So after what felt like several consecutive lifetimes spent writing about ghosts, grief, spectrality, and haunted cinema, I finally handed in my dissertation a few weeks ago. I’ll have much more to say about the project itself once I’ve fully recovered from disappearing into the spectral void for the better part of two years, but naturally the only way to celebrate was with a weekend away in the City of Ghosts itself. Of course that is York.

After months spent buried in haunted theory and academic writing, celebrating the end of it all in one of England’s most famously haunted cities felt entirely appropriate. The trip also happened to coincide with the Festival of Hauntology as part of the York Literature Festival. Honestly, it felt like the entire weekend had been designed specifically for us.

We stayed at Guy Fawkes Inn, birthplace of Guy Fawkes himself, and exactly the sort of old inn I always hope for: low ceilings, crooked floors, candlelit corners, and enough history in the walls to make the whole building feel slightly uncanny after dark. The kind of place where every staircase creaks like it has something to tell you (I did try to conjure up a few spirits but alas nobody was listening).

Most of the weekend was spent wandering between festival events, pubs, bookshops, and various excellent places to eat, stopping occasionally to admire just how unapologetically gothic York manages to be without even trying. We also managed to find time for a particularly brilliant evening ghost walk with The Deathly Dark Tours — equal parts hilarious (tiny hands), historical, and genuinely atmospheric. Then of course we made a visit to the supposed resting place of Dick Turpin, because no trip to York really feels complete without paying respects to at least one infamous ghost-adjacent historical figure.

There is something about York after dark that feels permanently suspended between history and folklore. All narrow lanes, shadows, distant bells, and the strange sense that the city never entirely left the past behind.

I don’t think there is a more perfect way to celebrate the completion of an exceedingly ghostly dissertation.