CASE No.3| A THOUSAND WORDS: The Brown Lady Ghost Photograph & the OTHER Haunted Raynham Hall
On a remote country staircase nearly a century ago, a supernatural sensation was born. But what’s the real story behind the “Brown Lady of Raynham Hall” and her infamous photograph? And does she haunt a second home on a farther shore?
Transcript of podcast narration:
In 1936, on a remote manor house staircase, a now nearly century-old supernatural sensation was born. That brisk morning in rural England, a shady photographer snapped one of the world’s most infamous spirit photographs: an image of a diaphanous figure descdending the steps. Just weeks later, the entire world would know of the manor’s family ghost.
The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall.
Raynham Hall can claim quite the noble pedigree among the world’s “haunted houses.” The striking manor is situated in the English region of Norfolk—doubtless one of the most phantom-riddled places in ghostlore. Indeed, Norfolk’s collection of phantoms includes a monstrous demonic hare said to guard the Lodge at Thetford Warren, a murderous apparition in the holiday town of Cromer who once slit the throat of a cemetery caretaker, and the spirits who gathered around the séance table in the Scole Hole: the cottage cellar where, in the 1990s, the “Scole Experiment” reportedly produced every kind of paranormal manifestation imaginable. When I traveled to England in 2018 to help host the documentary, “The Haunting of M.R. James” with Haunted Earth’s Chris Halton and filmmaker Jason Figgis, I got a chance to visit Castle Rising, supposedly haunted by the “mad queen,” Isabella I, and the Inn of Adam and Eve. Reportedly dating to 1249, it’s claimed as the oldest pub in England. Operating next to towering Norwich Cathedral, we stopped for a drink there after visiting the striking church, unaware at the time that Lord Sheffield, a victim of Kett's Rebellion in 1549—which occurred near the spot— is said to ring a bell in the bar with his phantom fingers, chill patrons with cold spots, and make his presence known with phantom footsteps. Still prretty tame stuff compared to what one drinker saw in 2006 here: the apparition of a floating hand holding a severed head.
But none of these Norfolk specters is as well-known the world over as the mysterious “Brown Lady” connected for generations to the Norfolk region’s stately Raynham Hall: the lady immortalized by that still controversial photograph taken in 1936. It’s still one of the most celebrated claimed spirit images of all time, and it’s one that’s influenced countless souls to follow after the supernatural, myself included. I will never forget the rainy day in the 1970s, at our old library in Chicago, so many years ago, turning the pages of a book of true ghost stories to behold the image. I remember consoling myself that this dread-inducing photograph had been taken somewhere far away—but to my instantly haunted mind—not at all far enough!
IN GOOD COMPANY
Recently, when I began to take a harder into the shadowy corners of Raynham for the first time, I found that the Brown Lady is not the only apparition said to wander the halls and staircases of the Norfolk manor. One of her ghostly companions is said to be James Scott, the Duke of Monmouth and the bastard son of King Charles II. The Duke was charged with high treason in 1683, because of a conspiracy to kill his father. Scott fled to the Netherlands, only returning to England after the death of the king. He charged his uncle, James (the former Duke of York who had taken over Charles’ throne)with poisoning the king, and he tried to overthrow him but lost. This latest troublemaking earned the Duke an execution at Tower Hill, ordered by his uncle himself. They said it took eight tries to behead the outspoken offspring. After Scott’s execution it was realized that no portrait had ever been painted of him, so his body was exhumed and his head sewn back on so one could be completed.
In addition to haunting Tower Hill even today, in the company of George Boelyn (Anne’s father), Sir Thomas More and others, some say Scott also haunts Raynham Hall. The Townshends—the family who has called Raynham home for some four centuries—were friends with Charles 1st, so there is a connection in the backstory to this obscure tale, if no collected encounters to verify the haunting.
Also said to haunt the manor is a former caretaker and a rather uncommon spirit companion: the man’s trusty—and now ghostly--cocker spaniel.
Among Norfolk's many magnificent country estates, Raynham Hall is without question one of the finest specimens. After a failed start at building in 1619, official construction began in 1622, and it was almost complete by the time of Sir Roger Townshend’s death in 1637, though apparently some rooms had not been finished by that time. One architect noted after its “bones” had been completed, that even undecorated the building displayed, as he said, “the perfect balance between its length, width and height” and was “aesthetically pleasing to the mind.”
