Something happens between November and February. Reports of activity spike. The short days bring out things that stay hidden in summer. We spent years documenting UK hauntings and noticed a pattern. Winter ghosts are different. They leave marks. Footprints in snow that shouldn't exist. Handprints on frozen glass. They grab at people. They hammer on doors.

We pulled seven cases from our book Winter Ghosts. These are real locations. Real accounts. Real cold.

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1. The Frozen Handprint of Datchet

February 2000. The Royal Stag Public House in Berkshire. A tour guide and fifty-three other people watched it happen. Ice formed on an outside window. A small handprint appeared in it. Child-sized. On the outside of the glass.

Local story says a child froze to death outside the pub years ago. The handprint keeps coming back. No one can explain how it forms on the exterior surface or why it only shows up when ice covers the window.

2. The Devil's Footprints

8 February 1855. Devon woke up to something wrong. Thousands of cloven footprints in the snow. Running in a straight line. Across rooftops. Over walls. Through gardens. A hundred miles of them across the county.

The prints looked like a donkey's. But donkeys don't walk in perfect straight lines. They don't climb over buildings. The footprints covered Dawlish and dozens of other towns. No animal was ever found. The phenomenon has never repeated.

3. The Monks Who Predict Snow

Amwellbury House in Ware, Hertfordshire. Shadowy figures in monks' gowns appear on the property. They chant. They go about their business as if the living aren't there. Nothing unusual for an old house with monastic history.

Except they only appear the evening before snow falls. Multiple witnesses over decades have reported the same thing. See the monks at dusk. Wake up to white ground in the morning.

4. The Gilsland Boy

Triermain Castle in Cumbria. A young boy wandered away from home and got lost on the snow-covered common. His body was found near the castle walls. Now his spirit appears there. Shivering. Reaching out.

Here's the part that stays with people. Sometimes he grabs passersby. And the spot he touches on your body is supposed to be where you'll die. An arm. A shoulder. A leg. Locals avoid the castle in winter.

5. The Fear Liath Mor

Ben MacDhui. Britain's second-highest mountain. Climbers have reported it for 150 years. An overwhelming sense of dread. The feeling of being watched. Heavy footsteps in the snow behind you when no one's there.

Some have seen it. A grey figure. Twenty feet tall. Covered in hair. Long arms. Huge head. Most people don't wait to get a good look. They run down the mountain. The Grey Man appears most often before heavy snowfall hits.

6. The Drummer Boy of Hickling Broad

Norfolk. The story goes that a young drummer fell in love with a rich man's daughter. They couldn't be together openly. So he would skate across the frozen river to see her in secret. One winter the ice gave way. He drowned.

Now when the Norfolk waterways freeze, people watch for him. A lone figure skating the ice. The sound of drumming across the water. Sometimes a phantom woman rows alongside him. Still searching after all these years.

7. Dame Anne Wroughton

Wilcot, Wiltshire. Anne's husband was convinced she was unfaithful. He wasn't. But jealousy doesn't need facts. On a winter's night he threw her out of the house. No coat. No shelter. She froze to death within hours.

Her ghost walks the village now. Only on snowy nights. The twist that gets people: she never leaves footprints. The fresh snow behind her stays untouched.

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