Clyro Court, as it was originally called, was built in 1839 for the Baskerville family. It is now a hotel under the name Baskerville Hall, and it leans on a story that Arthur Conan Doyle stayed here as a friend of the family, heard a local legend of a spectral hound, and turned the family name into the title of his most famous book.
The hauntings the hotel reports are not canine. A woman in white is said to be seen regularly in the rose garden, and an unknown man has been reported on the main staircase. Guests and staff talk of footsteps and banging in the corridors at night when nobody should be about.
No witness names or dates have been published for any of these. The Conan Doyle link is just as hard to pin down: The Hound of the Baskervilles is set on Dartmoor, and the account of its origins generally accepted by Doyle scholars points to Devon. The hall's stories are recorded here as they are told, as a local tradition attached to a building with a good name and a commercial interest in keeping it.
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