The ninth Duke of Norfolk's haunting at the White Horse Hotel stands out within this register for its distinctly comic framing, a ghost explicitly attributed not to any violent death, tragic circumstance, or unfinished business in the usual sense, but to a state of ongoing intoxication apparently severe enough to have followed him past death itself. Whether this represents a genuine, if unusually irreverent, piece of local tradition, or a more recent joke that has simply taken on the trappings of a ghost story through repeated telling, is not clarified by the source consulted for this entry.
The Dukes of Norfolk are a genuine and long-continuing English aristocratic title, the senior dukedom in the peerage of England, and identifying which specific ninth holder of the title is meant would require independent research beyond what is available here, the title having passed through numerous different holders across its long history since its creation. No specific date, or account of why this particular duke should be associated with a Dorking hotel rather than the family's own more traditional seats, has been traced in the sources consulted for this entry.
Given both the comic, almost tongue-in-cheek framing of the haunting itself and the lack of any specific identifying detail connecting a named ninth Duke of Norfolk to Dorking, this entry is recorded at the lower end of this register's confidence scale, included as a genuinely distinctive and clearly well loved piece of local pub folklore rather than a claim this register can treat as historically grounded.
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