Ghosts of Wales

Ghosts of Wales gathers more than 50 reported encounters drawn from Welsh newspaper archives and dating from 1837 to 1901. Mark Rees presents the stories as products of their time, when sensational accounts of apparitions and spiritual manifestations regularly reached the press.

The collection ranges from two-headed phantoms and murdered knights to spectral locomotives, séances and haunted mines where superstition reportedly brought work to a halt. Other accounts describe poltergeists troubling industrial communities, prophecies attributed to the dead and families abandoning supposedly haunted homes. Alongside the alarming reports are stories of alleged hoaxes and comic incidents, revealing how Victorian Wales could treat ghost stories as both headline news and public entertainment.