Day: September 29, 2020

Silky has been compared to both ghost and brownie, and by the year 1863, Balfour claimed that she had not been heard of for some years. In appearance, Silky was a tall woman, dressed in silk (hence her name) but at that point tales of her appearance varies widely. Some say that she dressed in glowing white silk, others in dark rustic browns; and there are those that say her appearance was terrifying and ugly, and yet by the same notion, others say that she was a calm, gentle apparition, soothing in appearance.

Bamburgh Castle is one of the most well-known castles in the Northumberland coastal landscape, its impressive walls being used in a number of television and film productions, as well as its sheer location and size dominating the landscape. It is currently owned and occupied by the Armstrong family, who are allowing archaeological excavations of areas of the castle and the surrounding dunes. The main legends surrounding the Castle are about a dragon, or rather a worm or wyrm said to once plague the surrounding areas, but the grounds also have several ghost stories, the most well known being that of the Green Lady, a slight female figure swathed in a green cloak who has been witnessed on a number of occasions tumbling down the old steps clutching a bundle in her arms.

Bainbridge, now called John Lewis, is a shop in Newcastle with over one hundred and fifty years of history behind it. However, it is not the old Market Street Bainbridge building that has tales of the supernatural associated with it: rather it is the Eldon Square site that seems to have been active, mostly in the period just after the move to Eldon Square from Market Street. The ghost seen wandering Bainbridge was that of a Grey Lady: quite literally in this case as she was said to be a little grey old lady often seen in the old restaurant area.

The Silky of Denton Hall has a similar story to that of the apparition at Black Heddon. According to Tomlinson in 1894, Denton Hall had at that time been haunted by Silky, or ‘Old Barberry’ as the spirit was also known for nearly a century. According to legend, the first appearance of Silky coincided with Mr. William Thomas being tenant of the Hall. Thomas had two domestic servants, sisters named Ruth and Hannah Bell, and one night one of the sisters dreamed that there was a huge sum of money buried under a specific flagstone in the Hall’s entrance hall. The next morning, she told her sister, who then told Thomas – who had the stone raised and found a wealth of treasure.