This episode we have a haunted island on the paranormal radar, listener stories from Kat, Rob and Katie and we proudly bring you the second episode of our Whitby adventures in which we discover ghosts, legends and history galore as we return to the cliffs of Whitby … on the trail of Dracula! Click here for to visit the shownotes on the website!
Hi, I'm Lil. And I'm Fitz. And you're listening to Knock Once For Yes. Well, our living room may still be strewn with signs of the end of summer, looking rather like a second-hand camping shop with the yet-to-be-unpacked chaos of our last research road trip to the coast.
But outside, summer is definitely over, and chill, misty mornings and autumn winds are declaring that spooky season is in full swing. So what better time to take you on a journey to track down ghosts, mythical beasts and even vampires in the second installment of our Whitby series. So Fitz, what have we got coming up on today's episode?
Coming up, we have a haunted island on the paranormal radar. We have listener stories from Kat, Rob and Katie. And we proudly bring you the second episode of our Whitby adventures in which we discover ghosts, legends and history galore as we return to the cliffs of Whitby on the trail of Dracula. And if you want to skip ahead to any of these segments, there will be timestamps in the show notes.
But before we get stuck into all of that, we would like to say a huge thank you to our latest patron, Connie Martin.
And as always, we want to say a massive thank you to all of our patrons and coffee supporters, old and new. I know this episode has been a long time coming and this whole series, including the third instalment, which we still have coming up, has been a labour of love. But it's something I've wanted and needed to create for basically 20 years.
So from the bottom of my heart, I am so grateful that you wonderful people have given me the incredible opportunity to create it. Thank you so, so much for making this happen. And I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we have loved making it. But now let's get stuck into the episode. And Fitz, what have you got for us on the Paranormal Radar?
Our Paranormal Radar story this episode is brought to us by Sky News, who asked the question, would you buy a six-acre island near Plymouth with a private beach and 15 ghosts? And we say, do you even need to ask? Drake's Island, named for Sir Francis Drake, lies a mere 600 yards from Plymouth.
It became a fortified defence against the French and Spanish fleets in 1549 and continued its role in defending the southern coast for several hundred years and through both world wars, all the way until 1963 when the War Office finally vacated it. The island houses a barracks and other buildings from the Napoleonic era and even artillery batteries including several 18th century cannons.
It has changed hands a couple of times since 1963, first being used as a youth adventure training centre from 1964 until 1989, which sounds super cool. It was then bought by a businessman that wanted to turn it into a hotel complex. It was most recently bought for £6 million in 2018, with the aim of opening the island up as both a museum and a hotel.
but it seems that the renovation costs are more than the current owner is able to invest in the site, as he has suggested a figure of £25 million will be required to complete his vision. He has, therefore, put the site back on the market. There is no guide price that I can currently find, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was now a little north of the £6 million paid in 2018.
Sadly, even without the £25 million for the renovations, Drake's Island is a little out of our budget, as I would love to get my hands on it. Not only is it a really cool little island, but it is also, apparently, really haunted.
The story claims that there are 15 ghosts on the island, and after looking at a few articles, I found that number repeated several times, but I haven't managed to find out exactly how that figure was reached. There does though seem to be a lot of paranormal activity reported there.
I found a story from Plymouth Live in 2021 when they spoke to the steward of the island who recounted a few of the experiences that people have had, as well as some handy hints if you would like to experience them for yourself.
The activity is reported to range from uneasy feelings and sounds like whistling and coughing, even including voices from within a shuttered-up building, to more physical encounters with people being touched and having things tug on their clothing.
I even wonder if our old friend Graham the bum-pinching ghost that I talked about way back in some of our earlier episodes has found his way onto the island as some people have experienced having their bottoms pinched and their bra straps pinged.
The story, which I will of course link in the show notes as usual, also features a couple of photos taken by paranormal investigators and staff on the island, including one that they have termed the White Lady. I would be interested to hear what you all think of it. I have double-checked, and they are still offering visits for paranormal investigators.
So, if you would like to visit the 15 ghosts of Drake's Island for yourself, you can do so. And, as I mentioned earlier, the steward had some helpful hints to encourage the island's spooks to make an appearance. First, don't forget to greet them on your arrival. And second, wear a lot of perfume.
Apparently, some of the island's disembodied residents can't get enough of the smell, and they will pay particular attention to anyone wearing it. And the stronger, the better.
I mean, having a haunted island is pretty much the dream. So, you know, if anybody wants to chip in, I think we could raise 30 million on it.
I think with the number of listeners we have, that might be a slightly unreasonable ask, but you would all be welcome if we got it.
Maybe. Definitely. Well, the photo is a bit odd. Basically, it's a person in a fairly dark area of the island in a building, I think. And to start with, it looks like one of those photos you take in low light where the exposure ends up being quite long because of the low lighting conditions.
And it looked like the person was moving and they'd left like a trail in their wake that you get, like I say, with the long exposures because the shutter is open on the camera for so long. But then I looked at it again and realised that if that was the case, the smear of movement would be the same colour as the person.
And this person is wearing like a red top. There's not even a smear. It's like two distinct things.
And that can happen with long exposures. Although, yeah, you would expect more of a smear of movement. But the figure behind the person is quite bright white, actually, isn't it?
And you can see why they've called it the White Ladies.
definitely so i don't on second glance i don't think it is the movement of the first person because yeah the colors would be the same as what they were wearing and they're definitely not the person is wearing like a red top and this figure is yeah just all bright white having said that is it you know something else in the building that we can't see because we're not there i don't know but yeah i'd be really interested to get everybody's thoughts on it go and give it a look
Well, it's time now for our first listener story, and this one is from Kat.
I grew up in a 1930s semi-detached council house. My parents eventually bought it and my mother still lives there. My sister and I were moved from a bedroom at the back of the house to a practically pointless box bedroom at the front of the house, and I hated it. I was around five years old when we moved into the room, and from day one, I felt weird about it.
I can't say that I definitely saw what I saw from that first night, but I remember seeing a black, solid shadow figure. My older sister would sometimes sleep at her friend's house. I always dreaded it when she did this. I remember the feeling of terror igniting in my bones whenever she announced she was staying out. I'd cry and beg for her to stay.
I didn't want to be left alone in that room with that thing. The shadow man would appear whether my sister was there or not, but it wouldn't leave the corner if I had someone in the room with me. Every night, I'd climb the squeaky bunk bed ladder, get into my bed, and my sister would give me ten minutes of light because she couldn't sleep with the light on.
I'd pray that she'd fall asleep and it would be left on. To my disappointment, the light would switch off. I would immediately look into that right-hand corner of the room and it would appear. It started as a sort of thick black splodge, and it would grow taller until it fully formed into a long, hooded black figure.
It didn't have a face, and I don't remember seeing any extremities like arms, hands or feet. It was just there, tall and looming. It felt like it was staring at me.
I would hide under my covers every night, and I remember sweating profusely because I was so afraid, and probably also being roasting under the covers, but I was too terrified of the shadow man to dare sleep without the covers over my head. I'd mentioned it to my sister and my mum in my childhood and was told, you were dreaming.
I can assure you that I was wide awake for most of my childhood and to this day at 36, I struggle to sleep without some form of light.
And thank you to Kat for sharing that story. And I must say Kat, as you described in that sort of second to last paragraph about the splodgy black figure that kind of grew taller until it turned into a looming black figure. I've seen something extremely similar to that. In my mind, I was imagining what I saw as you described it.
That's exactly it. I was sitting here reading it thinking, this is exactly what Fitz described to me when we did the radio experiment in our house. It was a weird experiment involving a radio and a black mirror. But what Fitz saw at the top of our stairs, just outside where we're recording right now. Yeah.
basically i was sat at the bottom of the stairs and those of you that follow the show will know a little bit about the radio experiment so normally we'll be blindfolded and we're listening to a radio tuned between stations so kind of like a sort of spirit box estes method but not switching between stations just tuned to white noise effectively
But this time we thought we would try doing it whilst looking into a black mirror.
And... It did not go well.
Well, I think it kind of went well. Quite a lot of things happened. I was getting a lot of responses. And that was one of the things I saw in the mirror. I could kind of see the stairwell reflected behind me. But bear in mind, it was very dark. Um, but I could see the top of the stairs and it just looked like something just kind of appeared out of the floor.
Like there was, um, almost like there was a lift or like those stage lifts where somebody can appear on a stage in the theater from out of the floor. It just kind of slowly grew until it looked like a figure that must've been a good seven feet tall.
in a black cloak that or it was just a very indistinct outline but yeah basically as cat described just like this tall hooded type of thing no features no hands no feet just this kind of robe yeah that's how you described it to me yeah and i was a little bit uncomfortable when i saw it a little bit you were freaking out
He was freaking out, listeners. And rightly so. I think you did actually ask me at one point to stick my head around the door and see if I could see it with my own eyes. I could not. It was only appearing in the mirror. The one thing I will say, and we never really know...
We watch these ghost hunting shows and they use all this equipment and, you know, it kind of sounds scientific, but really we don't know what we're measuring. But we do have an EMF detector in the house. It's actually like a business, like a workman's EMF. It's not a ghost hunting EMF detector. It's what you'd use as a builder to literally detect EMF in a house for...
you know if you're doing renovations or something for reasons but you know it's a professional one I should say it's not one that's made for a ghost hunting market so we literally have previously gone all around our house just out of interest when we got it to see if there were any areas of our house that had particularly high EMF it's not a particularly it's not an especially old house so most things were fine they weren't giving off any high readings that I would need to be worried about except the top of the stairs
yeah that was i mean obviously we're talking electromagnetic waves and they they're not necessarily bound by floors or walls oh no and there's a very practical reason why there's high emf at the top of the stairs is because the the top of the stairs is directly above our um fuse cabinet and the fuse cabinet is the only place in the house that gives up any significant emf and it's actually quite high because it's an old fuse board
Yeah, I mean, you still have to be fairly close to it for it to give you a reading. Otherwise, I think the only other places were around electrical sockets. Where you'd expect. Things like that. Where you'd normally expect to have some kind of electromagnetic radiation from large power sources.
But because that landing is directly above the fuse board, I've always assumed that that's why there would be high EMF there. I mean, I don't know how EMF travels, but it just makes sense. It's literally directly above it. So is that, you know, then you ask the question, it's kind of a chicken and egg situation. Is the EMF causing weird activity at the top of our stairs?
