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John Marshall, 67, is owner of Cornish Welcome Tours (www.cornishwelcometours.co.uk), which offers custom tours of that region of southwest England. He is a native of Nottingham, England, who has lived in Launceston, Cornwall, for 27 years. Among Marshall's unusual tour stops is Warmington House, in Camelford, a B&B owned by his daughter, Sarah.
Q. How did your family come to acquire an old inn - one said to be loaded with ghosts?
My daughter and son-in-law bought it three years ago. They spent a lot of money renovating it and now run it as a guest house and holiday cottage. Camelford is about four miles from the coast.
The house was built by Lord Falmouth in about 1690; he sold it to the Earl of Darlington. It then went to a gentleman called Warmington, who named it after himself. It has had a varied history and was at one point a hotel. It was won and lost as a gambling debt - that's how Darlington lost it - and is fairly famous in the town.
It's not massive, like a stately home. But it has 10 bedrooms - quite large for a private house - three lounges, two kitchens and a dining room. It's right in the center of town, on the market square. Camelford is small, about 2,000 inhabitants at the very most.
Q. Your daughter and her husband knew it was considered haunted when they bought it?
Yes; it had been written up in books for years. People who stayed there when it was a hotel wrote comments on that in the visitors' book. Not worrying comments - the ghosts seem friendly. But definitely there.
Q. And the spirits include...
The oldest we've managed to contact - through a medium who was in a trance - is a knight from the 1300s who lived there in a previous house in the days of King Edward II. He was a soldier who died after falling down the cellar steps. The medium said this ghost's name was Arthur.
The story of his appearance was written up in a book called "Ghosts of Cornwall." He appeared to a lady one night at the foot of her bed.
Another guy - the one who most frequently appears and has more dealings with live people - is Thomas. The medium spoke with him. Thomas lived in the time of Queen Victoria and died in the present house from pneumonia, we think. Neglect may have been involved. He was a servant, but also seems to be an illegitimate son of Lord Darlington, who had eight children who were legitimate. Thomas appears frequently. He plays the piano, opens and closes doors, takes pictures off walls and puts them on the floor....
Another ghost, called Harriet, is somehow connected to Thomas. We're not sure if she was a housekeeper, his mistress or whatever. She and a ghostly child, with whom we've had no contact, apparently live there.
Thomas is the only one who does physical things. Many over the years have commented on him, and his playing the piano.
Q. What does Thomas play?
It's fairly tuneless, to be honest. Nothing recognizable; just notes. No Beethoven.
Q. Do you mention these spirits to prospective guests?
We don't actually tell them. Unless we're doing a special ghost tour, people find out for themselves. Some already know, and the house is known in town as being haunted. There are many haunted houses in Cornwall, and when we do ghost tours, we sort of base them at Sarah's house.
Q. How does one bathe or get dressed in privacy in a haunted inn?
My daughter's mother-in-law stayed in the house one night and said someone was at the bottom of her bed. She and others who've experienced this don't seem to be worried or affected. They don't leap up, scream and run out. We've never had anybody frightened of ghosts. If someone has that sort of nature, they wouldn't stay here. The spirits are friendly. They're not throwing things around the room or making blood-curdling noises.
And the ghosts aren't out every night. Just now and again.
Q. What else have you personally experienced?
Pictures taken off the walls; doors opening. When the medium had a long conversation with Thomas, she said, "Can you give us a manifestation of you being here?" We were in the back of the house, by a kitchen door. "Can you open the door?" Thomas opened the door four inches. "Can you close the door?" The door closed again. He did that three times.
Q. And your daughter's family lives there?
Yes, with their two children, ages 6 and 3. The children seem quite happy with the ghosts, and quite sensitive to them.
Q. If the ghosts are happy, why do they hang around?
Thomas does seem fairly content. The medium said that at the end of her first conversation with Thomas, she asked if he was happy to have had the talk. Thomas said yes. Interestingly, she was the first person to have had a conversation with him in 150 or 200 years.
Q. Where do you live? In your own haunted house?
My house is 400 years old and on the site of a leper colony that existed from the 1100s to the mid-1500s. After leprosy died out, it was a farmhouse. Our house was built on the site after that. We have bodies in the garden and in the fields. An archaeological dig about 10 years ago found some skeletons next door that were from the leper colony.
We did have a medium in; she said there were no spirits in our house. Don't know why, though.
