A ghost tour participant was amazed on taking a photograph which she believes captured apparitions of both a bearded man holding an infant and a monk with his arms crossed against his chest.
Dorothy Simpson took the picture after joining the Chester tour along with a friend last Halloween but has only just shared the image.
The group was taken to St John the Baptist’s Church to see the ruins and infamous upright coffin embedded in the archway when her attention turned to Grosvenor Park.
She explained: “On Halloween 2015 I and a friend went on a Chester ghost tour. We were taken to St John’s priory. I stopped and took a picture of the old coffin in the archway. I found I couldn’t keep up with the tour as I am not all that well and the walk was gruelling.
“So my friend and I stopped to rest. We were overlooking Grosvenor Park, it must have been about 10pm, the weather was good and there was no wind that night. I decided to take a picture of the park as I hadn’t taken any others apart from the arch.
Bearded man holding 'see-through baby'
“My friend and I had been looking all over the park it was very still and empty of people. The next day I decided to look at my photos and something made me zoom in, to my amazement what I mistook for a tree is a heavily bearded man.
"I believe he is holding a see-through baby, and in the distance on the pathway is the figure of a monk with his arms crossing his chest as though he had just left his coffin.
“The white light in the photo is I believe just from the two street lamps. This is absolutely genuine. My friend and I tried to return to the exact spot in daylight but the gates had been locked due to vandals.”
Father David Chesters, The Rector of St John’s, is currently recovering following a serious operation. But before going into hospital he told The Chronicle he was aware of the ghost stories but despite having been in and around the church at all times of the day and night, he had never seen an apparition. However, he would wish to keep an open mind.
Chester tour guide Mary Ann Cameron launched her book Chester City of Ghosts at St John’s Church last year with everyone, including herself, dressed as ghosts and ghouls. Her experiences back up the idea of things going bump in the night around the church.
She said: “The photos we used for the covers of the book, Chester City of Ghosts, were taken in St John’s ruins by a local photographer, David Mitchell, so I invited him to come to the book launch last October and do a display of his work.
“In preparation for the display he printed all the photos he took that night, not just the two we used - and was shocked to discover the outline of someone dressed in red on some of the photos. We had been completely alone at the time.
Read: Chester City of Ghosts is a modern tale of ghoulish activity
“Also, a tourist took photos in the ruins one day in the summer of 2014 and when he looked at them, he distinctly saw a monk in some of them. So is the monk on the back cover of Chester City of Ghosts Roger, one of the ghost tour guides, as we’ve always thought, or an actual ghost?”
City of Ghosts is available to buy from St John’s, the Visitor Information Centre, Beatons tea shop, Tea on the Wall, Pemberley’s and Sally’s Secret Garden.
