Some years ago Vernon Hillier and his fiancée Patricia bought a sixteenth century cottage in Farnham Common. The building needed some modernisation and redecoration, which they had planned to do before their wedding so they could move in afterwards. One day Mr. Hillier’s cousin, Brenda Lewis, went round to the house unexpectedly. As she glanced through the kitchen window she saw a tall fair-haired girl walk through the lounge then the kitchen and ‘disappear into the gloom beyond’. When she went into the cottage there was no sign of the girl and Vernon and Patricia, who were upstairs at the time, had no idea who she was as they thought they were alone.

This was the start of a number of odd occurrences including a window catch lifting up by itself much to the surprise of a carpenter who was in the bathroom at the time and a light switch which turned itself on just before Vernon pressed it. Also a fluorescent tube fell out of its socket and smashed on the day they got married.

One Sunday they were relaxing in the lounge when Patricia felt suddenly cold and saw a figure, surrounded in a strange greyish-white light, walking down the stairs. She described the figure as that of a tall girl with blonde hair down to her shoulders in which there was a ribbon and two rosettes, wearing a Victorian nightdress with a lace collar and carrying a candlestick. As she watched the girl she walked to the bottom of the stairs and went straight through a wall. They later found that there used to be a door at the point where she disappeared through the wall.

When she was first seen coming down the stairs she walked past their Irish Setter Oscar who did not react but he did after that. A week later Oscar suddenly jumped up, ran to the wall and started barking at it. The wall was the one the ghost had walked through and the time was 18:50, the same time as when the ghost first appeared. This happened again at a later date. At other times the dog would look up and follow something with its eyes that no one else could see. Enquiries made locally revealed that a girl named Elsie had lived in the cottage at the end of the 1800s and she fitted the description of the ghost.

Elsie didn’t limit her presence to just walking down the stairs, as she would knock loudly on the front door, when the Hillier’s investigated there was no one there, but they could hear the sounds of feet running down the gravel path. A strong smell of potpourri used to pervade the bedroom, whilst downstairs it was rice pudding, strong ale or cooking vegetables.

Other witnesses included friends who saw somebody moving around from room to room upstairs and an eight year old girl who said she had seen a fairy during the night and described Elsie. One person who never saw her was Vernon Hillier.

Elsie hung around for two years until the day their son was born. Just before she went into labour Patricia came home to find the lights turning themselves on and off, then she heard someone coming down the stairs. She fled the house and waited for her husband to return. That was the last thing that happened during the fifteen years they lived at the cottage.

To view a map of the area click on the button below