Ghost of Sir Walter

The village of Calverley, near Bradford, in Yorkshire, has been haunted since the time of Queen Elizabeth by the apparition of Master Walter Calverley, now popularly called Sir Walter. It is averred that this man murdered his wife and two of his children, and, refusing to plead, was subjected to the peine forte et dure (hard and forceful punishment) in 1605. In his last agony he is said to have exclaimed, Them that love Sir Walter, loup on, loup on! which accordingly became the watchword of the apparition, which frequented a lane near the village of Calverley.

There is no fear, however, of meeting it at present; the ghost has been laid, and cannot reappear as long as green holly grows on the manor.

This Master Walter Calverley is the subject of A Yorkshire Tragedy, one of the plays attributed by some to Shakespeare, but more probably a work of the Jacobean playwright Thomas Middleton.

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