Lil
speaker
737 appearances
4 recordings
2 series
first heard Oct 2024
last heard Apr 2025
Lil’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I have been, but it was many years ago. And it's definitely on our list of places that we really need to visit for the podcast at some point.
It's only just a little bit further up the coast, though, and maybe next year or the year after we could get that little bit further and visit Lindisfarne. I would love to visit, and I think you'd really enjoy it, Fitz.
Thank you so much to everybody who shared their stories with us today. Your ghostly experiences are, as you know, the lifeblood of the show. So if you have a story to share with us, we would absolutely love to hear it.
We wake to glowering skies and rain. Looking out of the French doors of our holiday cottage towards the coast, the grey sea is indistinguishable from the blurry horizon of the equally grey sky.
The dull weather casts the heather and gorse-covered moorland into muted shades of brown as we drive towards Whitby along an undulating road that rises and falls like a fairground ride, causing us some trepidation, us Midlanders being far more used to the pancake-flat expanses of the fens.
A particularly steep incline that has me clutching the dashboard takes us down into Whitby Town, only to abruptly start another climb up to the top of the West Cliff where our day's adventures will begin. Today, we are on the trail of Dracula to explore the parts of Whitby that feature in Bram Stoker's legendary book and discover their history, folklore, ghosts and legends.
And what better place to start than the Royal Crescent, the location the author himself staged during the visits to Whitby that so inspired his famous work. We head for the pavilion car park, just opposite the Royal Crescent, and right on the cliff edge with views across to the abbey over on the east side.
We manage to get one of the parking spots directly overlooking the sea, and as wet and miserable of a day as it is, it's quite tempting to stay for a while, cosied up in the van, watching the steel-coloured waves crash below, and imagining the silhouettes of full-masted ships gliding across the hazy horizon. But we have so much to see.
And if nothing else, the dreary weather sets the perfect backdrop for a gothic horror pilgrimage and ghost tour. But we're not only following the trail of Dracula today, but also the trail of Whitby's ghost stories. Stories that don't always get the attention they deserve from the standard tourist trail maps.
Thousands of people visit Whitby each year and explore the town via one of the many available Dracula trail guides. But what many don't realise is that in the very footsteps of Bram Stoker's fictional story, another layer can be found. A deep layer of Whitby's own ghosts and legends. And today, we're going to be taking on both in tandem. And, of course, dipping into some history along the way.
And we'll start by looking behind us, away from the sea, at the row of tall four and five storey Victorian townhouses that played a part in the most famous vampire story of all time.
The clock was striking one as I was in the crescent, and there was not a soul in sight. I ran along the north terrace, but could see no sign of the white figure which I expected. At the edge of the west cliff above the pier, I looked out over the harbour to the east cliff, in the hope, or fear, I don't know which, of seeing Lucy in our favourite seat.
There was a bright full moon with heavy black driving clouds, which threw the whole scene into a fleeting diorama of light and shade as they sailed across. For a moment or two, I could see nothing, as the shadow of a cloud obscured St Mary's Church and all around it.
Then, as the cloud passed, I could see the ruins of the abbey coming into view, and as the edge of a narrow band of light as sharp as a sword cut moved along, the church and churchyard became gradually visible. Whatever my expectation was, it was not disappointed. But there, on our favourite seat, the silver light of the moon struck a half-reclining figure, snowy white.
The coming of the cloud was too quick for me to see much, for shadow shut down on light almost immediately. But it seemed to me as though something dark stood behind the seat where the white figure shone.
From this passage, and Mina's description of the landscape she passes through, it's generally agreed that the lodging house of his fictional characters was in fact the very same as his real holiday accommodation at Sixth Royal Crescent.
And we can follow Mina's flight along North Terrace, past the modern car park, to the corner of the cliff that overlooks the west pier and harbour below, where Mina looks for her friend.
The view that she describes here is one of the most famous and most photographed in all of Whitby, and also the place where two famous monuments stand testament to the town's history, the Captain Cook statue and the Whalebone Arch, two quintessentially Whitby photo opportunities that can't be missed, but that also reflect a darker side of the town's history.
Both structures, perched on the cliff edge above the steep drop to the harbour below, face the wave-filled expanse of the harbour mouth and the east cliff on the opposite side of town.
And anyone with a photographic eye can appreciate how the tall, imposing Cook Monument, with the stony-faced captain forever gazing determinedly out to sea, creates the perfect foreground to the ruins of the ancient abbey far off in the distance, the cluster of red pantiled roofs crowded together along the face of East Cliff, completing a scene that crushes together a thousand years of history in one shot.
Showing 601–620 of 737 · page 31 of 37
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