But which UK universities are the most haunted?

Published On: October 18th, 2023

Most haunted universities in the UK

With many British universities dating back hundreds of years, it’s no surprise that some of these historic establishments have supernatural links. But which UK universities are the most haunted?

As Halloween approaches, The Knowledge Academy have conducted their own investigation into the paranormal in order to find out the answer. They did this by calculating a final spooky score of each university based on the number of cemeteries, gravestones, demolished buildings and paranormal reports within 2 miles of each university campus. Key Findings:

The University of Liverpool and University of Bath are in joint first position as the UK’s most haunted university, with a final spooky score of 8.28/10!
The University of Exeter has the highest score for paranormal incidents – with 59 reported. University of York ranks second with 50 reported incidents.
Liverpool John Moores University has the highest number of gravestones within a two mile radius – a whopping 361,531.

We really hope you find this release useful. If this release is of use to you, please can you provide a link to the company that conducted the research:https://www.theknowledgeacademy.com/

The top 10 most haunted universities in the UK

Rank	University	Final spooky score (/10)
= 1	The University of Liverpool	8.28
= 1	The University of Bath	8.28
3	Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln	8.16
4	The University of Kent	8.00
5	The University of York	7.98
6	The University of Exeter	7.85
7	Liverpool John Moores University	7.69
8	The Queen’s University of Belfast	7.64
9	The University of Strathclyde	7.56
10	Oxford Brookes University	7.51

The final spooky score was determined based on the percentage rank of all variables: the number of cemeteries, gravestones, demolished buildings and paranormal reports within 2 miles of each university campus.

Please see the full dataset of all 64 universities analysed here.

The Knowledge Academy can reveal that two universities are in joint first place, ranking as the most haunted universities in the UK.

The University of Liverpool ranks as the most haunted university in the UK in 2023, with a terrifying spooky score of 8.28/10. Founded in 1884, the historic university has a whopping 275,108gravestones within 2 miles scoring 9.65/10 in this regard.

In joint first place is The University of Bath. With frightening scores for multiple factors including the number of listed buildings (9.38/10) and gravestones (8.92/10), it’s no surprise that it ranks as one of the UK’s most haunted.

Ranking third is Bishop Grosseteste University in the city of Lincoln. Achieving a final spooky score of 8.16/10, the university is one of the oldest among all 64 universities analysed.

In fourth place is The University of Kent, obtaining a final spooky score of 8.00/10. 33 paranormal reports have been recorded within two miles from the campus, giving the university a score of 9.54/10 in this criteria.

Despite only ranking in fifth place in the final spooky score (7.98/10), The University of York has the second highest number of paranormal reports as well as the number of cemeteries within 2 miles from the campus. Data shows that 50 paranormal incidents have been reported within 2 miles – merely 10 fewer than The University of Exeter.

For the complete data of all 64 universities analysed, please click here.

We really hope you find this release useful. If this release is of use to you, please can you provide a link to the company that conducted the research: https://www.theknowledgeacademy.com/

Methodology:

1. With Halloween fast approaching, The Knowledge Academy were curious to know which UK universities are the most haunted by analysing the average age of each university, the number of cemeteries, gravestones, paranormal reports and listed buildings within a 2-mile radius, alongside how long they’ve been listed for.

2. Firstly, a seed list of universities was gathered by utilising Deparkes.co.uk. Each university’s centroid locations were established.The centroids were based on the centre of each university’s main campus.

3. Only campus universities were considered in this piece. In the instance that a university had more than one campus, only the main campus was used. Universities spread out or located in multiple locations were omitted from that data. This list of universities was gathered from theuniguide as well as personal research.

4. The foundation date (the year the institute gained university status) was obtained through Wikipedia. The older the university, the higher its score for this variable.

5. Data corresponding to historic listed buildings was taken from each counties’ respective government. For each university, a 2-mile radius was calculated around the centre coordinate. Then, each listed building that landed in this radius was counted.

6. An average number of years passed since the buildings were listed was calculated in each university’s radius.

6.1 Note the resulting value is not the age of the building. Instead, we can assume that a building listed in 1960 is older than a building listed in 2010 – it merely acts as an indicative figure.

The ‘Year built’ was not available in any of these data sets, therefore the date the building was listed as historic was used instead.

6.2 Note: The Irish dataset did not contain the time each building was listed. To replace this value, the University of Belfast was given the average years passed of other Universities in the dataset, in order to allow it to be ranked, but as to not hinder or help it in the rankings.

7. Haunted locations across the UK were obtained from paullee.com. Haunted locations were counted in a 2-mile radius around the university campus centre.

8. Subsequently, cemeteries within 2 miles were counted. The count of gravestones in each of these cemeteries were also collated to give an overall estimated sum. Gravestone data was gathered from findagrave.com. Note: This data is community driven, meaning the data could be inaccurate or incomplete in areas.

9. Finally, the experts applied a PERCENTRANK formula across all variables and calculated a final spooky score for each university. The university that scored the highest is identified as the most haunted.

10. All data was collected on 10.2023 and is correct as of then.