Jan Tregeagle was not loved by the people of Cornwall, so when he died there was no great outpouring of grief in the local area. Hardly anyone attended his funeral, and even less visited the grave in the churchyard. Tregeagle was a frugal man, who spent his days up in his office looking at county laws and the such. A talented lawyer no doubt, but many disliked his no nonsense approach, being completely hell bent on winning his cases, and sometimes even being plain vindictive. He would bully witnesses, change documents and outright lie to get his way. But now he was no more, buried in St Breocks church yard, overlooking the windswept moors of Bodmin.
However, Tregeagle rest was not to be an eternal one. It came to light one day that just before he had died, Tregeagle had witnessed a local farmer being lent a large amount of money. Now that it was time to pay it back, the farmer claimed that he had never been lent the money, and the case went to the local court. With a lack of witnesses and official documents, it seemed that the farmer would win and not have to pay back the money. To show his confidence at the accusations that Tregeagle had seen it, the farmer declared “If Tregeagle ever saw it, I wish to God that he would come down and declare it!”. Just then a crack of thunder illuminated the courtroom, and in its wake was seen the horrible phantom of Jan Tregeagle. “It will not be as easy a task to get rid of me as to summon me” he professed, and then gave the evidence in favour of the lender, winning him the court case.
But after the court had ajourned, Tregeagle did not disappear, instead following around the farmer that summoned him, tormenting and screaming at him for disturbing his peace. Weeks went by, and yet Tregeagle did not disappear, so the farmer enlisted the help of a priest. The priest tried to banish the phantom, using every prayer and crucifix he could, but all it did was make Tregeagle louder and more angry. The priest then resolved to trap the phantom, preventing him from hurting the farmer. He took it to the local Dozmary Pool, and bound the phantom to it. He told Tregeagle the only way to earn his freedom would be to empty the entire pool with a leaky limpet shell. This task seemed impossible to both the farmer and the priest, who left satisfied that Tregeagle would not bother them again.
A few days came and went, and the farmer lived in peace, until one evening. He was relaxing and enjoying the sunset, when he heard screaming and wailing from across the moors. He then caught sight of Jan Tregeagles ghost, slowly moving towards the house. It had emptied the lake already, moving the water at incredible speed to gain its freedom. The farmer saw that a harder task was needed to keep the spirit at bay, and so enlisted the help of an excorsist. The excorsist took Tregeagle to Gwenvor Cove, and there gave the spirit a task that he thought would keep him there forever. He asked him to create a rope out of sand from the beach, and then present it to him when finished. The excorsist thought that he had created an impossible job, as every day, when the tides came up, his work would be washed away. The plan worked, and every day the screams of anguish from Tregeagle were heard as his work was destroyed. Weeks went by in peace for the farmer, and winter soon approached, bringing cold weather with it. One frosty morning, the farmer awoke from a blissful night of sleep to hear the cries and shouts of Tregeale. He had done it, he had constructed the rope. One night, instead of letting his work be destroyed, Tregeagle went to a local spring and used the water to ice his rope, setting him free and able to torment the farmer.
The farmer was now fed up of this constant back and forth, and so asked every priest in the area to help him. They all convened in the local church, to pray and consider ideas. At the meeting, no one could decide what to do, until one priest spoke up. He claimed to have had a vision from Saint Petroc, telling him to take the ghost to lands end, and have him sweep all the sand from Porthcurno Cove to Mill Bay. And so they arrived, telling Tregeagle that he could be free once he had swept all the sand from Porthcurno and put it in Mill bay. The ghost thought this terribly easy compared to his earlier tasks, and so set out straight away to complete it. He did it before the tide had even come in, sweeping away the sand to reveal the hard rock face of the cove. But just before he could leave, the tide came in and washed new sand onto the beach. The spirit saw this and was livid, seeing that this task was impossible, as the tide would always bring in new sand and recover the beach. To this day he is still said to be there, cleaning the beach from all sand, just to watch it be refilled. It is said his howls of anger can still be heard on windy days, when his voice is carried over the cliffs and across the moors.