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Four Historians Tell Us a Ghost Story

There are ghosts in the archives. Floating nuns, joy-riding cyclists and things that go bump in the night. Four historical ghost stories and their meanings.

History Today | Published in History Today Volume 73 Issue 10 October 2023

A Victorian double exposure photograph of a ghost in a white sheet frightening a man in a smock, c. 1887.
Amateurs playing a ghost scene by photographer W. S. Hobson, c. 1887. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Public Domain.

‘What the servant saw made him drop the tray with an almighty crash’

Francis Young, author of English Catholics and the Supernatural (Ashgate, 2013)

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