An authority on dales lore once said the West Riding had surprisingly few ghosts. I have been making inquiries (writes a “Yorkshire Evening Post“ reporter) and have found that this is far from the case, and that the West Riding, comparatively speaking, swarms with spectral visitors and unearthly tinkles and janglings.

The Templenewsam district must have pride of place, if stories from several sources are to be believed. 

Only last week, a newcomer was revealed – a ghostly dog that strides about the fields between Colton and Templenewsam, with “an opaque body and unmoving legs.”

Hot (or cold) on its heels comes another story, from Whitkirk Vicarage. It is stated that the sound of heavy footsteps on a stone floor have been heard, the last occasion being a week or two ago. The odd thing is that the Vicarage floors are heavily carpeted.

Nothing will induce this visitor to become visible. It may be mentioned, incidentally, that the dog already referred to has been seen in the garden, but it looked rather like an Alsatian.

But Templenewsam boasts another mystery. Perhaps peeved by the appearance of competitors, the ghost of Templenewsam, the famous “Lady of the Blue Gown,“ who has always disdained an audience that included a member of the city Council, has turned up again.

A young Leeds man, who prefers to remain anonymous, says he saw her only a few days ago. This young man will not let me go further than to say he lives “just off Selby Road, at Austhorpe, near Whitkirk.”

The Lady of the Blue Gown is supposed for years to have haunted the Blue Damask Room of the mansion at Templenewsam. But even ghosts change with the times, apparently. It appears now that she has decided that a little open-air work may revive her flagging spirit. The young man says she has been seen walking across the lawns. Dare we say that she has taken up hiking?

For the benefit of those who delight in ghost stories, I have compiled a list of the better-known West Riding spooks. It does not pretend to be a detailed survey.

The Templenewsam district trio shall have pride of place – the Lady, the nebulous dog and the strange footsteps.

Heath Old Hall, near Wakefield, has a ghost story. The Lady Bountiful of the district appears, it is said, in a room over which is the legend “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”

A luminous face is supposed to own a voice that sings in the empty vastness of Ripon Cathedral.

There’s a tang of the sea in the story of the peg-legged admiral who stumps up and down Paper Hall, Bradford.

Between Appletreewick and Skyreholme, a howling midnight hound with a delectable name – a barguest – roars down Troller’s Ghyll, while not many miles away an untenanted pair of shoes tramps round the disused lead mines on the moors near Grassington.

At the Rectory, Bolton Abbey, it is said there is to be seen the apparition of a monk.

At Woodsome Hall, near Huddersfield, now a golf club, a ghost is said to take two forms. Some describe it as a robin without a head – a most original form – while others describe it as a man. There is a curious panel door near where this ghost appears.

It is said that a spectral woman peers out of a window of a house in the Ings Road district of Wakefield.

The Abbey House, Kirkstall, has a notorious phantom which is said to pace up and down.

Two of the best spectres, which, owing to lack of concise information, lend themselves admirably to the imagination and are highly recommended to raconteurs, are the Dob Park spectre in  Washburndale and the Ghostly Knight of Bramhope.

The Dob Park apparition is a summer night visitor, and takes the form of a howling black dog with gleaming green saucer-like eyes.

I like the story of Bramhope best of all, however. I was told that once upon a time a gallant knight of Bramhope, filled with alcoholic courage, wagered he would gallop his steed down the well-known Staircase. As this footpath to Wharfedale is almost sheer in places, he was unfortunate, and now when the moon is high, the gallant knight gallops down the Staircase.