Is it the other way around? Is it just a complete coincidence? Yeah.
It does seem that a lot of the things we experience in the house are centred around that area. Definitely. Not all of them, but quite a lot of it is. And again, you might say, is that affecting us and causing us to experience things? But Not to say that this rules it out. No. But the thing that makes me think that that's possibly not the case is we tend to be somewhere else.
Yeah.
And looking at that area when we experience things.
Yeah. As in this situation, you weren't at the top of the stairs. We were elsewhere looking up and having, again, in a kind of nerdy way, tested our entire house. Yeah.
for high EMF like we literally ran around and tested every area the place where Fitz was sitting basically in the behind the front door there's no EMF there there's not even anything electrical there's no electrical sockets or anything like that where he was sitting
I mean, there was a light close by, but at the time it switched off. So, yeah, weird. But yeah, definitely that description really rang a bell for me.
Yeah. And I'm really sorry that you had to deal with that for your entire childhood. That must have been terrifying. Fitz was terrified when he saw it. So I can only imagine what that must have been like as a child.
I'm normally quite relaxed about these sorts of things. But yeah, that was a little bit unnerving. I won't mind admitting to that.
Understandably so. Well, thank you so much again to Kat for sharing their experience with us. And it's time now to move on to our next story. And this one was kindly shared with us by Rob from the How Haunted podcast.
In 2008, I moved into a new house. It wasn't a house with any kind of history as far as I know. It was a 1970s-ish terraced house in Wallsend, six or so miles outside of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Wallsend is named as such because it's the location of the Roman fort, which was the last fort at the eastern end of Hadrian's Wall.
It was at a noticeably reduced price, and when my girlfriend and I spoke with the estate agent, it became clear why the price was less than expected. The owner was a man with two daughters, and his wife had just died of cancer. He couldn't afford to pay his mortgage, so he needed to sell, even for under market value.
Otherwise, he'd default on his payments and would have it taken off him and receive no money at all. When I first moved in, the place seemed to have some kind of atmosphere. I felt unwelcome at times in my new home. I regularly felt watched. One weekend, I was sat in the living room watching TV alone.
The staircase was behind the wall upon which the TV was mounted, so looking at the TV I could see a doorway off to the left which led to the staircase and the front door of the house. The door was open and as I watched telly I saw the light come on at the bottom of the stairs, clearly turned on by my girlfriend who was upstairs.
I heard her come down the stairs, but she didn't appear at the bottom. What are you doing? I said out loud. I got no response, but the light went out. Just as I was about to stand up and go and find out what she was doing, I happened to glance to my left, the opposite direction to the bottom of the stairs.
and saw that in the back garden, my girlfriend was stood talking to our neighbour over the back garden fence. So, when the light came on, someone clearly descended the staircase and the light was switched off. I was in the house alone.
Thank you so much to Rob for sharing that experience with us. It's a really interesting one. But even more interestingly and kind of weirdly, we literally just the other day had something quite similar happen here at Coffee HQ.
Yeah, we were talking before this story about the amount of activity that centered around the staircase in our house. So that kind of ties in. But this one was actually me going down the staircase and something happening nearby.
So I was upstairs in the studio working and I could hear Lil, you know, pottering about working, doing things, going into her room from like her office, walking on the landing into the bedroom and just general doing things in a room noises. And that carried on as I walked downstairs and I went into the kitchen and there was Lil making her lunch or a cup of coffee or something.
And I was like, you're here. And I was like, yes, a lot of it. And I had to canter with because I was listening to you doing things upstairs whilst I was upstairs. And then on my way downstairs, you were still doing it. And you can't have passed me on the stairs without me noticing. So something weird happened.
Yeah. And I'd actually been down there quite a while. So it had been a long time since I'd been upstairs. Oh, no, that was it.
Because I heard you come upstairs and do things. Yeah. And I hadn't, basically.
Yeah.
Because, yeah, you were downstairs doing something. And I heard you come upstairs. I heard you walk into the office, then into the bedroom and do things. Yeah.
Yeah, but that never happened because I never came upstairs.
I think that's actually the reason I went downstairs because I was making like a slow cooker meal and I thought I'm not going to do that while Lil's in the kitchen because we're going to get in each other's way.
That's right. You were trying not to interrupt what I was doing.
So I waited until I heard her come upstairs before I went down to carry on doing what I needed to do. But when I went down, she was there. So yeah, that was weird.
Never came upstairs. Don't know what you heard. And now, you know, the thing is, Fitz does often quite often hear things going on in our bedroom and in the office. And, you know, I have to be in there like all day alone with whatever's making these noises.
Yeah, we've actually got an interesting story about that. We'll have to tell you about that at some point.
We'll save that for another day.
Yeah, because that's a corker.
But thank you again to Rob. And please go and check out How Haunted podcast. We only recently discovered this. Thank you to listener Laura for introducing us to How Haunted. And we're loving it. And I'm pretty sure that if you like our podcast, you're going to like the How Haunted podcast as well.
If you want my personal recommendation for something to go and kick off spooky season with, go and check out Rob's episode on Highgate Cemetery. It's absolutely fascinating and I think you'll love it.
I will of course put a link in the show notes to the How Haunted podcast, so do check it out. And our last story of the day comes from uncanny and gothic fiction author Katie McCall, who got in touch with us to share this real ghostly encounter from her childhood that inspired a lifelong fascination with the supernatural.
Way back in the mists of time, I grew up in the northeast of England, where the ancient cobbled streets are steeped in history and strange folklore. It must have been around 1997 when I was playing in the garden of our old family home with one of my school friends. Back then, our garden overlooked acres of farmland, stretching off into the distance.
In the field beyond our garden fence, the crops grew tall and would have been at least waist high if a tall adult walked through them. My school friend and I were attempting to build a tree house in the corner of the garden when something caught our eye. With its arms outstretched, a figure was moving rapidly across the adjacent field, clothed in a very bizarre outfit.
a long-sleeved brown tunic with a large hood pulled over their face. It looked as if they were wearing a strange fancy dress costume. Stranger still, they were skimming along the top of the cropline rather than walking through it. They looked as if they were running at an unearthly speed, almost as if someone had pressed the fast-forward button on a videotape. We had never seen anything like it.
Terrified, my friend and I fled back into the house. Inside, my mum grew alarmed when she saw how frightened we were. Our garden led out to a road and she assumed the worst, thinking that a passerby had perhaps tried to enter the garden when we were playing or done something else to frighten us.
Imagine her confusion when we garbled our explanation to her about the strange tall figure in the crop field. We refused to go back outside until she checked that the coast was clear, which she gallantly agreed to do, only to see an empty pasture beyond the garden fence. There was nobody there. Years later, we learned that the field behind our old house had a story of its own to tell.
In 875 AD, when St Cuthbert's monks were fleeing from Viking raids, they carried his body and holy relics across the northeast of England in a desperate search for sanctuary. With their bounty of undefended treasures, monasteries had become easy targets for the Danish invaders, and Lindisfarne Monastery was no exception.
On their escape from Lindisfarne, the monks faced months of hardship, the brutal northern weather and the constant threat of Viking raiders. After a long, exhausting journey, they finally buried Cuthbert on the Durham Peninsula. Its location was deemed a suitable and safe final resting place for their beloved saint, offering protection from invaders.
The street we lived on was named St Cuthbert's Road and had been named as such because the monks had apparently camped out on the land next to the road itself on their way to Durham. Delving far back into our area's history, we also learned that the level of the ground would have been significantly higher in centuries gone by.
Over the years, it had been dug away to unveil fresher soil for the farmland. Was the figure in the field a glimpse back into the past? They say that ghosts are an imprint of heightened emotion or a retelling of a person's trauma.
Perhaps we saw one of Cuthbert's monks fleeing in fear across the pasture with his monk's habit pulled over his head in a bid to hide from the Viking invaders or protect his weary head from the incessant northern downpours. It's a sight that I'll never forget.
And thank you to Katie for sharing that story with us. And you can tell she's an author because I had the perfect mental image of that ghost, arms outstretched, floating across the field at sort of super speed, because we've seen things that are like that as well, that happen like they're fast forward.
We have. But I have to say, I do a lot of walking around the countryside near where we live, a lot of which is crop fields, and that image is going to live with me forever. So thanks for that, Katie. Every time I'm out on my own having a good old jaunt through the countryside and I come across a field of crops, that ghostly monk skimming over the top of the crops is just going to pop into my head.
Definitely. I'm certainly going to imagine that next time we drive past a field. And that will be like tomorrow because we're surrounded by fields.
But I also now really want to visit St. Cuthbert's Road. Oh, I love these stories. When you find the history that goes with the witness experience, that is incredible. And yes, I mean, the monks fleeing from the Viking raiders would have been an incredibly heightened emotional time. They would have been terrified. It really was a race for their lives.
So I can completely understand how some of that history would continue to reverberate through the centuries. Yeah.
Indeed. And you obviously lived in quite an interesting area because being near Lindisfarne as well, I really need to visit Lindisfarne. I've never been.
I have been, but it was many years ago. And it's definitely on our list of places that we really need to visit for the podcast at some point.
We weren't even that far away when we were at Whitby. No. It leads us almost back to the Whitby thing, because this is not within a quick walk, but it's close by.
It's only just a little bit further up the coast, though, and maybe next year or the year after we could get that little bit further and visit Lindisfarne. I would love to visit, and I think you'd really enjoy it, Fitz.
Of that, I have absolutely no doubt. It looks amazing. So thank you again to Katie for sharing that story. And if you would like to check out some of Katie's work, she recommends that you visit her on either Instagram or threads at Katie McCall underscore author. And we will, of course, be putting links on the show notes on the website so that you can check it out straight from there.
Thank you so much to everybody who shared their stories with us today. Your ghostly experiences are, as you know, the lifeblood of the show. So if you have a story to share with us, we would absolutely love to hear it.
Well, that may have been the last listener story of this episode, but it's by no means the end of the show, for we are about to embark on a spooky adventure through the ancient streets of Whitby, turning up all kinds of stories, myths and legends. So grab a hot drink and a cozy blanket to keep you warm against any unearthly chills and join us as we go on the Trail of Dracula.
