"The horrible ghost up on Nevill Holt hill"

The Market Harborough Advertiser and Midland Mail for Thursday 19 August 1954 has a report on a benign ghost to be found at the Manor House in Medbourne.

In those days the house belonged to a Mrs Beadon, who tells the paper she has seen the ghost on quite a number of occasions but has never resented his presence because he is a "perfectly good-tempered old man".

She then added:

"Not like the horrible ghost up on Nevill Holt hill, who makes the village people scared to walk up there after dark."

Nevill Holt Hall, you may remember, is now accepted by most scholars as the chief inspiration for Bonkers Hall, though I don't recall the old boy reporting any hauntings there. Come to think of it, he never mentions Bonkers Hall being on a hill either.

So I wonder if the ghost was really the headmaster of the notoriously abusive prep school at Nevil Holt, manufacturing a haunting to keep prying eyes away like a Scooby-Doo villain.