Tale of the spooky Squire who chased his daughter to the grave

When I met up with David Hammond, at the start of the Summer, to make some recordings for his radio show in Dartmouth, there was one particular story that eluded me at the time but, thanks to the books my friends brought me recently, I’ve been reminded of all the tragic details.
The haunting in question concerns the Mount Boone area of the town, as established by one Thomas Boone, who was born in 1610 in Townstall, another area of Dartmouth. He became the local squire, and in 1635 he acquired the land that was to become the Mount Boone estate, upon which he built a substantial house, giving it the same name, a property befitting a gentleman of his status.
Thomas became renowned for being a kind-hearted man, and his benevolence was commemorated by the people who he went on to serve as their local MP. Unfortunately, his benevolence didn’t extend to his own family, for when his daughter, Anne, announced her intentions to become engaged to the man she was in love with, her father forbade it, as he felt the reputation of his proposed son in law would sully his own, should he be seen to condone the union. He even went as far as making her vow to never consider marrying her beloved again, something she reluctantly agreed to.
As fate would have it, not long after their falling out, Thomas Boone died, and almost immediately Anne seized this opportunity to renounce her vow, and marry her true love, settling into wedded bliss in her family home at Mount Boone.
Not long after the wedding, disturbing, ghostly activity started to occur around Anne both inside and outside the house. Furniture would move around, lights would be lit, and unearthly noises would echo around the corridors. It appeared her father was determined to continue to show his disapproval of his daughter’s betrayal from beyond the grave. Even spending time elsewhere, at her doctor’s advisement, as her health was becoming affected by the continuous harassment, didn’t help, for the ghost just followed her.
Once back at Mount Boone, still with ailing health, drastic action was called for, with Anne summoning the clergy to exorcise her father’s spirit from the property. They hurried to her aid, and, after prolonged attempts to get Thomas Boone to appear before them to explain himself, his ghost reluctantly complied.
Upon their insistence that he should leave his poor daughter in peace, he made the clergy a deal, he would vacate the house, on condition that Anne accompany him to the grave. Realising this request wasn’t right for the young girl, the clergymen resorted to a traditional remedy for ridding the living of troublesome ghosts, by setting the spirit of the deceased a seemingly impossible task.
In this instance, they commanded that Thomas should empty the stream that ran through the Mount Boone estate using a cockle shell...with a hole in it!
Anne felt that she was then able to agree to her father’s unreasonable condition, to join him in the grave, knowing that his spirit would be employed in his task for all eternity, and thus taking his attention away from her. Sadly, her peace was short lived. The stress and strain of her supernatural treatment had weakened her health, and within thirteen weeks of the exorcism, Anne was dead...her persistent father had gotten his way, ensuring that his daughter kept her end of the bargain.
The Mount Boone estate passed through several generations of Thomas’s family, until 1899, when the house was demolished, and the land sold off. In 1905, some of that land went to the Royal Naval College, who still own it to this day, along with the insufferable ghost of Squire Boone. He is still seen and heard riding his horse through the former courtyard of his ancestral home, but his isn’t the only ghost that has been experienced around the college grounds.
On September 18, 1942, WRNS Petty Officer Mrs Ellen Victoria Whittall, was tragically killed when two bombs were dropped on the college. She was caught in the blasts of both as she was walking along the Quarterdeck, between a toilet block and one of the classrooms. She had been one of the first females to be enrolled at the college, back in 1940, and was one of only a handful of people on site that fateful day, a very tragic case of wrong place, wrong time.
Over the years, her ghost has been seen in the Quarterdeck area, sometimes being mistaken for a real person. She is also said to turn on the lights, when no one is near the switches, eerily illuminating the area where she is said to have died.
Another, more modern ghost, has been sighted by many people, in recent times, on the Passenger Ferry that runs between Kingswear and Dartmouth. It is that of an old woman, wearing a grey coat, affectionately known as “The Grey Granny”. When it’s time for the passengers to disembark, at either end of the journey, she is nowhere to be seen...definitely one to keep an eye out for during future investigations.