The ghosts of Hampton Court Palace

Historic Royal Palaces, the charity that runs Hampton Court, posted this six-and-a-half-minute tour in October 2009. Its guide is David Packer, one of the palace’s State Apartment warders, who takes the camera to the spots most tied to its ghost stories after the visitors have gone home. It is short, atmospheric and shot entirely on location.

Packer starts with Henry VIII’s wives: Jane Seymour, said to glide down the Silver Stick Stairs with a lighted taper, and Catherine Howard, whose legendary escape and recapture outside the royal pew gave the Haunted Gallery its name. He then tells the story of Sybil Penn, Prince Edward’s nurse, and the forgotten room with a spinning wheel, before moving on to lesser-known oddities — a tall cloaked figure by a door, a phantom dog by a cold fireplace and the scent of lavender and roses in Queen Caroline’s rooms. He finishes at the fire doors near Clock Court that burst open on CCTV in 2003.

What makes this tour worth watching is Packer’s own caution. He says plainly that the stories come from statements by warders, staff and visitors and, however trustworthy, “don’t constitute physical evidence.” Of the famous CCTV figure he even suggests it was “possibly a member of the public” and that the real puzzle is what opened the doors. Hampton Court’s Haunted Gallery has also been studied scientifically: in 2000–01 the psychologist Richard Wiseman ran hundreds of visitors through it and found that their expectations about ghosts shaped what they felt.

Some details in the video differ from the written record. Catherine Howard’s dash down the gallery is a legend that no contemporary source describes. Packer says Sybil Penn’s tomb was wrecked in a storm in the 1800s; other accounts tie the disturbance to the rebuilding of St Mary’s church in Hampton around 1829. Jane Seymour gave birth to Edward VI at the palace on October 12, 1537, and died there twelve days later.