Wells has a new ghost tour — and it is not for the faint-hearted.

A new 50-minute audio walk invites people to prowl through the city with Walpurga the Wells Witch as their guide. The tour, available on VoiceMap for £7.99, promises a trail of murder, plague, executions and restless spirits lurking behind Wells' postcard-pretty streets.

It starts at a Wells church where, according to the tour description, marble memorials honour slave traders who turned Caribbean plantation profits into local respectability.

From there, the walk takes in a building where executions took place, the former jail where paranormal investigators reportedly picked up intense spirit activity, and streets whose names are said to carry their own dark clues.

There is plenty of local folklore packed in too. Tour users are told about "Charlie", a grinning Cavalier ghost said to haunt the former King Charles Parlour on the High Street, and the Bloody Assizes of 1685, when hundreds of men were condemned to death or slavery in a single day.

The route then winds through Vicar's Close, where shadowy figures are said to move between the houses at night, before ending at the Bishop's Palace. There, the tour says, the ghosts of Bishop Richard Kidder and his wife still appear on the battlements after being killed when chimney stacks collapsed in the Great Storm of 1703.

Other stops include Wells Cathedral, where the tour claims a phantom monk roams the cloisters and an invisible choir has been heard singing for centuries.

Listeners also hear stories linked to the City Arms, the Chapter House, St Andrew's Well, the Wells dragon and Joshua Parker, the butcher whose 1839 attack on his wife shocked the city.

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The tour can be downloaded to a phone and taken at any time. But the makers have a clear suggestion for anyone wanting the full effect — go at dusk.

People can find out more or sign up at somersetexperiences.com/ghost.

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