“This is one of the most harrowing narratives in my research to date - a tale known locally as “the girl in the window.”

Many distressing accounts have been related of the sightings at 5 College Street, “the Plague House,” where a small girl has been glimpsed in the tiny upper window. A feeble and pitiful wail is heard, accompanied by the sound of nails clawing on wood. It is said that, once heard, the sound may cause one’s heart to break in two. These sightings often coincide with a local death or the passing-by of a funeral procession.

The Black Death did cause terror in the city, and eventually made its unwelcome arrival at 5 College Street where a young couple lived with their daughter, in the shadow of York Minster. First husband and then wife were taken with the sickness and an intense fear took hold of the townsfolk. A panic-stricken mob, attempting to stem the spread of disease, bricked up the doorway and covered the windows with boards. Inside, the young couple lay in the jaws of death, plague ravaging their bodies and, before long, death took them.

Days passed but the child, left alone with the corpses of her parents, remained well. She pleaded at the window, begging to be released but, as the days went by, deprived of sustenance, her lamentable cries became weaker. The citizens, fearing for their lives, ignored the girl’s pleas. Weakened through starvation and thirst, the pathetic wretch fell silent, surrendering to death herself.

For countless years this cursed property remained uninhabited, no one daring take residence. I wonder if the sightings of the child at the window may have been of her watching out for the crossing of one who wronged her or that this connection with death somehow revives her spirit.

I did visit this place myself when a funeral was to be held at the Minster, in the hope of sighting the child. To my surprise, three figures were visible, two of them less bright. I assumed these to be the parents, in a separate room, distressed by their incapacity to offer comfort to their dying child. Their shrouds were dirty and contaminated with disease and their eyes, blackened by sorrow, made my heart ache. The child, alone and starving in her bedroom prison, looked down onto the street. I did not hear her wail but the feeling of loneliness and sadness overcame me until I could bear it no longer.

No written records remain of this long departed family of College Street, so I have taken the liberty of naming them myself. The parents I shall call Herbert and Daphne and the poor sweet girl, Beryl.”