Old Forde House's documented visits from Charles I and, later, Fairfax and Cromwell give it a genuinely significant place in the wider narrative of the English Civil War in Devon, the building's real historical importance considerably better established than most of the reported hauntings attached to it, none of which have been connected to any of these named historical figures specifically.
The range of phenomena reported, a visual apparition, disembodied sound, moving objects, and people becoming locked in rooms, spans several distinct categories of haunting that this register usually records separately, their combination at a single site suggesting either an unusually active haunting or, as with many long-inhabited historic buildings, an accumulation of separate minor incidents gradually folded into one general reputation for being haunted.
The detail of council staff being locked in rooms is a distinctly modern and mundane-sounding addition to an otherwise traditional haunting, Old Forde House's use as a council-owned building for public events giving it a steady stream of present-day witnesses in a way that many of this register's more isolated or privately owned haunted sites lack.
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