Roman Soldiers At The Treasurer's House, York

@Ghost In The Machine
the closed restaurant wouldnt be "La Piazza" by any chance? That's close to the Minster and closed a few years back. The last I heard it was being sold.

For us spook chasers, we'd jump at the chance to stay or eat in a haunted pub/restaurant/hotel but the proprietors don't see it that way. I was told recently by one guy that they feared it could damage their wedding business. And a few others have said they don't want to be associated at all with the paranormal.
 
DrPaulLee said:
@Ghost In The Machine
the closed restaurant wouldnt be "La Piazza" by any chance? That's close to the Minster and closed a few years back. The last I heard it was being sold.

For us spook chasers, we'd jump at the chance to stay or eat in a haunted pub/restaurant/hotel but the proprietors don't see it that way. I was told recently by one guy that they feared it could damage their wedding business. And a few others have said they don't want to be associated at all with the paranormal.
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LOL I could take you to it but I can't remember the name of it. (It's changed hands since this family owned it, maybe multiple times, am not sure. I hardly get into town since covid but last time I walked past, it was still a restaurant but I don't know the name of it now).

I'd have thought ghosts would be good for business, tbh - seeing how good the Ghost Merchants are doing on The Shambles! Wedding business might be different, of course. I know a couple people who volunteer as medieval people at a place that is now sometimes a wedding venue - will have to ask them if they've experienced anything there!
 
I've attached a little map showing where it is (on Goodramgate):

HauntedYork.jpg
 
catseye said:
I think he went public with the story at the time, but it's one of these that bubbles away in the background, getting raised every few years as 'proof' of ghosts, or when York fancies another go at being 'Most Haunted City in Britain' or the like. Nationwide used to do bits like this, was that where you saw it?
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Ah, sorry, I missed your question - but, yes, it was definitely on Nationwide now I think about it!
 
Analogue Boy said:
I like the way Nationwide has become ‘Boomer Memory Hole’.

Not the building society and its advertising. That’s more Doggerel Bank.
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I loved Nationwide. It was fun. I was a bit sad when they stopped broadcasting it.
I even met Michael Barratt briefly, when I was a kid. I was with my friend and his mum walking around Bracknell, and she recognised Barratt. When we walked away, I asked if she knew him because she'd greeted him like an old friend. My friend's mum laughed and said that everyone knew who he was.
 
Mythopoeika said:
I loved Nationwide. It was fun. I was a bit sad when they stopped broadcasting it.
I even met Michael Barratt briefly, when I was a kid. I was with my friend and his mum walking around Bracknell, and she recognised Barratt. When we walked away, I asked if she knew him because she'd greeted him like an old friend. My friend's mum laughed and said that everyone knew who he was.
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Michael Barratt is still alive! He's 94!
 
Mythopoeika said:
I loved Nationwide. It was fun. I was a bit sad when they stopped broadcasting it.
I even met Michael Barratt briefly, when I was a kid. I was with my friend and his mum walking around Bracknell, and she recognised Barratt. When we walked away, I asked if she knew him because she'd greeted him like an old friend. My friend's mum laughed and said that everyone knew who he was.
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As a kid I loved Nationwide and when older was in a club and saw Frank Bough and was starstruck but something didn't seem right about him wearing suspenders.
 
The very best Nationwide item was them trailing the story that they’d be showing a man who could walk on water and jump on eggs without breaking them. We waited and waited until….

https://www.ebaumsworld.com/videos/the-finest-moment-in-the-history-of-british-television/85117389/

His ‘Walking on Water’ involved a similar technique on the washing-up bowl of water you see at the side there. Still. His achievement has not been forgotten.

For the double, I’m going for ‘Sue Lawley’ as a Mondegreen for the Police.
Don’t say I don’t give you value for money.

