Tour Haunts – Leeds - Part 2

Haunted UK Podcast: History, Hauntings and the Unexplained

Steven Holloway

Haunted Locations, Ghosts, Society & Culture, Strange Phenomena, Documentary Podcast, Folklore, Documentary, Hauntings, Ufos, History, Paranormal, Unexplained Mysteries

4.5 • 652 Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2026

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A Victorian music hall where figures still linger backstage.

An old dispensary where footsteps, children’s voices, and the scent of smoke are said to remain.

A ruined abbey where monks, grief, and legend still move through the stone.

In this second part of Tour Haunts: Leeds, Haunted UK Podcast continues its atmospheric journey through some of the city’s most haunted and historically charged locations. Beginning at the City Varieties Music Hall, Steve explores stories of the White Lady, a silent man in a bowler hat, unexplained footsteps, strange cold spots, and a darker poltergeist presence said to have disturbed staff, performers, and even renovation workers.

The route then moves to the Old Leeds Dispensary, a former medical building shaped by sickness, poverty, and the realities of pre-NHS healthcare. There, accounts speak of a well-dressed figure drifting through corridors, the sounds of unseen children, moving toys, and the unsettling apparition of a nurse linked by witnesses to smoke, heat, and fire.

Finally, the tour ends among the ruins of Kirkstall Abbey, where centuries of religious devotion, dissolution, folklore, and ghostly testimony gather around the chapter house, the Sombre Monk, the Mad Monk, and the grieving figure of Mary. With reports of chanting, shadowy forms, strange voices, and the lingering atmosphere of a sacred place disturbed by history, the abbey offers a final, powerful stop on this haunted journey through Leeds.

Immersive, historical, and quietly eerie, this episode blends haunted locations, local folklore, paranormal testimony, and architectural history into a cinematic guide to the unexplained side of one of Yorkshire’s great cities.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Ready to grab your backpack and join us on a journey?
0:05.9	This is Haunted UK podcast's Tour Haunts.
0:10.1	Tour Haunts. Welcome to you Welcome, dear listeners to our series of tour haunts, a tour of scary just for you.
0:47.3	So in your mind grab a metaphorical torch, a backpack, and hell, maybe even some holy salt, as we pick back up for part two of our tour
0:57.2	around Leeds in Haunted UK. Following on from part one of this tour haunt, we now move our focus
1:06.0	to the City Variety's Music Hall, a place where the echoes of laughter, musical triumph, and something
1:13.2	otherworldly still linger in the shadows.
1:17.1	It was designed and built by George Smith in 1865, and is one of only a small number of genuine
1:23.8	Victorian era music halls still in existence today. Even though its seating capacity is
1:30.2	only 467, it was a venue which saw some of the biggest names in the world of entertainment play there.
1:37.9	Charlie Chaplin, Harry Houdini, Marie Lloyd, Erthiquette and Les Dawson walked the boards of this beautiful music hall.
1:47.0	And let's not forget the brilliantly named Madame Paula, the Reptile Queen, who would hypnotise an alligator on stage.
1:57.0	The City Variety's Music Hall has seen so much throughout its colourful history.
2:02.6	World Wars, economic depression, changes in management, modernisation, the downfall of the theatre variety show,
2:11.6	lack of investments, and even a global pandemic. But it has always remained open, and in 2009 it was given a new
2:21.4	lease of life thanks to a nine million pound grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to help
2:27.1	with a major restoration project. So the laughter, applause and glamour can continue in this fitting musical for many more years to come.
2:38.0	But underneath it all, there are stories whispered by staff and performers alike,
2:44.0	stories of things that go bump backstage.
2:48.0	And there are quite a few of them.
2:51.6	The most enduring spectre is known simply as the White Lady, a figure in a billowing dress, often
2:58.3	glimpsed floating along the dress circle bar.
	...

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