The Crown Hotel

A tall Victorian man has been seen standing next to the fireplace, staring at a member of staff. A women with a suitcase, a soldier from the English Civil War period and ghostly faces seen in ground floor windows are also to be observed here, too.

Update 8/7/22: Alan Turner, the General Manager kindly emailed me a document detailing the hauntings at the pub:

It mentions apparitions peering through windows, bottoms being pinched in the Bistrot (which used to be the stables), CCTV of people wandering through the Penn Bar even though it was empty and closed, temperature fluctuations, lights switching on and off, a candle and napkins knocked off tables in the dining room by something invisible, and furniture being moved around. There is also a mention of a Cavalier "in a terrified state" running through one of the bedrooms. Black barley seeds have been found in large quantities in some of the bedrooms, with no explanation as to how they got there.

Other stories include:

The lights were out in the hotel and the building close to empty when a Duty Manager went into the lounge to complete a task. Since this wouldn't take long, he worked in the darkness for a little while. When he turned to leave, he saw standing by the Bistro Bar "a ghostly tall, slim figure staring, intensely, straight at him. The Victorian looking figure was described as having jet black hair slicked back, a moustache, wearing a waistcoat and suit trousers. He was holding a walking stick. After a double take, the apparition had vanished."

Another time, again when the lights were off, staff were enjoying an after-work drink when they had a rattling noise from the Penn Bar, which they thought was the door knob being manhandled. The staff hurriedly drank up and left!

A guest who had booked in for two nights stay was eager to check out one morning as he had hardly slept a wink. On the first night, he had awakened to find the bedcover on the other side of the room. The second night he had been forced to grip onto the covers as something was determined to take it away again.

Staff working on painting the bar ceiling after hours received an unexpected visitor. Rich, the Bar Manager saw a figure walk from the other side of the bar to the front door at 3am.

The live-in manager returned to the hotel one Saturday night after walking his dog. The manager heard a loud banging noise from the cellar which the likened to "sounded like someone was thumping the beer barrels with a mallet." He shot up the stairs and locked himself in his flat. The next morning, a colleague, unaware as to what happened found the mallet on the first step of the cellar staircase; normally it was hung up in the corner.

Housekeeper Corrine Goodall saw a fellow staff member come into room 8 out of the corner of her eye and started chatting to her. But there was no-one there and her colleague was actually downstairs.

Corrine also saw a woman all in black with a black suitcase go upstairs past her. She could hear the stranger knocking about in each room. Each room the Housekeeper looked in was empty but the stranger could be heard in the room next door. She sought Alan the Duty Manager but he couldn't find the strange woman.

"A very old couple, frail with walking sticks" came through the front door and went upstairs. Corrine checked to see what room they had booked in case it needed to be cleaned. No one else had seen them and they couldn't be located upstairs. Another staff member heard them walking about upstairs.

Alan also provided details on the most recent experiences:

"...[a] medieval dressed lady caught on cctv during closure at night, she was sat in the restaurant all the lights were off and no staff in the area as they were closing up the bar, she was sat at a table with her hands clasped in front of her as if in prayer, her clothing was dark and she wore a white bonnet hat on her head, the image was on the cctv for 5 minutes as I was trying to rationalise the image before I moved from the screen to investigate the restaurant, on gingerly entering the restaurant there was no lady there and on returning to the cctv screen she also was no longer there."

"...during the end of the first covid lockdown where we could sell outside and takeaways I was in the hotel by myself to prepare for this. (still no one allowed to stay or travel to hotels at this point). It wasn’t until I was leaving the hotel car park in my car that I was facing the back of the hotel and caught a tall figure standing in the window of one of our hotel rooms staring directly at me in my car, I parked the car trying not to lose the gaze of this figure of a man wearing a dark suit his appearance seemed to slightly shift and shimmer but his stare was intense, I didn’t feel this was a happy man and even though I could not see details of his face I had the distinct feeling he wasn’t smiling, it even felt like he was angry for me leaving, I had done a security checked of the hotel before I left and as I didn’t feel I needed or wanted to re-enter the building I noticed approximately 15 minutes had gone by on the cars clock and decided to leave slowly while still looking up at that window as I drove past, even when I rounded the corner he was still there staring. Needless to say I couldn’t leave it at that and got half way home and the security of the hotel overwhelmed my original fight or flight emotions and returned to find no disturbances and all windows and doors locked.

Link: Somerset Live

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