Happy Halloween!

31 Oct 2022

I don't usually bother much with the celebrations; when I was a kid growing up near Liverpool Halloween was barely a Thing and it was much more about Bonfire Night…

A haunted castle

27 Oct 202119 Nov 2021

These days, Muncaster castle in western Cumbria is probably better known for its owl sanctuary. But it has a much longer and more varied history than that. According to Muncaster's…

October newsletter due tomorrow

26 Oct 2021

My first ever monthly newsletter is slated to go out tomorrow (Wednesday) just in time for Halloween. As a nod to the spooky time of year it'll include an excerpt…

Got Ghosts? You will have!

26 Jun 2017

Terrific news in the last few days - my new book 'Got Ghosts?' is due out from Fox Spirit in October, all set to coincide with Halloween! The book is…

Ghostly pictures

31 Oct 201631 Oct 2016

Just in time for Halloween, there's a fascinatingly creepy but ultimately common-sense article about the Victorian practice of photographing ghosts on the Hyperallergic blog here. The article debunks some of…

Story from the archives

30 Oct 201630 Oct 2016

What a nice surprise.  Like the historian I studied to be I've been digging around in old files and archives, and have just re-discovered a short story I had published…

Halloween hauntings

28 Oct 2016

There's an amusing piece in The Guardian today about the world's most haunted cities.  They list about a dozen from around the world, all supposedly haunted or beset by strange phenomena.  There…

Ghostly Lancashire

29 Oct 2015

This month's Lancashire Life magazine has an amusing little piece about haunted stately homes in and around the county, presumably in the run up to Halloween. Locations on the list…