Haunted Places of Dorset

Rupert Matthews surveys reported hauntings from across Dorset, bringing together stories attached to houses, ruins, roads, towns and other county locations. The book treats Dorset as a landscape where ghost lore has accumulated around places with long and sometimes troubled histories.

Among the stories included are the two phantom men of Shaftesbury, said to lead a ghostly packhorse. The emphasis is on local accounts and traditions rather than abstract discussion of the paranormal, making the book a county-wide record of apparitions, recurring legends and tales associated with specific sites. It offers a compact introduction to Dorset’s haunted geography, moving between familiar places and less widely known local stories.