 
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I visited the Treasurer's House a couple of years ago. Didn't witness anything special. However, while I was touring around upstairs, looking at a an old chair, a museum staff approached me from behind and asked me : "Did you see the old lady" ? I wondered what she was talking about. I hadn't seen anybody, as the place was quite empty. So she added : "Oh sometimes people see an old lady, in a beautiful dress, sitting in this chair. It is quite common with little children". Obviously I was no longer a child. Fortunately, I had already got used to this for about 30 years.

Did anybody see the Treasurer's house upstairs' ghost ? Did you still have a pure child's mind ? :)
 
AmStramGram said:
I visited the Treasurer's House a couple of years ago. Didn't witness anything special. However, while I was touring around upstairs, looking at a an old chair, a museum staff approached me from behind and asked me : "Did you see the old lady" ? I wondered what she was talking about. I hadn't seen anybody, as the place was quite empty. So she added : "Oh sometimes people see an old lady, in a beautiful dress, sitting in this chair. It is quite common with little children". Obviously I was no longer a child. Fortunately, I had already got used to this for about 30 years.

Did anybody see the Treasurer's house upstairs' ghost ? Did you still have a pure child's mind ? :)
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But now you will never be able to visit that chair without thinking about the ghost of an old lady.... smart of the staff to prime expectation!
 
catseye said:
But now you will never be able to visit that chair without thinking about the ghost of an old lady.... smart of the staff to prime expectation!
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You can even call a member of staff aside and say something like "Excuse me, could you bring a glass of water, I don't think the old lady in the chair is feeling very well" ;)
 
catseye said:
But now you will never be able to visit that chair without thinking about the ghost of an old lady.... smart of the staff to prime expectation!
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It's even worse. Now anybody reading this thread may expect to see the ghostly lady in the Treasurer's House. And since the thread is about the Roman soldiers, perhaps some will actually see a Roman soldier resting on a 18th century chair and addressing the passer-by : "O Caius, is that you ? I was so tired to march in the basement that I went upstairs to share a cup of coloured hot water with this youngster, the old lady with a bizarre dress. Can you imagine she never tasted garum ? By Jupiter ! She doesn't know what she misses !"
 
@Yithian 's post on another thread regarding ghostly Romans elsewhere:

Yithian said:
I quite like this one from there. I'll give it a separate post for ease for reference:

I attended a wedding at Maesmawr Hall in 2012.

We had a really nice day and were booked in to stay the night. Our room was upstairs just one floor above ground level. We'd had a good few drinks and my wife and I fell asleep pretty easily. At around 4 in the morning, I was woken to a sudden absolute din of noise. I was lay in bed looking down the room and an army of roman soldiers were marching up the room towards me and sort of through the bed. They were three of four abreast at the shoulders and were exactly how you'd imagine with long shields, swords, tunics, leather skirts and helmets. Some carried standards and some held torches. They marched and shouted for what I felt was 10 seconds. I was immobile looking down the bed in complete shock. It felt like I couldn't move. The noise of many men marching was overwhelming the whole time.I don't exactly remember how it ended, it just sort of stopped and the room was completely dark again. The room was completely normal and my wife was fast asleep.

I woke her and told her about it. I was really shaken apparently. I told her that it hadn't seemed like a dream as I woke into it rather than out of it. We kept the light on and eventually we fell back to sleep.We discussed it in the morning and put it down to being an extremely vivid alcohol fuelled dream.

I can't say that I ever thought about it again until earlier this year when we passed the hotel on the way to stay with friends in Cardigan. I remembered and joked that it was the hotel where I was haunted by a roman legion.Chatting with our friends that evening I recounted the story whilst we prepared a meal together. My friend thought it sounded spooky so searched google for Maesmawr Hall Romans and we were all shocked to find out that the place is haunted in several ways including by a Roman army which had been seen to march up to the hotel and though a wall. Interestingly that account had the person hear the noise and look out of an upstairs window to see them marching below. For me they were definitely coming through the room.

