The Brown Lady was not to remain hidden for long. The next witness to be terrorised was Captain Frederick Marryat, a friend of the family. Staying at the house in 1836, he is supposed to have asked to sleep in the most haunted bedroom at Raynham Hall, in order to prove that the ‘haunting’ was merely a group of local smugglers playing tricks on the Townshend family.

Happily for us, his daughter Florence Marryat recorded his experience in 1891:

“ (Captain Marryat) took possession of the room in which the portrait of the apparition hung, and in which she had been often seen, and slept each night with a loaded revolver under his pillow. On the third night, nephews of the baronet knocked at his door and asked him to step over to their room. As they were leaving the room, he caught up his revolver, “in case you meet the Brown Lady,” he said, laughing.

The corridor was long and dark, for the lights had been extinguished, but as they reached the middle of it, they saw the glimmer of a lamp coming towards them from the other end. “One of the ladies going to visit the nurseries,” whispered the young Townshends. My father was in shirt and trousers only, and his native modesty made him feel uncomfortable, so he slipped within one of the outer doors in order to conceal himself until the lady should have passed by.

He watched her approaching nearer and nearer until, as she was close enough for him to distinguish the colours and style of her costume, he recognised the figure as the facsimile of the portrait of “The Brown Lady”.

He had his finger on the trigger of his revolver and was about to demand it to stop and give the reason for its presence there, when the figure halted of its own accord and holding the lighted lamp she carried to her features, grinned in a malicious and diabolical manner at him.

This act so infuriated my father that he discharged the revolver right in her face. The figure instantly disappeared – and the bullet passed through the door lodged in the panel of the door opposite. My father never attempted again to interfere with “The Brown Lady of Raynham”.

By the end of the 19^th century, Raynham Hall had fallen on hard times. In 1905, Gwladys Sutherst married John Townshend, the 6^th Marquess Townshend in an attempt to alleviate the Hall’s financial problems. Marchioness Townshend took on the restoration of the house, as well as an interest in its history, which led to her writing the book ‘True Ghost Stories’. Country Life magazine described the era as;

‘…an age in which a pall of loss and decay hung over many formerly splendid residences and, for struggling owners, a haunted history was one way to stay connected to an illustrious past.’

It was common for aristocratic ladies to document the hauntings of their grand houses in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries; a literary result of the vogue for spiritualism that the contemporary middle and upper classes – particularly women – were enamoured with.

The Marchioness’s book was published in 1936 and was relatively successful. Perhaps coincidentally – perhaps not – it was also in 1936 that the Brown Lady made her most famous appearance. On 19^th September of that year, two photographers from Country Life magazine were despatched to Raynham Hall to document its illustrious and unique architecture. Captain Hubart Provand was a well-known photographer of the time, and along with his assistant Indre Shira, had been entrusted with capturing professional images of the Hall using some of the most up to date photographic equipment.

Of course, no photographic record of Raynham Hall would be complete without an image of the grand staircase. The story goes that as Provand prepared to take his photo, with his head under the black cloth, Shira suddenly saw:

‘A vapoury form gradually assuming the appearance of a woman.’

Shira shouted the command to quickly take the photo, and seconds later the image that we see today was captured.

The cynical among us may say that it was no coincidence that the resulting photograph was published in Country Life on 26^th December 1936 – the same year that ‘True Ghost Stories’ was written, with the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall as its principle story. Those who doubt the authenticity of the photograph have termed it:

‘An unorthodox, yet successful publicity stunt, the story coupled with the Country Life photograph helped put the house back on the cultural map’ (CL article 2000s)

The photograph quickly became the subject of controversy. It came to the attention of the Society for Psychical Research and its lead paranormal investigator, Harry Price. As a connoisseur of photographic trickery, Price was keen to examine the photograph of the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall. His ultimate conclusion was that the photograph had not been tampered with:

“I will say at once I was impressed. I was told a perfectly simple story: Mr. Indra Shira saw the apparition descending the stairs at the precise moment when Captain Provand’s head was under the black cloth. A shout – and the cap was off and the flash bulb fired, with the results which we now see. I could not shake their story, and I had no right to disbelieve them. Only collusion between the two men would account for the ghost if it is a fake. The negative is entirely innocent of any faking.”

The photograph has been investigated more recently, in 2006 by current leading SPR paranormal investigator Alan Murdie, who stumbled across a file in the Manuscript Department at Cambridge University Library. The document contained a previously unpublished exhaustive investigation conducted by the SPR in 1937. It concludes:

“There is almost certainly a mundane explanation of the ‘spectral’ image in the photo.”

It goes on to suggest that the camera may have leaked light onto the photographic plate, or the result of the camera being shaken during its lengthy six second exposure.

For those of us that are sceptics, this will be proof enough. For those of us who are hopeful believers in the afterlife, this will serve as a merely a possible explanation. I humbly invite you to reach your own conclusion!

Researched and written by L Spirit