Ghostly Canal Legends.

Could a Narrowboat holiday turn into a spooky experience?

Are you fascinated by legends and folklore? Do tales of ghosts and spooks leave you spellbound? Then Hire a canal boat and you may find yourself immersed in the middle of a mysterious encounter. Ever since the canals were built in the 18th Century there have been tales of haunting and of ghostly happenings so read on if you dare …...

Hire a narrowboat from our Union Wharf Marina and cruise the spooky Blisworth Tunnel on the Grand Union Canal. During the construction of the original tunnel the walls collapsed and fourteen men died. Sometimes when travelling through the tunnel a mysterious fork can be seen but this fork no longer exists. The image you may see was the location of the original tunnel where the tragic accident occurred 200 years earlier.

Listen carefully and you may hear 'Spring Heeled Jack' as the echoes of his footstep can be heard as you pass beneath the Bridges on Grand Union Canal. These terrifying steps here have been scaring boatmen since the 1830s and legend says his ghost leaps clean across a canal to attack his victims.

The eerie Harecastle Tunnel on The Trent and Mersey is the home to the ghostly beheaded corpse of Kit Crewbucket killed and dumped near to the canal in the 18th century. Narrowboat crews of old were so convinced of her existence that some would choose a long detour to avoid a trip through the tunnel.

At Brindley Bank on the Trent and Mersey Canal Christina Collins was murdered and her body flung into the canal. As Christina's body was dragged from the water, her blood ran down a flight of sandstone steps leading from the canal. Legend has it that ghostly bloodstained rocks appear at the site where she met her tragic end and she has been scaring boatmen since 1839.

The picturesque Shropshire Union Canal is perhaps Britain's most ghostly canal and at Tyrley middle lock, just beyond Market Drayton, there is a very helpful resident ghost. Sometimes as you enter the lock gates will mysteriously shut behind your narrowboat.

The most scary story of all and probably the best known is the phantom which appears on the Shropshire Union Canal at bridge 39. This is supposedly the ghost of a boatman drowned here in the19th century. Today he takes the form of a hideous black, shaggy coated being and is know locally as “The Monkey Man”.

The old lock-keepers cottage on the Montgomery Canal, at Burgedin, Wales, was where a tragic young girl was walled up alive as a punishment for running away with her lover. The cottage is now a waterway office and objects are regularly moved around and her ghost has been seen near the brick-built fireplace in the old basement of this building.