Blackpool has long been a favourite for holidaymakers and conjures up cosy images of theme-parks, donkey rides and ice-cream. However, this popular seaside resort also harbours some disturbing secrets. Discover the shadier side of Blackpool with this terrifying collection of true-life tales from across the town. Featuring the ghosts of some of the most iconic buildings, such as Blackpool Tower, the Grand Theatre and Blackpool Opera House, this book is guaranteed to make your blood run cold. Drawing on historical and contemporary sources and containing many tales which have never before been published, Haunted Blackpool will delight everyone interested in the paranormal.

The latest exciting title from Darren Ritson offers a wealth of paranormal tales and legends from all over the north of the country.

Despite the much vaunted ’end of religion’ and the growth of secularism, people are engaging like never before in their own ’spiritualities of life’. Across the West, paranormal belief is on the rise. The Ashgate Research Companion to Paranormal Cultures brings together the work of international scholars across the social sciences and humanities to question how and why people are seeking meaning in the realm of the paranormal, a heretofore subjugated knowledge. With contributions from the UK and other European countries, the USA, Australia and Canada, this ground-breaking book attends to the paranormal as a position from which to critique dominant forms of knowledge production and spirituality. A rich exploration of everyday life practices, textual engagements and discourses relating to the paranormal, as well as the mediation, technology and art of paranormal activity, this book explores themes such as subcultures and mainstreaming, as well as epistemological, methodological, and phenomenological questions, and the role of the paranormal in social change. The Ashgate Research Companion to Paranormal Cultures constitutes an essential resource for those interested in the academic study of cultural engagements with paranormality; it will appeal to scholars of cultural and media studies, popular culture, sociology, cultural geography, literature, film and music.

A fabulous collection of ghostly hauntings in Lancashire.

The Ultimate Companion to A Beautiful Game This new Rough Guide is the only soccer book of its kind. It uncovers the most amazing stories and the unlikeliest personalities on Planet Football, both past and present, that help to make soccer the greatest show on earth. We reveal the stories behind the mavericks and cult figures who make up the real heroes of the game - from cultured midfielders to jailbirds, drinkers to straight arrows, local legends to international wanderers. The book showcases an amazing and unusual roll-call of talent that stretches from Ferenc Puskas to Stan Bowles, Eric Cantona to Jose Chilavert and Garrincha to Perry Groves. Throughout, we run our eye over the special clubs - from the New York Cosmos to Berwick Rangers and Estudiantes; managers and football rivalries - from 'El Clásico' to the Faroe Islands derby; and recall extraordinary games from 'The Battle of Highbury' to underdog fixtures where the likes of Northern Ireland, Wimbledon, and Dynamo Kiev overcame the might of Spain, Liverpool, and the Nazis. Post-match analyses of football culture, ephemera, science, and some strange statistics, complete this ultimate fiesta of football fun. "Ain't it great to be alive? All you need is the green grass and a ball" -Pele

Paranormal expert Theresa Cheung shares 101 of the most mysterious and spooky true stories of hauntings from around the world together with the latest afterlife science and research, providing fascinating insight into our never-ending love affair with ghosts.

Here in the follow up to Paranormal Case Files of Great Britain (Volume 1) Malcolm Robinson continues to provide the public with some astonishing ghostly and paranormal encounters. The book is jam packed with tale after tale of people's own harrowing ghostly experiences. Malcolm also provides the reader with the best case of paranormal activity that he personally has encountered, (The Chingford Séance) All in all, this book is packed to the gunnels with accounts that will simply stand the hair up on the back of your neck!

'A dwarfish figure that resembled a monk with a gnarled and twisted face, holding out a bleeding arm from which the hand had been cut off at the wrist…’ 'He saw in the clear moonlight a massive male figure standing under a tree, dressed entirely in black…’ The ghostly little monk of Foulridge and the giant apparition from Heaton Norris are just two of the denizens of the North-West you might not care to meet on a dark, stormy evening. You would also be advised to avoid the Old Miser of Altrincham, the Timberbottom Farm Skulls, the Clayton Hall Boggart, and the Man in the Brown Pin-stripe Suit. It's certainly not a good idea to drive along the Hyde-Mottram road when the phantom lorry is about, and you should think twice before taking a taxi in Stockport - you never know who might be in the back seat with you. But for those intrepid sounds whose hearts quicken at the thought of eerie footsteps and muffled groans Peter Underwood - the President of the Ghost Club - has assembled an impressive collection of traditional legends and first-hand sightings of the white ladies, highwaymen, cavaliers, priests and nuns who form the spectral population of haunted Lancashire and Cheshire.

Popular TV ghosthunter Clive Kristen takes the reader in search of grueseome events in his home county of Lancashire. The stories are woven into their historical context and take the reader to spooktacular places. From grisly murders to wronged women to unfinished business, Lancashire has a haunting story...

The amusement parks which first appeared in England at the turn of the twentieth century represent a startlingly novel and complex phenomenon, combining fantasy architecture, new technology, ersatz danger, spectacle and consumption in a new mass experience. Though drawing on a diverse range of existing leisure practices, the particular entertainment formula they offered marked a radical departure in terms of visual, experiential and cultural meanings. The huge, socially mixed crowds that flocked to the new parks did so purely in the pursuit of pleasure, which the amusement parks commodified in exhilarating new guises. Between 1906 and 1939, nearly 40 major amusement parks operated across Britain. By the outbreak of the Second World War, millions of people visited these sites each year. The amusement park had become a defining element in the architectural psychological pleasurescape of Britain. This book considers the relationship between popular modernity, pleasure and the amusement park landscape in Britain from 1900-1939. It argues that the amusement parks were understood as a new and distinct expression of modern times which redefined the concept of public pleasure for mass audiences. Focusing on three sites - Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Dreamland in Margate and Southend's Kursaal - the book contextualises their development with references to the wider amusement park world. The meanings of these sites are explored through a detailed examination of the spatial and architectural form taken by rides and other buildings. The rollercoaster - a defining symbol of the amusement park - is given particular focus, as is the extent to which discourses of class, gender and national identity were expressed through the design of these parks.