The Creepy Discovery Made In The Former Mansion Of Pink Floyd's David Gilmour
While its interior is indeed spooky, the furor surrounding David Gilmour's abandoned mansion shows another instance of hype exploding research. On September 30, 2017, the urban exploration YouTube channel Exploring with Fighters uploaded a video documenting their adventure through Hook End Manor, a 16th century house in rural Oxfordshire that once belonged to Pink Floyd guitarist. Inside, the description, as written by NME, suggests a total abandonment: "Photos of a pool table that seems to have been abandoned mid-game, rooms that have had the wallpaper recklessly torn down from them while the only thing left of the recording studio is a well-worn piano. The dining room contains a table with seating for 10 people with plates sitting at the table, ready to be used."
The entire house seemed ready for occupation, yet the climax of the experience was waiting for them in the basement. A headstone for a seven-year-old boy called "Little Jack" who died in April, 1909 lay propped against the wall. Having seen enough, the explorers ran out of the house. Fine. Creepy.
In the UK, as the team explained, that criminal trespassing was essentially nonexistent, even though the building was still technically owned. In fact, in a followup a few weeks later, they found the owner at home. Boredom Therapy concludes their summary of this adventure with the odd pitch of "Abandoned or not, exploring a fabulously creepy mansion like this one definitely isn't for the faint of heart!" Because breaking and entering should be ... encouraged?
Hook End Manor
The reason the hysteria over the David Gilmour Mansion is that David Gilmour does not, in fact, own the house. Nor, as NME put it, do the images "suggest that the Pink Floyd vocalist just abandoned the home on a whim," because, as the now archived Hookend Studio's webpage describes, the Pink Floyd vocalist had previously sold Hook End Manor to West Side Productions, producers of Madness and Morrissey, who then sold it to Trevor Horn, the creator of the studio, in the nineties.
Tom Horn's time at the manor came to the most tragic end — at least, in the recorded history of the manor. Henley Standard reported that his son, Aaron, accidentally shot his wife, Jill Sinclair, with a stray pellet from his air rifle. The pellet lodged in her neck, piercing an artery, and she had to be put into a medically induced coma. Following this, understandably, Horn wanted to sell it, and found a buyer in Peter White, a man Red Shark News describes as "something of an international man of mystery." Even though he is British, he had primarily been living in Russia for the last twenty years, and was "looking to make some investment in England and establish a family home." The international move would explain the largely abandoned feel of the almost 500-year-old house.
However, why is a hundred-year-old headstone is stored in the basement? Good question.