Karl Wittering, who is known as Dr Crank is the man behind the Ghost Walk of Whitby, he aims to provide the best of Whitby to all visitors.
Mr Wittering started the tour guide business two years ago when the previous tour guide retired from the job. Since his hands off, Mr Wittering changed the content of the tour and the style of the tour, in order to match the current market needs. He described his style as ‘funny’ and ‘relax’, “No one is scared by ghost story any more, I am taking to a group of adults not kids, so the ghost walk nowadays should be entertaining”. He mixed both local histories along with the ghost stories and some bad pub jokes. This has proven the popular among tourist, as he is one of the most famous tour guides among Whitby.
Karl Wittering, grow up in Sunderland, moved to Whitby around 20 years ago, and has since lived in Whitby. “This is an exciting place, all the history, all the culture.” says Mr Wittering, “Whitby has more ghosts per square mile than any other town in Britain. We’re an isolated town. There’s nothing for 20 miles to the north or south and even more to the west”. When Mr Wittering talk about Whitby, you can see the excitement from his eyes.
In 2018, Sixty-three years old Karl Wittering become the only man successfully completely Whitby’s 199 Steps from the old town to St Mary’s Church for 199 times. He started at 4 am and ran non-stop for 12 hours and 54 minutes to raise money for the charity. When asked, what was his initial thought of doing this challenge, he said: “I wanted to do something no one has done before, I heard someone was going to do this challenge, so I came down and watch it but it turns out that was a team of 20, so they only had to go 10 times each. That got me thinking, I wonder if I can do 199 steps for 199 times on my own, and that all started from there.”
When talk about Karl Wittering’s favourite ghost story, he mentioned the Hand of Glory. “It is quite a famous story, but when you tell it about the hand crawling across the floor, up walls, you can see how people react to that, its brilliant”, he added, “and when you come to the end and you do say, in Whitby, we have a real hand of glory, you can see the look on people’s faces thinking this might actually be real.”
Mr Wittering’s Ghose Walk start at 7:30 pm every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, from the Whale Bone Arch opposite The Royal Hotel. More detailed information on the website https://www.whitbywalks.com/
“To me, I wouldn’t like to live anywhere else, but Whitby.”
Karl Wittering
The Hidden Treasure of North-east 