Hauntings
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  • Published: 3 January 2024
  • ISBN: 9781787636347
  • Imprint: Bantam
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $50.00

Hauntings

A Book of Ghosts and Where to Find Them Across 25 Eerie British Locations

Formats & editions
Hardback
3 Jan 2024
EBook
12 Oct 2023
Audiobook
12 Oct 2023
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Oliver travels the British Isles to explore the history of its most haunted places and and unpick why these houses, landmarks and other eerie places are so unsettling.

For longer than recorded history there have been tales of spirits and of places where our hackles rise and our skin turns cold.

Bestselling historian Neil Oliver travels the British Isles on a deliciously spine-chilling tour that spans several centuries and explores more than 20 sites - castles, vicarages and towers, lonely shorelines and forgotten battlefields - to unpick their stories..

Oliver invokes his family's history alongside that of kings and queens past as he probes why our emotions and senses are heightened in certain locations where the separation between dimensions seems gossamer thin. Our landscape is riven with these places, creaking from the weight of the secrets they hold, the echoes of tragedy and dark deeds . From Inverness to Devon, Co Dublin to Norfolk, Hauntings casts an enjoyably eerie glow with stories that, told generation after generation, are inextricable from place - and considers why they matter.
  • Published: 3 January 2024
  • ISBN: 9781787636347
  • Imprint: Bantam
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $50.00
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About the author

Neil Oliver

Neil Oliver was born in Renfrewshire in Scotland. He studied archaeology at the University of Glasgow and worked as an archaeologist before training as a journalist. In 2002 he made his television debut presenting BBC2’s Two Men in a Trench in which he and Tony Pollard visited historic British battlefields. Since that time he has been a regular on TV, presenting A History of Scotland, Vikings, and Coast. He was appointed President of the National Trust in Scotland in 2017. He travels all the time, but his home is in Stirling, with his wife, three children and an Irish wolfhound.

portrait photo of Neil Oliver

Also by Neil Oliver

The Story of the World in 100 Moments
The Story of the British Isles in 100 Places
Wisdom of the Ancients
See all

Praise for Hauntings

A proper page-turner. Neil Oliver blends personal reflections with vivid stories, rooted in the culture and history of these islands - a fascinating tangle of witches and mermaids, drowned fishers and dead warriors, ghostly planes, spectral horses and the 'thin places' where this world touches the Otherworld.

Christopher Somerville, Walking Correspondent for The Times and author of Walking the Bones of Britain

Wonderfully evocative. One of the most enjoyable books on the paranormal I've read. Neil Oliver creates a bucket list of places to visit, perfect for both paranormal investigators and history buffs alike. I was particularly impressed with the way in which Oliver explores the fragility of life and death and our idea of what a ghost actually is.

Nick Tyler, author of Haunted Yorkshire

Neil Oliver is such a very good writer. Haunted is a wonderful book: part history, part rumination on life, and, of course a haunting book about ghosts, both apparitions reportedly seen and heard, but also the lingering memories, shadows and spirits of those from the past. This is a beautifully written, fascinating, deeply moving and thought-provoking book that lingers in the mind long after the last page has been read.

James Holland

Book of the Week: Oliver's book offers just as many rational explanations for sightings as it does sightings themselves ... he wears his historian's hat to good effect.

Mark Mason, Daily Mail