The Girl and the Grandmother

The following story was related to the group during our day visit to the Spanish Barn in Torquay.

Sometime during 2004 a family that consisted of a young girl (around 9 years of age), her two parents and her grandmother visited Torre Abbey for the day. Whilst there the parents, who were big Agatha Christie fans, discovered the memorial display of their favourite author and spent a lot of their time in there.

The young girl was getting agitated and bored waiting for her parents and wanted to go. As she was waiting she saw an elderly lady leaving the room. Apparently thinking that it was her grandmother she decided to go along with this person, holding her hand as they walked out and away. The girl and the elderly lady walked for a little while around the building until they reached the chapel. At this point the girl suddenly realised that the elderly lady and completely vanished and was nowhere to be seen. Thinking that she was lost, or that her grandmother had wandered away she made her way back to where her parents were to tell them. However, surprisingly to her, when she returned she saw that her grandmother was still with them. Not only that, but she had never left the room.

A bit worried that this elderly lady may have been trying to abduct their daughter, the family went to the reception to tell them what had happened. The receptionist thought that it was most likely that the girl had simply mistaken another visitor for her grandmother but agreed to go back over the CCTV footage that had been recording during the time to see what had happened.

The tape played and showed the family in the Agaths Christie room. Then, to the astonishment of both the family and the receptionist the girl was seen dashing over to a completely empty space and then holding her arm in the air as if she was holding hands with somebody invisible. She was like this when she was captured on another CCTV camera walking down the stairs still holding this invisible entities hand and appearing to be speaking to whoever it may have been. This continued up until the chapel where the girl was seen walking inside with her arm still in the air. Then her arm suddenly crumpled down to her side as if suddenly let go. The girl, looking a bit stunned, started to look around to see where whoever was with her had vanished off to.

The tapes were put to one side, but unfortunately a new summer worker did not know what was on them, and sadly mixed them back up with the current tape rotation where they were subsequantly recorded over. It's such a shame because it may well have been one of the most convincing videos of the paranormal ever recorded.