Haunted city!

Not, you might think, a slight on the state of the city today, but an appeal from beyond the grave - and one of the first of many recorded hauntings in an area dripping with ghosts, legends and mysteries.

In 1643 the Earl of Newcastle, who was an ardent supporter of King Charles I, stayed at Bolling Hall near Bradford with very nefarious business to carry out. In retribution for Bradford's support of Cromwell during the Civil War, Newcastle issued an edict that his soldiers should "put to the sword every man, woman and child, without regard to age or distinction whatsoever".

The night before the orders were to be carried out, the Earl was visited, in A Christmas Carol-style, three times by a ghostly female figure, which pulled the clothes from his bed and appealed to him to "pity poor Bradford!"

The apparition was evidently enough to terrify the Earl of Newcastle, because the very next day he cancelled his order and Bradford was spared.

Many of Bradford's haunting sites are now no more. The old Theatre Royal in Manningham was latterly a council storage site before being demolished, but when it was a working theatre an actor continued to creep the boards long after he shuffled off this mortal coil.

One of the best-loved Victorian performers was Sir Henry Irving, who collapsed on stage at the Royal in October 1905, and died soon after, during a performance of Becket.

A good half a century later the Royal had been transformed into a cinema, as had many of the old theatres. During the late 1960s, as the manager watched the last of the audience leave, a ghostly figure materialised out of the cigarette smoke hanging in the house lights, seemingly suspended above the stalls and bowing to a non-existent audience.

When the terrified manager calmed down he dug out some old plans of the building, and where the figure had seemed to float in mid-air was actually where the old stage used to be. He was convinced he had seen Sir Henry taking his final bow.

Appletreewick and Wharfedale have their own fair share of spooks. One Thomas Preston is alleged to have terrorised the area for many years with much groaning and rattling, until a priest was called in to exorcise his spirit, which was apparently banished to a grave in Dibb Gill, now known as Preston's Well.

Just outside Appletreewick a lonely ghost haunted a country lane for many years, forced to walk the lane because of his guilt that he stole his neighbour's land when alive by secretly moving boulders between their property to give him the bigger share. A man returning from the pub one night was confronted by the spectre, and he pledged to right the wrongs. The ghost was released from its limbo and never seen again.

And apparently Hawkesworth Hall near Guiseley had the ghost of a young pageboy who used to sneak into bedrooms and leave the imprint of his hand on pillows, while a cowled monk was also spotted gliding through the corridors and galleries.

But the area with most spooky goings on seems to be Haworth, not in small part thanks to the Brontes who made the village famous. Local author Marie Campbell has just had her latest book published, Strange World of the Brontes (£9.95, Sigma Press), which investigates mysteries, legends and myths based around Haworth.

The three sisters Emily, Charlotte and Anne, and their wayward brother Branwell, were, says Marie, fascinated with the occult and the supernatural and "whose lives come right out of a Gothic novel".

Indeed, Emily Bronte writes in Wuthering Heights: "I have a conviction that ghosts can and do exist among us."

In her book Marie details many of the supposed Bronte-related hauntings in Haworth. She says: "A tall ghostly figure, said to be Emily dressed in everyday clothes, with head bowed as if in deep contemplation, has been seen regularly by visitors walking past the waterfall on the path to Top Within."

She also mentions the fact that Branwell is meant to have haunted a house on West Lane in the village.

No stranger to the gruesome history of Haworth is Phil Lister, who runs regular graveyard tours in the village.

Phil said: "The place is very atmospheric. A lot of the dark history of Haworth is told in these gravestones."

Phil says most people who visit Haworth for the history of the Brontes are missing out on half of the story: "I tell the other side to the story - the darker side of what it was like to live in this village at the time of the Brontes."

One of his stories concerns the celebrated balloonist and parachutist Lily Cove, who plunged to her death in 1906 when her parachute failed at a gala in Haworth. Her ghost is said to haunt the Old White Lion pub, where she spent her last night alive.

Of course, it's all nonsense, isn't it, this ghost business? So thought a young man who was a member of the influential Walker family who lived at the aforementioned Bolling Hall in the middle of the 19th Century.

A regular visitor to Bolling Hall was Richard Oastler, the famous industrialist, and one night he had a debate about the afterlife with one of the Walker sons. The young man vowed that he did not believe in life after death and never would, to which Oastler threatened that when he was dead he would come back and haunt Bolling Hall, unless the son changed his mind.

On the morning of August 22 1861 Richard Oastler died, and true to his word he came back from beyond the veil to visit the young man, appearing to him at the exact moment of his death.

The ghost of Richard Oastler has allegedly been seen many times since at Bolling Hall, usually on the anniversary of his death.

Sceptics be warned!

l For more information about Phil Lister's Haworth Graveyard Tours call 01535 642329.