Surveys of public opinion and people’s experiences aren’t unusual. We’re often asked about schools and transport links. But in 2015 thirty-thousand people around the country were asked to identify how different towns and cities ranked for more unusual criteria.
The survey found that more people had seen a ghost in Torquay than anywhere else in the UK. Over a quarter of all residents reported having experienced the supernatural, well above the national average of 17%.
Indeed, Torquay’s long-standing interest in the paranormal seems to be confirmed whenever residents are asked about any experiences they have had.
From a more esoteric perspective we have self-proclaimed ‘psychic medium’ Sally Morgan identifying Eastbourne as “Britain’s most psychic”; although Torquay is her second contender. In Sally’s worldview this is because seaside resorts have “old Victorian buildings which retain the psychic energy of the past, and all these are places where old people retire and eventually die. It’s a bit like heaven’s waiting room”.
There are, however, other more scientific explanations for this concentration of paranormal beliefs in Torquay.
From its very beginnings, Torquay attracted those with the time and money to pursue their enthusiasms. One such interest was the occult.
The town was a health resort catering for the many across Britain’s suffering from consumption, now better known as tuberculosis. For the sick we offered comfort and relief, though many inevitably died here to be buried in the churchyard of St Saviour’s. Consequently, by the 1840s it was reported that the town’s hotels were “filled with spitting pots and echoing to the sounds of cavernous coughs… the only sound to be heard was the frequent tolling of the funeral bell.”
Torquay was therefore founded on the dead and the dying, a setting sympathetic to the passions of Romanticism and the Gothic.
Following the arrival of the railways in 1848, Torquay was exposed to mass tourism and all those visitors needed entertaining. The occupants of the 500 new villas welcomed the intellectual stimulation and access to forgotten and forbidden knowledge. Hence the resort acquired a national reputation for the exploration and practice of the supernatural; and specifically a fascination with Spiritualism and pseudo-science.
And Torquay, not coincidentally, could boast England’s most haunted house in Castel-a-Mare on Middle Warberry Road. Nearby was the spectre-endowed Gothic experience of Berry Pomeroy Castle, a daytrip for the amateur revenant hunter. Ghosts then became part of the Victorian and Edwardian vacation experience.
Perhaps this environment influenced those inclined to accept the suggestions of others. When you say to people “if you visit this building, you might have some weird experiences”, the more suggestible ones will.
Such suggestibility may explain why some people interpret conditions such as sleep paralysis, where you’re half awake and you can’t move, as a ghostly assault.
We don’t have much evidence of the actual past beliefs of ordinary residents and locals. What we do have is data on gender imbalance. As a tourist resort with a large servile and service class, Torquay was a society with a significant gap between the male and female population. In 1881, for example, there were 13,665 males to 19,293 females.
Research has found that today women have a significantly higher propensity to believe in the supernatural, being 10% more likely than men to believe in ghosts, and 15% more likely to think houses can be haunted.
While there may be a variety of reasons for this past and prevailing gender disparity, Victorian and Edwardian society largely excluded women from the political, religious, and economic realms. The occult then offered a way of acquiring status, a decent income, and a degree of power. We note the overlap between female mediumship, suffrage, and a range of radical beliefs in the resort.
We also now have a better understanding of the mental and physical association with phantasmagoria.
Torquay has always been a place of refuge and hoped-for recovery for those experiencing mental distress. Some succeed while others do not. In addition, age-related illnesses such as dementia or Parkinson’s can further cause disorientation and visions. The average age in Torbay is 49; compared to 40 in the UK.
Drugs and alcohol are evidently linked to distortions in reality. In Victorian Torquay opium was consumed by much of the population as both a cure-all medicine and for recreational purposes. The drug could be easily acquired in either pill or liquid form from chemists or from street-sellers.
And, of course, Torquay has always been a party town and remains so with its tourism industry focused on mood-altering substances, both legal and illicit. Today, at any one time, around 1,300 of us are receiving support for drug and alcohol dependency across the Bay.
Then there is the physical environment. Some researchers have associated poverty and, specifically, poor housing with a belief in the supernatural.
And the Bay certainly experiences poverty. Wages are significantly lower that the nation’s average and there is a near decades variation in life expectancy between the more and less affluent parts of the Bay.
Housing is, of course, closely linked to poor physical and mental health. 27% of Torbay households live in the privately rented sector. Social housing is limited with only 8% social housing in the Bay; the national average is 18%.
Some older houses, perhaps divided into flats, are of low quality and poorly maintained. Contributing to this is that the centre of old Torquay is built in a series of steep limestone valleys. These terraces were constructed for the town’s working and lower middle classes and a number have drainage issues due to limestone being semi-permeable.
In such housing it’s not unusual to find mould which can grow on fabrics and walls when moisture is present. Excessive exposure to damp and mouldy environments can cause a host of medical problems, including in some instances hallucinations and delusions.
A further hazard in poorly ventilated properties is carbon monoxide, a poisonous gas that can cause serious illness or even death. Causes of carbon monoxide poisoning include faulty common household appliances such gas boilers, cookers, and heaters. The symptoms of poisoning can cause headaches, sickness, and confusion. Symptoms may come and go, getting worse when time is spent in an affected room.
Electric and magnetic fields (EMFs) are invisible areas of energy that are associated with the use of electrical power, including microwave ovens, computers, Wi-Fi networks, and power lines. Some researchers have linked EMFs with headaches, tremors, memory loss and sleep disturbance.
Low-frequency sounds known as infrasound have a variety of natural and man-made causes. These include thunderstorms, the sound of waves, whistling pipes, trains travelling on tracks, and higher frequency radio waves, such as TV antennas, radio stations or mobile phone base stations.
We do not consciously hear these sounds, but they do seem to affect our bodies, both physiologically and psychologically. When exposed to infrasound, people have reported feelings of panic or fear and experience sleep disturbances, headaches, depression, changes in memory, distorted vision and hallucinations.
There is one final, perhaps questionable, proposal. On the face of the vertical limestone cliff of Torquay’s Rock Walk is a crack. This indicates a geological feature called the Sticklepath Fault which runs across Devon. The fault is thought to be responsible for the earth tremors that were felt throughout our region in November 1955. Some have suggested that such underground movements can have a subconscious effect and have mapped ghostly sightings in Torquay’s townscape that correlate with the faultline.
Of course, all these rational and scientific explanations are just suggestions. Torquay may simply have more ghosts than anywhere else in Britain.
You decide.
‘Torquay: A Social History’ by local author Kevin Dixon is available for £10 from Artizan Gallery, Fleet Street, Torquay. or:
