The Shadowlands: The Spectral Roman Legion of York
Issue #18: June 1980
In 1953, a young apprentice plumber working in the cellar of the Treasurer’s House in York witnessed something that would later be corroborated by archaeological discovery. His account of Roman soldiers marching on a road that no longer existed remains one of the most compelling ghost sightings in British history.
Harry Martindale was eighteen years old in February 1953, employed as an apprentice plumber to install central heating in the Treasurer’s House, a medieval building near York Minster. His task that day took him to the cellar, where he was working from a short ladder near the ceiling.
What he witnessed there has been recounted consistently for nearly three decades, and archaeological discoveries have lent it unexpected credibility.
The Sighting
Martindale heard a trumpet sound that seemed to emanate from within the wall itself. Moments later, a figure emerged from the solid stone: first a horse, bearing a rider in a plumed helmet, then soldiers, dozens of them, marching in a ragged column.
They were not the triumphant legionaries of popular imagination. Martindale described them as exhausted, dirty, and beaten down. They wore green tunics and carried round shields, not the rectangular scutum typically associated with Roman soldiers. Their helmets lacked plumes except for the officer’s. They marched in silence, taking no notice of the terrified apprentice who had fallen from his ladder and pressed himself against the wall.
The most striking detail was that Martindale could only see the soldiers from the knees upward. Their feet and lower legs were invisible, hidden below the level of the current floor. They appeared to be marching on a surface approximately fifteen inches below the cellar.
The Corroboration
For years, Martindale told almost no one about his experience. When he eventually spoke publicly, researchers noted a significant detail: Roman auxiliary troops, rather than legionaries, carried round shields and wore green tunics. Martindale, a young plumber with no classical education, had accurately described military equipment he had no reason to know.
More significantly, excavations beneath the Treasurer’s House revealed a Roman road running precisely where Martindale had seen the soldiers marching. The road surface lay approximately fifteen inches below the medieval cellar floor, exactly the level at which the soldiers’ feet had been cut off from his view.
Martindale had witnessed something walking on a road he could not have known existed.
The Location
The Treasurer’s House stands within the area once occupied by Eboracum, the Roman fortress established around AD 71 that would become one of the most important military bases in Roman Britain. The road Martindale’s soldiers walked, the Via Decumana, was a principal thoroughfare of the fortress.
York’s Roman history is well documented. Emperors visited. Legions were stationed there. Constantine the Great was proclaimed emperor in the city in AD 306. The ground is saturated with almost four centuries of Roman occupation.
Other Witnesses
Since Martindale’s account became public, others have reported similar experiences in the Treasurer’s House. Staff members describe cold spots, unexplained sounds, and fleeting glimpses of figures in the cellars. The consistency of these reports suggests that whatever Martindale saw in 1953 was not a unique occurrence.
The cellar where the sighting took place remains accessible to visitors, though the house’s custodians maintain a tactful silence on the subject of ghosts.
Interpretation
The Martindale case supports what some researchers call the “stone tape” theory: that traumatic or significant events can somehow be recorded by their physical surroundings, replaying under certain conditions like a spectral recording.
The soldiers Martindale saw were not spirits in the traditional sense. They took no notice of him. They appeared to be performing an action from their own time, preserved in the fabric of the building and the ground beneath it.
Why these particular soldiers, at this particular moment? What event left such an indelible impression that it can still be perceived nearly two millennia later? These questions remain unanswered.
What is certain is that Harry Martindale, a teenage plumber with no knowledge of Roman military history or the archaeology beneath his feet, described exactly what excavation would later confirm. He saw something that should not have been there, walking on a road that had crumbled to dust centuries before he was born.