The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall

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The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall is one of the most famous hauntings in Britain, this is mainly down to the strange form captured by photographers from Country Life magazine in 1936. Before that event the Brown Lady had been reported several times, but many of the written accounts vary considerably.

The hall dates from the 17th century, and has been in the hands of the Townsend family from that time. In some stories the apparition of the Brown Lady once haunted Houghton Hall, but came to Raynham with sister of Robert Wallpole, who married Viscount Townsend in 1713.

Lucia C Stone recorded the first reference to the ghost in 1835; the sighting took place at Christmas of the same year. Lord Charles Townsend had invited a number of guests to the hall for the Christmas festivities. Among them was a man called Colonel Loftus, who, with another guest called Hawkins, witnessed a figure in a brown dress. He also ran into the apparition on the main stairs. He described her as an aristocratic looking lady with one horrific feature: where her eyes should have been there were only empty sockets, highlighted in a face that glowed with an unearthly light. The captain drew a sketch of the apparition, and others also said that they had witnessed the ghost.

The next sighting was by a Captain Marryat (1792-1848), an author of sea novels, although no firm date is given for this encounter. In most accounts the captain has asked to stay in the haunted room because he believes that the haunting is the result of local smugglers. He is returning to his room with two companions, when they see a figure with a lantern coming towards them. They take refuge in a doorway, and the figure turns and grins at them in a "diabolical manner". The captain, who is armed, looses off a shot, which passes straight through the figure and becomes lodged in the opposite wall. Fortunately for the Captain the figure is not a guest with a sense of humour in disguise, and the apparition vanishes.

The next publicised sighting was in 1926, when Lady Townsend admitted that her son and his friend had witnessed the ghost on the stairs. They identified the figure with the portrait of the lady hanging in the haunted room.

Ten years later in 1936, the most famous event occurred in the dubios history of the haunting. Two professional photographers, Captain Provand and his assistant Indre Shira, were taking photographs of the hall for 'Country Life' magazine. The date was the 19th September, and at 4.00pm that afternoon they were photographing the Hall's main staircase. They had completed one exposure, and were preparing for another, when Shira saw a misty form ascending the stairs. He shouted to the captain that there was something on the stairs, and asked if the Captain was ready, he replied "yes" and took the cap off the lens, while Shira pressed the trigger for the flash light.

After this the captain came up from under the protective cloth, and asked what all the fuss was about. Shira explained that he had seen a shadowy, see-through figure on the stairs. When the negative was developed it showed the famous image. There were three witnesses to the negatives development, as Shira had wanted an independent observer to verify the event. He ran and got a chemist called Benjamin Jones, who managed the premises above which the development studio was located. A full account of the experience was published in Country Life magazine on the 26th of December 1936.

The photo was later examined by experts at the Country Life offices, where it was declared unlikely to have been tampered with. There have been a few detractors saying that Shira hoaxed the image by smearing grease on the lens or moving in front of the camera, but there is unlikely to be a definitive explanation for the photo. It is still held in the offices of Country Life.

There have been more recent stories suggesting the haunting has moved to a road between South and West Raynham, but this has not been verified. The spirit has not been reported at the hall since the photograph was taken.

http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/england/norfolk/hauntings/the-brown-lady-of-raynham-hall.html

Raynham Hall, Article from Women's Illustrated 1952
The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall
The Ghosts of Raynham Hall

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raynham_Hall

Paintings

Many fine portraits still adorn Kent's splendid rooms at Raynham. Hanging beside his lovely black and white marble chimney-piece in the Princess' Room is a painting which is believed to be a preliminary sketch for the famous Van Dyck portrait "Children of Charles I." Until 1904, there were many more paintings at Raynham, including several fine family portraits by Kneller and Reynolds. The most famous and valuable was "Belisarius " by Salvator Rosa, which was presented to the 2nd Viscount Townshend by Frederick William, King of Prussia. This was valued at 5,000 pounds in 1804, but was disposed of a hundred years later for 273 pounds.

Charles Townshend, 8th Marquess Townshend, is the present owner of the Hall.

Additions

The Hall at Raynham was begun in 1619 with indications that it may have been designed by Inigo Jones.[citation needed] Later extensions and interiors were designed by William Kent, the one-time coach-painter who turned his talents to designing houses and furniture. To add the North wing to Raynham and decorate the interior, the 2nd Viscount Townshend called in William Kent, later to be one of the architects of nearby Holkham. Much of Kent's finest work can be seen at Raynham, especially in the elaborately carved chimney-pieces, the mosaic paintings and decorated doorways. The impressive and beautiful ceiling of' the Marble Hall with its motif of Lord Townshend's coat of arms (see picture on right) is famous.

Legend

In 1713, Lord Townshend married Walpole's prettiest sister, Dorothy. She was his second wife, and is reputed in the gossip of the time to have been previously the mistress of Lord Wharton, "whose character was so infamous, and his lady's complaisant subserviency so notorious, that no young woman could be four and twenty hours under their roof with safety to her reputation."

Lady Townshend was buried in 1726. But there is a tradition that she did not die in that year and that the funeral was a mock interment.

Instead, she is rumoured to have been locked up in the house by her husband. This is why the ghost of "Dolly" Townshend, the "little brown lady of Raynham," is said still to haunt the oak staircase of the house in the twilight.

