Books We Love Insider Blog: Burford UK

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As a kid, I was traveling with Mom in UK, and staying in one of her favorite places, Burford, Oxfordshire. This is, BTW, 1961. She always stayed in black and white Tudor hotels if at all possible. We hadn't been in England for many days when we entered the interior courtyard of just such a place, driving in our green Morris wagon through the narrow made-for-carriages entryway.

There was no double room available. After a bit of discussion, they put me upstairs on the 3rd floor which was right under the eaves of this venerable building. A steep stairway went up, and on the way the porter said they only put the young and spry up here.

Then as now, I was history mad, so I scouted around, really enjoying the feel of the place, the dark beams, the crooked walls, the off-kilter floors, the heavy dark antiques which filled the hallways and public rooms. All this carved, blackened antiquity was new and delightful, the stuff of travel books, and now--I was actually here! After supper, I went up to bed to read, leaving Mom in the salon bar downstairs talking to other guests.

The toilet (a.k.a. “loo”) was down the hall, so I'd made a final trip before settling in for the night. There wasn't much light up there, just enough to see the stairwell opening. I knew there were only two other guests staying up on the floor besides me.

The roof, with beams bare, slanted down over the bed, which was a formidable four poster with carved posts and broad box feet. It, my mother had said was "probably Jacobean." Even if it wasn't, it was making a credible effort to look even older. I remember the smell, too, of polish, of damp and of the ages since the house had been built. Clearly, this room wasn't used often. I finally fell asleep listening to footsteps below coming and going and a blurry mumbling sometimes interrupted by laughter seeping up from the floor below.

I awoke in the night—and to my distress, I had to go to the toilet, which meant a walk across the hall. I groped around for the light and found my door key. With the key clutched tight, I descended from the high bed. It was very quiet now, just after midnight by the watch I'd set on the nightstand.

I didn't have the suitcase which contained my bathrobe with me. Dressed only in a flannel nightgown, I didn't want anyone to see me, but when I opened the door, it was now entirely dark in the hallway. That pitiful dim light, I thought, must have gone out.

Then, just as I finished locking the door behind me, I turned and saw the ghost. I knew enough English History to know this was a cavalier, a fine one, too, with long locks and a trimmed beard which came to a nice Charles I point. He had high leather gloves and a hat with a red plume. His collar was of lace, and he had on a long waist coat, but no outer jacket.

Now, FYI, the English Civil War was not my preferred time period. No, at fifteen, I was an obsessive Ricardian, devouring Paul Murray Kendall's Richard III, and Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time and historical novels set in the appropriate time period. The doings of the members of the House of York were as familiar to me as were those of my schoolmates.

Since we'd begun to travel in the UK, if a thing wasn't medieval, well, it was barely worth looking at. In fact, I had been anticipating the next day, when Mom and I were to drive to see what remained of the home of Lord Lovell, who'd been King Richard’s dearest friend. His home was now a ruin beside the nearby River Windrush.

The ghost put one hand on his hip. His lips moved and I understood what he said, although there was no actual auditory sensation involved. He said he was an ancestor of mine, who had come here to raise a company to fight for the King, and that he had been waiting for me for a very long time. The oddest thing about him was that he appeared to be almost up to his knees in the floor, no boots were visible.

At this point, I got scared. Suddenly, I was cold, freezing! I wanted to run but I couldn't move, to shout, but the sound stuck in my throat.

Then, it changed again. Although I was still standing in the hallway, standing in my nightgown, with that low-wattage electric light illuminating drab yellowish walls, not a single creature, living or dead, was there with me.

The next morning over breakfast, I told the entire story to Mom, including the fact that the ghost had “stopped at the knees.” My mother got very excited, for she never sees things like that, and has always wanted to. She was terribly interested in what the ghost had said, because she said she had always had such a longing to have a cavalier in the family. I remember saying something annoyingly teenage like "if only he had been a medieval ghost."

At this point, people at the next table were giving us looks. Then, the host, who’d been saying good morning to other breakfasters, came by. He moved a chair over to our table and said, sotto voce, "Ah--don't-please--talk about that in the dining room. I'm terribly sorry your daughter was disturbed, but that—fellow--is quite a nuisance, you know. When he’s active we can barely use the third floor--especially that back guest room."

We leaned heads together over the table and continued the conversation quietly. Our host went on to explain that he’d had a parapsychologist visit, an investigator who’d also, after staying upstairs for a few days, had had an encounter with the third floor ghost, though it hadn't spoken to him. Our host said that the investigator had explained that we only saw the ghost down to the knees because “he is standing on the old floor—the way it was before remodeling,” an event which had apparently taken place just after the last war.

So that's one of my ghost stories, a thing which happened a long time ago. I have come to doubt this man truly was an ancestor, however. A branch of my mother's family had originally come from the Burford area, but they were probably weavers or something similar, not sword carrying gentlemen. Retelling this tonight, I wonder if this “ancestor” bit was the line the ghost used on all the history-struck teens he met.

Juliet Waldron

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