The Ghost Stories of Byland Abbey
A medieval monk filled the blank pages of a book with a dozen local ghost stories: spirits that turned into crows, horses and haystacks.
What was reported
Around 1400, a monk at Byland Abbey in Yorkshire wrote a dozen ghost stories into the spare pages of a manuscript. They were told by local people, and they're nothing like later, misty ghosts: these dead were solid and troublesome. One ghost followed a tailor home in the shape of a crow, a dog and then a horse, and had to be asked, properly, what it wanted.
Most of the ghosts were souls who couldn't rest because of some wrong left unrighted, and once a priest helped them, they were seen no more.
Explanations offered
The stories were meant as moral lessons, urging prayers for the dead and confession. Historians value them as rare glimpses of what ordinary people in medieval England believed about ghosts. The manuscript is in the British Library.
- When
- Written down around 1400
- Where
- Byland Abbey, North Yorkshire, England
- Witnesses
- Local people, recorded by a monk of the abbey
- Status
- Legend
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.
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