“Kids have hit me. I’ve been grabbed, groped and pushed. I’ve had people pull my witch hat off and fling me backwards,” says Nyx, as she is known on the Witches and History tour she leads through York.
“I once had someone follow me, shove a camera in my face and ask if I was wearing knickers. I popped into one of the shops and was just like, ‘Hey, can I hide at the back?’”
Nyx is off-duty when we meet for a drink near the Shambles, one of Europe’s best-preserved medieval streets, and dressed for a drizzly day in York. There is still something witchy about her, though. Perhaps it’s the blue hair or the rimless batwing glasses. Or perhaps it’s simply that, after years of dressing as a witch in public, she has acquired something of the wariness of the persecuted.
“I know which shops I can jump into, particularly around the Shambles,” she says. “Plus, I’m Greek-Irish, so I don’t give in.”
She quotes a Greek phrase: ta matia sou dekatessera. “It means you have to have 14 eyes.”
In York, Nyx has learnt to use all of them.
In February 2017, a York ghost-tour guide called Andrew Auster was jailed for 20 weeks for inciting a child to engage in sexual activity. Auster, then 57, had met a 15-year-old girl while handing out leaflets for his tour. The two began meeting after he finished work, and a court heard that he sent her text messages saying that he loved the girl and wanted to have sex with her. The judge said he had shown no remorse, and he was placed on the sex offenders’ register for seven years.
In York, Auster was better known by his tour name: Andy Dextrous.
After leaving prison, Dextrous returned to the streets. He still leads ghost walks today, dressed much as he was before, in a top hat and tailcoat.
You'll need to become a paid member to read the rest of this article.
Reports like this demand weeks of research, writing and editing — and our paid subscribers are what make that possible.
But here's the good news: for three months, you can join them by paying £4.95 a month to access everything.