Hauntings

Room Four and the cellar of the Black Swan, Devizes

Also known as: Black Swan Hotel ghost

Black Swan Hotel, Market Place, Devizes

Reports mostly from the late 20th and early 21st centuries

Haunted Britain says the Black Swan overlooks the Market Place in Devizes and that although the present building dates from 1737, an inn had stood on the site for much longer. The brick cellar may be early 17th century. It describes the cellar as one of the spookiest parts of the building and a magnet to investigators, whose tape recorders are said to pick up knocks and bangs, thermometers to show sharp drops, and video to show moving orbs of light. One group claimed to have photographed a face peering from the cellar wall.

The better known story is of Room Four. Several guests are said to have left in the middle of the night when a young woman in a flowing dress materialised from the wall, glided to the chair by the window and sat looking out, then rose into the air and melted into the wall behind the bed. Two researchers who spent a night watching the chair thought the session had been uneventful, until they reviewed their camera footage and saw a misty form near the chair at about 1.15am. Haunted Britain itself says it is debatable whether that was the resident ghost.

A Wiltshire Gazette and Herald feature repeats the Room Four story and the cellar face. The evidence is mostly investigator recordings and guest anecdotes, which cannot be independently checked, and no identity for the woman is offered. The hotel is a working business, and Wikipedia's list of reportedly haunted places in the UK also names the Black Swan.

Working hotel and bar.
Evidence
Long-standing local tradition
Access
Open ground
Location
51.352, -1.995 (Sited to the building or field)

Sources: Haunted Britain: The Black Swan Hotel, Devizes [other]; Wiltshire Gazette and Herald: Haunted pubs, five of the spookiest rooms in Wiltshire [other]

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