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Servant Girl

A 'horrible and pale-faced' servant, a girl, is reputed to have haunted a house in Bristol during the early years of the 20th century. Halfwitted and hunch-backed, always wearing a pink dress and living a life of misery the girl was beaten and half-starved until she drowned herself in a garden pool. She was the natural daughter of the man who owned the property 50 years before her death.

A colonel's wife and her three daughters leased the house but could not find a housemaid for some weeks. However, soon after they took possession of the property, a young woman was seen, on the stairs, cleaning with a brush and pan. The daughter who saw the girl assumed her mother had found a temporary maid and gave her only a fleeting glance, seeing an untidy, sluttish person wearing a pink dress and very soiled cap.

The girl, white-faced and almost hump-backed, glided down the stairs while smiling horribly over her shoulder at the daughter, and vanished through a red baize door which closed behind her. A little later, one of the daughters, alone in the house, went to the basement for hot water and, on pushing open the kitchen door, was surprised to see the girl, still wearing the pink dress, with her back to the door, busy at the kitchen range. On being challenged by the daughter the figure turned and, leering impudently, ran into an adjacent room from which there was no way out.

The daughter followed, sure of catching the girl at last, but on entering the scullery found it empty with no sign whatsoever of the mysterious figure. She was terrified and ran from the kitchen and saw, through the landing window which was about 9 metres above the ground, the face of the ghostly maid. She fainted and was so ill afterwards that she was sent to a spa to recover. Soon afterwards, her mother and sisters left the house.

The next family to move in stayed for only a month and the next even less time than that - until the house was left empty, apart from the ghostly maid. Beauchamp Tower | Samlesbury Hall |