Raynham was constructed using a completely novel form: one that broke with indigenous styles in favor of an Italian layout and design which was far ahead of its time. Today it resembles houses built more than a century after its completion. To this day, no one can be sure who designed the original house, but William Kent updated the north facade for the 2nd Viscount Townshend, and expanded Raynham with a north wing and added decoration, including chimneypieces, that are still considered among his finest work. The 'Belisarius' Room features a painted ceiling that looks like mosaic tilework, architectural doorcases that resemble niches, and painted stairs that almost appear to be fine sculpture.
Not all were impressed by the decorations. A Lord Oxford, who visited the State Dining Chamber in 1732, was “offended” that Kent had installed a screen in the style of a Roman triumphal arch in the room, calling it “absurd.”
A LEGEND IS BORN
It was a woman—Lucia Stone—who first spread the tale that a ghost had been seen at Raynham Hall. She was attending a party just before Christmas one bone-cold evening. The guests were put up for the night, and after the affair a Colonel Loftus and a friend of his named Hawkins claimed to see what they called a “brown lady” as they made their way to their rooms. The “brown” was in reference to a transparent but unmistakable brown brocade dress the phantom wore. The men claimed the phantom resembled more than a little the woman in a painting that hung in one of the guest rooms—a claim that would be echoed by other witnesses in the future.
The woman appeared to Loftus again the next night, but this encounter was a bit more unsettling. For this time he saw the lady’s face, and it was not a pleasant one. The visage of the spirit bore empty eye sockets sunk into a luminous countenance.
The encounters reportedly sent many of the Raynham staff packing—leaving the family high and dry to fend for themselves on Christmas Day and beyond.
In 1836, Captain Frederick Marryat, a friend of Charles Dickens' and the author of several best-selling maritime novels, claimed to have seen the "Brown Lady” sometime after this first episode. This later encounter, moreover, was no accident. Tales tell that Marryat went to Raynham Hall expressly to establish his claim that the paranormal activity there was manufactured by a gang of smugglers hoping to scare visitors away from the area. He would find, however, that he was wrong.
The captain’s daughter, Florence Marryat, wrote years later about what her father had experienced that night at Raynham Hall:
“(H)e moved into the room where the apparition's photograph hung and where she had been seen frequently, sleeping with a handgun under his pillow every night. There was nothing to see for two days, and by the third, he was to leave. However, on the third night, while he was undressing for bed, two young men (nephews of the baronet) knocked on his door and asked for his judgment on a new rifle that had just arrived from London. My dad was dressed for the day, but because it was late and everyone else had gone to bed early, he got ready to go with them nonetheless. In case they ran into ‘the Brown Lady,’ he added jokingly as he grabbed his handgun. After the gun check was complete, the young guys in the same good humor as before said they would come back with my father again ‘in case you meet the Brown Lady,' which they repeated while laughing. Since this was the case, the three gentlemen traveled back together.
Lights had been turned off, making the corridor lengthy and gloomy, but as they neared its midpoint, they caught sight of the faint glow of a lantern approaching from the far end. They were whispering to my father, ‘One of the ladies going to visit the nurseries.’
Now, as is typical of many older homes, the bedrooms in that hall had doors that faced each other and were double-doored with a space in between them. As I've mentioned, my dad was only wearing a shirt and pants, and his natural modesty made him feel awkward in public. So, he snuck inside one of the exterior doors (with his companions following suit) to hide until the lady had passed.
I was told how he saw her through the crack in the door getting closer and closer until he could make out her colors and realize that she was a dead ringer for ‘The Brown Lady’ from the painting. He was going to demand that it stop and explain its presence when the figure abruptly stopped in front of the door behind which he was standing and, with the light from the lamp she carried cast over her face, grinned at him in a cruel and diabolical fashion. My father, who was anything but mild-mannered, was so enraged by this action that he burst into the hall, aimed at her face, and fired the gun. Instantly, the figure vanished, the figure at which three men had been staring for several minutes. The bullet continued down the corridor, through the outer door of the room on the other side, and through the panel of the inner door. “
The "Brown Lady" was seen by Lady Townshend herself in 1926 and, later, by her son and his friend. The young men claimed to have glimpsed the ghost on the now-famous staircase and, like others before them, identified her with the portrait that hung in the “haunted room” at the time: bedroom where others had seen and heard seemingly anomalous activity transpire.
WHO’S THAT LADY?
But just who was this mysterious woman in the painting that has for so long been connected to the phantom encountered in Raynham’s dark corridors?
Her name was Dorothy Walpole, daughter of Robert Walpole, the first prime minister of England. Reportedly the most desirable of the Walpole sisters, Charles Townshend of Raynham wed Dorothy in 1713, but rumors still fly that she was involved in hanky panky with Lord Wharton. Now, Wharton had something of a reputation around the Raynham estates (and beyond). Apparently, his friskiness was made worse by his wife’s blind eye to his shenanigans. Friends commented that “his behavior was so infamous, and his lady's complaisant subserviency so notorious, that no young woman could spend four and twenty hours under their roof with safety to her reputation."
Some say that Townshend was so enraged by Dorothy’s affair that he locked her in her room at Raynham, and she never saw the light of day again. She reportedly died of smallpox and, thereafter, began her ghostly rounds of her earthly prison.
AN EVERLASTING IMAGE
There’s a generally accepted story about how the famed photograph of the Brown Lady was taken at Raynham Hall. They say that, in the fall of 1936, Captain Hubert C. Provand, a London photographer for Country Life magazine, and his assistant, Indre Shira, traveled to Norfolk to conduct a photoshoot at Raynham Hall for the magazine’s upcoming December issue. The pair had been photographing the Hall’s main staircase, resetting the tripod frequently to change the lighting effects. While setting up for one of these shots, Shira later claimed that he saw with his own eyes what he described as "a vapoury figure gradually adopting the look of a woman" descending the stairs. Thinking fast, he instructed Provand to remove the lens cap while he focused the camera. A few seconds later, the flash burst over the stairs, and a sensation was born.
The story of the journalists’ encounter with the “Brown Lady of Raynham Hall” was published in Country Life on Boxing Day, December 26th, 1936. It caused such a sensation that, just several weeks later, the story of the photograph appeared in the wildly popular “Life” magazine, spreading the story around the world in short order.
But is this how it all really happened?
ANOTHER LOOK
In the early 2000s, a longtime member of the Society for Psychical Research, Tom Ruffles, was inspired to look more deeply into the photograph’s background after hearing a lecture given by Alan Murdie in 2006 at the thirtieth international conference of the SPR Ruffles noted that Murdie’s lecture relied on the records of the society housed at Cambridge University, particularly on a report assembled by one GVC Herbert, one of the society’s research officers. Ruffles believed this report to be not fully trustworthy.
Ruffles notes a number of issues with Herbert’s report, including the fact that purported “other anomalies” he found in the picture are not anomalies at all, but the result of reflections of the banister, stair risers and paneling resulting from the flash used by the reporters.
Ruffles also notes in the SPR files a testimony from a chemist named Jones who claimed to have seen the photograph at the moment it was developing, and he swore the figure was there in the image at the time. He said:
I saw the negative of the Oak (sic) staircase at Raynham Hall, in the hypo bath in your dark room immediately after it had been taken by Captain Provand from the developer. ‘I am satisfied that the ethereal figure on the staircase was there when the film was being fixed.
Ruffles found it suspicious that a chemist just happened to be in the darkroom when the photo was being developed, but the reporters had addressed this issue in the Country Life article; they claimed that when they saw the image developing and the figure coming into view, they ran down to get Jones, whose office was below theirs. But Ruffles suspects that the photograph Jones saw may well have been a fake and not the original—a photograph of the photograph, with some—shall we say—added details—, and that Jones may have been fetched specifically to lend credence to the hoax.
What cannot be disupted, however, is that the reporters Provand and Shira had not been sent to Raynham Hall to photograph an article for Country Life.
They were, in fact, ghost hunting!
Ruffles reveals:
“As to why they were in the house, they were neither on a commission from Country Life nor working for Lady Townsend.
Ruffles goes on to quote Nandor Fodor, the infamous paranormal researcher, who stated:
‘According to Lady Townsend, Indra (sic) Shira particularly wanted to photograph the ghost ... He wanted to sit up at night.”
Fodor shared Lady Townshend’s admission that she knew of Shira’s desire to see the most notorious resident ghost, but she told Fodor,
“I would not have him for that purpose. But I allowed him and Captain Provand to come on a day when I had the whole Archaeological Society of Norfolk staying on the grounds. Indra (sic) Shira’s wife described to me exquisite influences all over the house. She behaved as a psychic.”
In the later article, Shira claimed he was not interested in psychic phenomena, but that, of course, was an outright lie.
Ruffles goes on to suggest that the image may have been made using a statue of the Virgin Mary, perhaps to exploit Lady Townshend’s well known devout religious faith and practice. In fact, ruffles reveals, she had a private chapel under the staircase! Indeed, in a letter to Fodor, Shira posited that “certain experts’ think it is the Madonna.”
