Torbryan lies near Newton Abbot, and the Old Church House Inn is the building locals are said to point to as the most haunted. The inn is said to be 13th century, with older parts reaching back much further, and the de Brian family are named as its longest tenants at about 250 years. Behind the bar the wood panelling is said to come from a defeated Spanish Armada ship, and tunnels are said to connect the building to the old abbey, though that is a claim rather than a surveyed fact.
The reported events include a woman in Room 1 in 1997 who woke to cold and a noise and saw a man's disembodied arm floating before her and pointing at the wall behind her. A monk in black robes and a hood has been seen near the bar over the last century, and one man sleeping in the bar saw a robed figure seated at a table that melted into the wall when he approached. A former landlord heard his son cry out, saw a transparent man leaning over the boy and chased him downstairs where nothing was found. Patrons say the screaming faces of men appear in the Armada timber for a few moments.
The television programme Most Haunted investigated in 2005. The source also repeats a pub tale that the writer of a black dog story drank here and that Conan Doyle borrowed from him for the Hound of the Baskervilles, and calls the claim that Doyle poisoned him pure speculation. That claim is folklore and not entered as fact.
Comments