Jamaica Inn: Ghosts, Smugglers and the Dark Stories of Bodmin Moor

Jamaica Inn has stood on Bodmin Moor since 1750. It was built as a coaching inn on the old route between Bodmin and Launceston, where travellers could stop after crossing the moor, eat, drink, sleep and rest their horses before carrying on. Over the next 275 years, it became linked with Cornwall’s smuggling trade, inspired Daphne du Maurier to write one of her best-known novels and gathered enough ghost stories to build a second reputation as one of Britain’s best-known haunted inns.

The location is a large part of the story. Jamaica Inn sits at Bolventor, roughly halfway between Bodmin and Launceston. The A30 passes nearby now, but Bodmin Moor can still make the inn feel surprisingly cut off when the weather changes. Mist can take away the views very quickly, while rain and low cloud make a landscape that felt open a few minutes earlier look completely different.

That is much closer to the Jamaica Inn Daphne du Maurier encountered in 1930 than the modern road outside might suggest.

An inn built for crossing Bodmin Moor

When Jamaica Inn opened in the eighteenth century, crossing Cornwall was a very different journey. Coaching inns were part of the transport network. Travellers needed somewhere to eat and sleep, but the horses pulling coaches and carriages also needed rest, food and sometimes replacing before the journey continued.

The inn says it was built in 1750 specifically as a coaching inn for travellers using the turnpike between Launceston and Bodmin.

That position put it in the middle of a landscape that could be difficult to cross even for people who knew it. Bodmin Moor is high, exposed and prone to sudden changes in weather. Long before GPS, mobile phones or a major road through the area, losing sight of the route could become a serious problem.

The old function of the inn resurfaced rather dramatically in February 2019, when heavy snow brought the nearby A30 to a halt. Around 140 stranded motorists ended up taking shelter at Jamaica Inn. Staff kept the kitchen going through the night, people slept in lounges and restaurants, and strangers shared rooms because there simply wasn’t enough space. Some people had abandoned their vehicles and walked through the snow to reach the building. More than two and a half centuries after it was built for travellers crossing the moor, the inn was doing much the same job again. The Guardian reported the night in full.

Smuggling in Cornwall

The smuggling stories attached to Jamaica Inn make more sense when you look at Cornwall during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Imported goods such as tea, silk, brandy and tobacco attracted heavy duties, which made avoiding the customs system extremely profitable. Cornwall had hundreds of miles of coastline, small coves and difficult terrain where goods could be brought ashore away from the larger ports.

Landing them was only one part of the job. The cargo then had to be hidden and transported inland.

Farms, houses, tracks and inns all appear in stories about the Cornish smuggling trade, and Jamaica Inn’s position on a remote route across Bodmin Moor gave it an obvious place in that history. The inn says contraband was brought inland from the coast and stored there before continuing towards places including London and Bristol. Its Cornish Smuggling Museum now tells the wider story of the trade as well as Jamaica Inn’s connection with it.

There is a point where the evidence becomes less clear. Cornwall’s smuggling trade is real history. Some of the very specific Jamaica Inn stories, including hidden goods beneath floors and behind secret panels, come mainly from the inn’s own history and the folklore that has grown around it.

That distinction is worth keeping because Jamaica Inn has had nearly three centuries for fact and story to become mixed together.

Daphne du Maurier arrives at Jamaica Inn

In November 1930, a 23-year-old Daphne du Maurier stayed overnight at Jamaica Inn with her friend Foy Quiller-Couch, daughter of the writer Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch.

They were exploring Bodmin Moor on horseback.

During the afternoon they lost their way. Darkness came down, it was raining and they were struggling to find the route back. According to the Daphne du Maurier website’s account of the trip, they found an abandoned barn and du Maurier wanted to stay there, but Foy was worried about spending the night in the cold.

Instead, they trusted the horses.

The animals found their way across the moor until the women eventually saw the lights of Jamaica Inn in the distance.

It is easy to see why that journey stayed with du Maurier. The experience gave her the landscape in a way that looking at it from a window never could. She knew what it felt like to be out on the moor after dark, in bad weather, without knowing where she was.