Although it was scary at the time, it didn't badly affect me, I even forgot all about it. Looking back now I think it is an amazing thing to have witnessed and I am positive it wasn't a dream or if it was it wasn't a normal one. Annoyingly some of the mentions of the hauntings online predate the incident so it could be argued that I'd read about it or someone at the wedding had mentioned it. But in the bed that night whilst trying to get back to sleep we commented that nobody had mentioned romans to us so it was a very random thing to dream about if it were a dream.
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This had me wondering. Reports of Roman ghosts are widespread in England at least, and I wouldn't be surprised if they crop up in Wales or southern Scotland. Local ghost books will often have an account of a solitary Roman, or a marching company.

Are there reports of ghostly Romans from other parts of the Roman Empire? What about Italy, Spain, North Africa or Lebanon, to name just a few? And if not, then why here of all places? The Romans certainly had their traumatic encounters here, but we're not unique in that respect.
 
SimonBurchell said:
@Yithian 's post on another thread regarding ghostly Romans elsewhere:


This had me wondering. Reports of Roman ghosts are widespread in England at least, and I wouldn't be surprised if they crop up in Wales or southern Scotland. Local ghost books will often have an account of a solitary Roman, or a marching company.

Are there reports of ghostly Romans from other parts of the Roman Empire? What about Italy, Spain, North Africa or Lebanon, to name just a few? And if not, then why here of all places? The Romans certainly had their traumatic encounters here, but we're not unique in that respect.
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Is the issue here that we run into the Latin culture in France and Italy and the influence of the Catholic Church as opposed to our more Celtic culture that is more open to ghosts and ghouls?

I know the Bretagne (Brittany) culture prides itself on being distinct from the rest of France and having Celtic roots and a quick google brought up a lot of Brittany ghost stories and experiences
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Is the issue here that we run into the Latin culture in France and Italy and the influence of the Catholic Church as opposed to our more Celtic culture that is more open to ghosts and ghouls?

I know the Bretagne (Brittany) culture prides itself on being distinct from the rest of France and having Celtic roots and a quick google brought up a lot of Brittany ghost stories and experiences
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I'm not so sure about that. I think the differences between the Celtic and Germanic peoples were overstated by Victorian romanticism. Spain has plenty of ghost stories, I'm currently delving in to see what I can dig up in Spanish or Portuguese.
 
SimonBurchell said:
I'm not so sure about that. I think the differences between the Celtic and Germanic peoples were overstated by Victorian romanticism. Spain has plenty of ghost stories, I'm currently delving in to see what I can did up in Spanish or Portuguese.
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Would be interested to know more about that. Poltergeist and doppelgänger are of course Germanic words.
 
SimonBurchell said:
Are there reports of ghostly Romans from other parts of the Roman Empire? What about Italy, Spain, North Africa or Lebanon, to name just a few? And if not, then why here of all places? The Romans certainly had their traumatic encounters here, but we're not unique in that respect.
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The Colosseum in Rome has had a few sightings (and more often sounds, apparently).
 
SimonBurchell said:
Not looking good after a brief Google - lots of Spanish ghosts, none of them Roman. Could just be that Google is rubbish these days, of course, and just wants to sell me stuff.
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The following is a typically half-formed 'inspiration' which hasn't been thought through but...

The Usual Nonsensical Speculation:
I wonder if the amount of trauma has an effect on ghost sightings? Collective trauma - in this particular context - and also the collective trauma or even the collective/national memory of past trauma? We often read rhetorical questions like these: 'Where are all the ghosts of dinosaurs?' or 'Where are all the concentration camps ghosts?' (these are often asked with an agenda of dismissing the existence of any ghosts); could it be that battles - for instance - in which thousands died result in very few ghosts sightings in later times? Are such mass-death events simply so much of an overload of trauma that the individual traumas leave no ghostly mark, as it were - in a sense, all that suffering and angst cancels itself out.

Even Worse Nonsensical Speculation:
And of course my latest loony idea begs the telling question of our own (i.e. the living) impact on ghost sightings: if it's true that only individual ghosts 'appear' in our sight, or at least a few ghosts at any one time, does this particularly strange phenomenon suggest that ghost sightings are merely an overspill of the insatiable human habit of identifying with others & other lives and fates (as, for example, we do when identify with one or more characters in fictional works)?

