The Ghost Photograph of the Brown Lady of Raynham

In the early 18th century, Lady Townshend was married to Charles Townshend, a rising young statesman known for his fiery temper, his mind fully occupied with, for example, the Treaty of Utrecht. So Dorothy became the mistress of Lord Wharton who some time later fled the country and his creditors. When Charles learned of his wife’s infidelity, he locked her up in her apartments at Raynham Hall and treated her so badly that in 1726 she died of smallpox, a broken heart or even a broken neck, tumbling down the grand Raynham staircase.

Over the next two centuries the ghost of Lady Townshend became the terror of the servants and visitors of  Raynham Hall. King George IV awoke Raynham in the middle of the night, screaming that a lady dressed in brown “with dishevelled hair and a face of ashy paleness” had appeared at his bedside. He would not stay another hour in this haunted house, where he had seen something “I hope to God I may never see again”.

Some gentlemen of the household sat up for three nights in the corridors where  the Brown Lady had been seen. On the third night, she appeared to be coming through the wall. One gentleman was petrified, the other stood resolutely in the path of the spirit as she approached. Lady Dorothy passed right through him in a puff of icy smoke and disappeared through the wall beyond.

In 1835 Colonel Loftus was visiting the house for Christmas holidays. He and another guest lingered late one night over a game of chess, but when they finally went upstairs, they saw the Brown Lady standing outside the door of Lady Townshend’s room. The apparition turned and walked along the corridor, pursued by Loftus, but then the spectre melted from his sight. The following night, he stood suddenly face to face with her on the grand staircase: a stately lady in rich brocade, her features clearly defined, with dark hollows where once her eyes had been shining.

A few years later Captain Frederick Marryat came to Raynham Hall. Marryat had spent years at sea and he was now famous for his sea stories and books for boys. He was by no means a superstitious sailor. In fact, he thought some sort of trick was being played upon the Townshend family. He had a theory about smugglers and poachers who were using old ruined buildings near the Hall for their hiding places. They would have much to gain by frightening the Townshend family away…

The story was later told in Marryat’s biography, written by his daughter Florence, herself a renowned novelist and spiritist. Her father went to sleep in the splendid bedroom with the portrait of the Brown Lady. Ghost hunting was fun, he enjoyed himself. Lord Townshend’s two young nephews knocked on his door and asked him if he would go into their room and give his opinion about a new gun. The Captain inspected the gun and the two young men, in a joking mood, offered to escort him safely back to his room, “in case you are kidnapped by the Brown Lady”.

It was a long, dark corridor, and the lights had been extinguished. As the three men walked along it they saw a woman approaching them, carrying a lamp. They were in the part of the house reserved for the men and Captain Marryat was in his vest and trousers, so they stepped quickly into the open doorway of an empty room and stood there in the darkness waiting for the lady to pass by. Maybe she had lost her way in the labyrinthine corridors of Raynham…

But the lady didn’t pass by. She stopped at the doorway, held the lamp before her face, looked straight into the eyes of the Captain and smiled at him… Her resemblance to the portrait in his bedroom was unmistakable: the waxy flesh, the large shining eyes… Her diabolic smile made Captain Marryat discharge his pistol point blank at her… and the bullet passed through her, and still wickedly smiling she disappeared, leaving nothing but some smoke and a bullet hole in the door behind her…

More ghost photographs: Seven Spooky Pictures by Phantom Photographer William Hope

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