The Haunting of Tumbledown Cottage

A 300 year old cottage in Mount Pleasant, Pilton, Somerset, went up for sale in the early 1970s and along with the pretty house, came a ghost.

The then current owners, Mr and Mrs Villiars, didn’t believe in ghosts when they first moved to Tumbledown Cottage the previous year. The Villiars heard whispers that their abode was haunted but they just laughed at the rumours but as time went on, they were to witness ghostly activity.

The Villiars had invited a few friends over one evening and they were all sitting in the dining room, chatting away. As the conversation lulled, Mr Villiars asked everyone if they had heard a noise. They had all heard the footsteps walking across a bedroom floor upstairs. There was nobody in the house at the time and next door was empty.

It was Mrs Villiars curiosity that was peaked by the noise, as she left the dining room and went upstairs. Nothing was there but Mrs Villiars felt a heavy atmosphere in the bedroom where the footsteps had come from.

On another occasion, Mrs Villiars was in bed reading and she heard the footsteps in the other bedroom. She got up and again, felt a heavy atmosphere in the room. This time she had her Alsatian dog with her, and he started to growl and was jumping about, as though to scare off the invisible entity.

Mrs Villiars added that there was nothing nasty about the ghost and in fact, the cottage had a happy feeling overall and that they would be sorry to leave.

The local estate agent the Villiars used for the selling of the property, admitted that when he was inside the house, he had an uncomfortable feeling whilst measuring up the property.

The estate agent took Mr and Mrs Feast to Tumbledown Cottage as they were looking for a home. As soon as they walked into the property, they fell in love with it, so they made an offer to buy it, and it was accepted.

It was when they were in the process of buying the cottage, that Mrs Feast, who worked at the local dentists, heard about the haunted reputation of Tumbledown Cottage from a patient.

Hearing this made Mrs Feast even happier to be moving in, as she was a great believer in the supernatural. She had also heard that the ghost was said to be of a young man who had died in the Battle of Sedgemoor.

I do wonder if the Feast’s and any other occupiers, experienced any hauntings whilst living in Tumbledown Cottage?

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