WINDWARD MANOR

Location: Windward Manor is located on Windward Point, a rocky cliff high above Biddeford in Devonshire, England. The small fishing community is about 170 miles west of London between Adolecombe and Barnstaple in Devonshire.

Description: The large grandiose house sits on a hill not far from where the cliff reaches over the sea. The Elizabethan manor has four bedrooms with high ceilings, four chimneys and a round bay window above the front door. One bedroom has been converted into an artist’s room with a huge window from floor to roof for natural light. The kitchen has an old-fashioned wood-burning stove.

Ghostly Manifestations: Windward is an impressive edifice standing tall above the small community of Biddeford-in-Cornwall, England. With its imposing view of the town from its lonely hill, it definitely resembles the image of a classic haunted house. For the people who actually live there, it is a comfortable and gracious house with all the splendors of gracious living. Some of the guests who say or visits, however, report that the old house still seems to conceal a secret or two.

Roderick Fitzgerald and his sister, Pamela, stumbled across the house in 1944 and became enraptured by the place. After a bit of inquiry, they purchased it and were soon restoring the place to the grandeur that so fitted the neglected and forgotten place. They didn’t believe in ghosts, but they started noticing things that just didn’t seem right. The place seemed to get chilly even on the sunniest days. Pamela once remarked she could see her breath. Their little dog became afraid of something on the second floor and won’t come up the stairs. It would howl up to the top floor at something. He eventually ran off altogether and became friendly with local physician Dr. Alfred Scott.

Both Roderick and Pamela heard crying in the house their first night in it. They tried to trace from where the noise came from, but it just seemed to emanate from everywhere and no where at once. It always vanished at dawn and was sometimes accompanied by the scent of mimosas, a flower that grew no where near the property. The screams were subsequently attributed to caves possibly under the mansion, but the mimosas scent returned many times.

The studio at the top of the stairs also seemed to have a life or reputation of its own. Locked up when they first discovered the house, Roderick mentioned that for a while it seemed the room was incredibly stifling as if some force in the room drained the strength and will of anyone who entered it. Before the electricity was turned on in the house, both the Fitzgeralds used candles to see through the house at night, but for some reason, whenever they came near that room, some force blew out their candles.

The Fitzgeralds later inquired to Retired Naval Commander Archibald Beech, Windward’s previous owner, to confirm whether the house was haunted or not and he confessed that his daughter, Mary Meredith, had died there. His grand-daughter, Stella Meredith, even visited the house a few times to try and confer with her mother’s spirit as to why it stayed in the house, and once had a strange compulsion to throw herself from the nearby cliff. Stopped just in the nick of time, she later reported feeling a strong maternal spirit in the house.

During a subsequent séance, the Fitzgeralds, Dr. Scott and Stella attempted to make contact with Mary to see why she was so restless. During the private ritual, a visage appeared and tried to form to them, but then a glass shattered and seemingly frightened it away. Roderick later guessed the truth. Windward was not inhabited by one ghost but by two !

History: Commander Beech inherited Windward from his grandmother and it may be as much as two hundred years old. He gave it to his daughter as a wedding gift, but after both she and her husband died, he actually forbade Stella to never go near it. On one occasion she actually sneaked into the place, he sent her away to boarding school in Brussels. Stella returned home in 1934 and became angry at him for trying to sell the house, but tenant after tenant refused to stay in it. When the Fitzgeralds wanted to buy it, Beech sold it to them for less than its worth because he knew about the ghosts.

Roderick Fitzgerald, however, took a shine to Stella and actually married her. Before then, however, he did an exhaustive study into Stella’s mother and discovered that Stella had been adopted. Stella’s true mother was a Spanish Gypsy named Carmen. Unable to have children, Mary had adopted Stella from Carmen and then sent her off to live in Paris, but three years later, Carmen returned wanting her daughter back. Mary threatened to throw the child from the cliff as a threat to her, but fell to her death instead. Carmen died in the house a few days later from pneumonia. Rumor has it that Mary’s ghost killed her by leaving the windows open to the cold. Since then, both women reportedly haunt the mansion.

Identity of Ghosts: Mary’s ghost has not been felt since Roderick and Stella married, but Carmen’s caring spirit, accompanied by mimosas, has been felt several times. Since the Sixties, guests have reported her phantom wandering the top landing and silently gliding harmlessly through the rooms.

Comments: The Uninvited (1944), Book created by Dorothy McCardle. Hauntings based on the movie.