Was Shira, Ruffles wondered (as we surely do), planting this idea because that was the photographer’s intended effect? However, Fodor said later that it was Lady Townshend herself who suggested that the image was the “Madonna,” referring to it as “that beautiful apparition.”
But wait, as they say, there’s more. For with a little more digging wecome to discover, perhaps more than a bit astoundingly, that Lady Townshend was not just a little ghost crazy herself…she had recently written, with a collaborator, a book of true ghost stories.
SKEPTICAL EYES
It’s hardly surprising that the stunning photograph of Raynham Hall’s “Brown Lady” should have attracted supernatural scrutiny from the start. One of the first to delve into the question of the photograph’s authenticity was the famed English investigator, Harry Price—one of the world’s first “ghost hunters.” After interviewing Provand and Shira, Price stated:
"I have to admit right off the bat that you have amazed me. Mr. Indre Shira saw the ghost coming down the stairs at the exact moment Captain Provand's head was hidden by the black fabric, or so I was told. With a cry, the flashbulb's cap was blown off, and the results we see now were captured. Their story stuck with me, and I knew it was wrong of me to doubt them. If the ghost is phony, then only the two men could have worked together to create it.”
Clearly, Price—like many others—could not conceive of Shira and Provand hoaxing the photograph. Their characters and careers, all concurred, forbade such an idea.
Others, however, were not so kind. Some skeptics ventured that Shira or Provand had created the “ghost” in the picture by smudging oil, butter or some other greasy substance on the lens of the camera, or that a light leak or double exposure—both frequently to blame for “ghostly” images—had resulted in the stunning image.
Joe Nickell—one of the most established “skeptics” of the modern era, closely examined the photograph and decided that, in fact, a double exposure was behind the not-so-mysterious image. And another pair of investigators—John Fairley and Simon Welfare—noted that "a patch of reflected light at the top of the right-hand banister appears twice; a pale line above each stair-tread, indicating that one photo has been superimposed over the other."
As is usually the case in these kinds of situations, magicians also stepped in to prove the whole thing fake by attempting to recreate it. To this end, magician John Booth had colleague Ron Wilson drape a sheet over his head and then proceeded to descend the main staircase of Hollywood's Magic Castle. The result was intriguing, but not really that similar to—and decidedly more pronounced than—the original “Brown Lady” photograph.
MY THOUGHTS ON “THE BROWN LADY”
In the end, we’re foced to set aside the famous photograph, accepting that we may perhaps never know the truth about its authenticity—but erring on the side of disbelief.
And so we turn to the apparition itself. Surely, something seemed to be there at Raynham, seen not only by Lady Townshend but by Captain Maryat and others. Just what was going on with the mysterious Lady seen at the now world-famous manor over so many years?
There are a number of possibilities to consider.
Could the Brown Lady be a true haunting? Not an intelligent spirit but a kind of environmental recording or residue?
I considered this possibility deeply because the story of the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall hit quite close to home when I started to look at the background of the famous photo for the first time some years ago. The situation that reportedly took shape at Raynham seemed, in fact, to be echoed in the backstory of the “haunted house” I grew up in here in Chicago. As some of you know, the house—built by my great uncle in 1914—was known to be haunted when my parents purchased it in 1967. It would be decades, however, before we put a story to the nightly footsteps on the staircase, frequent sense of foreboding, and other manifestations of our invisible lodger.
My mom was a schoolteacher, and when her colleagues found out I had published a book of ghost stories, one of them was surprised to discover that our haunted home was directly across the street from her own childhood home. She’d lived in clear view of the house until 1960, she said, and she told us a fascinating story of the former inhabitants—an elderly brother and sister who lived a reclusive life in the house that would later become ours. The sister was severely mentally ill and confined to the house. Her dream of being a Catholic nun was an impossible one for her because of her malady, and the impossibility was made all the more painful because at the corner of the street was the convent which served as home for the nuns who taught at the local Catholic elementary school. This poor woman would sit in the window each day, dressed all in black, watching the nuns come and go and seeing the children she longed to teach. Occasionally she would steal quietly from the house and sneak into the convent, hoping to blend into the community there, unnoticed. The kindly nuns would take her gently home to her brother each time it happened.
When I first heard this bit of history about my family home, it seemed to provide the long-awaited answer to the question of our ghosts’ identity. Having grown into an active paranormal investiagator by that time, my guess was that this woman’s energy had been somehow trapped in a decades-long cycle of repetition for years after her bodily death. Essentially, I surmised that, since all of her emotion had been confined to the house for long decades, and because she had likely kept to the same routine each day, after her death the house somehow kept repeating her actions—a sort of paranormal inertia, if you will.
