No one knew how Les Grentmaisons had got its reputation, or how long it had had it, MacCulloch wrote, "but that it was the resort of troubled spirits no one could doubt." At the time the stories were told, the house stood well apart, with no other dwelling in sight except the town two miles away. In winter the family went back to their town house and a single servant looked after the place from one of the outbuildings.
That was when the trouble started. Noises came from the shut-up rooms and lights moved behind the windows where no one should be. People going along the high road at night saw the house's guardian, a beast with long shaggy hair trailing on the ground and large glaring eyes, making its rounds of the old walls, "and seemed to guard the house from intrusion".
The Le Marchants of Les Grentmaisons turn up in another Guernsey story: a "Mr. Le Marchant des grent mesons" who shot at a white rabbit in his warren, loaded his gun with a silver sleeve-button when ordinary shot failed, and found a lady of the Vale lying behind the hedge with a broken leg. Between the witch-rabbit and the shaggy beast, the house collected a good deal of lore. The district has long since filled with houses, and the road of Les Grandes Maisons keeps the name. The exact site of the old house is not marked here.
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