Jamaica Inn

Jamaica Inn sits high and exposed in the middle of Bodmin Moor, beside the old main road from Launceston to Bodmin (now the A30). The slate-hung building dates from 1750, when it was a coaching inn where travelers changed horses, and it was extended with a coach house and stables in 1778. Despite the legend, its name probably comes not from smuggled Jamaican rum but from the local Trelawny family, two of whom served as governors of Jamaica in the 18th century.

Its remote position on a moorland road made it a natural stopping place for smugglers moving brandy, tea and tobacco inland from the Cornish coast, and that reputation was cemented by Daphne du Maurier. She stayed at the inn in 1930 and set her 1936 novel Jamaica Inn there, turning it into the lair of a brutal landlord and a gang of wreckers; Alfred Hitchcock filmed it in 1939. The inn now houses a smuggling museum, including du Maurier’s writing desk and typewriter, and sells itself proudly as one of Britain’s most haunted inns.

The ghost stories are a tangle of folklore and modern reports. The oldest concerns a strangely dressed man seen sitting motionless on the wall outside, who ignored passersby; the inn’s own history says press interest in him peaked in 1911, though it names no newspaper and no contemporary report has been traced, and he is often linked to a drinker said to have been lured out from the bar and murdered on the moor, whose footsteps are said to return to finish his drink. In 1970 two overnight guests reported a man in a tricorn hat and long coat who walked through their bedroom wardrobe. Staff and guests also tell of the clatter of horses and iron-wheeled carts in the courtyard, a cloaked figure in the snug, voices in foreign languages in Room 4, and “Hannah,” a little girl said to have spent her last night in Room 5 before being lost at sea — guests now leave toys for her, though no record of such a child exists.

The inn’s fame among ghost hunters grew after a 2004 episode of Most Haunted, during which the medium Derek Acorah claimed a set of old chains in the former generator room had been involved in a death; the chains still hang in reception with a plaque. Today the inn runs its own guided paranormal investigations.

Footsteps in the bar and bedrooms, a silent stranger sitting on the outside wall, a man in a tricorn hat and long coat, horses and carts heard in the courtyard, tapping, voices, glasses falling, hair pulling, a child’s wet footprints and toys that move in Room 5 — reported by landlords, staff and overnight guests.

The main Smugglers’ Bar and its fireplace, the snug (Mary’s Bar), the courtyard at night, Rooms 4 and 5, the cellar and the wall outside facing the old road.

Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn (1936), Hitchcock’s 1939 film and later TV adaptations, a song by Tori Amos (2005), and appearances on Most Haunted and many other paranormal shows. The inn’s museum covers smuggling and du Maurier.