Ghostly goings-on in the county are the subject of a new book by Most Haunted's Richard Felix.
From Axholme in the north of the county to Stamford in the south, the ghost-hunter relates the stories behind some of Lincolnshire's most well-known buildings.
The fifth in the series of books accompanying the Ghost Tour of Great Britain DVDs, the first part of the book includes an introduction to the tour, Felix's theories about ghosts, a guide to ghost-hunting and a glossary of supernatural terminology.
Part two is dedicated to individual haunted sites from stately homes to pubs, churches, RAF bases and even railway stations.
The first place described is unsurprisingly Lincoln Cathedral with its story of a 17th-century monk seen drifting along the stone steps and through the door and the various myths surrounding the Lincoln Imp.
Outside the Cathedral, standing in front of "the dark statue" of Alfred Lord Tennyson, Felix was reminded of one of the writer's haunting poems The Ring:
My people too were scared with eerie sounds,
A footstep, a low thobbing in the walls,
A noise of falling weights that never fell,
Weird whispers, bells that rang without a hand,
Door handles turn'd when none was at the door,
And bolted doors that open'd of themselves:
And one betwixt the dark and light had seen
Her bending by the cradle of her babe.
The county poet laureate is mentioned in connection with other county landmarks too.
The Vine Hotel in Skegness was the haunt of smugglers in centuries past and has even turned up a skeleton bricked into a wall, but Tennyson was also a previous tenant.
While sitting under a tree there he wrote Come into the Garden.
"The tree is still there but is now nothing more than a stump," Felix writes.
"On frequent occasions many of the staff say they have seen an old man with a white beard walking through the gardens, accompanied by two large dogs, and they believe it to be the ghost of Tennyson haunting his former residence."
Tennyson's poetry is also cited in connection to Gunby Hall in Burgh le Marsh which preserves a hand-written original verse.
The hall's ghostly tale is a story of a forbidden love and "a bloody and callous murder" that left unhappy souls posthumously walking the pathway alongside the pond.
"I have explored Lincolnshire and even spent time here in my youth," Felix explains, "and I have spoken to local people who recount tales of strange noises, poltergeist activity and sightings of spiritual beings."
From the Boston Stump to Marton Church and Thorpe Hall in Louth, from a public hanging to plague deaths and premature burials, Felix demonstrates that the county has a wealth of supernatural stories buried only shallowly beneath its surface.
Source: http://www.thisislincolnshire.co.uk/dis ... erPk=87131
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