The story is told of the Horse Fair building during the years when Catholic worship was illegal. The owner is said to have been sympathetic and to have let worshippers use room 52 for secret services. A lookout on the ground floor would pull a cord to ring a bell upstairs if the authorities approached, and the congregation could slip away down a hidden stair.
In 1687, according to the tale, a servant who had been drinking pulled the cord as a joke. Father Bernard, described as elderly and with a weak heart, took the alarm as real. The shock and the hurried flight down the stairs were too much for him and he was found dead at the bottom with a fatal heart attack. His ghost is said to haunt the hall and stairwell, usually described as a hooded figure.
The account Dark Oxfordshire gives draws on Richard Holland's Oxfordshire Ghost Stories (2013). It is a local legend rather than a documented event: the priest is known only as "Father Bernard", and other versions of the story say he died of natural causes rather than the prank. Treat it as a traditional tale attached to a real and historic hotel.
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