Last episode we left you high on the East Cliff amidst the ruins of Whitby Abbey, looking out at the landscape of the town and harbour beyond, framed by the archway of the Abbey's crumbling west front, as a bright sunny day fades to the gloaming of a spring evening. Today we'll pick up the next chapter of our explorations, but this time we begin high up on the West Cliff,
on a brand new, but distinctly less bright and sunny day.
We wake to glowering skies and rain. Looking out of the French doors of our holiday cottage towards the coast, the grey sea is indistinguishable from the blurry horizon of the equally grey sky.
The dull weather casts the heather and gorse-covered moorland into muted shades of brown as we drive towards Whitby along an undulating road that rises and falls like a fairground ride, causing us some trepidation, us Midlanders being far more used to the pancake-flat expanses of the fens.
A particularly steep incline that has me clutching the dashboard takes us down into Whitby Town, only to abruptly start another climb up to the top of the West Cliff where our day's adventures will begin. Today, we are on the trail of Dracula to explore the parts of Whitby that feature in Bram Stoker's legendary book and discover their history, folklore, ghosts and legends.
And what better place to start than the Royal Crescent, the location the author himself staged during the visits to Whitby that so inspired his famous work. We head for the pavilion car park, just opposite the Royal Crescent, and right on the cliff edge with views across to the abbey over on the east side.
We manage to get one of the parking spots directly overlooking the sea, and as wet and miserable of a day as it is, it's quite tempting to stay for a while, cosied up in the van, watching the steel-coloured waves crash below, and imagining the silhouettes of full-masted ships gliding across the hazy horizon. But we have so much to see.
And if nothing else, the dreary weather sets the perfect backdrop for a gothic horror pilgrimage and ghost tour. But we're not only following the trail of Dracula today, but also the trail of Whitby's ghost stories. Stories that don't always get the attention they deserve from the standard tourist trail maps.
Thousands of people visit Whitby each year and explore the town via one of the many available Dracula trail guides. But what many don't realise is that in the very footsteps of Bram Stoker's fictional story, another layer can be found. A deep layer of Whitby's own ghosts and legends. And today, we're going to be taking on both in tandem. And, of course, dipping into some history along the way.
And we'll start by looking behind us, away from the sea, at the row of tall four and five storey Victorian townhouses that played a part in the most famous vampire story of all time.
One of the lodging houses, No. 6 Royal Crescent, a cream and salmon painted townhouse with a little balcony and views directly out to sea, has a circular blue plaque fixed on the wall to the right of the front door, at the top of a short flight of steps. In the UK, these so-called blue plaques are a mark of historical significance –
And this one reads, Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, stayed here 1890 to 1896. And of course, because it's Whitby, embossed underneath is a small golden ammonite. The lodging house is part of what should have been the crowning jewel in the Victorian holiday development on Westcliff, sitting as it does in a row of similar houses occupying the prime spot.
with unrivalled views out to sea, gardens and promenades at its feet, and the Westcliff Saloon and Theatre just across the road, which would have been a fresh new construction at the time of Stoker's first visit.
On an aerial map of the town, you can see that Royal Crescent is aptly named, the road arcing 180 degrees around a manicured lawn planted with flowerbeds and scattered with benches for taking in the view whilst getting a healthy lungful of sea air.
But from the ground, we can see that the crescent is oddly lopsided, with only 90 degrees of its arc filled in with the guesthouses that sprang up during the town's rise to fame as a 19th century holiday hotspot, and the other half unsatisfyingly empty.
Although the development of holiday accommodation had begun on the West Cliff as early as the 1840s, it really took off when railway mogul George Hudson set his sights on the area. And, with his money and attention on the project, soon the East Crescent and Terrace, the Esplanade, North Terrace and the Grand Royal Hotel sprang into being.
The so-called Railway King, true to his name, added even more impetus to the scheme by carving a small railway line into the cliff face to make it easier to ferry building materials up the steep incline, which was, and still is, named Khyber Pass, after the famous mountain pass in Pakistan that was a vital part of the ancient Silk Road trade route.
But the railway king's reign was cut short when his goals outstretched his means, and he was discovered to have been fudging his finances, owing money that he couldn't repay. He fled abroad for a while to escape his creditors, but was arrested in 1865 and served time in prison for fraud. The railway king's empire fell, and Whitby's Royal Crescent was never finished.
And this is how Bram Stoker would have found the West Cliff in 1890, with its lopsided, unfinished Royal Crescent, but with a freshly built crop of lodging houses, pretty clifftop gardens made for leisurely strolls, and epic views over the historic town. There's a popular story that back in 1890, when Stoker made his first visit to Whitby, the landlady of No.
6 Royal Crescent didn't like her patrons hanging around the house all day, and so sent them off to explore the town. I don't know if this is true or not, but explore Bram Stoker did, taking in all the elements of the West Cliff and the town and harbour below and working them, and a good deal of local lore and legend, into his novels.
Although the landscape of Dracula takes place across multiple locations, which we experience through the collection of letters, diary entries and newspaper cuttings that make up the book, the scenes that take place in Whitby are so evocative. And a big part of that is because, visiting Whitby today, the landscape is not much changed.
Although of course the signs of 21st century life are plain to see, and some landmarks might have been updated or renovated, nearly all the elements he described are still here for us to experience today, and it's possible to follow the adventures of our protagonists through the Whitby landscape almost step by step.
One diary entry in the book that encapsulates so many of the featured locations is the scene where Mina Murray, our brave and yet gentle Victorian heroine, suffers the terror of seeing her best friend attacked by the malevolent Count and makes a midnight dash all the way across town in the depths of night to try and rescue her from his clutches.
Happily for us, her journey on that fateful night happens to hit upon not only many of the places featured in other important scenes in the novel, but also the real haunted hotspots of the town. Whether by accident or design, Stoker plotted a route that passes through the sights of some of Whitby's best ghost stories.
So, let us now join Mina as she wakes suddenly in the dark bedroom of the lodging house that she shares with her friend Lucy, only to find the young woman missing. Suspecting that her friend is sleepwalking again, Mina rushes out into the night to find her and bring her back to safety, as she writes in this chapter of her journal.
The clock was striking one as I was in the crescent, and there was not a soul in sight. I ran along the north terrace, but could see no sign of the white figure which I expected. At the edge of the west cliff above the pier, I looked out over the harbour to the east cliff, in the hope, or fear, I don't know which, of seeing Lucy in our favourite seat.
There was a bright full moon with heavy black driving clouds, which threw the whole scene into a fleeting diorama of light and shade as they sailed across. For a moment or two, I could see nothing, as the shadow of a cloud obscured St Mary's Church and all around it.
Then, as the cloud passed, I could see the ruins of the abbey coming into view, and as the edge of a narrow band of light as sharp as a sword cut moved along, the church and churchyard became gradually visible. Whatever my expectation was, it was not disappointed. But there, on our favourite seat, the silver light of the moon struck a half-reclining figure, snowy white.
The coming of the cloud was too quick for me to see much, for shadow shut down on light almost immediately. But it seemed to me as though something dark stood behind the seat where the white figure shone.
From this passage, and Mina's description of the landscape she passes through, it's generally agreed that the lodging house of his fictional characters was in fact the very same as his real holiday accommodation at Sixth Royal Crescent.
And we can follow Mina's flight along North Terrace, past the modern car park, to the corner of the cliff that overlooks the west pier and harbour below, where Mina looks for her friend.
The view that she describes here is one of the most famous and most photographed in all of Whitby, and also the place where two famous monuments stand testament to the town's history, the Captain Cook statue and the Whalebone Arch, two quintessentially Whitby photo opportunities that can't be missed, but that also reflect a darker side of the town's history.
Both structures, perched on the cliff edge above the steep drop to the harbour below, face the wave-filled expanse of the harbour mouth and the east cliff on the opposite side of town.
And anyone with a photographic eye can appreciate how the tall, imposing Cook Monument, with the stony-faced captain forever gazing determinedly out to sea, creates the perfect foreground to the ruins of the ancient abbey far off in the distance, the cluster of red pantiled roofs crowded together along the face of East Cliff, completing a scene that crushes together a thousand years of history in one shot.
Monuments, plaques and even a museum dedicated to the 18th century explorer Captain Cook, who apprenticed here in Whitby, thread throughout the town. But, as with most early explorers, who so often left trails of native ruin in their wake, I don't know that it's a legacy to be celebrated.
Not one to be forgotten either, though, if only for bearing witness to the past and hopefully learning from the errors of our forebears. But however you feel about the explorer, his statue marks the spot of our first ghost story and serves as a landmark for where witnesses have spotted Whitby's White Wraith.
Directly below the Cook Monument is Whitby Beach and it was from here that one local gentleman encountered the White Wraith at the turn of the century in 1905. At the time the witness was a young man, part of a group of Boy Scouts who were enjoying a campfire on the beach below the part of West Cliff on which the Cook Monument stands.
It was evening but had been a fine day with no rain or mist or bad weather to speak of so the group were surprised when they looked up and saw a misty white figure at the top of the cliff.
clearly discernible as the shape of a person but with no defining features the figure proceeded to float down the cliff face and the youths ran to the spot where they predicted it would land on the beach eager to see what manner of being this was but the moment before the feet should have hit the sand the figure disappeared
Author of the Whitby ghost book, Paul McDermott, was told of a similar encounter during a chance conversation with a visitor who had holidayed in Whitby some years before. Only this witness's experience took place 75 years after the scouts had encountered the White Wraith.
This time, the misty figure appeared in front of the eyes of a baffled man and woman who were walking their dog on the beach just as they passed under the Cook Monument. As before, it was a clear day, with no mist or fog to explain the apparition that floated down the face of West Cliff, once again vanishing the moment before it touched down on the beach.
The woman turned to her partner in amazement wondering if he had seen it too. It seemed he must have as he was busy speeding away from whatever it was as fast as possible and he resolutely refused to discuss what he had seen.
No one seems to know who or what the White Wraith is, or what its connection to the Cook Monument might be, possibly nothing at all, as these cliffs are ancient and have been settled for thousands of years, so who knows what secrets and stories they hold.
But our next story probably does have links to a more recent time in history and takes us just a few paces along the cliff to that other famous monument occupying a rather uncomfortable place in the annals of Whitby's history. A large archway, his placement perfectly frames the dramatic view of the Abbey and St Mary's Church on the rugged East Cliff.
