Europe’s Most Haunted City: A Walk with the Ghosts of York

York holds a remarkable distinction: it's been declared the most haunted city in Europe by the International Ghost Research Foundation, with around 500 reported hauntings within its ancient walls. On this walking tour, you'll encounter the most dramatic of those spirits, from Roman soldiers marching through medieval cellars to child ghosts still searching for comfort centuries after their deaths.

The tour starts at the junction of Stonegate and High Petergate, in the shadow of York Minster. You'll head down Stonegate – one of the country's oldest shopping streets – where a house dating to 1482 harbours 14 separate ghosts, and the Ye Olde Starre Inn still echoes with the screams of Civil War soldiers treated in its cellars. From there, the route weaves past the Theatre Royal, King's Manor, and through the city's narrow snickleways to the Minster itself.

Beyond the cathedral, you'll follow College Street, Goodramgate, and the Shambles, uncovering murders, betrayals, and a plague-stricken child who never left her home. The tour ends at the Punch Bowl pub on Micklegate, where a former landlord is apparently still tending the barrels in the cellar.

On this 90-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• Hear how an 18-year-old plumber in the Treasurer's House cellars watched Roman soldiers march through the wall – visible only from the knees up
• Visit the Golden Fleece, where seven active ghosts include a pickpocketing boy and a highwayman called One-Eyed Jack
• Learn the grim story of Margaret Clitheroe, crushed to death on Good Friday 1586 – and the severed hand still kept as a relic nearby
• Discover the headless ghost of Thomas Percy, the 7th Earl of Northumberland, still roaming between Holy Trinity Church and St Crux
• Hear about young Marmaduke, who carved his name and dates into a beam in 1715 before taking his own life – and still tidies up the restaurant below
• Stop at Micklegate Bar, where the ghost of little Sarah Parker rattles keys she spent a lifetime searching for

Whether you believe in ghosts or not, York's 2,000 years of war, plague, and execution make for a spine-tingling 90 minutes.