Glossop is a mill town on the north-western edge of the High Peak, built up rapidly during the nineteenth-century cotton industry on ground that has been occupied for considerably longer. Roman Melandra Castle sits on the edge of town, and the surrounding moorland was crossed by Roman roads and packhorse routes before the mills arrived. Old Glossop, the original village, preserves a sense of that earlier character.

Its ghost lore draws on both the industrial past and the older landscape around it, with accounts concentrated in the mill-era town centre and in the outlying farmsteads that predate the industrial expansion. The dark moorland immediately to the east and north adds a consistent backdrop to accounts from the area.