The arch is formed by the lower jaw of a bowhead whale, a testament to Whitby Harbour's days of whale hunting industry.
The whaling that took place here in the 18th and early 19th century wasn't subsistence whaling, it was commercial, and sadly contributed to the population decline of those giants of the sea, evidenced by the end of the industry in Whitby in 1837, when the last whaling vessel returned empty of its quarry. Crewing the whaling vessels of the 18th and early 19th centuries was a treacherous career.
Doubtless, many of the men, and often quite young boys in the enterprise's employ, wouldn't have had a lot of choice in how they earned a living. They would have had to find work wherever work was offered, and many of them probably knew that it was a job they may never come home from.
It's said that it was from the point where the arch stands, high on the west cliff overlooking the harbour and out to the expanse of the North Sea, that wives and children would wait, watching for their sons and husbands to return from the icy waters of Greenland. But often, they didn't return. In fact, sometimes entire ships were lost to the crushing ice fields, never to be seen again.
And our next ghost... may just be connected with this sad history. Over the years, many similar whalebone arches stood throughout the town, and even up to recent decades, one such arch stood in the pretty gardens of Panit Park, home to the town's art gallery and museum. But the park's resident ghost seemed determined to remind visitors of the less attractive history attached to the monument.
Witnesses reported the heartbreaking sight of a young boy who would appear next to the whalebone arch, looking distressed and sometimes even crying uncontrollably. Nobody knew who he was or why he haunted this spot, but understandably, many wondered if his proximity to the whale jaw indicated that his fate involved some terrible tragedy connected to Whitby's whaling days.
and this seems to have been borne out when the archway was removed from the park in recent years and the young apparition immediately stopped his mysterious appearances. We stand in the rain, slightly mesmerised by the view across to St Mary's Church and the Abbey, both buildings that have stood on the headland in some form since the 12th century, a view that's heady in its timelessness.
I have no doubt that Stoker felt the same and we know that he spent a lot of time gazing out at it from his favourite spot on a small rise where today a commemorative bench bears his name. I squint through the mizzle that's rapidly plastering the hood of my cagoule to my cheeks and forehead and try and imagine spotting a night robe clad figure in the churchyard on the east cliff as Mina did.
From this distance, the grand edifices look doll's house sized, and even in bright moonlight, I'm not sure that I could pick out a tiny figure between the shadows of that graveyard. But I guess Mina must have had better eyesight than me, which, to be fair, doesn't take much.
And, as we're about to find out, she must have been an awful lot fitter than me as well, as she proceeded to run full pelt from one side of the town to the other and up the 199 steps that snake up the side of the East Cliff. But first, it's time to descend the West Cliff, making our way, as Mina did, down Khyber Pass.
But we need to make a quick stop on our way to check out a feature that is marked on every Dracula trail map. The Screaming Tunnel.
Tourist maps will eagerly tell you that the creepy looking little tunnel cut through the side of Khyber Pass is a hideout of Count Dracula. Somewhere he lures his victims who scream as they meet their fate. Hence the name, the Screaming Tunnel. It does look rather creepy. It's a claustrophobically narrow, stone-lined channel that cuts right through the cliff.
The shine of the rain-slick flagstones does nothing to alleviate the inky black shadows within, and tendrils of ivy hang from the ceiling and archway, swaying wetly in the breeze. In fact, though, this is not a hideout of the Count. It's actually another legacy of George Hudson, the railway king, who built it as a shortcut to the harbour below for the transport of building materials.
Once this is known, it becomes quite obvious that it looks exactly like a railway tunnel, just on a miniature scale. Today, it's a footpath that forms a shortcut into the town, down a steep flight of steps. It actually doesn't feature in Dracula at all, but despite the misplaced name, it is haunted.
Being such a useful shortcut up the cliff straight to the hotels and holiday lodgings, the tunnel has often been used by visitors returning to their accommodation after an evening in the town. But locals know that it's not somewhere you want to be after dusk.
Many residents report feeling an eerie presence when walking through the tunnel and still more tell of witnessing a dark shadowy shape appearing from nowhere and briefly blocking out the light at the end before vanishing. Maybe the spookiest story though comes from a couple who were holidaying in Whitby and used the tunnel as a shortcut to and from their hotel a few times during their stay.
On one occasion, the woman of the couple experienced exactly what so many witnesses before her had done. She noticed the dark figure of a man at the end of the passage and was startled because she knew that no one had entered the cut-through ahead of them.
When she mentioned it to her husband he brushed it off and said that it must just be another pedestrian who had come up the steps on the other side, changed their mind and started back down again. But when they emerged out on the other side there was no one else to be seen anywhere and certainly no one descending the steps on the other side.
The next time they used the shortcut, the husband chuckled when he felt his wife grab his hand as they passed through the tunnel. He had no fear of the tunnel, shadowy figures or otherwise, but he supposed she must still be feeling frightened from her previous experience if she felt the need for this physical reassurance.
So he tried to make light of the situation, asking if she saw any spooky dark figures today. He stopped chuckling when he heard his wife's voice behind him in the darkness say, Pardon, I didn't hear you. In fact, she was several paces behind him and definitely not close enough to have been in physical contact with him. So who or what had just been holding his hand?
Mina describes that she flew down the steep steps to the pier, indicating that she probably didn't traverse the Screaming Tunnel, but took the main route down Khyber Pass, as we do now, passing delicious-smelling chippies and coffee shops on the way and emerging onto Battery Parade, where a battery of protective cannon was erected in the 18th century and the pier that Mina mentions.
Whitby actually has four piers, and although visitors can promenade along them, none are the kind of wide leisure piers full of donut booths, candy floss and helter-skelters such as you might find at Brighton, Bournemouth or Cromer. These are principally functional piers, constructed to provide safe harbour and ease of passage for Whitby's fishing and shipping fleet and any seaborne visitors.
The furthest back into the River Mau is a stubby pier behind which now sits the lifeboat station. It's called Fish Pier and it's aptly named. Even today, it's stacked with worn-looking crab and lobster pots in a timeless scene familiar to every fishing town.
Downstream of this and nearer the harbour mouth is thought to be the oldest pier, which has existed since at least the 1500s according to written records, but was probably around even earlier than that. A little sandy beach has formed in the crook between this pier and the East Cliff, known interchangeably as Tate Hill Sands and Collier's Hope.
And this will become important later in our story, but for now we turn our attention to the more modern western east piers, relatively modern that is, as they would have certainly been in situ by Bram Stoker's time, albeit without the extra pier extenders we see today, popularly compared to the mandibles of some giant insect that sweep out into the sea, guiding ships into the great mouth of the river Esk.
Also present during the time of the author's visits were the two lighthouses that capped the ends of both piers, the 73-foot-tall West Pier Lighthouse, having been built in 1831, and the shorter 55-foot East Pier Lighthouse, which was completed in 1855.
since which time the pair have stood sentinel over Whitby's harbour, providing safe passage for seafarers, with, of course, the hard work of the town's lighthouse keepers, one of whom, it seems, may have never left. I imagine Mina and Lucy strolling along the pier after one of their days exploring, and wonder if it looks much different than it would have in Bram Stoker's time.
the white-painted wrought iron railing and black and gold-gilded lampposts wouldn't look out of place in a Victorian landscape. Apparently, during the summer months and warmer weather, visitors can go into the lighthouse at the end of the pier, ascending clockwise up the 81 steps to the octagonal white lantern room, just as the then-princess Victoria did in 1834 on a royal visit to Whitby.
But today is not a warmer weather day and the door to the tower looks firmly closed. I'm not sure I would have fancied experiencing the balcony outside the lantern room in today's inclemencies anyway. The waves whip a white foam around the sandstone base of the pier and the wind tries relentlessly to snatch away the now very crumpled map that I have clutched tightly in my hand.
Against the brooding sky, the lighthouse looks ripe for a haunting. And a haunting it does indeed have.
Of course, these days, lighthouses have electric lights and are often automated. But this lighthouse's ghost hails from the days that the life-saving signal needed to be lit and tended by hand.
And one day, as dusk was beginning to creep in and the pelting rain of an incoming storm already blurred the darkening skies, the West Lighthouse's keeper hurried towards the tower, knowing lives would depend on his signal that night. The tempest grew and he battled his way through rains sent horizontal by swelling winds and
By the time he reached the base of the lighthouse steps, his clothes were soaked and dripping as he toiled up those 81 steps with grim determination, leaving a watery trail behind him. He got the lamp lit, as his duty demanded, and started to head back down the steps to find a warm fire and dry clothes.
But, tired and distracted as he was, he didn't notice how slick the steps were from the rain he had shed all the way up them. and before he had time to realise the slippery danger, his feet went out from under him, and down he fell, finding his fateful end on the cold steps of the lighthouse's staircase.
It's claimed that witnesses have seen the apparition of the unfortunate lighthouse keeper hurrying towards the tower just as he did on that fateful stormy night. Some say they have seen him doggedly making his last journey up the steps to light the lamp, forever replaying his last crucial but deadly task.
This is the version of the story told in many guidebooks and town trails, but ask the local ghost tour guides who have been stomping these streets for years, or consult their books at least, and they tell a slightly different version.
According to Paul McDermott's The Whitby Ghost Book and James J. Brown's The Original Ghost Walk of Whitby, the real story came from a young girl who visited the lighthouse with her mother in the 1950s. The pair were climbing the long winding staircase when the girl stopped in her tracks at seeing the prostrate form of a severely ill or injured man lying across the stairs halfway up.
He was wearing seaman's clothes and she could clearly see that he had only one arm. She was absolutely baffled when her mother simply urged her on up the stairs, expecting of course for her parent to rush to the man's aid, but she quickly realised that no one else but her could see him.
Paul McDermott writes that he came across this story when he read a letter published in the Whitby Gazette written by this very girl, only now an adult, describing her strange experience in the lighthouse.
He adds that he looked into this further and was actually able to discover there was in previous years a one-armed man who worked at the lighthouse and sadly suffered a heart attack and died right in the middle of the long staircase.
James J. Brown notes in his retelling that when the girl explained to her mother why she had stopped on the stairs and what she had seen, the mother realised straight away that what her daughter witnessed was not of the living, as she personally knew of the one-armed keeper, who had tragically died on those stairs some years before. Which version of this, if any, is true, we may never know.
