The story goes that one night a nobleman sent for a midwife
from another village. He had her blindfolded and taken to the house. She was
taken upstairs to a room where a woman was in labor and was insturcted to help
deliver the baby. As soon as the child was born, the nobleman ripped it out of
her arms and threw it into the fire. She was given a purse full of money and
was then take home, still blindfolded. However, she had the presence of mind to
surreptitiously snip a piece of curtain before she left. She also counted the
stairs on her way out.
The next day she reported what had happened to the local
magistrate. Immediately Littlecote was suspected as the scene of the crime. And
investigation was made and it was found that the number of stairs matched the
number the midwife had counted, and her piece of fabric matched the bed
curtains in one room. Darrell was arrested and was somehow acquitted, causing a
scandal. He died 14 years later.
The infant’s ghost, called the Burning Babe, is said to appear at Darrell’s Stile, the place where Darrell was thrown from a horse and killed. The site is also haunted by Darrell himself, accompanied by phantom hounds, and horses are said to be frightened by this spot of the grounds. Other ghosts include a silent woman who holds a baby and walks in the room where the murder took place; a woman who appears in the garden and a woman who carries a rushlight. Sounds of phantom footsteps on the stairs have been made by the ghost of a lady dressed in a pink nightgown with a lamp in her hand. Terrifying screams have been heard in the middle of the night coming from the bedroom and the landing where the murder took place.
