Haunted Devon Inns for Halloween… Author, photographer and local historian, Robert Hesketh revisited Teignmouth Probus Club at Richard Newton Hall with tales and a picture show of hauntings at many nearby antient hostelries.
Robert had not witnessed these manifestations or apparitions himself but recounted first hand experiences of others including the pub landlords and members of the paranormal societies who frequently have ‘stop-over nights’ in such places.
Some of the more spooky Inns included the Oxenham Arms at South Seale a 14thC old church house at Tarbrion haunted by 13thC woman Mary Oxenham, a traditional old monk with stories of mysterious appearances, objects missing and reappearing and many visitor accounts of ‘presences’ in bedroom 12 and the Bovey Room.
The Valiant Soldier at Buckastleigh (1747) has a ‘coldness; and ‘eerie’ with sights of a man with a black dog who was a local resident who died by accident. I was not certain that his dog died with him.
Totnes’s Kingsbridge Inn (17thC) experiences missing items and the subject of several paranormal investigations of a barmaid one Mary Brown who was murdered and walled up by the then landlord.
The Highwayman Inn Dartmoor on the Tavistock/Okehampton Road may well be the most haunted with ‘grounded spirits’, video evidence of orbs of light appearing from old oak beams in the Locker Bar taken from a stricken whaling ship ‘Diana’. A man dressed in green with a green feathered has been seen many a time. A clairvoyant believes he was a 36-year-old called Samuel (Sam) who was fleeing from a local Roundheads and Cavalier battle seeking refuge at the pub.
The stories from several other hauntings were regaled, all recounted in Robert Hesketh’s book ‘The Haunted Inns of Devon’.
The vote of thanks by Steve Battersby
At our next meeting Richard Newton Hall will give a talk on “Land of Ice & Fire” by Ivan & Sue Godfrey.
If any retired male readers in Teignmouth would like to know more about us, please visit our website: www.teignmouth-probus-club.org.uk