The Star Online > Lifetravel
Uninvited guests

MANY of Britain's hotels have taken on a ghostly aura. Far from scaring
off potential visitors, inexplicable phenomena seem to be a highly
marketable asset these days. 

In hostelries throughout the land, Grey Ladies (or Ladies in Black, or
White, or Blue, occasionally a daring shade of Red) are reported to
drift through walls and float over lakes, accompanied by spectral orbs
and sudden icy chills. 
Hooves clatter at midnight, ghostly legions march past along old Roman
roads, doors lock and unlock of their own accord, and hidden children
laugh or sob on secret stairwells. 

Ludlow's most famous building is the Feathers Hotel, which is said to
have several interesting ghosts.
Historic buildings in atmospheric surroundings ? of which Britain,
with its long history, has many ? predictably take the lead in these
alleged phenomena, whereby medieval monks, Victorian serving girls, and
unhappy lovers revisit old haunts. 
Specialist short-break operators can arrange all sorts of hair-raising
experiences involving séances, dowsing rods and ouija boards for
hopeful ghost-hunters, or at least, a promising setting in which they
might just happen. 
Of course, nothing is guaranteed and the chances are you will enjoy a
perfect night's rest.  
For most of us, the faint chance of some other-worldly experience adds
no more than an amusing frisson to a hotel stay ? at least, in broad
daylight. 
For others, it's a serious quest to prove there are more things in
heaven and earth, undertaken only with quantities of recording equipment
and a determination to stay awake all night. 

Certain hotels crop up repeatedly on the paranormal lists. Cornwall, in
southwest England, famed as a land of myths and legends, is a classic
venue for ghosts.  
Guests and staff of the Wellington Hotel in Boscastle have experienced
many strange apparitions, dark shapes and inexplicable sounds, including
a figure in period dress vanishing into a wall and an old lady passing
through a closed bedroom door. 
Not to mention the mystifying case of a small dog (a real one belonging
to a writer staying at the hotel), which suddenly got up and trotted out
one night yapping and wagging its tail as if being taken for a walk by
some unseen presence. 

Immortalised in Daphne du Maurier's novel, Jamaica Inn, Bodmin Moor,
Cornwall, has strong associations with smugglers.  
Disembodied voices speak in the long-dead Cornish language, and a coach
and horses crunches across the gravelled courtyard at midnight ... Even
odder is the stranger in 18thcentury dress repeatedly observed sitting
on a wall outside the inn. He neither speaks nor moves, but bears an
uncanny resemblance to a former guest summoned by a message to meet
someone outside. 
He left the bar and his half finished tankard of ale, and was later
discovered murdered on the moor. Has he returned to finish his drink? 

Coaching tales are a recurrent theme in some old former coaching inns.
The Molesworth Arms in Wadebridge is reputedly visited by a ghostly
stagecoach at midnight on New Year's Eve, its four horses whipped on by
a headless coachman. 

At Dartmouth's Royal Castle in Devon, a mysterious coach and horses
draws up at the entrance to collect an unknown passenger and vanish into
the night.  
The 15th-century Holt Hotel at Steeple Aston in Oxfordshire is haunted
by the notorious highwayman Claude Duval, a former footman to the Duke
of Richmond. He was apparently so popular with lady victims that tearful
petitions for his pardon accompanied him to his execution.  

A handsome timbered inn called The Feathers in Ludlow, Shropshire has
several interesting ghosts. One is a woman who tries to drive rivals
away by pulling their hair (beware Room 211 if you're the female half of
a couple staying here). Another is a Victorian gentleman with a dog, and
a third seems to be a more modern apparition who confines her
appearances to men only. 
She's a pretty thing in a miniskirt and a see-through blouse who walks
straight through cars parked outside. One shocked guest who witnessed
this young lady felt an urgent need of a brandy. Relaying his experience
to the hotel barman, he was soon interrupted with the news that she had
appeared to several guests on previous occasions.  

One of London's most haunted hotels is the five-star Langham opposite
the BBC's Broadcasting House. Its spectral residents include a
silver-haired doctor who murdered his bride while on honeymoon, and a
German officer who killed himself shortly before the outbreak of the
First World War. Room 333 is said to be a haunted bedroom, as numerous
BBC journalists attest.
 
Ruthin Castle, now a hotel in Denbighshire, North Wales, has a resident
Grey Lady, believed to be the wife of one of King Edward I's
lieutenants. She murdered her husband's mistress with an axe in a
jealous rage and was later executed. The hotel is noted for its
medieval-style banquets.