ALILA JAKARTA HOTEL

A stop off at the famous Jamaica Inn for some pub grub.
Daphne du Maurier's The Jamaica Inn, Cornwall
The hotel: Cosy coaching house on Bodmin Moor with cobbled courtyard, beamed ceilings, roaring log fires and real ales, immortalised in Daphne du Maurier's novel of the same name.
Who haunts it? Several spirits, the best-known and oldest being the man who sits on the wall outside, believed to be the ghost of the stranger who was summoned outside while drinking in the bar last century. His body was found on the moor the next day, but his killer was never found.
Double room from ?80 per night.
Ghosts and spooky goings on at Jamaica Inn

Most Haunted said "one of the spookiest programmes ever recorded..."

Many people who have stayed here have reported strange incidents in the night and we have been sent many photographs from guests. Popular TV programme Most Haunted featured Jamaica Inn in what they said was one of the spookiest programmes they had ever recorded!

Previous managers of Jamaica Inn have heard conversations uttered in a foreign tongue. Could this be the Cornish language?

For years there have been many stories of hauntings at Jamaica Inn and recently the Ghost Society has made in-depth investigations and compiled a report based on their findings. The areas of substantial interest to the investigation were, The Smuggler's Bar, The Stable Bar, the restaurant and upstairs in bedroom four.

Murder at the Inn: Many years ago, a stranger stood at the bar enjoying a tankard of ale. Upon being summoned outside, he left the half finished ale and stepped out into the night. That was the last time he was seen alive. The next morning his corpse was found on the bleak moor but the manner of his death and the identity of his assailant still remain a mystery.

Previous landlords, upon hearing footsteps tramping along the passage to the bar, believe it is the dead man's spirit returning to finish his drink.

Who is the stranger sitting motionless on the wall outside? In 1911 there was much interest and correspondence in the press concerning a strange man who had been seen by many people, sitting on the wall outside the Inn. He neither spoke nor moved nor acknowledged a greeting but his appearance was uncannily like the murdered stranger. Could this be the dead man's ghost? And what strange compulsion drove it to return to the same spot so often?

With such an extensive history, including several centuries of smuggling, Daphne du Maurier's Jamaica Inn is probably closer to the truth than we care to believe. It would explain the clatter of horses hooves on cobbled ground heard in the depths of night...

During the early 1900s the Inn was used as a temperance house but there have always been spirits of a different kind at Jamaica Inn.

On a moonlit night, when all is still, how can any earthly person explain the sound of horses' hooves and the metal rims of wheels turning on the rough cobbles of the courtyard? Yet there is nothing to be seen!Who can explain the uneasy footsteps heard pacing the corridors in the dead of night? Who is the strange man in a tricorne hat and cloak who appears and then walks through solid doors?

We've just got back from three days in Cornwall, a belated silver wedding anniversary treat (as the actual date fell during school time).
The quickest route for us is simply to join the A30 (which used to be called the Great South West Road) at Honiton, and follow it all the way until we get to the nearest point to wherever we're going. But on the way, we usually stop for a coffee and comfort break at Jamaica Inn.
It's changed a lot since I first stopped there in the early 1960s. At that time, the A30 from London to Cornwall on a summer Saturday was a series of traffic jams: Ilchester, Ilminster, Honiton, Bodmin - each one about an hour long. The main road ran right past the Inn, and was nose to tail, chug chug chugging along at snail's pace in a cloud of radiator steam. (Not to mention the infamous Goss Moor section, with a low bridge which regularly caught lorries.) Since then, of course, all of these have been bypassed, and the road is now pretty painless; but most of the traffic whizzes past Jamaica Inn at 70 mph, and they often seem to rely on coach parties, and fall back on playing up their connection with the Daphne du Maurier book of the same name.