For the first time about ghosts in the old English estate of Raynham Hall, owned by Lord Townshend, they started talking in 1835. Then on Christmas Eve the house was full of guests. Among them were two inveterate chess players - Colonel Loftus and a gentleman named Hawking.
When they finished their last game, it was well past midnight. Conversing, the men walked down the long corridor to their rooms. Suddenly Hawking cried out and squeezed the colonel's hand: at the door of one of the bedrooms stood a beautiful woman in a dark dress.
As they approached, she stepped back from the door and went to meet them. The men were dumbfounded. The ghost (it was him!) Approached the men and suddenly said: "Do not leave here tomorrow" - and then disappeared into thin air.
The dumbfounded men discussed the incident among themselves for a long time, and in the morning they notified the owners about it. They suggested that this is most likely the spirit of the estate, which they heard about from the previous owners. According to Loftus and Hawking's descriptions, it looked like a portrait hanging in the living room.
It was the work of an unknown old master. It depicted a beautiful young woman in a brown dress with a white collar. The picture, the owner of the mansion claimed, came from the previous owners.
Loftus and Hawking decided to take the advice of night vision and did not take the train to London that day. The train went off the rails, many people suffered …
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Then the Lady in Brown appeared to Captain Mariett, a guest of the mansion. The captain sat down in a chair to take a nap. Opposite was the same old portrait. Mariette stared at the image of the beautiful stranger for a long time. So long that he had the unpleasant feeling that the lady on the canvas was also looking at him.
Late in the evening the captain went down to the hall to get acquainted with the collection of weapons. Having admired the guns and pistols, he returned to his room. A lady in a dark dress moved silently towards him, clutching a barely glowing lamp. Looking closer, the captain realized that it was a ghost.
Without thinking twice, he mechanically grabbed one of the pistols, raised it and fired. The echo echoed through the house, the bullet pierced through and through the ghost and stuck in the wall. But the spirit, as if nothing had happened, continued on its way and soon disappeared, turning a corner. Apparently he wanted to tell Mariette something. A couple of days later, the captain died of a shock.
WHEN THE BIRD FLED OUT
After the death of Lord Townshend, his descendants at the beginning of the 20th century invited two photographers, Provand and Ball, to shoot the interiors of the mansion.
One day, photographers were busy with their large camera, intending to capture a magnificent oak staircase. As Provand looked into the camera for a better angle, his assistant suddenly screamed. Provand looked up to see what Shar had watched a few moments before him - a lady in an antique dress, slowly descending the stairs toward them.
"Sir, shoot it soon!" Shar shouted. Provand crouched down on the machine and gestured to the assistant. A flash flashed, blinding both. When the friends' eyes got used to the gloom of the hall again, there was no one on the stairs.
Developing the photograph, Provand was convinced that it was only a play of light and shadow in a huge gloomy hall. But the negative clearly showed a translucent female figure standing on the stairs.
This was the first time a ghost was captured on film.
Subsequently, this sensational photograph appeared in many newspapers, magazines, books. Members of the society of paranormal phenomena became interested in the mysterious figure of the Lady in brown. But after a careful study of the old chronicles, they learned that the ghost always appeared on the eve of some misfortune, as if warning the owners of the estate about them.
In the middle of the 18th century, for example, a lady came to the 14-year-old daughter of the owner of the estate and even allegedly persuaded her not to go hunting. The ghost reported terrible details: the head of the young person would be broken, her neck, right arm and ankles would be broken. By a fatal accident, one of the guests went to hunt the girl's mare. He did not return from the hunt - the horse carried, and the rider was under his hooves.
A DIARY
Specialists in the paranormal have long argued about the causes of the phantom. As a result, two hypotheses emerged. First, one of those present was a powerful telepathic transmitter, and everyone else was a receiver.
Opponents of this idea, who find it difficult to deny logic, argued that the transmitter could not appear for hundreds of years in an English estate to inspire any thoughts on its inhabitants. Second version: at Rineham Hall, someone skillfully used a combination of telepathy and clairvoyance.
At least, the supporters of this idea argued, it makes it possible to understand how the Lady predicted future events. However, it was still a mystery who wanted to amuse themselves in such a strange way. In general, they tried and ran for a long time, but the riddle remained unsolved.
Meanwhile, the lady in the brown dress continued to terrorize the inhabitants of the estate into the 20th century. Once a nurse, Eva Braun, visited the elderly owner of the mansion, 75-year-old Brian Smith, who was dying of tuberculosis. Grandpa asked me to bring him water.
The nurse went out to fetch her, and when she returned with a glass, the patient said that he shouldn't have bothered her - he had already been given a drink. Eve asked who did it. "An elegant lady in brown," was the answer … A week later, the owner died.
Soon the mysterious lady appeared once more. On the eve of her death, 28-year-old Jane Smith, Brian's granddaughter, suffering from severe diabetes, told the service staff how a lady in a dark dress sat at her feet all night.
The secret of the Lady in Brown was discovered quite by accident. In the second half of the last century, the new owners of the mansion started a grand renovation. I had to dismantle the library, which contained many old books.
Once the new owner of the estate was looking through the folios in the evening over a cup of tea and came across the diaries of one of the owners of the house. It was Charles Townshend. He loved his wife Dorothy, but one day he suspected her of adultery. According to official records, she died and was buried in 1726, but everyone suspected that the funeral was a hoax.
And so it turned out
In his diaries, Charles admitted that he kept his wife under lock and key in the far corner of the house until her death for many more years. Before her death, the woman promised her husband a restless life. Her prophecy came true: she began to persecute her husband wherever he was in the house.
She especially loved to visit the room where her portrait hung. It all ended with the fact that Charles could not stand it and fled from home to America. What happened to him there is unknown. Since then, the Lady has switched to the inhabitants of the mansion. Experts advised the new owner of the estate a simple and effective way to get rid of the ghost - an exorcism ritual. This helped, and the Lady in Brown left her former chambers forever.
Sergey BORODIN