Herm Island

Overview

Herm Island – also known as “the island of the Dead”. We hosted a first event in 2014 there for a Guernsey charity called Guernsey Cheshire Home. The event was over two nights and was based around several locations throughout the island. We returned to Herm on May 6th, 2017  to support a paranormal event on the island as part of the Channel Islands Heritage festival based around “myths and legends”. We are currently analysing the data from this second event and will be posting the “best of” here soon. As always, it was a great investigation and we would like to thank all on Herm island, especially Jonathan, for welcoming us back and asking us to run the paranormal investigation. Data will also be available on the team pages on Facebook: 

Alpha Charlie (Audrey’s team) 
https://www.facebook.com/groups/630194090446791/
Bravo Hotel (Ben’s team)https://www.facebook.com/groups/1007744699275409/
Papa Hotel (Paul’s team)https://www.facebook.com/groups/1648543875369286/

Ghost Stories

The White House Hotel

In 2010, a local group held a Ghost Hunt in Herm. The two nighter focussed on the White House Hotel. Various locations in the White House were explored. A guest claimed to have seen a dark figure walking through the lounge towards the Monk’s Bar on camera.

Jenny Wood mentions in her book ‘Herm Our Island Home’ that she and friends had a similar experience in the Monk’s Bar. She was playing cards with three friends. Her dog Sapper was sat at their feet stretched out in front of the fire . She wrote: ‘all at once he lifted his head, got to his feet and with slowly rising hackles gazed at the door. Gradually his head turned and his eyes followed the progress of someone, or something, right across the room to the door on the opposite side. Not a thing was visible to the three of us watching. Rather an eerie experience.’

There is a corridor in the hotel where guests often report that they can hear the voices of children playing when there have been no children staying in the hotel. In August 2010, a group of 3 children were walking along this corridor- everything they said was repeated in a mimicking set of voices afterwards.

Wood also mentions in her book that a Clairvoyant who was staying in the Hotel approached her husband Peter to ask whether the monk would be taking the service in the Chapel on the Sunday. Peter was confused and told her that there were no monks living on Herm. The Clairvoyant said she had been speaking to a monk on the lawn outside the Hotel ‘a very charming gentleman’. The Clairvoyant told Peter that if she met him again she would find out more about him. A few days later, she claimed that the monk’s name was Pierre du Pont and that he had lived in Herm in the 11th c. She thought that there had been a massacre on the island and that he had been burnt at the stake (there is no historical evidence for this- a local legend)

St Tugal’s Chapel
A Farm Foreman went to secure the chapel one night before a storm. He claimed to have seen a monk kneeling in front of the altar who ‘suddenly wasn’t there anymore’.

The Manor House
A young girl has been seen coming out of the bathroom door and walking along a corridor in the Manor House.

The Walled Garden in front of the Manor House
Jenny and Peter Wood took some photos in their walled garden one autumn. When the film was developed in the centre of one of the photos showing the long slope of the garden down to the wall there was a large bonfire ‘where none had been’. In the centre of the flames were ‘the vague but easily discernible outlines of a face’. The photo was shown to various people and half of them put it down to “a photographic error in the developing processes”. (Jenny Wood)

Guernsey Society of Dowsing reported that their members felt sick and heady in this area. The dowser that is also a medium picked up a little girl who plays in the garden. The little girl wanted to make a connection but the medium said she felt this ‘difficult’. Interesting- cross reference with what’s reported in the manor seeing a little girl emerge from a bathroom which is on the ground floor looking out towards his garden.

Farm Cottages
A resident living in one of the Farm Cottages awoke one night and claimed to see a figure wearing a monk’s habit on a low stool by the window gazing out to sea. She woke her husband but the monk had disappeared.

Valley Panto
Many have seen an apparition of a monk in a long dark brown cloak strolling in Panto Valley. Many visitors claim to feel a strange sensation walking up The Drive at Night- the sensation is that they are being gently guided or pushed up the hill. Valley Panto is situated on the right hand side as you go up the drive to the Manor House, below the Woodland Walk and next to the ‘bug boxes’. Others have seen the apparition walking down the drive and past them.

Seagull Campsite
A seasonal camper reported that late one evening, she saw 2 women – she described them as being dressed as ‘old fashioned nurses’ (her words) approaching her niece’s tent just after she had put them to bed. She approached the tent to question them and they hurriedly walked away in the opposite direction. She went after them but it was dark and lost them. She reports that they were wearing head dresses and she could hear the ‘swish of their heavy dresses’ as she went after them.

Fisherman’s Cottage
Many families who stay in Fish Cottage have regularly experienced the sound of footsteps running up and down the stairs and hear the door catch to the bathroom being locked and unlocked.

North of the island- precise location unclear
Prince Blucher’s farm bailiff My Harding was trapping rabbits at 4am on a January morning- it was absolutely still when suddenly the willow tree under which he stood bowed over to the ground. He then heard what he says was an ‘indescribable sound’ that rushed past him like a wind. It lasted for a minute or so. It terrified him so he quickly ran home.
Tom Le Pelley who worked as Herm’s gardener in the 1800’s –he also heard the same sound (recorded in La Societe Guernesiasie).
Mr Harding was Herm’s Bailiff and lived there for over 50 years. He also says that on occasions he would hear ‘a terrifying roar’ on still frosty nights