A year later she returned with Foy. This time they visited the village of Altarnun and St Nonna’s Church, often called the Cathedral of the Moor. The vicar visited them at Jamaica Inn that evening, and the people, places and conversations from those visits eventually fed into the novel.

Read Jamaica Inn before the real Jamaica Inn

If you are interested in the story of the place, I would read Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn before seeing the real building.

The book was published in 1936. It follows Mary Yellan, who travels to Jamaica Inn after her mother’s death and discovers that her uncle Joss Merlyn is involved in a violent criminal world built around smuggling and wrecking.

Du Maurier never presented it as the true history of the inn. In the book itself, she described the real Jamaica Inn as “hospitable and kindly” and made clear that the characters and events she had created were imaginary.

That makes reading it first more interesting, not less. You arrive with du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn in your head and can see immediately where the real building ends and the novel begins.

The landscape also makes more sense. The isolation, the weather and the long stretch of moor around the inn aren’t just scenery in the book. They are part of what makes the story work.

The current Virago edition is available through the publisher link above, which also lists Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles, Blackwell’s and other retailers. If Visit a Story joins Amazon Associates later, the book title is exactly where I would place the affiliate link. It is useful to the reader and already belongs naturally in the story.

The fictional Jamaica Inn takes over

The success of the novel changed the real inn’s identity.

People who had never been anywhere near Bodmin Moor now knew the name Jamaica Inn. The building was no longer just an eighteenth-century inn with a smuggling reputation. It had become the setting of a popular novel.

Only three years after the book appeared, Alfred Hitchcock’s Jamaica Inn reached cinemas in 1939. Charles Laughton, Leslie Banks and Maureen O’Hara were among the cast, with Hitchcock directing.

The film took considerable liberties with du Maurier’s story. Jamaica Inn’s own museum says the altered ending particularly displeased her. Hitchcock would later adapt du Maurier again with Rebecca and The Birds, but Jamaica Inn was their first connection on screen.

The novel has continued to be adapted. A three-part BBC One version of Jamaica Inn starring Jessica Brown Findlay was broadcast in 2014. The production became almost as well known for complaints about its sound quality as for the adaptation itself, with hundreds of viewers saying they struggled to hear the dialogue.

By then, Jamaica Inn had been moving between real history and fiction for nearly 80 years.

The stranger who left his drink behind

The ghost stories are another part of the inn altogether.

One of the oldest and most repeated concerns a man who was drinking at the bar.

According to Jamaica Inn’s own account of its hauntings, the stranger was enjoying a tankard of ale when somebody called him outside. He left his drink unfinished and walked out of the building.

His body was found on the moor the following morning.

The inn says neither the cause of his death nor the identity of whoever killed him was established. There isn’t enough independent evidence now to reconstruct the original incident with confidence, so this is best treated as one of Jamaica Inn’s long-standing stories rather than a solved historical murder.

The haunting came later.

Former landlords reported hearing footsteps moving along the passage towards the bar and came to believe the dead man was returning for the drink he had left behind.

Then, in 1911, the story gained another layer. According to the inn, there was considerable local interest in a silent man who had repeatedly been seen sitting on the wall outside Jamaica Inn. Witnesses tried to speak to him, but he neither answered nor acknowledged them.

His appearance was said to resemble the murdered stranger.

Whether the sightings created the connection to the earlier story or the earlier story shaped what people thought they had seen is impossible to know now.

Either way, the unfinished drink has been sitting at the centre of Jamaica Inn’s ghost story ever since.

Voices with nobody behind them

Other reports are less dramatic but appear repeatedly in the inn’s own records.

Former managers have said they heard conversations when there was nobody nearby. Some described the speech as sounding foreign, while others suggested it might have been an older form of Cornish.

There is no recording to analyse and no way of going back to check what was heard. The story survives because staff and guests have continued reporting unexplained voices in the building.

The same is true of footsteps.

Jamaica Inn records reports of footsteps pacing the corridor outside rooms 3 to 6 during the night. Guests have opened their doors and found nobody in the hallway.

An old hotel makes noises. Pipes, floorboards, doors, wind and other guests can explain a lot. The interesting part here is the number of similar stories attached to the same parts of the building over time.

