The Byland Abbey Ghost Stories
- Date of account
- fourteenth century manuscript tradition
- Location
- Byland Abbey, North Yorkshire
- Source
- model_recalled_reference
- Record updated
- 2026-10-10
Record summary
A Middle English manuscript associated with Byland Abbey preserves a cluster of short ghost and revenant narratives, including dead persons returning, threatening households, or being identified through clerical knowledge. The texts are especially valuable because they are grouped in a monastic manuscript rather than surviving only as a later antiquarian anecdote. They permit comparison of medieval ideas about bodily return, confession, social disruption, and exorcistic practice. Manuscript date, provenance, translation, and the relation of individual tales to continental exempla require verification.
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