It may look like like one of Lincoln’s plushest hotels but The White Hart, in the city’s Bailgate area, is known for something else entirely – at least according to Karen Crow.
“This is definitely the most haunted building in Lincoln – even the staff tell us is it,” she says. “There is no way the building isn’t haunted with things we’ve heard about from staff, cleaners and visitors.
“People often claim to hear loud banging on their doors in the middle of the night and running down the corridor even if there is no one there. In many incidents the visitors have gone outside to try and find someone but there is no one to be seen.”
Welcome to the Lincoln Ghost Walk – a tour that introduces visitors to horrifying hotels, ghastly ghouls and murder-most-horrid.
So full of spirits is this ancient city that Karen – the 65-year-old behind the walks – reckons “three out of every four” buildings in the Bailgate have witnessed paranormal activity.
And the walks aim to entertain and inform visitors through their mix of both recorded history and spooky stories.
Since being set up more than 30 years ago, they have attracted hundreds of people from spook-loving children to paranormal academics – and even one bona fide Hollywood A-lister: Tom Hanks and his family booked a private ghost walk with the company while he was ifilming The Da Vinci Code in the city 20 years ago.
The walks were started by a lady called Margret Green in the Nineties with Karen joining as a tour guide few years later.
She said: ‘The talks were getting more popular and Margret stumbled across me when I was working at the Lincoln Shakespeare Company. Margret noticed that I had a loud voice and could control an audience and offered me a job.”
When Margret passed away in 2020, Karen took over the walks.
Among stories that are particular hit with visitors are one of a black horse running up Steep Hill towards Lincoln Castle in the middle of the night with a man on the back.
It is said this man was racing to Lincoln to deliver a pardon for his friend who was due to be hung at dawn – but, despite his efforts, he did not make it in time. His friend was hung – and the ghost remains trying to (unsuccessfully) deliver the pardon to this day.
But what of Karen? Has she ever witnessed a ghost herself?
“When I used to live in an old farmhouse, our guests would often describe how lovely it was the cat slept across their feet during the night,” she says. “This was unusual because I never owned a cat.”
Now, she hopes to keep the ghost walks running for years more to come.
“People of all ages come again and again,” she said. “All our guides have different stories have different stories, so no ghost walk is the same.”
