S2 Ep14: The Origin of the "Bedsheet" Ghost

Norfolk Folklore Society

This month’s podcast is all about ghosts – or rather, the ghosts we’d all draw if anyone
asked us to mock up a quick doodle. You know the one: looks like a floating bedsheet with eyes.
Round on top, wiggly on the bottom, with a couple of eyes holes – it’s the image that
always pops to mind when thinking of ghosts: but why?
This very specific image of ghosts as white sheets has been engrained in our culture for
centuries and, until fairly recently, was considered genuinely terrifying.
We look into the history of the bedsheet ghost, find our own example in Norfolk and recent examples further afield in 2020: the bedsheet ghost, it seems, is still alive and well (dead and well?) even today.