Description

A walker shares a pub fire with an old man who has one last story to tell about the weir at Burrs. A genealogist in a forgotten records room at Facit finds that the names of the dead will not stay on the page. A grieving sister takes refuge on the Ribble marshes, where locals still speak of a ferryman who carries what the tide cannot wash away. A night watchman in a shuttered mill hears a handloom working in the empty air. And every September, on the shore of Hollingworth Lake, someone reads forty-three names aloud, and a drowned bell rings back.

Ten ghost stories from the moors, mills, rivers and marshes of Lancashire, where the land keeps its own records, and some debts can only be paid by remembering. From Pendle Hill to the Irwell valley, and from Scout Moor to the drowned farms under Hollingworth Lake, they are rooted in real places and real history, including the Chatterton Massacre of 1826. Each is told the way it was heard: by walkers, farmers, watchmen and volunteers, over a pint or a cuppa.

This revised edition tightens the original stories, corrects a number of small continuity details, and adds a historical note on the real events behind The Weaver’s Lament.

Many of these places are real. You can walk to them. Just don’t linger by the water after dark.