Free Ghosts at Christmas by Darren W. Ritson Page A

His daughter, Pricilla Marie Hopper, married General Charles Beckwith and moved into the house. It was at this time that the front entrance to the house was constructed and adorned with the Beckwith coat of arms. It is a magnificent piece of stonemasonry that can still be seen to this day. In 1890, the Beckwith family moved to Shropshire and the estate was leased to a man named John Craven. When he died in 1902, a lease was taken up for the house by a man called Charles Doxford, who laid out the gardens and the lake before the First World War. He was a wealthy shipbuilder at that time and certainly had the money, and time, to do this. It was his daughter, Aline Doxford, who lived at the house after Charles’s death in 1935.
    The house is believed to be haunted by the ghost of General Beckwith, with his shade being seen on the grand staircase and in the large bedroom upstairs many times since the 1930s. This sighting usually occurs around Christmas time, or at least in the month of December, so we were in the house at the right time of year to maybe catch of glimpse of this elusive figure. It is also believed that the ghost of Aline Doxford may still reside in the property too. There is an unsubstantiated claim that Aline mayhave held lurid sexual gatherings with her many friends, who, incidentally, were all said to be women. It is also reputed that a certain room on the ground floor situated in the semi-circular side wing, is the room where Aline Doxford once locked herself in for weeks at a time to carry out Ouija board sessions. Whatever went on there in the past had certainly left its mark on the building.
    The property owner, Phil Jeffries, told GHOST that his two Alsatian dogs will simply not venture upstairs in the house. They say dogs have a ‘sixth sense’ and can see and sense things that humans can’t. If this is the case, it would seem that there is something lurking on the upper floors which keeps these fierce guard dogs at bay.
    We arrived at the building on 1 December 2008 at 1.30 p.m. so that we could have a look around the house during the daylight hours. We were met by the property owner, and the GHOST team – Yvonne Moore, Ralph Keeton, Drew Bartley, Fiona Vipond and myself – ventured inside this magnificent stately home for the first time. We walked into a long corridor that seemed to go on forever. The atmosphere began to take ahold and as we walked along, passing over fifty small rooms along the way, we could sense that this old building really did have secrets hidden deep within. As we approached the end of the long corridor a magnificent foyer and seventeenth-century wooden staircase greeted us. Under the stairwell, directly ahead of where we stood, was a beautiful alcove with seats either side of an old and striking fireplace. Opposite this was the semi-circular wing and Aline’s ‘Ouija room’.
    It was in this room where, many years ago, workmen carrying out construction on the building had their tea breaks. One workman, said to be a big burly chap and not afraid of anything, sat down to his morning cuppa and breakfast sandwich. After enjoying his break he attempted to stand up but found he could not. Something had grabbed hold of his shoulders and pressed downwards on him, pinning him down and stopping him from getting up to his feet. These feelings went on for a minute or so before they subsided. Said to be ‘terrified’ and ‘chilled to the bone’, the workman fled the premises and never returned.
    Doxford House contains many huge rooms with high and original Italian-style Renaissance ceilings and grand fireplaces.
    To our right were the main entrance and a marvellous Victorian-style conservatory, which was festooned with exotic plants and decked out with garden ornaments and old furniture. A large stone water feature with granite stairs going up and around it from either side, led us to the nineteenth-century addition to the house, which was the entrance folly that bares the Doxford