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For some 35 years, York has been capitalising on its reputation as a haunted city. Ghost walks, tours, lectures, “eerie evenings” and weekend breaks have become an established feature of the tourist trade, together with books and DVDs all celebrating and promoting York as “the most haunted city in England”. Of course, the claim that York (or for that matter anywhere else) is the “most haunted city” is incapable of verification.


Nonetheless, the rest of Yorkshire is now catching up with its principal city in exploiting the supernatural, increasingly with official backing. From tours announced at Bolling Hall near Bradford in January 2007 (Halifax Evening Courier, 30 Jan 2007) to the “Last Old Town Ghost Walk of the Year” in Bridlington (Bridlington Free Press, 20 Dec 2007), ghost tourism is becoming a year-round activity across the whole of Yorkshire.