues on walls and rooftops across the city. No-one has ever seen all of them however, and it’s rumoured that if anyone did, they’d become cursed for the rest of their days…

York’s black (and white) cats

There are at 22 statuettes of (variously coloured) cats in York centre, and five further out; many to be found on walls, chimney pots and roofs. Some are clearly visible, others more elusive. Some cat statuettes may have been put in place as the early as the 19th century. An article in the Evening Press on 13th April 1962 states that two cats on Low Ousegate were originally added in the 1920s. The more recent cats, beginning in the 1980s, were sculpted by Jonathan Newdick for the architect Tom Adams. See here for more info.