There'll be more nonsense from me to follow, no doubt.
 
Steven said:
The following is a typically half-formed 'inspiration' which hasn't been thought through but...

The Usual Nonsensical Speculation:
I wonder if the amount of trauma has an effect on ghost sightings? Collective trauma - in this particular context - and also the collective trauma or even the collective/national memory of past trauma? We often read rhetorical questions like these: 'Where are all the ghosts of dinosaurs?' or 'Where are all the concentration camps ghosts?' (these are often asked with an agenda of dismissing the existence of any ghosts); could it be that battles - for instance - in which thousands died result in very few ghosts sightings in later times? Are such mass-death events simply so much of an overload of trauma that the individual traumas leave no ghostly mark, as it were - in a sense, all that suffering and angst cancels itself out.

Even Worse Nonsensical Speculation:
And of course my latest loony idea begs the telling question of our own (i.e. the living) impact on ghost sightings: if it's true that only individual ghosts 'appear' in our sight, or at least a few ghosts at any one time, does this particularly strange phenomenon suggest that ghost sightings are merely an overspill of the insatiable human habit of identifying with others & other lives and fates (as, for example, we do when identify with one or more characters in fictional works)?

There'll be more nonsense from me to follow, no doubt.
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I wonder how many cases of sounds of ghosts (battles for eg) there are compared to actual sightings?
I don't suppose they probably get reported, or taken notice of as much as visual phenomena are.
 
This is from the small pamphlet "The Haunting of Holme Hale," held in my local library.

Edit: it looks like they've been uploaded in the wrong order.
 

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I'm interested in why there doesn't seem to be much in the way of reporting of Viking ghosts (or Viking-era ghosts) in York, when whole sectors of the city were settled by Northmen. Given how much evidence we have regarding their daily lives and locations in the city, there seems to be a dearth of 'scruffy bloke in hose/woman in gown' type ghosts, compared to the Roman ghosts.

Or is it just that the Romans, with their armour and standards and everything are just more identifidable? Where are the ghosts of the Roman women?
 
catseye said:
I'm interested in why there doesn't seem to be much in the way of reporting of Viking ghosts (or Viking-era ghosts) in York, when whole sectors of the city were settled by Northmen. Given how much evidence we have regarding their daily lives and locations in the city, there seems to be a dearth of 'scruffy bloke in hose/woman in gown' type ghosts, compared to the Roman ghosts.

Or is it just that the Romans, with their armour and standards and everything are just more identifidable? Where are the ghosts of the Roman women?
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Maybe settled Vikings weren't as scruffy as we are led to believe? I don't see why they should be particularly distinguishable at first glance from any other townsman of the Middle Ages. They weren't, on the whole, running around waving axes at people.
 
SimonBurchell said:
Maybe settled Vikings weren't as scruffy as we are led to believe? I don't see why they should be particularly distinguishable at first glance from any other townsman of the Middle Ages. They weren't, on the whole, running around waving axes at people.
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But that's just the point - there aren't really any reports of 'medieval' ghosts. It's Romans or Georgian/Victorian/Edwardian. Why the big black hole in hauntings?
 
catseye said:
But that's just the point - there aren't really any reports of 'medieval' ghosts. It's Romans or Georgian/Victorian/Edwardian. Why the big black hole in hauntings?
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The many reports of phantom monks are arguably just medieval folk wearing the cloaks that were common at the time (very few of theses reports ever mention a crucifix, for example).
 
Paul_Exeter said:
The many reports of phantom monks are arguably just medieval folk wearing the cloaks that were common at the time (very few of theses reports ever mention a crucifix, for example).
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Did the poor people wear cloaks? I know the gentry would, but I thought the poor medieval peasant just had a kind of tunic thing. Maybe we are talking about different eras.
 
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