A leading stand-up has revealed he had a paranormal experience right here in North Yorkshire.
Stewart Lee, whose comedy has been featured on the BBC, Sky and Amazon Prime, was speaking on the Radio 4 podcast Uncanny.
The show recounts real-life stories of paranormal encounters. And although Stewart told host Danny Robins that he didn’t believe in ghosts, he did have his own inexplicable experience at Fountains Abbey.
He said he’d had a ‘time-slip’ – which is where you suddenly see the same spot as if it was decades or even centuries earlier.
“I was in Fountains Abbey, which is a ruin having been trashed by Henry VIII in order to create beautiful ruins that would then inspire Romantic poets 300 years later.
“I went into the main part of the abbey. And for a few seconds, out of nowhere, it knitted itself together around me.
“It was full of monks facing away from me, towards the altar. The walls were all filled in the stained glass.
“Windows were back, and interestingly, the walls had frescoes on them, which I think would have been the case at the time, but not necessarily something I would have known.”
He didn’t say when this happened, but went on to explain the context of the experience at the historic visitor attraction near Ripon.
“I would have been on tour between gigs. I probably had been drunk the night before, or certainly in a state of sleeplessness due to adrenaline.
“I don’t entirely trust my own responses to things!
“But it also looked a bit like the cover of that Black Sabbath album with all the monks on it, which might have been in there as well, you know?
“I didn’t mention it’s the person I was with, because it just seemed so mad. You know, you don’t want people to worry about you.”
Stewart added: “I didn’t believe that happened – but I did feel like, for a few seconds, that I was back in the building in the pre-Reformation times, and that I was seeing and experiencing it as it was then.”
You can hear the full show here.
