Brown Willy is said to be one of "the UK's best-loved high points". The hill features in an annual race held on New Year's Day that starts and finishes at Jamaica Inn, an old coaching inn made famous by Daphne du Maurier's 1936 novel of the same name. The hill is regarded as a sacred mountain by members of the Aetherius Society, a UFO religion founded in 1954 by George King. They believe that Brown Willy was charged with "holy energy" on 23 November, which they celebrate each year as "Charging Day", and gather at the hill on that day each year
Jamaica Inn (novel) the road in a hired coach and offers her a lift home. He leaves the coach at the crossroads to walk to Altarnun. The coach is then waylaid by her uncle's band of wreckers, and the coach driver is killed. Mary is forced to go along with the wreckers and has to watch as they 'wreck' - tricking a ship into steering itself on to the rocks and then murdering the survivors of the shipwreck as they swim ashore. A few days later, Jem comes to speak with Mary, who is locked in her room at the inn. With Jem's