Mystery Flowers On Dog's 110-Year-Old Grave

by Patricia Collier

Every year a mysterious man dressed in black creeps into a cemetery in Baltimore to place three red roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac on the grave of Edgar Allan Poe. Or so the legend goes.

Across the Atlantic ocean, in Manchester, England, someone's also been leaving flowers on Ben's grave for the past 110 years.

The similarities end there, however, as Poe was a famous author and Ben was a golden retriever.

Ben's headstone is inscribed: Ben, Favourite Retriever, Dec. 30, 1893.

The grave lies in the 300-acre grounds of Mottram Hall, now run as an exclusive hotel.

"We came across this old gravestone when we were clearing paths to re-create the original nature walk, which used to run through the wooded area of the grounds," said Mottram Hall's estate manager Barrie Gregson.

Since then, Mottram Hall staff have regularly discovered fresh flowers on Ben's grave, but no one has ever seen anyone putting them there. The grave is always well tended, yet staff members said they aren't the ones doing it.

No one seems to know who Ben's family was, but it's been suggested he may have been a hunting dog kept by an aristocrat who used to live in the hall.

Some say it's the ghost of that aristocrat who appears to place the flowers on his favorite dog's grave.

Mottram Hall was built in 1721 and had been a private home and a nursing home before being purchased by the De Vere hotel chain in the 1970s.

Gregson said everyone connected with Mottram Hall was "absolutely charmed by the discovery" and even more surprised when they found that someone was still visiting Ben's grave and leaving flowers.

© 2003 Animal News Center, Inc.