But stories like this, more often than not, grow from a grain of truth. So if you're ever passing by Whitby's West Pier, when the skies are heavy with storm, keep an eye out for a dark huddled figure hurrying towards the lighthouse at the end of the pier, and maybe glance up at the white lantern room in case any shadowy figures are moving around up there.
But now we must leave the promenade and follow Mina past the bandstand and the fish market towards the Red Swing Bridge.
It's impossible to know just how long there has been a bridge on this spot at Whitby. The earliest written records date to the 14th century. But as these records mention trying to raise funds for bridge repairs, that could very well mean that by this time the existing structure was already quite old.
It's certainly likely there's been a bridge here or in the vicinity for as long as Whitby has been settled, as for centuries there was no other way to cross between the west and east cliffs without taking to the water.
It was only as recently as 1980 that an alternative bridge further up river was constructed that meant people and traffic could cross from one side of the harbour to the other without detouring all the way over into the next town.
For many years, at least since the 18th century but probably as early as the 16th, a drawbridge spanned the river here, raising and lowering its leaves each time a ship required entrance to the upper harbour. These drawbridges caused a few problems and seemed to sustain persistent damage from ships passing through them.
Vessels would collide with the raised leaves and counterweights when passing through, and it was common practice to tie boats up to the bridge supports, which put the whole structure under strain.
The drawbridge design was also too narrow to allow bigger vessels to pass through, including some ships that had been built in Whitby's Upper Harbour only for their first voyage to be cut short upon discovering that their shipbuilders had made them too wide to ever leave.
In 1746, shipbuilder Benjamin Coates constructed a vessel in the upper harbour that ended up being several inches too wide to pass through the gap in the raised drawbridge. Incredibly, in realising this, he actually petitioned to be allowed to chip away at the bridge supports to create a gap wide enough for the ship to pass through. We can only hope that his request was denied.
But by the time Bram Stoker and therefore Mina visited the town, a new swing bridge had been installed. And although today we will walk across a slightly wider and electric-powered swing bridge than the one Stoker walked across, it doesn't look too terribly different to the one the author would recognise from his visits.
Even in today's modern times, the vehicle and foot traffic of Whitby are at the mercy of the sea and its vessels. And as we approach the cheerfully red-painted bridge, a crowd and queue of traffic waits patiently at its foot as the leaves swing open gently and slowly to allow a small fishing boat to pass through.
I imagine that for residents needing to cross this way regularly, this must get somewhat annoying. And I can see with my own eyes why there are reports of severe bottlenecks at the bridge in high summer when the tourist season is in full swing, as it's a very narrow point to funnel all the traffic and pedestrians of Whitby from one side to the other.
But, not being local, or here in high season, I'm lucky enough in my blissful ignorance to be able to relish watching the little boat chug through, wondering how the crew feel about the assembled crowd gawking at their passage, and imagining Stoker standing right here on this spot.
Perhaps he was writing Lucy and Mina's adventures in his head while he waited for the swinging arms of the bridge to come slowly, inchingly, together once more. It seems odd to think I'm standing here watching the same scene as so many people before me. A very distinctly Whitby activity that's been repeated over and over again for hundreds and hundreds of years. And then the boat is through.
The assembled crowd is released to go on their way and the spell is broken. Crossing at last, we find ourselves in what many think of as the old part of Whitby, the cliff where locals continued to live and work and ply their trade whilst the wealthy Victorian tourists and their upmarket lodging houses rapidly spread over the west cliff.
The streets here are narrow and run warren-like down to the water in the old pier on one side and up to the base of the cliff and the abbey steps on the other. Shops, cafes, pubs, houses and museums are crammed cheek by jowl into what's actually quite a small space at the foot of the East Cliff.
But you could easily lose hours, even days, exploring all the nooks and crannies and alleys, not to mention the fascinating array of shops. Their vibrant and eclectic scents and window displays doing an excellent job of distracting me from my task. But I pull my attention back to the map and Mina's journey.
She doesn't describe the route she took to reach the abbey steps, but the most direct way would either be along Church Street with its many jet shops, or the narrower Sandgate. Either route would have taken our heroine past the market square and old town hall, where we must pause to meet another of Whitby's ghosts.
Turning onto the market square today from Sandgate, the area bustles with shoppers, tramping over smooth, well-worn cobblestones that look like they have a few hundred years' worth of stories to tell. Customers of a nearby cafe are seated around an area paved with wide, heavy flagstones, enjoying their drinks in the shadow of the 18th century town hall.
At the centre of the square, a rectangular building perches atop four sturdy masonry corner blocks and a series of more delicate stone columns, leaving the undercroft open on all sides to create a covered area for market traders. Or, as today, a gaggle of high-vis jacketed schoolchildren eating their sandwiches.
Above the undercroft, a pretty Venetian window is set into the warm yellow stone under a gable roof, and atop the roof sits a white clock turret, capped with a gilded dome and weathervane. It all looks very quaint in the daylight,
But I wonder what kind of atmosphere this place would have after dark, when footsteps would echo loudly on the cobblestones, and the town hall, crouched over its leg-like columns, would cast a heavy shadow across the square. I feel like it would be very easy to see dark figures flit between those columns from the corner of your eye.
But in fact, the ghostly encounter one man had here in the 1950s was rather more tangible. The local gentleman involved was at that time employed in a job whose title is likely to elicit stifled giggles these days, namely that of knocker-upper. And no, it's probably not what you think.
He was employed by the railway company, and his job was to walk the streets of Whitby with a long pole, tapping on the upstairs bedroom windows of employees to wake them up in time for work. A job that necessitated being out and about before everyone else, when the streets were still dark, empty and quiet.
One morning he was going about his task, turning from the market square onto Church Street, when he noticed a man wearing a billowing black cape who seemed to be speeding towards him.
Before the railway employee even had time to think, the unexplained figure was nearly upon him in a swirl of black cloak, and the unfortunate local was knocked right off his feet by what felt like a tremendous blast of air.
The impact, if that is indeed what it was, didn't alter the caped stranger's trajectory one jot, and the figure swept on towards Sandgate, where, to the witness's shock, he vanished into thin air.
And this isn't the only resident ghost of the area either, as one local ghost tour guide was to discover, to his surprise, when he was unexpectedly given a brand new ghost story to add to his collection by several patrons of his tour.
James J. Brown describes in his book The Original Ghost Walk of Whitby how he used to end his tours of an evening outside a blind alley known as Sounder's Yard, which was just off the market square, and a few paces from an 18th century pub called the Black Horse Inn.
At the end of one tour, one of his patrons approached and told him that the group had been followed for the whole tour by the spirit of a man wearing a flat cap. and he informed the guide there could be found a picture of this man in the Black Horse pub.
The tour guide had heard this kind of thing before, and whilst he didn't discount it, he didn't think much more of it, until something even stranger happened at the end of a ghost walk with a different group some months later.
On this occasion the tour guide was finishing up the walk in front of Sander's yard as usual and was rather taken aback by the unexpectedly enthusiastic round of applause that he received. Unsure what had been deserving of such a lively response his bafflement was soon answered when a patron approached him and asked How did you do that? Do what? replied the confused guide.
The patron explained that the group had seen an old man wearing a flat cap walk out of the shadows at the end of the tour and stand behind the guide as though listening to his speech. Then, just as the guide was wrapping up, the figure vanished into thin air before everyone's eyes.
The delighted crowd had just assumed it was a theatrical effect, added to give the tour a spooky flourish, and erupted into appreciative applause. but of course the guide had seen nothing of what they had witnessed and had no idea what they were talking about. Except that whatever had occurred, he had had nothing to do with it.
If that hadn't rattled and befuddled the tour guide quite enough for one night, the patron, having congratulated him on achieving the best special effect he'd ever seen, had one more bomb to drop when he asked, ''Did you put a picture of that man in the cap behind the bar of the Black Horse pub on purpose?''
The guide can only gape and wonder over the irony that his ghost tour may have been attended by an actual ghost, and he missed it completely.
Putting the bustling market square behind us, it's time to head back into the pages of Dracula. We walk along Church Street in the direction of the famous 199 Steps,
But before we begin our climb to catch up with Mina on her quest to rescue Lucy, we must take a short detour to Tate Hill Sands and a different chapter of Dracula in which Stoker's story weaves together real-life events with his own imagination and a healthy dollop of local folklore.
Nearing the end of Church Street, the cobbled road veers to the right and begins to slope upwards as it begins the ascent up East Cliff. But we carry on straight ahead, squeezing down a narrow gaff between a pub called the Broad Inn and the Whitby Jet Heritage Centre, emerging at the top of a short flight of stone steps that take us down onto Tate Hill Pier.
This pier is much shorter and plainer than the newer East and West Piers, a nod to its much older and more humble beginnings.
There are no wrought iron lamps, railings or lighthouses here, just a broad, sturdy stone pier jutting out into the harbour, a pile of lobster pots at one end and a small sandy beach known as Collier's Hope nestled in the elbow-like crook where it joins the base of East Cliff. The name Collier's Hope hails from the days when coal-carrying vessels known as Colliers would offload their cargo here.
but it's also served as a safe haven for many a ship seeking refuge from raging storms over the centuries, including one that made it from the front page of the Whitby Gazette newspaper straight into the pages of Dracula, the Dimitri of Narva, or, as Bram Stoker calls it in his novel, the Dimita of Varna.
Through journal entries and cuttings of the fictional Daily Graph newspaper, Stoker paints an atmosphere of expectant tension, as at the end of a sultry summer's day, a great storm starts to brew.
In a clever juxtaposition, we have the lightness and innocence of happy holidaymakers making day trips to nearby tourist attractions such as Mulgrave Woods and Robin Hood's Bay, whilst off the coast, dark clouds begin to gather. Old salts squint at the horizon from their favourite weather-watching spots on the East Cliff and warn of something vicious rolling in.
And, as readers, we understand that those gathering storm clouds signal something even more vicious than they know, because Dracula is about to arrive at Whitby.
Shortly before ten o'clock, the stillness of the air grew quite oppressive, and the silence was so marked that the bleating of a sheep inland or the barking of a dog in the town was distinctly heard. and the band on the pier, with its lively French air, was like a discord in the great harmony of nature's silence.
A little after midnight came a strange sound from over the sea, and high overhead the air began to carry a strange, faint, hollow booming.
