Uncanny UK editor Richard Holland continues his countdown of the most haunted places in Britain.
14.MARSTON MOOR: Long Marston, North Yorkshire
Echoes from the Civil War Battle of Marston Moor, which was fought on July 2, 1644, and in which 4,000 Royalists died, have been witnessed several times in the past century.
The best-known example is that of the motorists who got lost on their way to Wetherby and saw half-a-dozen men in ‘fancy dress’ creeping along a ditch. Only later did they realise that they had been driving through the old battlefield and that the figures may well have been examples of the ghosts reported by locals on many previous occasions – including the sighting in 1932 when a car driver nearly ran into three or four men in Royalist outfits similarly skulking by the side of the road.
Ghosts of soldiers have also been seen on Atterwith Lane and its junction with Marston Lane, and men and horses have been seen at the clump of trees opposite the Monument. At the Monument itself one night, researcher Christopher Linton believes he heard the ghost of a running, and heavily breathing, soldier. The apparition of a young girl, possibly trampled to death by escaping cavalry, has also been seen near Wilstrop Wood, and no less a personage than Oliver Cromwell is said to haunt nearby Marston Hall, where Parliamentary officers were housed the night before the battle.
[SOURCE: Our Haunted Kingdom by Andrew Green; Phantom Britain by Marc Alexander; Christopher Linton in Paranormal Magazine issue47; Janet Bord in Paranormal Magazine issue 38]
