‘Curiouser and Curiouser: The Creepy, Captivating, Magical and Mysterious at Whitby Museum’

Introduction

Whitby Museum curators have chosen a selection of the most macabre and unusual treasures together with local tales of folklore to create this new exhibition. Discover stories rooted in superstition that accompany some of the objects held at the museum. From the Ruswarp Witch to the Gytrash of Goathland join us for this most curious exhibition.

Exhibition opens 7th February 2026 and runs until December 2026.

I was in Whitby at the weekend, and I always visit the museum in Pannett Park, but this exhibition really caught my eye, although there was also an "Alice in Wonderland" costume exhibition as well. Lewis Carroll stayed in Whitby often.

Curiouser and Curiouser

Everything in the exhibition is supported by explanations on wall posters, and you can find some in the ten things to see link in the introduction.

The Zeplin III Dark Matter detector caught my eye at first as it is sat in the middle of the exhibition. It was previously used in Boulby Underground Laboratory as a dark matter detector and was donated to Whitby Museum in 2018 by Imperial College London.

Here is a full description:

This was a cinema projector head, but I thought it was the Tempest Prognosticator, but that was in the main museum, though it was on the wall in here:

Have you ever heard of a ‘Tempest Prognosticator’? We can show you a 1951 model, comprising twelve glass bottles, each of which would have contained a live leech, set around a circular stand under a bell which was surrounded by twelve hammers. The original contraption looked like an Indian temple, in honour of the supposed design of the Crystal Palace, and was used to predict storms at sea – Whitby is well known for them!

‘The Hand of Glory’ is a mummified severed hand, discovered in the twentieth century, hidden in the wall of a cottage in Castleton and given to Whitby Museum in 1935.

I see The Hand Of Glory all over Whitby. I hope they are not used for any nefarious purposes.

A Hand of Glory was supposedly the carefully prepared and ‘pickled’ right hand of a felon, cut off whilst the body still hung from the gallows and used by burglars to send sleepers in a house into a coma from which they were unable to wake.

The Gytrash is a legendary shape-shifting spirit from Yorkshire folklore that takes the form of an animal. An evil Gytrash famously appeared in Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre. This is the story of the Gytrash of Goathland.

A wicked tyrant named Julian de Mauley built an imposing castle. He believed the castle walls would stand forever if he encased a live malden within them. Gyda of Goathland was chosen to submit to this cruel fate. So as not to be idle awaiting her death, Gyda was entombed with a spinning wheel.

For ten years every year on the anniversary of her death, Gyda's ghost appeared, spi eventually causing paralysis and a painful death. The night red, spinning invisible threads over Julian, he died, the Gytrash appeared as a gigantic black goat with eyes that burned like coals and horns topped with fire. Some think it's Julian, doomed to wander the Earth.

Conclusion

These are just a few of the things in the exhibition, and if you get to Whity is is definitely worth your time, leaning towards gothic victoriana and steampunk.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you have enjoyed this as much as I did, actually being there.

As I said before, if you are in Whitby, you need to see this.