Somerset Ghosts

Levibrawn · Somerset Ghosts

Somerset Ghosts

Despatch Rider
Morton House, Rossiter's Hill, Frome, Somerset

Morton House often boasts some impressive floral displays which prompts some visitors to the area to try and capture the sight on film.

In 1990 Reg Wickens did just this, but the picture that was processed was not as he had imagined - the house and displays could still be seen but a shadowy figure had appeared across the picture.

Theories that it could be the shadow of Reg have been discounted given the angle that the sun would have been at at the time the picture was taken. The possibility that it might be a double exposure was also discounted given the camera that Reg used.

So what was this strange apparition that seemed to take over the picture. Reg thought it looked like the shadow of a wartime dispatch rider coming towards the camera on his motorcycle.

He could make out a leather helmet, goggles and a long black raincoat which was the dress for dispatch riders in the war years. So he started his own research into the area to try and solve the mystery.

After making enquiries with locals, Reg found out that not one but three dispatch riders had died in an accident and one of them - Bombardier Thomas Gladdis - swerved and went into the wall right where Reg was standing when he took the photograph.

Molly The Tea Lady
Yeovil Railway Station, Somerset

The new owners of Yeovil railway station buffet didn't believe the stories that is was haunted when they took it over, but they do now.

Molly the tealady who used to work at the buffet and who died on the station platform in the 1960s, couldn't bear to be away from the place.

Her ghost is thought to be responsible for swapping cutlery around and turning things on and off, but she always stops when she's asked to!

Porch Presence
Wedmore, Somerset

Not all ghosts are scary and in a pillared porch attached to a 17th century house in Wedmore, the benign presence of the doctor who once used the house as a cottage hospital can still be felt.

Dr John Westover was way ahead of his time in the treatment of the mentally ill, preferring to treat his patients with kindness and gentle care rather than the ill-treatment which was the norm at the time.

The A38 Hitchhiker
Nr Taunton, Somerset

The solitary and ghostly hitchhiker haunting different stretches of road is an image that has prevailed over the years.

However, a phantom hitchhiker, said to wear a grey overcoat, appears to be haunting a stretch of the A38 near Taunton, in Somerset.

In August 1970 a woman from Taunton encountered the apparition standing in the centre of the road and was forced to veer to avoid him.

Stopping to tell him what she thought of his choice of place to stand, she discovered that he had disappeared.

Local newspapers found a number of people who had encountered the same apparition at the same place, including a motorcyclist who had crashed as a result.

These local reports prompted lorry driver Harry Unsworth to tell how he had encountered the man several times in 1958.

At the first meeting Unsworth gave the man a lift, having picked him up wet through from the rain at three o'clock in the morning.

The man in the grey overcoat spent the journey of four miles recounting tales of accidents that had occured during the last few days and was not exactly bright company for the driver.

Mr Unsworth picked up the same passenger several times, usually in the pouring rain and wandering along with a torch in his hand.

The Skull Of Theophilus Broome
Higher Chilton Farm, nr Yeovil, Somerset

You often hear creepy stories of dismembered parts of the body haunting people so that they might be reunited with their body. But at Higher Chilton Farm the opposite is true.

The skull of Theophilus Broome has remained at the farm at the request of its owner who died in 1670. A Civil War soldier during the 1640s, he had become horrified at the mutilation of bodies carried out by Royalist troops at the time.

Mr Broome was scared that his head might be severed from his body and impaled on a stick as a trophy, common practice for Royalist troops.

So before he died he asked his sister to ensure that his skull never left the farmhouse.

It seems that Theophilus is a bit of a cantankerous ghost, and when people have tried to remove the skull they have been subject to terrible screaming until it is returned.

Likewise when TV crews have tried to film there, they are sent packing by the old ghost.

He doesn't even seem to want to be put back with his body all these years down the line, when someone attempted to do it the spade broke in half as they tried to exhume the body.

It seems that as long as the skull remains in the house, and that the house is well looked after, the ghost can be very nice, but mess around with either and there'll be skullduggery before you know it.