Tensions suitably built, the tempest breaks with terrifying speed, sending small fishing boats hurtling for harbour before a growing fury of spume-topped waves. Onlookers watch in horror as a schooner just off the coast, still in full sail, and having apparently ignored all warning signs of the coming danger, careers towards a treacherous reef that lays between it and the port.
With the tide high, gale force winds in her sails and mountainous waves lashing the vessel, no one can see how the ship could possibly make entrance to the harbour without being dashed to bits on the reef. But then, in a rush of dank sea fog and a crash of thunder, the schooner sweeps between the piers and into the harbour to the relief of the onlookers.
But the celebrations are short-lived because the vessel does not pause, instead hurtling on towards Tate Hill Pier. And as the ship crashes into the sand and gravel bank of Collier's Hope, the onlookers realise that the steersman, who had seemed to so skilfully guide the ship's perilous entry, is actually a dead man, whose lolling corpse is lashed to the ship's wheel.
As the schooner rams into Tate Hill Beach and parts of the rigging come crashing down, a huge black dog appears from below decks and leaps onto the sand, pelting away towards the cliff and the churchyard of St Mary's. Dracula has arrived.
This scene has become so famous not only because it is a superb example of gothic horror writing but also because of the tantalising fact that much of it is true. In 1885 there really was a great storm that lashed Whitby's shores and there really was a schooner that miraculously made the safety of the harbour during the tempest only to wreck on Collier's hope.
Stoker even bases the cargo of his Demeter on that of the real-life Dimitri, which was carrying a ballast of silver sand. Although Bram added to this a number of wooden boxes of earth, or mould, as it is sometimes described, from the Count's homeland.
The real Dimitri was from Narva which is in modern day Estonia but back in the 19th century the ship really was referred to as a Russian schooner or brigantine and although it was not in fact steered by the hand of a dead man its dramatic entry into port and subsequent wreck was still shocking to local onlookers and would have been the talk of the town for a long time.
In fact, it was still fresh in the memories of locals when Bram Stoker was doing his explorations and research, and he was told all about the event during his conversations with Whitby residents. And with overtones of foreboding baked into the real-life event, it's small wonder it ended up finding a place on the pages of Stoker's novel.
We found these accounts of the real event on Heritage Gateway's Historic England research records. Severe Gale, Whitby A storm of great violence visited the north-east coast on Saturday, accompanied by torrents of rain. About an hour after the stranding of the Mary and Agnes, another vessel was sighted a few miles out, flying signals of distress.
The gale was then at its height, and the sea even more dangerous than before. Another lifeboat, the Harriet Portith, was got out. A little excitement prevailed among the thousands of people on shore, for it seemed certain that if the vessel was cast upon the rocks, she would be immediately dashed to pieces and the crew drowned.
The craft, however, steered straight for the port, and by good seamanship got into the harbour safely. Two pilots were in waiting, and at once gave instruction to those on board, but meanwhile the captain, not realising the necessity of keeping on her steerage, allowed her to fall off and lowered sail, thus causing the vessel to swing towards the sand on the east side of the harbour.
On seeing this danger the anchor was dropped, but they found no hold and she drifted into Collier's hope and struck the ground. She was purported to be the schooner Dmitri of Narva, Russia, Captain Siki with a crew of seven hands, ballasted with silver sand.
During the night of Saturday the men worked incessantly upon her that her masts went by the board, and on Sunday morning she lay high and dry, a broken and complete wreck, firmly embedded in the sand.
This event was immortalised by pioneering local photographer Frank Meadows Sutcliffe, who became famous for branching out from the Victorian trend of posed portrait photography and made a name for himself, capturing candid shots of Whitby life.
Featuring working class residents going about their daily chores, children playing, scenes of the town's picturesque landscape, a glimpse into the real Whitby of the 19th century and a chronicle of the events that affected its residents, including the wreck of the Dimitri.
I purchased a print of the scene a long time ago on one of my younger visits to Whitby and it's a photograph that I can stare at for hours. Sutcliffe's candid photographic style that tells a story with every shot is so unexpected for the era that I almost feel like if I look hard enough at the scene I'll be able to see the characters moving and the story will play out in front of my eyes.
The sepia photograph conveys the aftermath of the destructive power of the storm. A ship rests tilted at an angle on the beach beneath a shelf of the East Cliff, with the tombstones of St Mary's Church are just visible above.
Its masts and rigging lay in a broken pile in front of it like so many snapped twigs, while the small figures of people swarm around it, clambering on and over the broken timber. The figures are slightly blurred.
They were likely moving during the relatively long exposure time required for Victorian plate photography, and the movement evokes a sense of frenetic energy and a frisson of excitement that would have doubtless accompanied the unexpected event.
I can't help but feel that the photograph helps to blur the line between fact and fiction, as this feels like something that could have come straight out of Mina's collection of newspaper cuttings pasted in her journal. I'm almost disappointed not to spot a large black dog in the photo, scampering off up the cliff. And what of that great black dog?
Well, that brings us to another chunk of Whitby's lore and legend that Stoker cleverly worked into his story.
Throughout Dracula, the Count assumes many forms, including those of a bat, of mist, and, as we see here, of a large black dog. Some of these forms are based on vampire folklore and legend, but the dog harkens back to a legend that's deeply entrenched, not just throughout Yorkshire, but across many areas of England. From county to county, details change, the law, the description and the name.
In other towns, we may call it Old Padfoot, Guy Trash or Shuck, but here in Whitby, it's called the Barguest. In times past, just the mention of this harbinger of doom would be enough to send a shudder down people's spines. For sighting one of these huge black beasts with their infernal flaming red eyes was almost always a portent of ill fortune.
In the shipping and fishing town of Whitby, the apparition was said to appear pacing up and down the shore during stormy weather, and was seen as an omen of doom for anyone taking to the sea that day, a sure sign to keep vessels safely in harbour and feet firmly on dry land. Interestingly, Stoker flipped this legend around to fit his story,
In local lore, the Barghest portended a great storm, but in his novel, the storm was the omen preceding the calamitous arrival of the beast. You could say that Stoker's novel helped to immortalise the legend of the Barghest. But then, to be honest, it was doing pretty well on its own anyway.
Sightings of the creature are said to date back at least as far as Saxon England, with a mention in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and still persist to this day. In fact, a particularly curious encounter with the brute is documented just a few miles up the coast from Whitby at Kettle Ness Point. a landmark mentioned by Mina Murray in her diary entries in Dracula.
It took place in the 1950s and was documented in a book called To Anger the Devil, a biography of Reverend Dr Donald Armand, a clergyman of the Church of England and an exorcist. The riverend had apparently received a letter from a schoolmaster who had been out with two friends at the desolate windswept point of Kettle Nest Nab where the rocky promontory juts out into the sea.
In his letter the schoolmaster wrote that he and his friends were shocked and horrified to witness a huge hound appear out of thin air on the misty shore. Describing the beast as bigger than any mortal dog, they stood frozen in terror as it silently began to move towards them, and then suddenly and inexplicably vanished.
The group discussed feeling an overwhelming sense of evil, leading to the schoolmaster contacting the reverend to ask if he would visit the area and consider performing an exorcism. Reverend Omand was apparently only too happy to oblige. He had actually visited Kettle Nest before as a youth, and on that visit had felt what he thought of as an ominous atmosphere.
He felt vindicated in this when he later heard reports of the bar guest being seen in the area and even more so when he read Bram Stoker's Dracula and realised the Count's form as a black dog was inspired by the Yorkshire Coast's bar guest. In fact, he even became convinced that Stoker must have visited Thethilness and witnessed the apparition for himself.
Amand obligingly headed out to Kettle Nest by train, and after meeting up with the schoolmaster, the pair headed out to the rocky nab, arriving just as night was falling. The shore rapidly becoming cloaked in darkness, the scene well and truly set for a frightening encounter with the legendary creature. Both men were alert and expectant. Oman choked.
All we need now is for Dracula to come bounding ashore in the form of a great black dog. He probably intended to break the building tension with some humour, but instead his words seemed to have the effect of summoning the beast itself, and as Oman felt the schoolmaster grip his arm in sudden fear, he looked up to see a huge black hound heading straight towards them.
The reverend described it as being bigger than any of the canine species known to man, fitting with so many accounts of Shuck and the Barghest that often compare the size of the creature to that of a calf or even a small horse. The schoolmaster, understandably, lost his nerve and rushed back to the car. But Oman stood his ground, uncorked his bottle of holy water and proceeded with his exorcism.
recounting that as he spoke the last words of the rites the apparition disappeared and the heaviness went out of the atmosphere he declared that the menace of kettleness was ended but unfortunately the schoolmaster never recovered from the shock and went on to suffer a breakdown Of course, this makes a great story, especially for a self-proclaimed exorcist recounting his life's work.
But is there any truth to it? And did the Reverend really end the terror of the Kettle Ness Shore? Well, we should probably bear in mind that this account comes from a man who also claims to have exorcised Loch Ness and the Bermuda Triangle. But that doesn't discount the Barghest legend itself. And when we look into it a bit further, it gets very strange and maybe a little sad.
The name Kettleness likely comes from the Old Norse language, kettle meaning pot or cauldron, and thought to refer to the cauldron of water around the point, whilst ness means headland, or more literally, nose, very appropriate for the rocky, jutting nose of Kettleness Nab.
This reminds us of the Danish invaders we encountered in our first episode of the series, who landed at Whitby and sacked the Abbey. But before that, the shore was at risk of invasion from Saxons, and we touched on this too when we explored the possibility of Whitby's East Cliff once being the site of a Roman signal station.
Sturdy, defensive lighthouses built in chains along the sections of the English coastline exposed by the North Sea to raiders as well as traders.
We may never know if one of these signal stations existed at Whitby, but we do know that a Roman signal station did stand at Kettle Ness, just inland between the Knab and the small hamlet of Goldsborough, likely surviving due to its more inland location having saved it from disappearing off the cliff edge and into the sea via coastal erosion, as may have happened at Whitby.
From discoveries at nearby Ravenscar in the 18th century, antiquarians realised that there was probably a string of these forklets all up the Yorkshire coast. And in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, historians and early archaeologists set about hunting them down.
