An American tourist staying at a ‘haunted’ hotel claims to have caught a legendary ghost on camera – even though it appears to be her own shadow.
Holidaymaker Lisa Corya was staying at the Headland Hotel in Newquay, Cornwall – made famous in the film ‘The Witches’.
For years staff and guests at the hotel have reported sightings of a ghost – a woman wearing a uniform stalking the corridors.
The eerie figure is said to be the ghost of a woman who worked at the hotel – either as a nurse or a maid.
Lisa, a nurse from Indiana, now says she has evidence of the spectre lurking in the grounds of the famous hotel.
She took a photo of the beach in front of the Headland – but when she got home she saw a large shadow in the picture.
But she says the shadow isn’t hers – and is in the shape of a female in a Victorian-style uniform.
Lisa said: ”My jaw literally dropped when I saw the image. It’s not my shadow as I was wearing a pair of leggings and a sweater and no hat.
”There was no-one standing near me so it can’t be anyone else’s.
“It appears to be a heavier set woman, wearing a long coat and hat, with a baby – a woman from the early 1900s or late 1800s.
“When I returned to the US, I sat by a lady in the airport who looked at the image and said it was a nurse because her mother was a nurse and had a similar cloak and hat.
“Her comment was that maybe this person was making a connection with me because of our nursing backgrounds.”
The hotel was requisitioned during the Second World War when it became an RAF hospital.
According to the official history of the hotel, ”extensive renovations during the late 1990s may have awoken more ghosts of the past”.
It reports ‘..sightings of a woman wearing a uniform disappearing through a wall into the Ladies’ Powder Room’.
Other sightings have been reported by children of a spectral nurse.
Hotel spokesman Jo Marsh said: ”There has been a long history of ghost sightings in and around the building.
”Staff have heard strange noises and seen a figure in the ballroom.”
In 1990 the hotel was the setting of the film The Witches, an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s novel. The Headland Hotel was renamed “Hotel Excelsior” in the film.