My own family ghost reminded me so much of Dorothy Walpole--who’d been allegedly locked in her room for years for her sins, right down to the confinement to the house and the ghost on the staircase (though Raynham’s have been visual apparitions and ours auditory).
Many years later, after many other strange events played out in those corridors and on that staircase (and after learning much, much more about the behaviors of ghosts), I came to realize that our family home was likely not haunted at all, but that something darker in the house had—over all those years—tried to convince us that it was. That’s a story for another day, but that later realization made me question, too, the supposed “haunting” of Dorothy Walpole. Because, as I’ll note in a moment, something else told me that it wasn’t a haunting behind the Raynham apparition.
But first, let’s consider another possibility. Could the Brown Lady ghost be, in fact, a ‘true ghost?’ Some theologians tell us that the dead are occasionally permitted—or charged—to linger where they lived or died . . . or where they sinned. They sometimes remain until enough prayers or Masses are said to gain their entrance to Heaven, but sometimes they only stay for a brief time. It may be possible that Dorothy is a true human spirit who manifested at Raynham for several years so that those who saw her might pray for her. We’re told that Lady Townshend of 1936 was particularly devout in her religious practice. Theologians have suggested that souls will appear to those they know will pray for them—even before their own less devout family members. Could some poor soul have presented itself to Lady Townshend with such hopes ?
This, too, seemed a distinct possibility. But again, something else troubled me about this possibility: something suggesting this world famous phantom has nothing whatsoever to do with a person at all.
Those gaping, ghastly, empty eyes, and that horrible smile.
Some exorcists believe that—like Satan’s minions— spirits of the human damned may be allowed to roam the Earth until the final Judgment. This might explain why at least one witness who claimed to have seen Raynham’s most famous ghost described her as looking vey frightening—with hollow eye sockets, a malicious smile and so forth.
In the same vein, the Brown Lady could be something even worse: a devil itself. Reports that the apparition was frightening seem to back up this possibility, especially once again, that fact that the “lady” was described by witnesses as having no eyes. Much religious folklore claims that demons in disguise cannot appear as entirely human; there is always something “off” about them, because it would be blasphemous to mimic anything in God’s creation precisely. So often these entities appear in human form but with no feet, no head, no eyes, or even—surprisingly often—no face at all. It would be likely that such an entity started coming around after the family brought in a medium or psychic, held a seance or used a Ouija board to try to conjure or communicate with the spirit that had been seen, but the sightings began over a decade before the birth of “Spiritualism” and the blow up of interest in seances and such. It is possible, however, that in later years such tools and methods were used to try to summon the already known spirit in the house—conjuring up an imposter that merely looked like Dorothy.
Could she have been, all this time, just a great ghost story? Perhaps a dream, a trick of the light, or maybe a very clever storyteller who spent the weekend at Raynham, the “Brown Lady” may just be a lively chapter in our supernatural imaginations.
Regardless of whether the photo was legitimate or hoaxed, a woman in brown of some spiritual sort does seem to have walked the halls of Raynham, keeping company with the other family ghosts. I know if we can draw a firm conclusion about what’s behind the supernatural tales of Raynham Hall’s enigmatic lady in brown. But it’s certain that the this centuries-old home (and the family who has experienced so much here) has seen a great deal of death, heartache and unhappiness, and that the manor is haunted in a very real way by both its ghosts and its a troubled history.
THE OTHER HAUNTED RAYNHAM HALL
Amazingly, the story of the Townshend family and its supernatural sidekicks doesn’t end on the stairs of Raynham Hall in Norfolk, as I discovered only recently when digging down deeply into this landmark paranormal caser. In fact, right here in the United Sates, ghosts a plenty inhabit—believe it or not—a SECOND Raynham Hall, this one in America: on Long Island in the state of New York. Though some historians claim the two family lines are not related, many family geneaologies tie the Long Island Townsends (note the diffferent surname spelling) to Norfolk, England, and even specifically to Raynham Hall.
Three brothers, John, Henry and Richard Townsend, arrived in New York in 1640—to New Amsterdam at the southern tip of Manhattan. Various personal family trees show his birth in Norfolk, England—or even Raynham--around 1608 or 1609. The trio had lots of problems with both the Native American tribes and the Dutch colonists, and John finally retreated to Long Island—in particular, Oyster Bay. The American homestead of John’s descendants—dating back to the 18th century—has a long and storied history of its own--and its own ghost stories to match its Norfolk namesake. Both are connected to no less than George Washington and the American Revoulution.
