The Real Lives - and Deaths - of the Ghosts in my Ghost Stories

As a number of readers have asked me this, I'm starting a mini-series on this website in a few days' time looking into the 'true' stories behind some of the ghosts that appear in my fictional short stories.

The accompanying picture, incidentally, is a copy of the famous 1936 Country Life magazine photograph of The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall in Norfolk. Raynham is a historic country house about 50 miles away from where I'm sitting and has reputedly been haunted by The Brown Lady - in life Lady Dorothy Walpole, the sister of the first prime minister of Great Britain and second wife of Viscount Charles 'Turnip' Townsend. (Charles was another politician and an enthusiast for agricultural improvements, hence his nickname.)

Lady Dorothy died in 1726. The photograph - probaby the most famous photo ever taken of a 'real' ghost - was acidentally captured by Country Life photographers who were on an architectural photo-shoot at the house at the time. Although the ghost has not been seen again since 1936, it was well observed and reported in the 19th Century, being seen by, amongst others, one king of England - George IV - and the naval officer turned writer Captain Frederick Marryat (Mr Midshipman Easy is his best known novel today) who chased the ghost and shot at it with his pistol. Those who saw the ghost close up said the most frightening aspect were the spectre's empty eye sockets.