ghost photo-The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall

Are you looking for some inside information on ghost photo? Here's an up-to-date report from ghost photo experts who should know.

The information about ghost photo presented here will do one of two things: either it will reinforce what you know about ghost photo or it will teach you something new. Both are good outcomes.

This is one of the Famous Classics of Ghostdom, said to be one of the best ghost photos ever taken - The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall.

For over 300 years, Raynham Hall Mansion in Norfolk, England was the home of the Townshend family (also reported as Townsand and Townsend). In the 1700s, Charles Townshend lived there with his wife Dorothy. He had a title and all that, but I'll skip to The Juicy Parts. Charles suspected Dorothy of infidelity. Lots of infidelity. In fact Charles pretty much decided Dorothy was a slut. She was once the mistress of a famous politician who was more famous for bedding anything in a skirt (no relation to Bill Clinton) than politics, and rumored to be quite wild. But of course marriage will change all that! thought Charles, the Moron.

Records show that Dorothy died and was buried in respectful style in 1726, but the Juicy Rumor was that Charles really got fed up with his tramp of a wife, worrying his reputation would be ruined, so he really just locked her away in a remote corner of the house, as good as dead, until her actual death many years later. And so, the tragic Dorothy haunted Raynham Hall, maybe still looking for a way out.

While staying in Raynham Hall in the early 1800s, King George IV said he saw the figure of a woman in a brown dress standing beside his bed, noting that she was deathly pale and hair a wild mess. Colonel Loftus said he saw a woman in a brown satin dress in the hallway on two occasions in 1835 and that her skin glowed with a light all it's own. He also said it appeared that her eyes had been gouged out. In fact whatever this was, was downright hideous looking. A few years later, Captain Frederick Marryat and two friends saw her gliding along an upstairs hallway, carrying a lantern. They ducked behind a door, peeking at the apparition just barely out of sight. As she passed them, Marryat said she stopped, turned and grinned at the men in a "diabolical manner." She seemed so real and so menacing that Marryat fired a pistol at her but there was nothing to hit - and it went right through into the wall.

The famous photo above was taken in September, 1936 by Captain Provand and Indre Shira, two photographers who were assigned to photograph Raynham Hall for a Country Life magazine article which was published in December of that year. This is what happened, according to Shira:

"Captain Provand took one photograph of the stairway while I flashed the light. He was putting in a new plate and focusing for another exposure; I was standing by his side just behind the camera with the flashlight pistol in my hand, looking directly up the staircase. All at once I detected an ethereal veiled form coming slowly down the stairs. Rather excitedly, I called out sharply: 'Quick, quick, there's something.' I pressed the trigger of the flashlight pistol. After the flash and on closing the shutter, Captain Provand removed the focusing cloth from his head and turning to me said: 'What's all the excitement about?'"
When the film was developed, there stood the Infamous Brown Lady ghost, seen for the first time. No sightings have been reported of her since 1936 - perhaps she's camera shy.

There's a lot to understand about ghost photo. We were able to provide you with some of the facts above, but there is still plenty more to write about in subsequent ghost articles.