York Haunted Walled City Self Guided Ghost Tour

Highlights

Inclusions

Itinerary

1. The case opens on the green between the old castle prisons, now the York Castle Museum. Part of the lettering on the building is cut out of your photo, and a number code turns the real thing into a password. In 1801 a cattle thief named Samuel Lundy was the first man hanged on York's new gallows here.

   6 min

2. On the mound above sits Clifford's Tower, shaped like a four-leaf clover. You'll pick the right version of the English Heritage sign out of four. In March 1190, about 150 people, York's entire Jewish community, died in the wooden tower that stood here before it, and the only plaque went up in 1978.

   6 min

3. Along Castlegate, Fairfax House was bought to marry off a daughter, and you'll track down the name of the man who built it. Her father opened it in 1763 with a ball of sixty-three courses and 6,700 bottles of beer. Anne Fairfax never married.

   6 min

4. At Ouse Bridge, you'll unscramble a message and answer its question on the spot. A toll booth on the old bridge is where Margaret Clitherow, a butcher's wife who hid priests, was put to death in 1586 after refusing to plead so her children wouldn't have to testify.

   6 min

5. All Saints on North Street has some of the finest medieval glass in England and a small cell stuck to its side. You'll fill in a word missing from a handwritten list. Dame Emma Raughton had herself walled in there in 1425, dead in law, and the Earl of Warwick still came to ask her advice.

   6 min

6. Across the river, Museum Gardens has abbey ruins, peacocks and a carved stone drinking fountain whose date is hidden in your photo. In 1953 the museum's caretaker found an old man reading in the library after closing and put a hand on his shoulder. There was no shoulder.

   6 min

7. At York Minster, the largest Gothic cathedral in northern Europe, a riddle leads you to a bronze model of the area and the number of a red house. Across from the south door stands a Roman column, found under the cathedral only because its central tower started to sink.

   6 min

8. Behind the Minster, the Treasurer's House holds the best-attested ghost in the whole file. You'll uncover what a sticker hides on a stone pillar outside. The 1953 apprentice saw the soldiers only from the knees up, and a Roman road was later found fifteen inches below the cellar floor.

   6 min

9. Timber-framed with a red door, St William's College housed the Minster's chantry priests from the 1460s. You'll spot what's missing from a photo of its carved doorway. People paid those priests to pray for their souls forever, until Parliament cancelled the deal in 1547.

   6 min

10. Through an archway off Goodramgate, Holy Trinity is the one church in York nobody got round to modernising. You'll pick the right version of a nearby shop sign out of four. Inside, the floor still rises and falls over the graves beneath it.

    6 min

11. Mad Alice Lane is one of York's snickelways, lanes too narrow to be streets, and a rhyming riddle leads you to its sign. Then you'll see the gaol records: there was never an Alice hanged in 1825, and the lane's real name is Lund's Court.

    6 min

12. The Shambles still has the meat shelves and hooks of its butchers' days. At Margaret Clitherow's shrine you'll find the day of the month that her death and her canonisation share. The shrine is very probably in the wrong house.

    6 min

Cancellation

Free cancellation up to 24 hours before the experience starts, for a full refund.

Know before you go

How it compares in York

• Its from-price is 87% below the median of the 186 experiences we list in York.
• It is shorter than most of them.
• The operator lists free cancellation on it.

About York

York is a walled cathedral city in northern England, a place of Roman and Viking history, medieval lanes and a vast Gothic minster.

York Minster, among the largest Gothic cathedrals in northern Europe, towers over the city, and its stained glass includes the Great East Window, one of the biggest areas of medieval glass in the country. Medieval walls, the longest in England, encircle the old centre and can be walked along the top. The Shambles, a narrow lane of leaning timber-framed buildings, was once the street of butchers.

Top-ranked sights in York: York Minster, Clifford's Tower, The Shambles.

See all 186 experiences in York