The Ghost of Exeter University

Amid the verdant sprawl of Exeter University, where South Devon’s ancient oaks stand sentinel beside modern lecture halls, a gentle spectre in white overalls haunts the older corridors—a ghostly decorator, whose love for his craft bound him to the walls he painted even after his fatal fall in 1954. Known for his meticulous brushwork in life, a spirit drifts through Washington Singer and Devonshire House, a benign presence glimpsed by late-night students and staff, pausing to admire his handiwork with a faint whistle of sea shanties or a whiff of paint thinner, his silent vigil a testament to a devotion that death could not erase. On quiet evenings, when the campus hums with stillness, his fleeting figure reminds all who pass that some labours linger eternal, etched into the very stones of Exeter’s storied grounds.