After a systematic search of likely sites, the antiquarians William Hornsby and John Laverick discovered the ruins of a fortlet on Goldsboro Pasture in 1918. And, thankfully for us, they wrote about their discoveries in the Antiquaries Journal in 1932.
Interestingly though, even in these academic pursuits, it seems that the darkness of the area's legends somehow managed to seep through, as this quote from the write-up in the Antiquaries journal hints. The impression left from the outset by the loveliness of the situation is unforgettable. In front extends the ever-changing sea. To the left lies Runzik with its glorious bay.
To the right is Whitby with Abbey and Harbour, while behind stretches the moorland, black and lonesome, still reputed the abode of evil spirits. But it gets really interesting when the men explain the findings of their excavations within the fort, as they made a truly extraordinary discovery. It's not unusual, of course, for archaeologists to find human remains during excavations.
Uncovering burials and cremations is quite common, and they can often tell us a story about the lives of people that once lived on the site being examined. But the bodies that were found on this excavation were somewhat of a rarer find. And what a story they told, as this quote from the journal demonstrates.
In the southeast corner, we made discoveries which can only be described as sensational discoveries. A short, thick-set man had fallen across the smouldering fire of an open hearth, probably after having been stabbed in the back. His skeleton lay face downwards, the left hand on which was a bronze ring behind the back, the right touching the south wall.
Another skeleton, that of a taller man, lay also face downwards near the feet of the first, his head pointing south-west. Beneath him was the skeleton of a large and powerful dog, its head against the man's throat, its paws across his shoulders. Surely a grim record of a thrilling drama. Perhaps the dog one of the defenders, the man an intruder.
However exciting a discovery as this must have been for the excavators, it's just as exciting for us. To find a record of a skeleton of a large, powerful dog in such a remarkable context, right in the area of the bar guest sightings, is incredible.
This excavation took place in 1918, and Reverend Omond, who was born in 1903, grew up hearing about apparitions of a large black dog in the area of Cattle Ness, finally seeing the spectre for himself in the 1950s. Did the excavations of the Roman signal station awaken the spirit of the great dog who died there when its remains were uncovered?
If so, this paints a very different picture to the ominous hellhound that Oman felt the need to exercise. The antiquarians wrap up their report with the following words, elaborating on what they think may have happened at the fort on that final, fateful day. The life of the station would seem to have been short, approximately 370 to 395 AD.
and there were many indications that its end had been sudden and violent. If conjecture be necessary, it would appear likely that the destruction was wrought by intruding angles, whose numbers and the swiftness of their attack enabled them to overwhelm the garrison.
Usually these marauders arrived when they were least expected, often no doubt in the dead of night, or in the din of storm, or perhaps during a fret, one of those thick mists from the sea which are so prevalent in the area.
The completeness of the destruction, when it did come, seems to us to be shown by the position and excellent condition of the skeletons found in the southeast corner of the tower. the covering necessary for their preservation would be most simply provided by the early and entire collapse of the structure. If the excavators were correct, then the skeleton of the dog was a protector.
A faithful hound struck down in the line of duty and buried where he fell under the collapsed tower, telling the story of his last desperate attempt to protect the station and his people.
With such a dramatic ending, and no doubt some unfinished business with the invaders, it isn't a stretch to imagine this faithful dog continuing his guard duties along the shoreline of Kettle Ness, even in the afterlife. So, did the Reverend Omand exercise a terrifying hellhound, or did he encounter the goodest boy of Kettle Ness? Just a faithful doggo doing a heckin' protec,
from beyond the grave.
It's time to leave Tate Hill Sands behind us now and follow the route taken by both the Black Dog of the Dimitri and Mina to our next location, the churchyard at the top of the cliff. And to do so, we need to ascend the famous 199 steps. an absolutely iconic landmark, no one is exactly sure just how old the 199 steps are.
The first written mention of them dates back to 1370, but they are very likely older, leading as they do up to the Church of St Mary's, which was built in the 12th century, and of course Whitby Abbey, founded in the 7th century.
The original steps were made of wood and were described as being brightly painted but these are long gone now having been replaced with stone in 1774 and it's this stone staircase that Mina would have encountered on the last stage of her frantic dash to Lucy's side.
The staircase is wide, wide enough for four or five people abreast, and 19th century writers indicate that even in Bram Stoker's time, this width was necessary to accommodate a high volume of foot traffic. In 1835, Sir George Head described this common scene on the church steps.
these steps may be seen every sunday covered from top to bottom with old and young parents at the decline of life children at its commencement both together surmounting the arduous ascent and wending their way up to the sacred edifice For many years St Mary's, the Norman church at the top of the cliff, was the only parish church for several miles, serving many of the surrounding villages.
And even as the years went on and chapels started springing up around the area to fulfil the needs of a growing population, the parishioners still generally owed allegiance to the Mother Church of St Mary's and would therefore have to travel the distance to Whitby and traverse the 199 steps to be baptised, married or indeed buried.
We stand at the bottom of the staircase, the steps worn smooth from hundreds of years of use, wide, shallow grooves carved into the stone at the far edges by a million feet that chose the path nearest the thin iron handrail. On the right-hand side, as we stand at the bottom of the steps looking up, a broad, cobbled ramp follows the staircase's ascent, and this is known as the donkey track,
and is a route well used by our hooved friends throughout the years, many of them in more recent decades on their way to give donkey rides on the beach to holidaying children. Buildings and houses run all the way up to, and seemingly into, the side of the steps and donkey track.
the cobbled ramp wrapping around the corner of a three-storey whitewashed building bearing the sign Abbey Steps Tea Rooms, whose lower windows are almost swallowed up in a turn of the track.
Further up the donkey track is a cottage whose front door opens directly onto the steep cobbled slope, which I can only imagine must be quite a challenge in ice and snow and definitely a house for a hardy soul. As we begin to climb above the town we can see over the left-hand railing the steps down to Tate Hill Sands from whence we just came.
Beyond the pier running along a shelf at the base of the cliff above Collier's Hope lies Henrietta Street where a famous kipper smokehouse called Fortune's Kippers has been in business since 1872. and whose somewhat overpowering smell has been hailed as part of the Whitby experience for decades. Henrietta Street stretches along the base of the cliff for a while until it peters out suddenly.
A ramp branches off from here, forking to either the base of East Pier or a drop-off straight into the sea. whilst a grassy ledge known by the Old Norse name of the Haggleith, meaning sloping area of land on the cliff, continues the trajectory of Henrietta Street for a little way further along the cliff shelf.
This area was once much larger and filled with houses and businesses, but several serious landslips, including one in 1787 and one in 1871, sent several buildings crashing down the cliff. The once respectable area was eventually abandoned due to this danger and became the haunt of the poorest of society and the town's ne'er-do-wells.
There was also danger from above for dwellers of the Haggleith, the area sitting as it does directly beneath the graveyard of St Mary's Church, where coastal erosion nibbles away at the cliff, and severe weather such as ice or heavy rain occasionally opens up the ground to send the bones of buried parishioners hurtling down onto the buildings below.
This still happens today, with one of the most recent occurrences in January of 2013. Although the rector at the time reassured everyone that the bones would of course be collected and respectfully reinterred, and noted that, as the graveyard has been closed for burials since the mid-19th century, no one need be concerned about anything too, um, fresh tumbling down the cliff.
I huff and puff my way up the steps. I didn't exactly think I would fly up them with Mina's speed and grace, but there does seem to be something about these steps beyond their sheer number that makes them quite exhausting. Whether it's their height or depth, Or the ratio of the incline, I don't know. Maybe it's simply my lack of fitness.
Or maybe Mina had superb cardio endurance from repeatedly climbing these steps in a corset. Who knows? But I do understand why it's said that these stairs were constructed to test the faith and commitment of the parishioners as they made the arduous climb to church every Sunday. I plop down on a handy-looking bench, a simple plank of wood set into the nook of the iron railing.
There are several of these and some people hover around them, looking longingly at the much-needed seat but hesitating to sit down. I can guess why, for it's quite well known that these are not actually seats for weary climbers, but coffin rests.
As we heard earlier, parishioners from not just Whitby, but villages all around, would have had to attend St Mary's for their biggest life ceremonies, including their final one, where they would be carried in their coffin up these very steps. The coffin bearers must have had muscles of steel, and I can imagine how well needed these coffin rests would have been.
I have no compunction about resting on one to get my breath back though, as I'm sure that the spirits of Whitby won't mind a bit of respectful company as I admire the view and reflect on my lack of stamina.
But I don't linger too long and push on to the top, where the ground flattens out and the square tower of St Mary's Church comes into view with the abbey ruins rearing up dramatically in the distance. At the very edge of the graveyard, the tall, carved St Cadman's Stone Cross perches on the cliff edge like a sentinel standing watch over the town below.
Down in the harbour, the waves glisten and glitter in the sun, and small, colourful boats bob cheerfully, safe in the encircling arms of the long, curving piers. Clusters of red-roofed houses spread out like a sweeping toy town diorama, and seagulls swoop across the water, shrieking their laughing cries.
We have reached Mina's destination, the place she described in her diary as the nicest spot in Whitby, and where her and Lucy spent many happy hours enjoying the sea breeze and the incredible views across the town and harbour from their favourite seat in the graveyard near the edge of the cliff.
It was also here, however, that Mina spotted the pale white figure of Lucy in a brief window of moonlight from her viewpoint near the whalebone arch, and behind the seat she saw a dark, menacing figure looming over her friend. The graveyard stretches out along the headland and all around the church.
Hundreds of headstones, leaning and worn, pitted by harsh salt winds and blackened by centuries of coal smoke, bear testament to the residents of Whitby's past. Many of the names of them have been scrubbed blank by time, wind and weather. Others, as we know from Mina's conversations in Dracula with Whitby elder Mr. Swales, bear dedications that belie the emptiness of the graves below.
Mr. Swales describes the leaning gravestones as tumbling down with the weight of lies written on them. And he's referring to the very real fact that a number of the headstones in St Mary's churchyard stand in memoriam of sailors and fishermen who were lost at sea. Their bodies never recovered and their headstones in the graveyard simply a memorial over an empty grave.
But the ghost story that we find in this churchyard concerns the bodies of seamen who do lie beneath their gravestones. a legend that would indicate either that the sailors and fishermen of Whitby felt it unbefitting for a man of the sea to have his body buried on dry land, or that the spirits of the ocean itself felt they had a claim over the souls who had made a living from its briny depths.
