Paranormal Cambridge’s Leigh Watson tells DAVID SAUNDERSON how a witchy conversation helped inspire a new kind of ghost tour
When Spooky Isles last spoke to Leigh Watson three years ago, she was guiding visitors through Cambridge’s haunted streets, sharing tales of ghosts, witches and strange happenings from the city’s long history.
The ghosts are still there, but Leigh’s focus has shifted.
After years of leading tours and researching local folklore, she has launched Paranormal Cambridge, a new venture that looks beyond haunted pubs and ghostly sightings to explore the bigger questions behind them.
Why do people keep seeing strange things? Why do stories of witches, ghosts and uncanny experiences endure? And what can they tell us about the way people have tried to understand the world?
“There’s more to it than just a ‘woo’ ghost story,” Leigh told Spooky Isles.
Paranormal Cambridge explores bigger questions
Her new tours still feature some of Cambridge’s most fascinating tales, but they also draw on subjects as varied as witchcraft, alchemy, psychical research and even quantum physics.
“The things, if you look at witchcraft, alchemy, conventional science, Newtonian physics, and then quantum physics, it’s starting to talk like witchcraft,” she said.
Leigh is not claiming that science and witchcraft are the same thing. Rather, she is fascinated by humanity’s endless search for answers and how each generation tries to explain mysteries that seem just beyond its understanding.
The idea crystallised during a private tour with a visitor from Pendle, the Lancashire area forever linked with Britain’s most famous witch trials.
The pair quickly moved beyond ghost stories and into a discussion about folklore, witchcraft and belief.
“We went so witchy, we basically got on our broomsticks and we zapped around Cambridge,” Leigh laughed.
The experience helped convince her that many people are looking for something more than tales of hauntings.
“I would have paid her to do the damn tour, it was so interesting.”
That conversation helped shape the direction of Paranormal Cambridge, which Leigh hopes will appeal to curious minds as much as ghost enthusiasts.
A qualified guide with a long-standing interest in folklore, Leigh grew up surrounded by stories of the supernatural. Her grandmother came from the Fens, a landscape rich in tales of witches and wise women, while her mother had an interest in spiritualism. Those influences have stayed with her throughout her life.
Today, they help inform a style of tour that is as much about ideas as apparitions.
“I love the small tours because you can go deeper into your subject,” she said.
There is something slightly wicked about Leigh’s approach. Not wicked in a sinister sense, but in the way she enjoys challenging assumptions and leading people down unexpected paths. One moment she is talking about a Cambridge ghost story, the next she is discussing witchcraft, folklore, philosophy or the mysteries of the universe.
The result is a tour that aims to do more than raise a shiver.
Leigh wants people to leave asking questions, making connections and wondering whether there might be more to the world than they first thought.
The ghosts may fade into the Cambridge night, but the ideas are likely to stay with visitors long afterwards.
Find out more at paranormalcambridge.com
