Finchale Priory

According to a former employee (who wishes to remain anonymous “Strange things happen in the paybox. Things appear and disappear and often, at night, dark figures are seen moving around. Customers talk about things happening in the undercroft. There is also a story about a local farmer who dug up a runestone but it brought him so much bad luck that he eventually threw it into the river.”
Less than a mile away is the site of the Great Lumley Ghost Story Murder where a ghost allegedly appeared in a courtroom, which is now part of the Palace Green Library, and testified against two men who allegedly murdered her. The two men were later convicted and hanged.

When the Abbey was a camp site in the latter part of the 20th century lots of locals talked about unpleasant encounters with the spirit of a hunchbacked monk to whom they gave the unkind nickname Slew foot. These sightings seem to have been more common on the bank opposite the current ruins where people camped without permission in the woods.

A number of fishermen in the area believe that there is an undocumented part of Finchale Abbey outside of the National Trust fencing that was possibly an infirmary and/or mortuary chapel. One of them has even given us Google Earth coordinates of the spot where he believes the site to be. Unfortunately we cannot reveal these at present but…

Watch this site for further developments on this fascinating development.