The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall is a famous ghost that haunts Raynham Hall in Norfolk, England, and it became one of the most popular hauntings in the United Kingdom due to the above photograph that Captain Hubert C. Provand took. The photo was first published in the Country Life magazine in 1936. Raynham Hall itself was a grand estate with roots that stretched back centuries, and for 400 years the Raynham Hall had been the seat of the Townshend family.
According to the legend, the apparition of the Brown Lady is Dorothy Walpole. She was born on September 18th, 1686 at Houghton Hall in Norfolk, England. She was the thirteenth child born into the illustrious Walpole family. Her parents were Robert Walpole, who was a member of the Parliament, and Mary Burwell. She was the sister of Robert Walpole, who is generally regarded as the first Prime Minister of Great Britain. But the family is best known because of her nephew, Horace Walpole, who was a author and wrote the gothic novel The Castle of Otranto. Overall Dorothy was raised in wealth and was accustom to the luxurious side of life. It's said that she fell in love with Charles Townshend, the 2nd Viscount Townshend, but her father who was also Townshend's guardian forbade them to marry. Reports claimed it was due to him not wanting the marriage between the two to be seen as him influencing the young nobleman, and because of this Townshend ended up marrying Lady Elizabeth Pelham instead, but when she passed away in 1711 it left him free to marry Dorothy.
A portrait of Lady Dorothy Walpole
After Townshend and Dorothy married they started a family, however, after awhile gossip of an affair started to spread. The story goes that when Townshend, who was well known for his temper, discovered that his wife had been unfaithful with Lord Wharton, a playboy, he punished her by locking her in Raynham Hall, telling everyone that she had died, and even holding a mock funeral. While in reality, Dorothy roamed the halls as a solitary prisoner, suffering until her death.
A portrait of Charles Townshend
According to Mary Wortley Montagu, Dorothy was entrapped by the Countess of Wharton. The Countess invited Dorothy over to stay for a few days knowing that Dorothy's husband would never allow her to leave, even to see her children. Dorothy remained at the Raynham Hall until she died, which some say was under mysterious circumstances in 1726, while officially it shows she died from smallpox. Rumors were that she actually died a violent death at the hands of her own husband.
Sightings
The first recorded sighting of the Brown Lady was by Lucia C. Stone at a gathering at Raynham Hall in the Christmas of 1835. Stone said that Charles Townshend had invited various guests to the Hall, including Colonel Loftus. Loftus and another guest named Hawkins said they had seen a "Brown Lady" one night as they had approached their bedrooms for the night, noting that she wore a dated brown brocade dress. The following evening Loftus claimed to have seen the "Brown Lady" again where he claims he was drawn to her empty eye-sockets that were dark in the contrast of her glowing face. Loftus' sightings led to some of the staff permanently leaving Raynham Hall in fright.
A portrait of Captain Frederick Marrayat
The next recorded sighting was in 1836 by Captain Frederick Marryat, a friend of the novelist Charles Dickens, and the author of his own series of popular sea novels. It's said that Captain Marryat requested to spend the night in the most haunted room of Raynham Hall to prove his theory that the haunting was caused by local smugglers to keep people away from the area. He later told his daughter of his encounter and how he had chased her down the hall with his resolver in hand. Writing in 1891, Florence Marryat said of her father's experience:
"…he 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. For two days, however, he saw nothing, and the third was to be the limit of his stay. On the third night, however, two young men (nephews of the baronet), knocked at his door as he was undressing to go to bed, and asked him to step over to their room (which was at the other end of the corridor), and give them his opinion on a new gun just arrived from London. My father was in his shirt and trousers, but as the hour was late, and everybody had retired to rest except themselves, he prepared to accompany them as he was. As they were leaving the room, he caught up his revolver, “in case you meet the Brown Lady,” he said, laughing. When the inspection of the gun was over, the young men in the same spirit declared they would accompany my father back again, “in case you meet the Brown Lady,” they repeated, laughing also. The three gentlemen therefore returned in company. 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 Townshend to my father. Now the bedroom doors in that corridor faced each other, and each room had a double door with a space between, as is the case in many old-fashioned houses. My father, as I have said, was in shirt and trousers only, and his native modesty made him feel uncomfortable, so he slipped within one of the outer doors (his friends following his example), in order to conceal himself until the lady should have passed by. I have heard him describe how he watched her approaching nearer and nearer, through the chink of the door, until, as she was close enough for him to distinguish the colors and style of her costume, he recognized 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 before the door behind which he stood, 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, who was anything but lamb-like in disposition, that he sprang into the corridor with a bound, and discharged the revolver right in her face. The figure instantly disappeared - the figure at which for several minutes three men had been looking together – and the bullet passed through the outer door of the room on the opposite side of the corridor, and lodged in the panel of the inner one. My father never attempted again to interfere with the Brown Lady of Raynham."