Horses and wheels outside

Some of Jamaica Inn’s ghost stories sound as though the coaching inn has simply carried on working after everybody has gone to bed.

People have reported hearing horses’ hooves outside, along with the metal rims of wheels moving over rough ground.

Others have heard barrels being rolled, or what sounds like a lone horseman arriving quickly and stopping outside the inn. When they look, there is nothing there.

The inn itself points out an odd detail. The cobbles in the front courtyard were laid in the 1950s, despite some of the reported sounds seeming to belong to an earlier surface and an earlier version of the inn.

That doesn’t prove anything paranormal. It is simply part of the story Jamaica Inn records.

The man in the tricorne hat

Another figure reported by guests is a man wearing a tricorne hat and cloak.

Unlike the murdered stranger, he doesn’t come with a long backstory or an explanation of who he might have been.

People have simply reported seeing him.

In some accounts recorded by Jamaica Inn, the figure appears in front of guests before walking through a solid door.

There isn’t much else to add because the reports themselves don’t give us much else. No name, no confirmed historical identity and no particular event to attach him to.

He is just one of the figures people say they have seen there.

The children

Jamaica Inn also records more recent stories involving two children.

One is described as a Victorian girl with long blonde curls. Staff and guests have reported seeing her in different areas of the inn and hearing a child giggling.

The other has been nicknamed Tommy. The inn describes him as a boy of around five or six who has reportedly been seen in the museum, the ladies’ toilets and bedroom five.

There is no known historical identity attached to either child on the inn’s current account, so there is no reason to invent one.

They belong to the modern collection of Jamaica Inn ghost reports rather than to the older documented history.

Most Haunted comes to Bodmin Moor

Jamaica Inn’s reputation made it an obvious location for paranormal television.

In 2004, the inn appeared in an episode of Most Haunted, with Yvette Fielding and the programme’s investigation team spending time in the building.

Jamaica Inn says the programme described it as one of the spookiest episodes they had recorded. The inn also says the British Paranormal Association later investigated the property and identified several areas of particular interest, including the Smugglers’ Bar, former Stable Bar, original bedrooms, reception area and stable attic. Those are claims made by the inn and paranormal investigators rather than scientific verification that the building is haunted.

The paranormal side of Jamaica Inn is still active. The inn continues to host ghost hunts and private paranormal investigations, including dates advertised for 2026.

The Jamaica Inn you can see today

The real Jamaica Inn is now a hotel, pub, restaurant and visitor attraction.

Its museums bring together two very different parts of the story. The Cornish smuggling collection covers the trade that became associated with the inn, while the Daphne du Maurier collection focuses on the writer and her connection with the building.

Among the objects displayed is du Maurier’s Sheraton writing desk. The museum also holds other memorabilia connected with her life and writing.

That literary collection is important because Jamaica Inn would probably be a much less famous place without the book. Du Maurier didn’t create the building or Cornwall’s smuggling history, but she changed the way millions of people saw both.

You can visit the museums without staying overnight. If you want to spend longer there, Jamaica Inn is also a working hotel, including rooms within the older building as well as later accommodation.

The moor beyond the inn

It is difficult to separate Jamaica Inn from Bodmin Moor because the landscape is present in almost every part of its story.

It affected the people travelling across it in the eighteenth century. It made the location useful to stories about smugglers. It was what left du Maurier and Foy Quiller-Couch lost in bad weather in 1930. It became one of the strongest parts of du Maurier’s novel.

There is also far more to the area than Jamaica Inn.

Dozmary Pool, further onto the moor, has its own connection with the Arthurian story of the Lady of the Lake. The landscape is scattered with prehistoric remains, settlements, stone circles, tors and stories that long pre-date the inn.

The Bodmin and Bodmin Moor travel guide brings those places together if you want to follow the wider history of the area.

Jamaica Inn is just one building on the moor, but several very different stories have ended up meeting there. There is the eighteenth-century coaching inn, the real smuggling trade, du Maurier’s fictional version and the reports of people who say they have heard or seen things they can’t explain.

You don’t need all four to be true in the same way for Jamaica Inn to be interesting.

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