‘Skipsea, an out of the way Yorkshire village, on the sea-coast between Bridlington and Hornsea, is celebrated for one of the most enduring apparitions on record. ” The White Lady of Skipsea,” as this phantom is styled, has haunted the old castle, of which, now-a-days, little more than the foundations remain, ever since the days of William the Conqueror.
This Skipsea ghost, whose local habitation no native of the place would venture near after nightfall, is described as haunting the Castle mound, and its vicinity, in the form of a beautiful young woman, of mournful aspect, attired in long white drapery.
Occasionally she may be seen flitting about the intrenchments or slopes of the Castle mound, and at times, even in the daylight, she is seen wandering about the precincts of what was formerly her home. No ill effects are reported to follow the appearance of this apparition, whose story is detailed by Mr. F. Ross in his interesting ” Yorkshire Legends and Traditions,’
John Ingram, ‘The Haunted Homes and Family Traditions of Great Britain’ (1897)
My own thoughts: Traditionally, the White Lady is supposedly the spirit of the wife of Drogo de Bevere, one of William the Conqueror's knights, who was granted the surrounding lands by the new king. She was also the Conqueror's niece, so when Drogo murdered her, he fled to Flanders before he could be punished. Her ghost has been seen ever since... but I'm wondering if she's been around a long time before that!
(as an aside, during the 1970s and 80s I grew up nearby in Hornsea, and a girl in my class at secondary school who lived in Skipsea once claimed to have seen the White Lady "come out of a hedge" and walk across the road which skirts the bailey earthworks before vanishing. She was a bit of a hard-nut, not the sort you'd expect to be up on her medieval legends, but she was adamant about it!)
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