Stories of wandering spirits and the restless dead were common in the Middle Ages. These ghostly encounters were recorded in a wide variety of medieval literature.

Medieval ghost stories combined folklore traditions with religious doctrine. The widespread belief in purgatory – a place where souls were cleansed of sin before entering heaven – helped fuel the belief in ghosts.

Spirits of the departed were thought able to return, exhorting the living to pray for them and make amends on their behalf to aid their passage through purgatory. As a result, medieval ghost stories often contained a strong moral and religious message.

Historians have long been fascinated by a series of 12 ghost stories written down in the early years of the 15th century at Byland Abbey, a Cistercian monastery in north Yorkshire. They recorded a bizarre and eclectic array of ghosts, featuring shape-shifting spirits, miracle stories and the walking dead, who crept up on the living.

These tales were clearly intended to scare people. They referred to the “terrors of the night” and to spirits rising from their graves to “disturb and terrify villagers”. One graphically described a woman sinking her hand into a spirit’s flesh as if it were rotten and insubstantial.

Some of those who encountered these spirits were even said to have been hurt or fallen “ill and languished for many days” afterwards. Yet the primary aim of most of the ghosts was not to physically harm the living. In one story, a spirit threw a man over a hedge but then caught him on the other side so he did not get hurt. Instead, ghosts most often sought the help of the living.

In one of the stories, two men were walking in a field when suddenly one fled “in great terror” as the other man was “left struggling with a spirit who badly tore his clothes”. The man managed to “conjure” the ghost – a vital step enabling the living and dead to communicate. The ghost then confessed that he had been excommunicated for stealing silver spoons. He begged the man to restore the spoons and request absolution on his behalf, which he duly did.

Such stories were intended to be instructive. The reader was encouraged to think about others who might be in purgatory, and to pray for their salvation. They were also exhorted to consider their own behaviour and to amend their ways before their own demise.

Some of the stories made this explicit. In one which revolved around a real inheritance dispute, the sister of Adam de London, a minor landowner in Ampleforth, was compelled to wander the village after her death. She explicitly threatened her brother that if he did not restore the disputed property to her husband and sons, he would suffer the same fate as her upon his death.

Some of these moral messages are timeless, but others clearly conveyed the concerns of medieval landowners. In one story, a poor spirit was being “grievously punished” because he had not ploughed his master’s land sufficiently well.

Religious faith was vital in confronting such spectral visitors. In one story, a man named William de Bradeforth was followed by a ghost crying “how, how, how”. William commanded the spirit to depart “in the name of the Lord and by the power of the blood of Jesus Christ”. The ghost was said to flee, “looking like a piece of canvas unfurling its four corners and billowing away”.

In another, a spirit appeared to a tailor called “Snowball” in various forms, including a raven and a dog. The spirit admitted that he only had the power to visit the man because he had not heard Mass that day.

The walking dead

Sometimes the moral instruction in such stories was less clear. For example, the revenant of James Tankerlay, a former rector, came forth and blinded his former concubine. No one sought to communicate with him or put him to rest. Instead, they opted for banishing the ghost by digging up his corpse and throwing his remains into a mire.

This echoes earlier stories of revenants and the walking dead. In this tradition, the return of the dead could be prevented by beheading, burning or otherwise mutilating the bodies of the deceased.

Archaeological evidence suggests this may not have been just a literary invention but was occasionally carried out. Skeletons from between the 11th and 13th centuries at the deserted medieval village of Wharram Percy in north Yorkshire had a series of post-mortem mutilations that may have reflected such anxieties around the walking dead.

Living an upright life might have promised peace in heaven, but when it came to keeping the dead in their graves, medieval communities clearly preferred not to take any chances.