HAUNTED HOUSES.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIV, Issue 28, 4 February 1910, Page 3

HAUNTED HOUSES.

A GRUESOME LEGEND

One of the most gruesome legends attaching to England's haunted homes is that told concerning Littlecote House, near Hungerford, in Berkshire, which is the subject of a ballad in Sir Walter Scott's "Rokeby." Littlecote House is known far and near as "the haunted house," and the following is in,brief the story of its tragedy. One wild November night in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, an old nurse in a neighbouring hamlet was carried blindfolded by a man on horseback to a great house, to attend on a lady. No sooner was the child born than a fierce-looking man, who was present, seized.it and flung it on a huge fire which roared in the chimney. The woman was again blindfolded and. hurried away; but before she went she succeeded in tearing out a scrap of the hangings of the bed, and by means of this the scene of the murder was identified. "Will Darrell.y the villain of the story, succeeded in evading the law, only to meet with a fatal accident two months later. It is ' hardly to be wondered at that the house has an evil name. A visitor, centuries later, sleeping in the room which was the scene of, the crime, had the cheerful experience of waking from slumber and witnessing the whole dreadful scene, which, was not previously known to him from description ; since which time the haunted room has been left to its dreadful memories. • • HAMPTON COURT GHOSTS. Few buildings have quite so many really well authenticated ghost-stories told concerning them as Hampton Court; most of the phantoms, by the way, as if is only to be expected, belonging to the days of Henry VIII. First of all comes Jane Seymour, who is said to be invariably seen to "walk"

whenever a birth is expected in the . Royal Family. She is said to haunt, in esxjecial, the Great Hall where Hal was won't to hold State functions. Here, they say, she may be seen to glide through the unopened doors of her apartment, down the staircase, and through the carved doors of the j Queen's Gate, as in the days when she went down to dance with the j King; she carries a lighted candle in her hand, and, ghost fashion, wears a long white dress. j The panelled room, where Cardinal ; Wolsey was wont to receive his j visitors,. also had a ghost story of a j rather vague kind, but quite authen- > tic. On a cold winter's night a \ gentleman was sitting by the fire read- { : ing, when the candles were suddenly : extinguished by some invisible agency. ; . There was no draught which could j I have caused it ,and nothing to be seen j jor heard. The gentleman was seized i I with a conviction of the presence of i I the supernatural, and beat a hasty j retreat! A ROYAL APPARITION. Yet again a Queen's ghost!—this time that of Katherine.Howard. This ghost haunts the gallery now used as a storeroom for old pictures, and is known as "the shrieking ghost." Along this gallery the poor Queen ran in order to seek an interview with the King before her removal to the Tower. King Henry was at his devotions in the. chapel, and not even his wife's frantic screams, when her guards removed her, could induce him to take the slightest notice of her. Now, it is said a female form may be seen to go towards the door of the Royal pew, and to return agonised 1 and dishevelled along the gallery, ' uttering those terrible cries which have given her the name of " the shrieking ghost." Many residents in the palace have heard screams proceeding from this gallery at midnight. The ghost of Edward Vl.'s nurse and foster-mother, Mrs Perm is also said to "walk" in the palace, clad in a long dress and a large grey hood, and in her chamber has been hear the sound of an invisible spin-ning-wheel. A visitor who slept in one of the many "haunted rooms" distinctly heard someone try her door and knock several times, and yet no one was there, while doors carefully locked at night were found open in the morning. . *"A lady in white" seems to be a very favorite form of. apparition,-a'-nd sceptics explain this by asserting that a combination of moonlight and moving shadows can easily to a nervous nuiKl give a vivid impression of such a phantom. Among the houses whose ghost takes this form is Lord Newton s seat at Lyme, in Cheshire, which is said to be haunted by one, Blanche, the lady-love of a Legh, who died at Agincourt. Here also, in one of the rooms, is to be heard, according to tradition, a ghostly chime of bells.