With Halloween creeping up on us, here's a taster of the Otley Ghost Tour, a spine-chilling walk around LS21.
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00:00Good evening and welcome to Otley's Marketplace. My name is Spindle Shanks
00:08McScrew and tonight I shall be your guide. Otley is a borough older than both
00:15Leeds and Bradford, having been founded in 620 AD. I will be teaching you about
00:23the ghosts that still linger in Otley's pubs, churches and courtyards to this
00:30very day. Keep your eyes peeled as we wander around for those who perhaps
00:35aren't quite there. The tour begins here at Otley's Jubilee Clock. We will then
00:42venture down Kirkgate after learning about the ghosts that hide on the shop
00:49floor of the British Heart Foundation charity shop. Then we will be
00:55approaching the Navvies Memorial, the only sculpture dedicated to the lives of
01:02the brave Navvies who were responsible for building the railway systems here in
01:06the UK. We will be then meandering around the churchyard of the parish church
01:13where we will learn about a ghostly anecdote that took place there and here
01:19at the Black Bull pub. The Black Bull is the oldest pub in Otley and is well
01:27known for having been, as they say, drunk dry by Oliver Cromwell's troops on the
01:33eve of the Battle of Marston in 1644. Regulars often go there and feel their
01:40faces stroked by invisible fingers. We will be then going down one of Otley's
01:48ginnels and into the Bay Horse Court where I will tell you about Charlotte,
01:53one of the former landladies who lost her beloved child one fateful evening to
02:00the clutches of the River Wharf. We will be then walking down towards the River
02:06Wharf after hearing about the voice recordings and the cells in Otley's
02:12infamous courthouse. If you haven't run off in a hurried fright by this point on
02:18the tour, we will be completing it with miserable tales of Margaret Clitheroe
02:24and then finishing outside Thomas Chippendale's former school and Otley's
02:29original police station. I hope you have enjoyed this taster of the Otley ghost
02:34tour and I hope to see you one of the coming weeks in the flesh in Otley town.
02:42Tours run every Saturday at half-past 6 and 8 p.m. They last an hour. Dogs are
02:52welcome if they are brave and children and humans are tolerated also.