A Bradford entrepreneur is expanding her ghost-tour business as she marks its second anniversary.

Rubina Khan founded Yarn Spinners Tours in 2006 while working as a business services manager with Bradford Council.

Growing demand for her historic and ghost tours around the area enabled her to give up the day job and now she is taking on her first employee.

Rubina is adding new tours to her regular programme.

She recently successfully organised her first bus tour based on literary shrine Haworth for a group of Bronte enthusiasts from Ireland.

She launched the business with a walking tour to explore Bradford’s history and later introduced “ghost, grisly and graveyard tours” of Undercliffe Cemetery and other ‘haunts’ around the city.

Rubina was a winner of a regional enterprise award from the University of Bradford and invested the £2,000 prize money in upgrading her website.

She is now adding another ghost walk to the tour itinerary, this time focusing on those that reputedly haunt Saltaire village and has also introduced an “Essence of Asia” tour.

In Saltaire she will talk about spirits who are supposed to haunt the heritage area, including its founder, textile magnate Sir Titus Salt as well as a former caretaker who is said to reside in the Victoria Hall.

The Essence of Asia tour will give visitors an opportunity to find out more about the customs of local ethnic communities and includes visits to a mosque and a Sikh temple and the Bombay Stores fashion shop.

Rubina, of Manningham, who is a former Butlins redcoat, acted on her business idea after thinking about it for several years. She was encouraged to take the plunge after becoming one of ten finalists chosen from a competition to find Bradford’s most aspiring entrepreneurs.

Her spine-tingling idea helped support Bradford’s successful bid for £21.4m funding over the next three years from the Local Enterprise Growth Initiative to help stimulate new business opportunities.

The resulting Bradford Kickstart programme, which has so far encouraged around 500 business start-ups, has provided support for her project.

Rubina said: “ I try and tell people about Bradford in a fun way and it has proved popular. “I am very pleased the business has progressed so well that I am now taking on my first employee and expanding the programme of events.”