Even the most unremarkable places can harbour the uncanny, as ghost stories from Milton Keynes begin to emerge from the shadows, writes guest writer DR STEPH LAY
There’s a certain look that people get when you say you live in Milton Keynes. A kind of knowing smile, and you can tell they’re thinking: “Oh yeah, roundabouts, concrete cows – the most boring town in the UK.”
When you then go on to say that you’ve just quit the job you’ve been doing for 23 years to spend your days tracking down ghost stories here, that look changes to total disbelief. As one taxi driver said to me recently: “That’s the last place you’re going to find anything spooky! There’s nothing there!”
I spend quite a lot of time in taxis, but more time on foot, walking around the city – and it is a city, albeit a new one, only officially designated back in 2022. Since April, I’ve clocked up more than 700 miles criss-crossing the estates, and spent hours in cafés, pubs, and even at the side of the road, listening to fascinating stories from the people who live and work here.
You see, I’ve set myself a mission. Milton Keynes is divided into over a hundred grid squares – distinct parts of the city where the roads that separate the estates cross. Each has its own identity, although they can look uncannily similar. Sometimes I’ll emerge from an underpass into a new estate and feel like I’ve looped back in time – but no, it’s just the same layout again: the shops in the same place, a play area on the same corner.
My goal is to find at least one story of the strange, the unexplained, or the paranormal for every single grid square. I’m plotting them on a map and sharing them for the world to read. I’ve called the project Revenants on the Redway, a nod to our red-paved walking routes that separate people from the high-speed traffic that races between all of those roundabouts.
And even though I’ve only been doing this for five months, I’m already a quarter of the way there. That definitely makes people think again.
It turns out, there’s a lot here, if you stop and listen. I’ve heard from people who’ve seen shadowy children in playgrounds, been driven from their homes by poltergeist activity, and even been chased by the Grim Reaper. Some consulted priests, some performed their own blessings, others simply learned to live with the entities in their homes – sometimes for years. These stories have unfolded in high-street shops, listed buildings, and on a graffiti-covered railway bridge that feels chilling in daylight and even worse at night.
Every story has stayed with me, but I’ll always have a soft spot for my first witness. Not only because she was the first to trust me, but because the setting was the ultimate “last place you’d expect.”
Anne was out shopping with her young daughter in Stony Stratford when they stepped into Party Mad, a fancy-dress shop squeezed between the butcher’s and a bakery on the High Street. Downstairs was quiet, just the two of them browsing racks of costumes, but from above came the sound of footsteps, shuffling, even muffled voices.
When Anne remarked on how busy it sounded upstairs, the shop assistant’s reply was blunt and chilling: “No, there’s nobody up there. You’re the only customers.”
A glance at the CCTV monitor confirmed what her ears were telling her – vague, shadowy figures moving around on the upper floor. Figures that shouldn’t have been there. When she pointed it out, the assistant only shrugged: “Yeah, the shop’s haunted.”
Anne described the shapes as indistinct, but unmistakably human in outline, shifting through the clutter of costumes above. She didn’t go upstairs to look – and who could blame her? A room full of masks and sequins, haunted not by laughter but by restless figures caught half-glimpsed on camera, is enough to make anyone’s skin crawl. You can read Anne’s full story here.
Since then, this project has taken me on some remarkable adventures. I first began collecting stories on Facebook, and the response was overwhelming: within hours, I had hundreds of comments and dozens of stories to follow up. One name came up again and again – Claire Evans, who many of you will know from her own writing here.
Naively, I hadn’t realised there were already investigators working in Milton Keynes. So when Claire invited me along to one of her team’s events at a local arts centre, I jumped at the chance. I never thought I’d find myself on a ghost hunt, let alone sitting at a Ouija board in a haunted barn at midnight. You can read the full story of that night here.
That sense of being welcomed into unexpected spaces has run through the whole project. Although I’ve studied parapsychology, my background is in interviewing people for psychology research, and I felt completely out of my depth at first. More than once, I tried to channel my inner Danny Robins – striking a balance between asking for all the details while listening with empathy.
It’s getting easier, and people are getting more willing to share. Just last week, I met up with Anne – my first witness has become a good friend – and while we sat in a pub garden talking, several people walking by overheard us and asked if they could share their stories too. That kind of spontaneous openness still surprises me, but it’s proof of something I hadn’t expected when I began: that people want to tell these stories, if only someone is there to listen.
It’s important to me that people know I’ll be respectful when I retell them. I’m not here to prove or disprove anything. What matters most is what the experience meant to the person who lived it. Every time I sit down with someone, I’m aware of what a privilege it is to be trusted with memories that are unsettling, sometimes life-changing, and often never spoken aloud until now.
And that’s what keeps me walking, listening, mapping. Because if the last five months have taught me anything, it’s that even in a city built of concrete and roundabouts, the ghosts are here. They linger in the play parks, the pubs, the quiet streets after dark. They live on in the stories people carry, waiting for someone to ask.
I’m only a quarter of the way through my journey, and there are still so many grid squares to explore. So if you’re reading this – whether you live in Milton Keynes now, grew up here, or even just passed through – and you’ve got a story to share, I’d love to hear it.
And if you’re not local, I’d still love you to join the journey and to explore these stories with me. Because really, this is wider than just the tales of one city. Finding hauntings in this most unexpected of places is a reminder that the uncanny can slip into any of our lives, wherever we happen to be.
Dr Steph Lay is a horror writer, photographer and parapsychologist. Her fiction explores dark urban folk stories, and has been published by Comma Press and the Milton Keynes Literary Festival. Alongside the Revenants On The Redway project, she works on the paranormal storytelling channel Into The Fog, contributing to content, looking after the analytics, and keeping everything running smoothly.
Have you experienced anything spooky in Milton Keynes? Share your story in the comments – we’d love to hear it!
