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Byland Abbey revenants

Also called: James Tankerlay, Robert of Boltby, Byland ghost stories
Folklore and mythUndeadVariesA bad death or burialMiddle Ages

The Byland stories are a set of local Yorkshire accounts of the returning dead, jotted into a monastic manuscript around 1400. Several concern actual corpses that leave their graves: a dead rector who walks across the moor to blind his former concubine, and a man caught bodily in a churchyard by his neighbours. Unlike the 12th-century cases, most are settled by absolution and masses rather than by destroying the body. They show the walking corpse giving way to the purgatorial ghost, with both still present in the same notebook.12

⚔️ Battle it
First recorded
1400
Twelve stories added about 1400 to a Byland Abbey manuscript (British Library Royal MS 15 A XX)
Origin
Medieval English
United Kingdom
What causes it
A bad death or burial
The dead return because of unconfessed sins, excommunication or debts they could not settle before death.
How you become one
People who died with a sin or obligation unresolved.
How it moves
Varies
Some walk from the grave in their own bodies; others appear as a horse, dog, goat, raven or a rolling object.
Intelligence
Some intelligence
Weak spots
  • priestly conjuration and absolution
  • masses said for the dead
  • restitution of stolen goods
  • throwing the coffin into a lake (Tankerlay)

When did it first appear?

Ancient world
Middle Ages
1500 to 1899
1900 to 1967
1968 to 1999
2000 to 2009
2010 to today
1400

Twelve stories added about 1400 to a Byland Abbey manuscript (British Library Royal MS 15 A XX)

field notes

What the sources say

1

Written down by a monk of Byland in Yorkshire on blank leaves of an older book12

2

Edited in Latin by the ghost-story writer M. R. James in 192212

3

James Tankerlay, a former rector, walked at night and put out his mistress's eye; his body was dug up and thrown into Gormire12

4

Robert of Boltby was seized in the churchyard by village youths and absolved by the priest12

5

One spirit speaks from its bowels rather than with its tongue12

Could you outrun it?

Speed class from how the sources describe it (varies), not a measurement.

You, walking about 5 km/h
You, jogging about 10 km/h
Byland Abbey revenants about 10 km/h
A fit adult sprinting about 24 km/h
A fast cyclist about 37 km/h

Sources

  1. Ghost Stories from Byland Abbey - Medieval Histories
  2. Zombies and Shapechangers in Medieval Yorkshire - Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Every fact on this page comes from these sources, written in our own words. Spotted a mistake? Tell us at hello@zombiewiki.app.

Folklore from the same lands

AbhartachIrish, 1870Revenant (medieval England)Medieval English, 1100Berwick revenantMedieval English / Scottish borders, 1198Buckinghamshire revenantMedieval English, 1198Drakelow revenantsMedieval English, 1090HaugbúiNorse, 1250

Same era: Middle Ages

DraugrNorse, 1250VetalaHindu (Indian), 1070GlámrNorse (Icelandic saga), 1300UpiórSlavic, 1100AsvithNorse (Danish chronicle and Icelandic saga), 1200HrapprNorse (Icelandic saga), 1245