| York Ghost Festival 2005 | York Ghost Festival is at various locations around York from 28th October - 5th November A full timetable of events is available at www.psi-chicks.co.uk |
They say the best ideas are the simplest, and the York Ghost Festival is certainly no exception to that rule. It was conceived two years ago, when Rachel Lacy, 'York's Official Ghost Finder General', and her friends hit upon the obvious: "We said, we've all these other festivals going on in York, and we've got all this stuff going on about ghosts, so it's time we had a ghost festival". To test the water, they put on three days of ghost-related events in York, and so successful were they that a longer, more packed festival was planned for this year. Amongst the healthy list of events on offer are Past Life Regression and Aura talks, and street performances of some of York's ghost stories, by groups including the Dead Wenches. They'll also be enacting the story of the barguest, a terrifying, slavering great beast whose mere sighting is a sign that death is close! In addition to all that, there'll be a number of overnight paranormal investigations taking place in various locations around the city, culminating in the festival organisers’ biggest investigation to date, which will be filmed for later release on DVD. But the festival starts on Friday 28th October with a free all-day event in Borders Bookshop on Davygate, designed to put suspicious minds at rest. Between 10am and 5pm, there'll be members of the Pagan and Wiccan community on hand to answer questions about their religions. As Rachel explains, it's not something that everyone feels comfortable with: "There is nothing evil about it, it is not the 'dark side' of Christianity, involving devil worship... A lot of people do know this but there are still a lot of people who worry about what their children are getting into". Why not pop along and see if there's something in it for you? After all, they're being suitably transparent about it all... There's a full timetable of events taking place during the York Ghost Festival at www.psi-chicks.co.uk | 
