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The alleged shades of royals, nobles and more common felons put to death in centuries past have long been an established part of the British ghostly scene. Executed queens (particularly Anne Boleyn) and celebrated criminals such as Dick Turpin, who paid the ultimate price for their villainy, reputedly appear at numerous sites around the UK. A great number are said to walk at Christmas time, but it may surprise the reader that in many cases the evidence for these hauntings is at best shaky, and quite often non-existent. However, as GK Chesterton wrote in his Autobiography in 1936: “…it is the woodcutter with no axe to grind, except for woodcutting, who will say he saw a man hang on the gallows and afterwards hang around it as a ghost. It is all very well to say we ought not to believe in the ghost on an ignorant man’s evidence. But we should hang the man on the gallows on the same man’s evidence.”
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