Squire Hilliard

In the weathered embrace of Brixham, Devon, where the sea’s restless murmur weaves through cobblestone streets, the whitewashed walls of the Black House stand as a silent sentinel of tragedy, its name a bitter echo of the despair that stains its history. Once a 14th-century monks’ retreat, it became the domain of Squire Nathaniel Hilliard in the early 1700s—a man whose unrelenting pride crushed his son Thomas’s dreams of love with a village girl, driving the boy to a despairing end in the attic’s shadows. Now, Hilliard’s ghost haunts the house, a gaunt figure in a frock coat, eternally locking doors in a futile quest for his son’s forgiveness, his anguished whispers of “Thomas” carried on the salt-laden wind, binding the Black House to a sorrow that refuses to fade.