Peterborough… is spook central

… [prev] graphics; the other was fixing a wall hanging up a ladder, and I was footing the ladder for her. Nothing out of the ordinary.’ As Stuart stood there, he happened to glance across at the door leading out onto the ground floor corridor. ‘This woman walked past the doorway. I’d never seen her before in my life. She wasn’t a member of staff or a visitor. The building was all locked up and I knew we were the only people in it.’ This ghost did not fit the stereotype, however. ‘She wasn’t a grey, misty figure – she looked like a living, breathing person. She was about 40 years old, hair pulled back in a bun, dressed in a dark blue Victorian style dress with a white apron or pinny on the front. And she just walked past the door. My colleagues were looking in the other direction, so didn’t see anything. I sort of coughed and they said: “Are you all right?” I said: “Hang on a minute…” shot to the door and looked out into the corridor. But there was absolutely nobody there. The door was locked.’ He shrugs. ‘It’s just one of those things. Buildings have memories.’

‘Lots of colleagues over the years have reported footsteps in that corridor, or glimpsing someone moving past the doorway, and then they look and there’s nobody out there’

As with so many ghosts, this one seems tied to a specific location. ‘Lots of colleagues over the years have reported footsteps in that corridor, or glimpsing someone moving past the doorway, and then they look and there’s nobody out there. When we’ve had ghost hunters stay in the building overnight, sometimes they’ve reported similar experiences.’

Something old: The Three Living and the Three Dead
For us, ghosts are spirits that appear and disappear and can pass through solid objects. As one goes further back into history, however, they become more solid, more physical. The Three Living and the Three Dead is a medieval zombie story. Whilst not exactly a local tale, it has local connections: at Longthorpe Tower we have a medieval wall-painting painting that Stuart describes as: ‘probably one of the most remarkable and well-preserved depictions of that story’. The story itself, told and retold in many variations, was hugely popular during the 14th and 15th centuries as a reflection on mortality – and as a warning…

Mediaeval zombies, Longthorpe style…

One day, three proud kings were out hunting boar. Riding ahead of their retainers, they became lost in a mist, which separated them from the main hunting party. Then, emerging from the dark edge of the forest, they saw three figures. They walked stiffly, as if barely able to move their limbs, and as the figures lumbered closer, the kings drew back in horror. They were dead men, each in a different state of decay. One, only recently deceased, had grey flesh and blue lips. Another was rotting and crawling with maggots. The third – an emaciated cadaver with staring, lidless eyes – was little more than a skeleton. The kings were terrified, uncertain whether to flee or to stand and fight these horrors. Then the dead addressed them. They were not demons, they said, but the kings’ forefathers, whose memory had been cruelly neglected. Each urged the living to live better lives, and to remember them. ‘Such as you are,’ they said, ‘we once were. Such as we are, you… [cont]