Storyteller: Exploring haunted Dartmouth

Having given our South Devon Folklore segment a rest for a few weeks, David Hammond was finally ready to get back out on the road again recently, to make some more recordings for his Riviera FM radio show.

Our first port of call was Dartmouth, taking my friend Christine with us, hoping to make use of her psychic ability, and the fact she has written a couple of books about the area.

My own paranormal experience with the town, began many years ago, when I got involved with Nigel, the then owner of The Royal Castle Hotel. Between us, we set up weekend breaks, inviting guests to join in a murder mystery night, a day of Dartmoor exploration, and a boat trip on the Dart, all the while keeping an eye out for any spooky activity in the hotel itself.

Over the years, there have been many reports of the sound of a carriage and horses driving over cobbles in the early hours of the morning, a playback from the days when it was a coaching inn. Also, ladies in long, flowing dresses have been witnessed, on occasion, climbing the staircases.

Sadly, nothing out of the ordinary happened during our weekends, nor on any subsequent stays there. However, a much more extraordinary experience happened as a result of Nigel introducing us to a chef, who was running a restaurant he owned, around the corner from the hotel.

It was called Hooked and it, too, had a history of paranormal activity. Several customers had experienced the sensation of being pushed while on the staircase, and it was lucky there had been no serious accidents as a result.

We were invited to investigate this phenomenon, to see what, or who was causing it.

Several members of my group joined me to hold a vigil there one night, setting up and monitoring our cameras until the early hours of the morning but when the owner came to let us out, we didn’t really have anything to report.

Later that same year, we heard that the owner had tragically been killed in a motorbike accident, so that particular case came to an abrupt end.

Many years later, my group, Torbay Investigators of the Paranormal (TIP), was getting regular requests to make visits to homes, where people felt paranormal activity was taking place.

One such call, came from a family living in the Paignton area, whose young son was being disturbed by a dark presence standing over his bed at night, and breathing heavily. He claimed it was Darth Vader, and he was terrified.

We were very anxious to help, so I visited the family, along with my good friend Maia, to see if we could find any answers. As we questioned them all, it turned out the father had been brought up in Dartmouth, in a house that was very haunted.

Regularly, he witnessed figures walking through walls, an experience he found most disturbing, and he was determined that his own young family weren’t going to suffer in the same way.

Maia latched on to the Dartmouth connection, and told me to continue that line of inquiry, so I started to tell them about our dealings with the Hooked restaurant and the tragic death of the owner. The mother and father looked at us gobsmacked, the dead owner was a good friend of theirs, and both their families were on the verge of moving abroad to start new lives together, when the accident put paid to those plans, and they had ended up in a place where they didn’t really want to be.

While she listened to all this, unbeknown to me, Maia was experiencing what she refers to as 'biker energy'. The sort of feelings she gets when her friends draw close to her in spirit, having been killed in motorbike accidents. Sadly, she has had many of these losses over the years.

She felt it as soon as she walked into the house, but, as there was no sign of any bikes outside, or gear associated with riders inside, she hadn’t bothered to mention it. As the family talked about their connection to this particular tragic accident, the penny dropped, their little lad was being disturbed by the spirit of their deceased friend, still wearing his all-in-one black leather biker suit, complete with helmet... looking like Darth Vader and breathing just as heavily!

Once this recognition had been made, Maia was able to communicate with the spirit, and made a deal that if she passed on his message to his friends, he would leave their son in peace. What he wanted to convey was a deep sense of sorrow that his demise had ruined their lives, having seemingly robbed them of the chance of a new start for both their families.

He wanted to stress that it had been a very tragic accident, brought on by taking over-the-counter medication for his hayfever, which had made him feel drowsy, and he needed their forgiveness.

Having conveyed his message, his visitations stopped, and, the last I heard, the boy once again enjoyed a good night’s sleep.

I’ve always regarded this particular case as one of the most extraordinary home visits we’ve ever made, to date. How on earth could a guy we only met briefly before his untimely death all those years ago, engineer for his friends to contact me, when he started to torment their son from spirit, many years later?

Just one of the unanswered questions that my continued investigations throw up from time to time.

While in Dartmouth for our recent recording session, we paid a visit to the site of the old Hooked restaurant, to find it is now a beauty salon, at street level, with holiday lets on the floors above. The friendly staff kindly allowed us to take a look around, saying they were aware the premises had a haunted reputation, but any reported activity didn’t bother them.

They felt that a small treatment room, positioned under what would have been the internal staircase for the restaurant, was the centre of odd goings on nowadays. Christine was allowed to take a look inside this room, and, using her gift, she picked up on the spirit of a young boy, possibly called Toby, that she felt was a bit mischievous but meant no harm, he just wanted to keep an eye on what was going on in the old building.

Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed access to the upper levels, and the staircase itself, but it wasn’t hard to imagine a child skulking there in spirit, unintentionally causing a trip hazard to the restaurant’s customers... just a theory.

We made several recordings about the spooky reputation that Dartmouth and the surrounding areas have, and plan to do more in the future.

This will give plenty for David to play on his show in the coming weeks, why not tune in and have a listen for yourselves?