What Buster Jones created was a fairy tale cottage cum Aladdin’s cave, with nautical and ecclesiastical themes thrown in for good measure. He dragged tree stumps from nearby woodland, and either fashioned them into bar tops or used them as massive beams to prop up aging ceilings. The old Okehampton-to-Launceston stagecoach became a suitably eccentric entrance lobby. Old spindles, battered tankards, cartwheels, lanterns, and all manner of other bric-a-brac came to occupy every spare inch of wall, beam, or ceiling. Timbers and fittings from old ships, including the intricately carved door of the whaler Diana that ran aground in the Humber in 1869, were used to create the remarkable Galleon Bar, which has the below-decks ambiance of an 18th century pirate ship. Buster’s daughter, Sally, and her husband, Bruce, now run the inn, and take great care to ensure that his legacy remains intact. They have long grown used to sharing their bequest with one or two spirits of an ethereal nature that drop in every so often to keep an eye on the comings and goings.

Much of the ghostly activity occurs in the Galleon Bar, and it is mooted that it may be related to the eerie-looking door from the Diana. Between September 21, 1866 and March 17, 1868, thirteen members of the ship’s crew died when she became trapped in Arctic pack ice. “We will not have a moment’s peace of mind or body so long as we are in this awful ice,” one sailor wrote in his log. When the remaining crew finally managed to force the crippled vessel across the Atlantic to reach Shetland, the first reporter to board her was appalled by the sight that met his eyes. “Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner might have sailed in such a ghastly ship,” he wrote, “the main deck a charred house not to be described.”

Several psychic investigators have suggested that the apparitions seen in the Galleon Bar are the long-dead mariners whose spirits have remained earthbound in the fabric of the door. Such a theory might sound a little far-fetched, but a definite air of melancholy emanates from the relic.