Local history enthusiast Luke Bigg heads up casual history tours in Margate and has a quirky Substack page called Borrowing Cats looking at some of the town’s past characters and events:
Margate does spooky the way it does sunsets — big, briny, and just a little bit extra. Ask ten locals for a ghost story and you’ll get twenty: white ladies in towers, actors who never left the stage, tragic wrecks off Foreness, scandal in a seafront hotel, even a murder myth that clings to Dreamland like candyfloss to a sleeve.
Here’s a ramble through some of Thanet’s best macabre morsels — fun to tell, safe to doubt, and all with enough breadcrumb trails to keep the sceptics happy.
The White Lady of Quex Park
Quex Park’s Round Tower wasn’t built for ghosts — it was built for signalling — but for more than a century locals have whispered about the White Lady who drifts near the tower and along the tree line.
The estate itself nods to the legend, describing her as the wife of an ancient warrior buried beneath the mound. Whether spirit or story, she’s become part of the Quex landscape: a genteel haunting with excellent parkland views.
Theatre Royal, Hawley Square — Sarah Thorne takes one more bow
Margate’s Theatre Royal has seen everything from Georgian star turns to modern refurb dreams — and, if reports are to be believed, a resident spirit who still checks the house.
Most say it’s Sarah Thorne, the Victorian actor–manager who made the venue famous. Sightings were first reported in the 1910s, with some claiming she appears when performances are less than inspiring. Whether ghost or stage fright, it’s a story worthy of the Royal itself.
“All hands lashed to the rigging” — The Northern Belle tragedy
On 5 January 1857, the American ship Northern Belle ran aground off Foreness in a raging storm. Margate’s luggers — Ocean, Eclipse and Victory — went out to rescue her crew.Victory capsized, and nine Margate men were lost. Their memorial is still set into the Jetty wall. As with any great sea tragedy, ghostly tales followed: watchers in the surf, phantom flares on dark nights. History gives us the facts — folklore fills in the waves.
66 — The Sidney Harry Fox murder
Margate’s most infamous true crime unfolded at the Metropole Hotel in 1929. Conman Sidney Harry Fox was staying there with his mother, Rosaline, when she died in a fire in Room 66.
Pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury ruled she’d been strangled before the blaze. Fox was convicted and hanged at Maidstone in 1930. Decades later, the case was re-examined and doubts raised — but it remains one of Margate’s darkest seaside scandals.
Death by Chocolate — Margate’s link to the Brighton Poisoner
Few realise that Christiana Edmunds, the notorious “Chocolate Cream Killer” who poisoned sweets in Brighton in the 1870s, was born in Margate.
Her father, William Edmunds, was a local architect credited with designing parts of Holy Trinity Church and the Margate Lighthouse. Christiana’s poisoning spree led to her being declared insane and confined to Broadmoor — another grim footnote in Margate’s long, strange scrapbook.
Dreamland’s “Strongman” — murder, myth and muscle
Ask around long enough and you’ll hear it: the tale of a circus or fairground strongman who murdered a woman at Dreamland and was cursed to haunt it forever.
Versions drift from the 1890s through the 1930s, but no firm evidence has ever surfaced. It’s a perfect seaside myth — half sideshow, half ghost story — proving that Margate loves to blur the line between fact and folklore.
Closing thought
Every coastal town has its shadows — Margate just lets them out for a walk.
From the signal tower at Quex to the haunted dressing room at the Theatre Royal, these tales add texture to the town’s already layered past. Whether you believe in spirits or just like a good story, Halloween by the sea feels right at home here.
Because in Margate, even the ghosts have good taste.
If you love uncovering Margate’s hidden histories, quirky tales, and the odd scandal or two, why not subscribe to Borrowing Cats? It’s my little corner of the internet where I dig up the stories that time (and sometimes the town) forgot.
Sign up for free, you’ll get a regular dose of Margate’s past, served with a side of wit and curiosity.
