Letter: The family cursed by a witch from Prestatyn

Sir: Anna Pavord vividly described our ancestral Welsh home, Talacre, as 'the Mostyns' own Frankenstein castle' with its 'headless hermit' and 'leering Cyclops' ('How a bloodhound sniffs out a ghost', 17 April). She may be unaware of a sinister significance. My uncle, Sir Pyers Mostyn, sold Talacre in the Twenties to go big game hunting in Kenya and formed part of the White Mischief set with his cousin, Raymond de Trafford, and others.

He was killed in early middle age in a light aircraft in Kenya. His nephew Pyers, a daredevil boxing champion who knocked unconscious a dozen gendarmes and waiters in a Paris restaurant because he questioned the bill, succeeded to the baronetcy, but was killed by a lunatic horse in Kenya in his twenties.

After the Second World War my father, Sir Basil Mostyn, his successor, met a girl at a party who said frivolously: 'Oh, so you're one of the unlucky Mostyns]'

To his puzzlement, she explained that the local Prestatyn witch had cursed us mainline Mostyns for selling Talacre and that the curse would not be lifted until we returned. My father died of a violent cancer in his early fifties, as did my brother five years ago. A tragic coincidence, I am sure, but my brother and I often discussed buying just a hut on the estate to exorcise the curse. I think he would agree that the time has come to do just that.

Yours sincerely,

TREVOR MOSTYN

Brussels,

Belgium

26 April

(Photograph omitted)