Explore the haunted hostelries of Cambridgeshire and experience a palpable sense of timelessness in the cities, towns and villages where ghost stories and strange happenings are an integral part of our folklore. Thumb through a ghostly gazetteer listing over sixty locations of reported sightings, sounds and sensations. Sightings of people from the past including Mary Queen of Scots on her way to Fotheringhay Castle; the highwayman Dick Turpin; the writer Daniel Defoe; the eighteenth-century murderer Gervase Matcham; poor Mary Ann Weems, murdered by her husband in 1819; Jeremiah Newell of Ely who mistook a steaming dunghill for his bed; and Harry `Kirky' Kirk, employed as assistant to the hangman Albert Pierrepoint. Reports of a cat walking straight through a wall, of a small hand print mysteriously appearing on a mirror, of a vase of flowers flying across the room, a pint glass floating from table to table, shoe laces untied repeatedly, and tidied up playing cards. Sounds of persistent knocking, footsteps, rubbing hands, jangling keys, rattling door latches and beer tankards, of bottles clinking in the middle of the night, babies crying and of English Civil War troops amassing. Sensations of cold spots, of an unseen presence close-by and a tap on the shoulder; the odour of rotting flesh, of pipe tobacco and of lavender; vibrating beds and tugging at the blankets by unseen hands. `The Last Round' and `The Old Waterman' Enjoy two original ghost stories by Trevor Bounford. Compelling tales, not for the faint-hearted but bound to put you in the right frame of mind for strange encounters.

When well-to-do Hester learns of her sister Mercy's death at a Nottinghamshire workhouse, she travels to Southwell to find out how her sister ended up at such a place. Haunted by her sister's ghost, Hester sets out to uncover the truth, when the official story reported by the workhouse master proves to be untrue. Mercy was pregnant - both her and the baby are said to be dead of cholera, but the workhouse hasn't had an outbreak for years. Hester discovers a strange trend in the workhouse of children going missing. One woman tells her about the Pale Lady, a ghostly figure that steals babies in the night. Is this lady a myth or is something more sinister afoot at the Southwell poorhouse? As Hester investigates, she uncovers a conspiracy, one that someone is determined to keep a secret, no matter the cost...

'Neil Oliver writes beautifully - letting us see ourselves in a new light.' - Professor Alice Roberts 'Oliver is an evocative storyteller, vividly bringing his tales to life' BBC History Magazine ......................................................................................................................................................................... For longer than recorded history there have been tales of spirits and of places where our hackles rise and our skin turns cold. Bestselling historian Neil Oliver travels the British Isles on a deliciously spine-chilling tour that spans several centuries and explores more than 20 sites - castles, vicarages and towers, lonely shorelines and forgotten battlefields - to unpick their stories.. Oliver invokes his family's history alongside that of kings and queens past as he probes why our emotions and senses are heightened in certain locations where the separation between dimensions seems gossamer thin. Our landscape is riven with these places, creaking from the weight of the secrets they hold, the echoes of tragedy and dark deeds . From Inverness to Devon, Co Dublin to Norfolk, Hauntings casts an enjoyably eerie glow with stories that, told generation after generation, are inextricable from place - and considers why they matter.