Boo! Did I scare you? Well, perhaps these medieval ghost stories will...
You can read all twelve of the Byland Ghost stories in their original Latin or translated into English at the Byland Abbey Ghost Stories Project. The versions I read, which make a bit more sense, are taken from Andrew Joynes' Medieval Ghost Stories which is a large collection of ghost stories divided into sections on Ghosts and Monks, Ghosts and the Court, The Restless Dead, and Ghosts in Medieval Literature. It's a good read but not of them are particularly scary, well, not to those of us who spent our teens scaring ourselves silly with Stephen King novels! As I say in my video, though, medieval people would have been frightened by the thought of restless spirits not being able to move on. They were very concerned with the fate of their mortal soul.
Now try not to have nightmares!
Sources and further reading
- Byland Abbey Ghost Stories Project http://www.anselm.edu/internet/classics/byland/about.html
- Twelve Medieval Ghost Stories by M.R. James, from English Historical Review, 1922 - see http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/12ghosts.htm and http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/content/XXXVII/CXLVII/413.citation
- Joynes, Andrew (2006) Medieval Ghost Stories, Boydell Press
Looking forward to watching video tonight with a glass of red wine , loverly
Enjoy it!
Just finished watching video, the stories were very interesting Only wish the video had been longer . The atmosphere was very good and the story’s had a heavy Christian theme which would have scared the people of that period half to death. Very enjoyable , well done Claire
Been to Byland Abbey and on a cloudy day or with a dramatic sky its structure does look very creepy, with the ruins looking like pointing fingers in some places. One part of the church tower stands tall and dark and we had a storm when we went on one visit giving it a very dramatic and frightening back drop.