Ecclesall Woods ghost Sheffield: Mystery 'voices' as city 'haunting' investigated

South Yorkshire ghost investigator Andrew Pollard – who works under the name Yorkshire Ghost Guy – headed to Ecclesall Woods to investigate reported ghosts near what is known as the Collier’s Grave in the woods.

George Yardley’s grave

He was looking at the site of the grave where collier George Yardley was said to have died in a fire in his nearby woodland cabin, in October 1786. His friends clubbed together to buy a headstone in his memory, which still stands in the woods, at a site fenced off by railings.

Mr Yardley is said to have died in mysterious circumstances, and the grave is now a listed monument.

Mr Pollard said: “There have been a few reports of people seeing things and hearing things, so I’ve popped down. I’ve come today because it’s a peaceful place, but I’ve been in the past and things do happen – bits and bobs, audio.”

He took electronic recording equipment to search for any signals that he believed would signify a ghostly presence – known by ghost investigators as electronic voice phenomena, or EVP.

Mr Pollard said he believed he had captured what he described as a couple of ‘intriguing’ electronic voice recordings during his investigation.

When he played back electronic recordings, he believes he had found a voice saying: “I don’t like him”, “I burned him”, and “Hello, it’s me.”

Within ghost hunting and parapsychology, electronic voice phenomena (EVP) are sounds found on electronic recordings that are interpreted as spirit voices.

Critics say that EVP voices are just stray radio transmissions, usually faint and masked by static interference making it hard to make out what they are saying, and the EVP investigator has to ‘interpret’ them. They claim what sounds like a voice may be an illusion.

The grave is a well-known feature of the woods, and has even been the subject of a song by the Sheffield singer-songwriter Richard Hawley, who hit the headlines recently when his musical Standing at the Sky’s Edge was nominated for several Olivier awards.

He has previously said of the song: “It's about George Yardley, a charcoal-burner and solitary man who's buried there. It's tapping into that deep folk tradition, the wood spirits and all that.”