21/08/2026
💭 Do you remember the Saltersgate Inn?
🤨 Did you ever visit?
👻 Maybe you felt the chill of the spirits despite the constant burning of the fire?
The haunted pub near Whitby whose fire was said to burn for more than 200 years… 👻🔥
High on the North York Moors, on a twisting stretch of road once known as the Devil’s Elbow, stood the legendary Saltersgate Inn.
The pub was demolished in 2018, but its ghost stories live on.
For generations, a peat fire inside was said to have burned continuously for over 200 years. Some believed it was kept alight to welcome travellers.
Local legend suggested something far darker.
One story claims that when the pub was known as the Waggon and Horses, the Devil arrived during a violent storm. A priest tried but failed to drive him out, then the landlord supposedly trapped him beneath the hearth using the burning peat.
From then on, the fire could never be allowed to go out.
Because if it did…
the Devil would return.
Another tale links the inn to smugglers avoiding heavy salt taxes. According to legend, an Excise Officer discovered their activities and was killed during a struggle.
His body was supposedly buried beneath the fireplace, with the fire kept burning above him to stop his ghost from escaping.
Whether either story is true is impossible to know, but Saltersgate became one of the most mysterious pubs on the Moors.
Today, only traces of the old inn remain beside the road towards Whitby.
But the warning attached to it for generations still makes for a chilling thought…
Never let the fire go out. 🔥👻
