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Dating back to 1123, Furness Abbey’s extensive ruins provide the perfect setting for a spine-tingling ghost story. Steeped in history and founded by monks, its not surprising that stories of mysterious figures dressed in Cistercain habits often circulate around the abbey.
Gill Jepson, author of children’s fantasy book series Out of Time and Guy the Grumpy Gargoyle shares the time she came across a strange figure last year.
On a sunny September day, Mrs Jepson and her friend were taking one of their many strolls around the abbey.
After a short rest and a chat, they both looked up to admire the abbey and saw what they believed to be a monk dressed in a Cistercian habit standing straight in front of them towards Abbots Bush. Thinking it was perhaps a member of the Iron Shepherds re-enactment group, the women raced to see who the strange figure was.
After reaching the wood and having a look around they were stumped when they couldn’t find anyone but a dog walker, and an empty lane.
Gill Jepson Mrs Jepson, said: “We were a bit puzzled, but not concerned.
“We went right along the full length of the wood and when we came back we got that funny prickly feeling on the back of our necks.
“When we got back to where we had seen the monk, we felt really uncomfortable but there was nothing there.
“But what was strange was that the place we had seen him appeared as though it had changed somehow; it was really weird.
“I don’t know if it was a ghost, or maybe just a kind of re-run of the past, a snippet of a clip, I just can’t explain it.”
It’s not just the monk who is said to be haunting Furness Abbey.
Mrs Jepson added: “There are a number of stories around the abbey. There’s the monk, a “white lady” and the Claife Crier, who fell for a local knight’s daughter – a local ghost of legend, who is believed to be the ghost of a monk from Furness Abbey in medieval times, and whose mission was the rescue of a fallen woman.
“He is said to have fallen in love with a woman who rejected him and he went mad, dying, and crying in anguish on the heights of Claife, which his ghost has haunted ever since.
“There are so many anecdotal stories about ghosts in different places, and you think there must be something there somewhere, but, I wouldn’t like to say what.”
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