Jamaica Inn

Jamaica Inn began as a farmhouse and grew into a coaching inn in the 1750s, a Grade II-listed staging post for travellers crossing the bleak, boggy expanse of Bodmin Moor between Launceston and Bodmin. The moor was smuggling country, with the coast a short ride away and few excisemen willing to follow contraband inland, and the isolated inn was ideally placed to store and pass on what came ashore.

In November 1930 the young Daphne du Maurier and her friend Foy Quiller-Couch stayed at the inn during a riding expedition. That afternoon they lost their way on the moor as darkness and rain came down, and the fright of the experience, together with the atmosphere of the inn itself, gave her the setting for Jamaica Inn, published in 1936 and set in Cornwall around 1815 with the innkeeper Joss Merlyn, his wife Patience and their niece Mary Yellan. Alfred Hitchcock filmed it in 1939 with Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Hara, with a new ending that du Maurier reportedly deplored.

The inn has traded on both histories ever since. It now houses a Smugglers' Museum, a collection of du Maurier's possessions and papers, a bar, restaurant, farm shop and hotel bedrooms, and it has expanded well beyond the original building, with a modern wing added to meet demand from visitors who come for the book, the moor and, increasingly, the ghosts.

Jamaica Inn's ghost stories were in print more than a century ago. The correspondence of 1911 about the silent man on the wall outside is the earliest well-documented episode, and it established the murdered stranger as the inn's signature haunting. Since then generations of landlords have reported the footsteps in the passage to the bar, and successive owners have been happy to add their own experiences to the file.

Television came on 6 April 2004, when Most Haunted broadcast its Jamaica Inn episode (series four, episode three). Yvette Fielding's team investigated Room 5, where medium Derek Acorah was pressed for the names of the spirits and, reviewers noted, seemed to steer away from the question, while Phil Whyman singled out bedrooms 4 and 5 and the courtyard as the hotspots. The episode is still one of the most-watched of the series and did a great deal for the inn's night-time trade.

Since then the inn has embraced its reputation. It hires itself out for paranormal investigations, whether to individuals, groups, corporate teams or film crews, and runs regular ghost hunts of its own, with reviewers on TripAdvisor describing overnight vigils in Room 4. ITV News West Country filmed a Halloween ghost hunt here in 2017, and the Cornish Times has reported that the inn had been named among the most haunted places in the UK. Guests describe footsteps, tapping, the sound of horses and carts, children's voices, shadowy figures and apparitions in period clothing.

A fair-minded visitor will note that Jamaica Inn is a busy hotel with old floors, thick walls and a moor outside where the wind does strange things with sound, and that its ghosts are also very good for business. It will also note that the stories predate the ghost-hunting industry by a long way.

Jamaica Inn is at Bolventor on Bodmin Moor, just off the A30 roughly midway between Launceston and Bodmin in Cornwall, with a large car park. It is a working inn, so the bar and restaurant are open to everyone daily; check the inn's website for current hours. The Smugglers' Museum and the Daphne du Maurier collection, described as the finest gathering of her artefacts anywhere, are on site alongside a farm shop and gift shop. The older parts of the building have steps and uneven floors, though the newer wing is more accessible.

This is a place you can genuinely sleep in. The hotel has bedrooms in the original eighteenth-century inn, including the reputedly haunted Rooms 4 and 5, and in the modern extension, and most guests book the old wing on purpose. The inn runs its own paranormal events and ghost hunts through the year, and can be hired for private investigations; operators such as Haunted Happenings also run combined Jamaica Inn and Bodmin Jail weekends. Beyond the ghosts, the inn makes a fine base for walking Bodmin Moor, with Dozmary Pool, Rough Tor and Brown Willy close by, and Bodmin, Launceston and the north Cornwall coast within half an hour.