Lady Townshend reported that the Brown Lady was seen next in 1926, when her son and his friend claimed to have seen her ghost on the staircase. The boys were able to identify the ghostly figure with the portrait of Lady Dorothy Walpole which then hung in the haunted room. Ever since the first encounter that Marryat claimed, sightings of the Brown Lady have dwindled. Some even claim to have seen her at Houghton Hall and Sandringham House nearby instead of Raynham Hall.
The Photograph
On September 19, 1936, Captain Hubert C. Provand, a London-based photographer working for Country Life magazine, and his assistant, Indre Shira, were taking photographs of Raynham Hall for an coming up article. They claim that they had already taken a photograph of the Hall's main staircase and were setting up to take a second when Shira saw "a vapory form gradually assuming the appearance of a woman" moving down the stairs towards them. Under Shira's direction Provand quickly took the cap off the lens while Shira pressed the trigger to activate the camera's flash. Later, when the negative was developed, the famous image of the "Brown Lady" was revealed. The account of Provand and Shira's ghostly experience at Raynham Hall was published in Country Life magazine on December 26, 1936 along with the photograph of the Brown Lady. The photograph and the account of its taking also appeared in the January 4, 1937 edition of Life magazine.
Shortly thereafter, the noted paranormal investigator Harry Price interviewed Provand and Shira and reported, "I will say at once I was impressed. I was told a perfectly simple story: Mr. Indre 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 flashbulb 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."
But some critics have claimed that Shira faked the image by putting grease or oil on the lens in the shape of the figure seen in the photograph, or that he himself moved down the stairs during an exposure. Others claim that the image is an accidental double exposure or that light somehow got into the camera.
Skeptic and paranormal investigator, Joe Nickell, wrote a detailed examination of the photograph and how it does show evidence of double exposure. John Fairly and Simon Welfare wrote "there is a pale line above each stair-tread, indicating that one picture has been superimposed over the other; a patch of reflected light at the top of the right-hand banister appears twice."
The magician John Booth wrote the photograph could easily be duplicated by naturalistic methods. To prove his point, Booth had the magician Ron Wilson cover himself in a bed sheet and descend the grand staircase at The Magic Castle in Hollywood. The faked ghost image ended up looking very similar to the Raynham Hall photograph.
Other critics point out that the image of the Brown Lady resembles very closely to that of a standard Virgin Mary statue. The light patch covering the bottom one third of the image, resembles an inverted "V" shape, being very indicative, as the outer garment above it drapes down on either side at an angle. Also the head is covered and the hands appear to be together as in prayer, and the square or rectangular pedestal on which she stands is also clearly visible. This strongly suggests that the photo is a simple superimposition of the statue onto the empty staircase.
Today
Raynham Hall remains in the hands of the Townshend family to this day. The current Marquess is married with children. The hall remains open to the public and invites visitors to explore the history of the estate and possibly catch a glimpse of the Brown Lady. The estate has completely embraced its haunted reputation.
Raynham Hall
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