From poltergeists to phantom cows and red-eyed apparitions – Cumbria has dozens of old spooky stories, myths and legends.
In the spirit of Halloween, we reached out to renowned Cumbrian author Alan Cleaver, who mapped out for us some of the creepiest tales of ghosts and boggles lurking in Cumbria.
No stranger to the paranormal – Alan is a retired journalist who has a love for Cumbria’s folklore and history.
He was also heavily involved with psychic research and helped found ASSAP, a paranormal education and research charity in 1981. He also worked on a psychic newspaper that dealt with paranormal phenomena.
While the term ‘ghost’ is used universally, in Cumbria, they were historically referred to as ‘boggles’, an old dialect term that covered not just ghosts, but anything odd that could not be explained.
Alan said that one 19th century author Jeremiah Sullivan said the term could be used to describe anything ‘unaccountable’ – whether it be human, animal or composite and that they should be expected to appear where they have no business.
Alan’s map provides a glimpse into just some of the boggles you might bump into this Halloween…
A church connected to the Croglin vampire story went up for sale earlier this year, read on here.
Think we’ve missed a good scary story? Let us know your favourite Cumbrian story of the unexplained – or your own – by emailing us at [email protected]
