The Storyteller: Wedding leads to a mysterious revelation about the lady in white

The other weekend, a good friend of mine got married. Paul helped me set up my Moors & More Tours business... then moved to Peterborough, having met the love of his life, and that’s where the wedding was.
So a contingency of his old pals, most of whom he’d met through TIP, my paranormal investigation group, made the trip up from Devon to act as witnesses to his nuptials and what a wonderful weekend it was...
The journey up north took way longer than it should have. Being a Friday, the world and his wife all seemed to be going in the same direction but we made it eventually and it was well worth the effort.
The whole event was being held at a beautiful old manor house called Orton Hall, part of a hotel and spa complex, set in its own grounds known as “The Village”, complete with church and pub. The ceremony was actually held inside the hotel so we didn’t need to set foot outside the whole time and, as it was raining most of the time, sadly we didn’t feel the urge to go exploring but what we saw was wonderful enough. The place has been modernised over the years but there is still enough of the old structure left to give it an atmosphere and to make you wonder if there are any old spirits still in residence.

Erroneously, I forgot to ask the staff if there was any history of hauntings there and, after what transpired during our stay, I’m now wishing I had...
I’m a bit of a night owl at home, usually not heading to bed until the early hours of the morning, and I always intend to do the same whenever I’m away, however, on our first night at Orton Hall, I only managed to stay up until 2am, reading, but, as the building settled with everyone in their rooms, I suddenly became aware of distant music.
I’d already sussed that there were certain soundproofing issues with our immediate neighbours, both on our floor and above, but this was coming from further afield. It wasn’t from a television as there were no voices, just continuous soft music, which didn’t sound modern.
Outside our window was the church and at one point it crossed my mind that it might be coming from there, but I was too tired to investigate.
The next morning I asked our friends who had rooms near us if they had heard anything, but no one had so I let it go. The next night I was tired from all the celebrations, the dancing and maybe a little drinking so I was early to sleep, and the next day it was time to head home but one of our friends was making a long weekend of it, not returning until the Monday. It was the Sunday night that got really interesting for her...
Sarah (weirdly all the women in our party who travelled up from Devon, including my partner, were called Sarah) and her husband Karl were staying in a different part of the complex, across a courtyard away from the main building.
She is a member of TIP and is quite sensitive to spirit, so if anyone was going to pick up on any presences, it would be her, twice having had her hair pulled during separate visits to our meetings at Chelston Manor.
Nothing untoward happened on the first few nights and she slept soundly. On the Sunday night, she was awoken from a disturbing dream by noises in the room.
Starting with the sound of a chair moving, followed by the sound of glasses swishing around on a glass surface... all the bedside tables and vanity units had sheets of glass on them to protect the wood, so something was moving the glasses around over them. This was followed by the sound of something being wound up. When she eventually dared to get out of bed to investigate, she noticed a drop in temperature in certain areas. She found all the glasses and mugs where she had left them but the chair from the vanity unit had been moved...she recalled feeling a bump as it had hit the foot of the bed. Sadly, they were leaving the next day but she wished she had one more night to see if anything else might happen. When she shared this experience with me, I wondered if the sound of the glass moving could be the result of someone carrying out a session on an Ouija board.
I felt these details, combined with the music I had heard, were worth writing an article about, so I did some online research and I came up with a few bits of interest. 
The Manor of Orton Longueville, which contains the hall dates back to 1086 and has been owned by an impressive list of nobility over the years. During the Second World War, it was used to house POWs, and after that in the 1950s, it was used as a school for girls with “special needs”.

Could they have dabbled in Ouija boards? Apparently, a converted stable block had a clock tower with a mechanism that wouldn’t work and that’s just where Sarah’s room was. Could she have heard the sounds of someone’s attempts to wind it? I found one passing mention of staff being disturbed by the presence of a “lady in white”, in the past. Could this have been enough to encourage Most Haunted to film an episode there? If only we had gone armed with this information, it could have been a totally different weekend for us Investigators...
Meanwhile, back in Devon, another wedding was taking place, on that same Saturday, this time at St Michael the Archangel, the Parish Church of Chagford. This is the church I visit on my Ghost Walk as it is associated with the tragic death of Mary Whiddon, who was shot and killed by a jealous ex-lover as she exited on the arm of her newlywed husband.

Her grave/memorial lies in the chancel, directly in front of the altar to the right and it has become a tradition that modern brides are encouraged to leave a flower from their bouquet on the grave as a tribute to the young girl whose life was so cruelly cut short. 
I was in Chagford, a few days after that wedding, distributing posters for my walks, and I popped into the church to check on the grave and sure enough, there were some flowers from the bride’s bouquet. I took some pictures and posted them on Facebook, explaining why they were left there and shortly afterwards, I was contacted by the grandmother of the groom, telling me it was his bride who had put them there. She also included a photo of the happy couple which I wanted to share with you dear readers as an example of living folklore, just like the laying of flowers on Kitty Jay’s Grave. In the immortal words of the great Billy Idol, that particular Saturday was most certainly a nice day for a White Wedding...