Two ghosts haunt the Black Swan on Peasholme Green. This is one of the oldest pub in York, dating back to the l6th century but its ghosts date from more recent times. The first and most often seen is a young lady in a long white dress who stands in the bar gazing intently at the fireplace. She has long, flaxen hair and appears to glow slightly. Less often encountered is a little Victorian workman wearing a bowler hat. He fidgets and tuts as if waiting for someone or something, he then fades into nothingness.

In Coppergate is a row of shops occupying the site of the former Craven's Sweet factory. The shops seem to have inherited more than the site from the old building. The factory was persistently troubled by a poltergeist which was felt most strongly in a downstairs workroom. Today, it has returned with redoubled energy to plague the row of shops which at present include the Body Shop, Olympus Sports and Fagin's Bookshop.

The poltergeist has a fascination with electric's and clothes, both of which are interfered with regularly. Assuming the poltergeist to be genuine, its most dramatic act was to break the glass fire alarm point in the depths of night and bring the York fire brigade to the site at high speed. So enjoyable did the poltergeist find this that it apparently went on to break the replaced alarm twice more before dawn. It must have tired of this prank, however, for the fire brigade have not been called to the premises recently.

A presence lurks in Judge's Court, a snickleway off Coney Street. The haunting; goes back to the last century when a large man with dragging footsteps and a strange tinkling sound was first reported. He has continued to be one of the most active ghosts of York. He even appeared when a tourist guide, who was showing a group of visitors around the city, paused in the Judge's Court to describe a point of interest. Though nobody knows who this ghost is, part of the mystery was possibly solved when renovations were carried out to Judge's Court. Hidden in one building was a disused well. At the bottom of the well lay a body. The bones were those of a large man wearing riding boots, one of which had a broken spur. This was taken to explain the tinkling which accompanies the ghostly resident. Who the man was and how he came to lie in the well, nobody can explain.