In fact, a certain Robert Townsend was one of Washington’s top spies.
Robert was one of eight children born to Samuel and Sarah Townsend. The family lived in a colonial saltbox style house in Oyster Bay, which Samuel had purchased in 1738. Years later, when the American Revolution began. Samuel father was a Whig politician and shopkeeper, and like his father, Robert was focused on making money. He was a buyer for his father’s store and also worked as a part time journalist in New York City. He cared little about the patriot cause. But then, something changed.
First, Townsend read Thomas Paine’s pivotal pamphlet Common Sense, the incendiary missive calling for a complete and total break from English rule and influence.
Not long after, British officers took over the Townsend home and quartered in it, during a time when nearly 300 British troops were stationed in Oyster Bay after the patriot loss of the Battle of Long Island. The troops took the place over, destroyed Samuel’s prized apple orchard and forced the family to swear allegiance to the king.
When, in the summer of 1779, Abraham Woodhull, member of Washington’s Culper Spy Ring, asked Robert to join, Townsend said yes.
After the revolution, Townsend left New York and returned to the family property in Oyster Bay. He lived with his sister, Sally, never marrying but likely fathering a child with an unknown woman—possibly a lady known only as Agent 355: one of his fellow spies. Robert died in the spring of 1838.
A dozen years later, the Townsend family renamed the Oyster Bay homestead, re-christening it for the family seat in England.
They called it Raynham Hall.
Townsend’s work as a patriot spy would only be uncovered in 1930—nearly a century after his death. More well known that his activities during the revolution were those of his sister, Sally. A beautiful young woman at the time of the British quartering in their home, she attracted many of the soldiers and even the commander himself: Lieutenant colonel John Graves Simcoe. The family, of course, despised him. They despised slightly less another suitor, Major John Andre, who visited the house sometimes as a British officer. But Sally’s heart was with Simcoe.
Sally became embroiled in the plot to bribe infamous traitor Benedict Arnold. She ‘d overhead the plans for it from Major Andre and now she had to choose. Would she reveal the plot to her patriot family and friends or protect the scheme for the sake of her love?
Sally Townsend chose her family and the patriot cause. She told her father what she had heard, and he in turn told Robert. Major Andre was hanged, and Sally’s paramour John Graves Simcoe left her, shattering her heart. She never married, carrying a torch for her lost love, and dying at 82 at the Townsend Homestead in Oyster Bay.
Today, they say that the second Raynham Hall—the Townsend Family’s American, Oyster Bay manor, is haunted.
In fact, very haunted.
They say that the lovestruck Sally Townsend still pines, long after death, for her lost British officer. Visitors to Raynham Hall in Oyster Bay have claimed to feel a lovelorn spirit of a woman, guessing that it must be that of the spinster sister of family lore. But there are many, many other spirits who call the American Raynham Hall home—or so they say.
Michael Conlin, a former gardener for the family, is said to still be pruning and planting on the grounds in phantom form, or standing near the grandfather clock at the foot of the staircase. The female ghost of a woman in a hooded cloak walks the halls. Olfactory apparitions of apple pie, tobacco and candle smoke, roses and burning firewood are said to appear and disappear with no physical sources to be found.
One overnight guest claimed to have seen a white horse with a rider on its bac enter her room one night. Tradition tells that this white horse is a ‘family ghost” that has also been seen at Raynham Hall in Norfolk, though there seems to be no relation between the two families. The appearance of the horse is said to portend a death in the family.
During meetings of the Daughters of the American revolution, members reported that a small dog belonging to one of the ladies reacted with terror to a certain part of the house. Another visitor saw what she described as a rather elderly and crippled man walking down a hallway, believed to have been the ghost of our patriot spy, Robert Townsend.
Of particular interest to us is a ghost known as the Gray Lady, another so called Townsend family ghost. The ghost was said to haunt a wardrobe in one of the American Townsends’ homes, and family members claimed she was the same spirit who walked the halls—and the famous staircase—at the original family home in Norfolk.
The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall.
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Sources:
Ruffles, Tom, “The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall – Re-examination of a Classic Ghost Photograph and a Possible Explanation” (archive.org)
Hernandez, J.A. “Ghosts of Raynham Hall Museum in Oyster Bay, New York” on the blog Into Horror History December 20, 2022.
Smitten, Susan, Ghost Stories of New York State