Spectres and Spooks: A Guide to York’s Haunted Taverns

York is Europe’s most haunted city, with over 2,000 years of history packed into its medieval streets.

On this walking tour you’ll explore eight of the city’s most paranormally active pubs with the voice of an eccentric Victorian physician, Dr Reginald Smalls, in your ear. You’ll discover how centuries of celebration, violence, secret worship, and scandal have left their spectral marks on these atmospheric drinking establishments.

The tour begins at one of York’s four historic gateways into the medieval city, called Monk Bar. You’ll wind through ancient streets like Goodramgate and Stonegate, passing timber-framed buildings from the 1500s. Along the way, you’ll have a chance to stop at pubs where ghostly monks hold silent mass around roaring fires, and Civil War soldiers still cry out in agony from makeshift hospitals.

You’ll hear about Dick Turpin’s corpse that was displayed for paying spectators, discover Roman ruins where phantom bathers splash underground, and learn why dogs attack invisible presences. The tour ends at The Cock & Bottle Inn on Skeldergate, where a notoriously promiscuous duke from the 1600s continues making spectral advances to unsuspecting individuals.

On this 60-minute tour, you’ll have a chance to:

• Visit The Golden Slipper, where a Medieval child’s shoe triggered an exorcism after workmen reported it was “pure evil”
• Enter Ye Olde Star Inn where an angry woman in black widow’s weeds appears only to children, causing terrified screams
• Learn about The Punch Bowl’s murdered young woman who runs panic-stricken through rooms, eternally fleeing her killer
• Stop at The Three Tuns where mysterious knocking echoes from a bricked-up hatch above a ghostly man’s favorite table
• Find hidden treasure and spirits nursing eternal pints
• Follow the legend of Mad Alice who murdered her abusive husband down Lund Court’s atmospheric medieval passages
• Discover how builders found Civil War gold coins hidden in The Three Tuns’ beams during 1970 renovations

This tour reveals why York’s ancient drinking establishments are among the most haunted places in Europe, where the boundary between living and dead grows thinner with each pint poured.