The Newcastle Ghost Walks, created and launched by entrepreneur Steve Taylor in 2006 and seen its first sellout Halloween in 2007 with over 1000 people trying to attend the events. It was created to give people a taste of what Steve does for his community, see Steve is a businessman by day, but while others sleep Steve is often the one searching the darkness for answers to that age old question. Do ghost exist?

Steve Taylor on the left of the photo with David Marshall demonologist at Newcastle Keep, Steve is a well respected paranormal investigator, writer and radio host, often classed as the last call in many cases that turn out to be too extreme for most ghost hunters. He has worked on over 800 cases in the UK in 20 years and has worked with some of the UK’s top paranormal investigators on some of the most scary cases noted by the press and unknown to anyone but the victims, Steve is a members of N.A.R.S.

He is proud to call such well known names in the paranormal community as friends, such as Michel J Hallowell, Darren W Ritson, Tony Liddell, Chris Felton, Rob Davis, David Marshall and so many more.

Steve started his idea of taking people into haunted buildings back when he was just 17 years old in 1998, his idea was to find the answers he had grown up wanting to know.

Steve had grown up in a haunted house, he and his family have many stories of the dead, the ghostly goings on at his home and it even made the press a few years after his family had moved away. It was written about by Alan Robson from Metro Radio and the house was feared by the local spiritualist church. It was known as one of the most haunted houses they had ever visited. But that’s a different story for another time.

With Steve having so many strange encounters that could not be explained it put him on a path, a fascination with ghosts, from an early age he would read ghost story books and was inspired by such tails of terror.

With this Steve eventually would end up working in a business which he coined and termed the “Paranormal entertainment industry” a business created around the idea of ghost, haunting’s and stories of the dead.

Steve had an idea when he was just young, he wanted to take people to his house he grew up in, people often did not believe the stories he told about growing up in such a hunted Victorian house so he set about taking friends to the old house which lay empty for over 20 years before been knocked down for new houses to be built.

But word spread about the house through the local teenagers and before long Steve was charging money for guided tours with his stories at night and naturally this led to them spending nights in the house searching for the dead which led to the UK’s first public ghost hunts although it was not technically all above board but it let him experiment with ghost hunting and what worked and what did not.

This was not on a commercial scale yet, but eventually would go on to let Steve launch and founder many ghost hunting teams and groups, sell on tour companies and create franchises in the UK.

What many don’t realize is that there would be no paranormal industry in the North of England if Steve had not brought his style of ghost hunting. When he created his first official company Alone In The Dark Entertainment there were no other paranormal entertainment teams in the UK apart from one, which is called Fright Nights, one of the first to actually sell ghost hunts to the public officially.

Steve’s first real big case would be the Castle Keep in Newcastle upon Tyne, Steve first went to the castle which had been used by another team called Twilight Worlds that were a large group of hobby style ghost hunters who used to get the public to come along to cover the hire fees, this was headed up by Mike J Hallowell and many other well known local ghost hunters but they had not been back for many years.

So Steve set about creating the first public ghost hunts in Newcastle and launched what would become a highly successful career at the Newcastle Keep for almost ten years.

Steve clocked almost 1000 hours inside the castle on investigation and training up other teams in the area. Steve researched and brought to life the ghostly legends of the castle and brought about its notorious ghostly goings on along with a mixture of some very clever advertising, the Castle Keep ghost hunts were launched along with the first UK haunted camp outs, haunted movie nights and specialist events like the Blackout events and many more which are all now imitated by other companies in the UK. Steve's team brought the like of Most Haunted to the castle and worked with the show while there.

Each Halloween Steve used to run the 13 Nights of Fright which was the Newcastle Halloween festival which used to run from the Castle Keep and Black Gate for 13 nights. We even attempted to win the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest haunted themed walk through attraction but lost by 12 ft to a meat factory in Texas. 

Business weekly magazine classed Steve as a pioneer in the “paranormal entertainment industry”.

Steve took the castle from strength to strength and seen over 50.000 people through his company in ten years.

Today the castle id a different place, new management have excelled the business where art and performance is now there lead venture. The ghost hunts have almost all gone with a odd few teams hosting nights at the castle still to this day. Visit the Newcastle Castle website fore more info.

Steve has also worked in the media on TV shows, he also piloted for his own show but it was due to be aired just as Most Haunted was ousted for been fakes and the TV industry dropped it in fear of a backlash from the public. It was a show that followed Steve on his Harley to the UK’s haunted historical and to sleazy locations, such as a nightclub, strip bars, pubs and ex gangland areas. Steve walked in their footsteps bringing the stories to life of such gangster like the Kray Twins, visiting the graveyard where many people believe they hid many dead bodies of their victims along with the Highgate vampire killings in London where he spent time alone in the haunted locations, just him and his camera.

Steve also went on to join forces with Metro Radio’s Chris Felton and NE1fm’s Rob Davies to launch the UK’s first ever FM paranormal radio show, a show dedicated to only the paranormal which airs every Monday night from 9 pm on NE1fm 102.5 as a community based project.

Steve Taylor truly has left a legacy in the North of England as one of its top paranormal investigators, a true business man that laid the pathway for the paranormal entertainment industry to grow and with over 300 companies now in the North of England alone he definitely has his recognition for his achievements.

Steve has since sold the ghost hunting side of his business which had 6 franchises such as Haunted Cornwall, Haunted York, Haunted Northwest, Haunted Scotland, Haunted Midlands, Haunted Southeast along with the Real Pendle Witch Hunt. Sedley so many companies started to compete for the same business which drove the ticket prices down by allowing up to a 100 people or more on a ghost hunt but only charging £15 per head, the quality of such nights were poor and the industry was in a freefall mode, paranormal TV was getting a bad reputations and TV mediums were been called fakes and that was mixed with locations tripling there hire fees and in the end it was no longer a viable option for dying industry.

Today Steve is retired from private cases after the Hendon poltergeist case which sealed the deal for him and was his final case which almost killed him.

Today Steve sold everything apart from the ghost walks which have won many awards, have been featured along with Steve in 14 different books.

In 2015 Steve took his company up a notch and created The Haunting of Finchale Farm which brought Steve out of retirement for a year where he spent it investigating the land at Finchale. He also launched the Black Death Plague tour of Newcastle which is the UK’s only plague tour outside of London.

Today Steve runs a successful locksmith school and business with franchises throughout the Northeast, he also owns a wilderness school that teaches outdoor education such as survival, he even owns 2 surf schools teaching surfing, one is Drift Surf School in Sunderland and the other is Get Salty Surf School at his home town in Newquay Cornwall. Steve owns many companies including a web development company and a private security firm, he buys failing businesses and rebuilds them and then sells them on. He also buys and sells housing and made his first million at the age of 32 years old. Steve is now partly retired at age 35 and spends most of his life travelling and surfing in the UK and living van life. He does come back to Newcastle each Halloween.

Today Steve is very much a "free spirit", wandering in the land of living instead of the dead...