For it's said that any men of the sea whose bodies were buried in St Mary's Churchyard would soon be visited by the Bargeist coach. No, not the Barghest, the Large Black Hellhound, or possibly the Goodest Boy of Kettle Nest, depending on how you look at it, but the Bargh Geist.
Although, in actual fact, these are just the two most common ways of spelling the different phenomena that I've found in use today. but really they're the same word and according to my research were both originally pronounced bogost simply meaning town ghost and over the years the spelling and pronunciation has changed and evolved
There doesn't seem to be a fixed pronunciation or spelling today, but for ease of telling the legends apart, for this story, I've gone with a spelling used in the Whitby Repository magazine, in which the spooky legend was recorded in 1831.
According to the old fishermen of the village, St Mary's Graveyard was not a good place to be on the night following the funeral of a man of the sea.
But if you were to venture out on such a night, you might just hear the sound of horses' hooves clattering across the abbey plain, the sound growing closer and louder until you can hear the creak of wheels and jangle of harnesses as a carriage bears directly towards the church, no obstacles seeming to halt its progress.
From out of the blackness, six horses emerge, all of them a coal black that seems darker than the night itself, and behind them, cloaked in a velvet pall, a driver steers them towards a freshly filled grave. In their wake, a line of skeletal figures forms a train of mourners, and reaching their intended target, the ghastly spectacle starts to circle the grave.
Once, twice, they make their ghoulish dance, growing faster and more frantic with each pass, until, on the third circuit, the soul of the deceased sailor rises up from his grave and steps on to the phantom carriage. Their task complete, the horses thunder off, the carriage clattering down the 199 steps and all along the haggleith.
then plunging straight into the waves of the North Sea, the ocean depths reclaiming the soul who had spent his life's work sailing upon it. In some versions of this story, the carriage contains a skeletal crew. In others, there's no driver at all. In still others, the horses are headless, lending an even spookier twist to the tale.
But many think that there may be a more practical reason behind this particular legend, and that is smugglers. It wouldn't be a seaside town, after all, without a history of smuggling, and Whitby was certainly no exception.
Many people think that the legend of the Bargeist coach was invented by smugglers who thought the tale was a fantastic way to keep people away from their illicit activities, because the coffin of a sailor fresh off a boat would make a very handy place to stash illegal wares that could be dug up later away from the beady eyes of the authorities.
In fact, some even say that certain bands of smugglers went as far as to enact the Bargeist coach haunting, donning fearsome and grisly costumes and even painting their horses to sell the legend and maintain their cover. But did they invent the story entirely? Or did they employ an existing legend to suit their nefarious purposes?
We may never know, but I certainly wouldn't want to be in St Mary's graveyard in the dark of night and hear the jangle of harnesses and the clatter of hooves heading towards me.
Although all our stories and legends today are in the graveyard and not the church itself, I can't resist a peek inside St Mary's. You might think that the place is most marvelled at for its great age, but in fact people are fascinated by its much more modern interior.
Anyone used to English churches is familiar with the typical rows of hard wooden pews standing in linear fashion either side of a long isle of the nave, facing a pulpit or lectern with the altar beyond. So St Mary's Church is rather a surprise, with its higgledy-piggledy jumble of pews and gallery boxes that look more like theatre stalls than the neat, orderly seating of a church.
In the centre, thick, grand columns soar up to a high ceiling, but further back, shorter columns, some squat, and some, like slender barley sugar twists, support a gallery that meanders around the walls. Instead of the orderly rows that we're used to, pews facing in different directions are crammed in like the blocks of a puzzle.
And it takes me a while to realise that this haphazard-seeming arrangement is actually all designed to face a central pulpit. A precarious-looking, three-tiered affair decked in red velvet in the middle of the church. I'm not sure what the designer was going for here, but at first glance it has the endearing look of a lopsided, slightly drunken attempt at an aerial bandstand.
In fact, the whole place has a rather dizzying, surreal effect, and I can understand why author Andrew White described the feel and proportion of the interior in his book A History of Whitby as like being between decks in a ship.
I can see what he means, and, as he points out, this may not be so far from the truth, because it's quite likely that any woodworkers in Whitby capable of building the galleries could well have spent much of their lives in the business of shipbuilding.
There is a very practical reason for this jumbled-looking layout, though, and that is simply that by the end of the 17th century, the church had run out of room for the rapidly increasing number of parishioners, and so galleries, pews and extensions were added during the 16th, 17th and 1800s.
The accumulation of seating in various styles over the centuries, and the fact that many of the box pews were privately owned and designed and decorated according to the tastes of the owner, creates the somewhat chaotic but unique effect.
It was loathed by many of the prim and proper Victorians, including one Reverend W. Keane, who described it as perhaps the most depraved sacred building in the kingdom. But others loved it for its eccentricities, as, I must admit, do I. As I make to leave, a sign in the porch catches my eye.
pinned up on the notice board by weary church wardens, apparently tired of fielding endless requests from Taurus who, just like me, are on the trail of Dracula, it sternly requests, please do not ask staff where Dracula's grave is, as there isn't one. I chuckle to myself as I head back into the graveyard. They're right, of course, in a way,
Despite the impact that the character has had on the town, Dracula didn't actually dwell too long in Whitby, moving swiftly on to London and eventually being chased by our intrepid gang of Victorian vampire hunters through the landscape of the Carpathian Mountains, where the book reaches its conclusion.
But avid fans of Dracula probably aren't referring to where Dracula was buried, but where he hid after leaving the wreck of the Demeter in the form of a huge black dog, in a grave directly under Lucy and Mina's favourite clifftop seat.
Mina describes in her journal that the seat they so often frequented was set upon a gravestone laid flat like a slab, which bore the words, The fact that they were sitting on a grave didn't seem to perturb them in the slightest, however.
I think Victorian ladies must have been made of sterner stuff than they're typically given credit for because they weren't put off their favourite spot, even after Mina witnessed something looming malevolently over Lucy on the seat during her sleepwalking adventure.
I could understand this, perhaps, but when their friend Old Mr. Swales was found sprawled across the very same seat with a broken neck, I think that might have been the point where I gave up on the favoured spot, no matter how spectacular the view was. But did that dissuade Mina and Lucy? No.
The very same day that Mr. Swales was found dead upon it, as Mina writes, with a look of fear and horror on his face that the men said made them shudder, they were back at the seat, standing on it to get a better view of the funeral proceedings of the Dead Sea Captain of the Demeter. If Bram Stoker is to be believed, those Victorians certainly seem to take death in their stride.
No wonder the era is so inextricably linked with Gothic horror. These days it seems impossible to tell which seat might have been Mina and Lucy's favourite spot. The clifftop is set with several benches just on the edge of the graveyard overlooking the harbour and town.
And on the day we visit, we sadly can't visit them all to take a proper look, or see if any of them are set on flattened gravestones, because most of them are roped off. A safety precaution due to recent bad weather making the edge of the cliff a risky place to be.
And for this same reason, I'm not sure we can know if the seat Bram Stoker had in mind when he wrote Dracula even still exists, or whether it's fallen victim to the crumbling cliff edge over the years. And what of all the ghosts and legends we've encountered today throughout Whitby's maze of ancient streets? Do they still exist, or have they too fallen victim to the ravages of time?
stoker's character the old salt mr swales thinks they belong to an earlier time stating when mina quizzes him about the ghost of whitby abbey them things be all wore out mind i don't say that there never was but i do say there wasn't in my time
Well, I think Mr. Swales would have a hard time convincing ghost tour guide James J. Brown that Whitby's ghosts are all wore out, as he would one visitor to St. Mary's Churchyard who had a very odd experience in 1995.
The witness got in touch with the Visit Whitby blog to relate what happened to him one April day when he was visiting Whitby for the first time. He'd been strolling through the churchyard on his way from the abbey, heading towards the top of the 199 steps, when he noticed a man and a woman with a coat draped over her right arm, sitting on one of the churchyard benches.
They smiled at him as the visitor and his partner approached, so he called ahead to his partner, who was walking in front of him, and suggested that they should join the friendly couple on the bench. but she turned, surprised, and asked him, what couple? A confused witness turned his gaze from his partner back towards the bench, but it had gone.
There was no bench, there was no man, and there was no woman holding a coat. Perplexed, he looked around and was struck to see that there were marks on the ground indicating that a bench had in fact once stood in that position, but it would be another seven years before he got any answers to this strange experience.
On the next visit, seven years later, the witness ventured into St Mary's Church to explore the Looking around, he was shocked to see a black and white photo hung on the wall picturing several people. Because amongst them, he recognised the man and the woman he'd seen in the graveyard on that April day in 1995.
The woman even had her coat draped over her arm in the photo, just the same as she had when he'd seen her, sitting on the bench. Of course, he was desperate to find out who the couple were, and a staff member was able to reveal that the people in the photo used to be church bell ringers.
Whether or not either of them were still alive was not revealed, but it soon became clear that he was not the first person to see them in the churchyard, and in fact, the witness's experience was a sighting familiar to some local inhabitants. So...
If you're ever walking through St Mary's Churchyard and you pass a friendly couple smiling at you from a bench, maybe just take a second look back over your shoulder and see if they're still there moments later. This witness's story reminds me of so many people's experiences of Whitby, including my own.
From the very first visit, the place draws you into its inexplicable mysteries, and further visits only build layers of intrigue and fascination.
Before heading back down the 199 steps, across the east side, the swing bridge, and back up to the top of West Cliff and our waiting car, I take one last look at the spectacular view across the town and harbour and out to sea, as a thick mist reminiscent of the Demeter's dramatic arrival starts to drift in, and wonder what surprises and stories Whitby has in store for future visits.
We have explored so much, but I imagine there are many more wonders to discover yet, and I already can't wait to return.
And that brings us to the end of this episode of Knock Once VS. Thank you to everybody that shared their stories. And don't forget, if you have a story, please do get in touch through our website, knockoncevs.com. As always, thank you so much to our patrons and coffee supporters. Your support is the only thing that allows us to keep producing this show.
And if you have a podcast and would like your editing done, don't forget that I do run an audio post-production company. So please do get in touch at narrativeaudio.com. We hope that you've enjoyed this episode and that you'll join us again next time for some more spooky stories and haunted history on another Knock Once for Yes.