Stockport is a town of deep histories compressed into a small area. Its sandstone caves, medieval street plan, and surviving Victorian buildings sit alongside each other in a way that makes the layers of occupation unusually legible. The town grew up at the confluence of the Goyt and Mersey on a naturally defensible site that has been occupied continuously since at least the medieval period, and the density of that occupation is reflected in its ghost archive.

Haunting accounts from Stockport range from the pubs of Underbank to domestic houses, civic spaces, and buildings demolished long enough ago that only the newspaper record survives. For a town of its size, the archive is substantial, and a good proportion of it is well-attested.