Pendle Hill: genuinely haunted or just dark history?

Visited Pendle Hill in Lancashire last weekend with my girlfriend, who's not really into the paranormal stuff but fancies a walk. The area's obviously got an absolutely brutal history (the witch trials), and everyone on here seems to assume that equals 'definitely haunted.' But I'm wondering whether we're just attributing every bit of atmosphere to ghosts because of the grim backstory.

Didn't experience anything particularly spooky to be honest - cold spot near the old stone circle, but that could've been wind. Felt eerie, but a landscape that's been through that kind of violence is probably supposed to feel eerie.

Anyone actually had genuine experiences there, or are we mostly just bringing our expectations to a dark-history location and finding what we came to find?

The history absolutely influences perception. You go to a place knowing 19 people were executed there, and suddenly every shadow feels significant. It's the power of suggestion. That doesn't mean nothing's there, but it means your baseline expectation is already set to 'haunted' before you even arrive.

Felt eerie, but a landscape that's been through that kind of violence is probably supposed to feel eerie.

I had something weird happen on Pendle about five years ago. Was up there in December (stupid time to hike), and I got genuinely disoriented despite good visibility. Couldn't get my bearings, and my mate's phone lost signal completely. Probably just weather and terrain, but it felt less like 'eerie atmosphere' and more like actual interference. Just anecdotal though.

Pendle's one of those places where the history is so dark that you're almost required to find it haunted. Nobody goes there expecting a pleasant woodland experience. You set expectations high, and you'll find confirmation. That's not to say it's not haunted, just that the methodology is compromised from the start.

The witch trials happened, people died, and that's genuinely sad and dark. Whether their ghosts are still there bothering hikers is a separate question entirely. Sometimes a place can be historically significant and atmospherically unpleasant without being paranormally active.