Raynham Hall is one of the most splendid of the great houses of Norfolk. It was begun by Sir Roger Townshend and was the first of its kind in England. Perhaps because of the three-year grand tour of Europe which Sir Roger had undertaken, Raynham was built in an entirely new style, abandoning native tradition and following the Italian form and plan. Raynham could easily be mistaken for a house built nearly a century later.

Raynham Hall viewed straight up the avenue
Date 15 April 2007(2007-04-15)
 
Source From geograph.org.uk
 

Raynham Hall is a country house in Norfolk, England. For 300 years it has been the seat of the Townshend family. The hall gave its name to the area, known as The Raynhams, and is reported to be haunted, providing the scene for possibly the most famous ghost photo of all time, the famous Brown Lady descending the staircase. However, the ghost has been seen infrequently since the photo was taken. Its most famous resident was Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend (1674-1738), leader in the House of Lords.

Automatic writing frequently exhibits indications of telepathy. The most remarkable series of automatic writings recorded in this connexion are those executed by the American medium, Mrs Piper, in a state of trance (Proceedings S.P.R.). These writings appear to exhibit remarkable telepathic powers, and are thought by some to indicate communication with the spirits of the dead.

The opportunities afforded by automatic writing for communicating with subconscious strata of the personality have been made use of by Pierre Janet and others in cases of hystero-epilepsy, and other forms of dissociation of consciousness. A patient in an attack of hysterical convulsions, to whom oral appeals are made in vain, can sometimes be induced to answer in writing questions addressed to the hand, and thus to reveal the secret of the malady or to accept therapeutic suggestions.

[edit] See
Edmonds and Dexter, Spiritualism (New York, 1853).
Epes Sargent, Planchette, the Despair of Science (Boston, U.S.A., 1869).
Mrs de Morgan, From Matter to Spirit (London, 1863).
W. Stainton Moses, Spirit Teachings (London, 1883).
Proceedings S.P R. passim.
Th. Flournoy, Des Indes à la planète Mars (Geneva, 1900).
F. Podmore, Modern Spiritualism (London, 1902).
F. W. H. Myers, Human Personality (London, 1903).
Pierre Janet, L'Automatisme psychologique (2nd ed., Paris, 1894).
Morton Prince, The Dissociation of a Personality (London, 1906).
(F. P.)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Automatic_Writing"

AUTOMATIC WRITING, the name given by students of psychical research to writing performed without the volition of the agent. The writing may also take place without any consciousness of the words written; but some automatists are aware of the word which they are actually writing, and perhaps of two or three words on either side, though there is rarely any clear perception of the meaning of the whole. Automatic writing may take place when the agent is in a state of trance, spontaneous or induced, in hystero-epilepsy or other morbid states; or in a condition not distinguishable from normal wakefulness. Automatic writing has played an important part in the history of modern spiritualism. The phenomenon first appeared on a large scale in the early days (c. 1850-1860) of the movement in America. Numerous writings are reported at that period, many of considerable length, which purported for the most part to have been produced under spirit guidance. Some of these were written in "unknown tongues." Of those which were published the most notable are Andrew J. Davis's Great Harmonia, Charles Linton's The Healing of the Nations, and J. Murray Spear's Messages from the Spirit Life.

In England also the early spiritualist newspapers were filled with "inspirational" writing,—Pages of Ike Paraclete, &c. The most notable series of English automatic writings are the Spirit Teachings of the Rev. W. Stainton Moses. The phenomenon, of course, lends itself to deception, but there seems no reason to doubt that in the great majority of the cases recorded the writing was in reality produced without deliberate volition. In the earlier years of the spiritualist movement, a "planchette," a little heart-shaped board running on wheels, was employed to facilitate the process of writing.

Of late years, whilst the theory of external inspiration as the cause of the phenomenon has been generally discredited, automatic writing has been largely employed as a method of experimentally investigating subconscious mental processes. Knowledge which had lapsed from the primary consciousness is frequently revealed by this means; e.g. forgotten fragments of poetry or foreign languages are occasionally given. An experimental parallel to this reproduction of forgotten knowledge was devised by Edmund Gurney. He showed that information communicated to a subject in the hypnotic trance could be subsequently reproduced through the handwriting, whilst the attention of the subject was fully employed in conversing or reading aloud; or an arithmetical problem which had been set during the trance could be worked out under similar conditions without the apparent consciousness of the subject.

Automatic writing for the most part, no doubt, brings to the surface only the debris of lapsed memories and half-formed impressions which have never reached the focus of consciousness—the stuff that dreams are made of. But there are indications in some cases of something more than this. In some spontaneous instances the writing produces anagrams, puns, nonsense verses and occasional blasphemies or obscenities; and otherwise exhibits characteristics markedly divergent from those of the normal consciousness. In the well-known case recorded by Th. Flournoy (Des Indes à la planète Mars) the automatist produced writing in an unknown character, which purported to be the Martian language. The writing generally resembles the ordinary handwriting of the agent, but there are sometimes marked differences, and the same automatist may employ two or three distinct handwritings. Occasionally imitations are produced of the handwriting of other persons, living or dead. Not infrequently the writing is reversed, so that it can be read only in a looking-glass (Spiegelschrift); the ability to produce such writing is often associated with the liability to spontaneous somnambulism. The hand and arm are often insensible in the act of writing. There are some cases on record in which the automatist has seemed to guide his hand not by sight, but by some special extension of the muscular sense (Carpenter, Mental Physiology, § 128; W. James, Proceedings American S.P.R. p. 554).

Criticism
A 1998 article in Psychological Science described a series of experiments designed to determine whether people who believed in automatic writing could be shown that it might be the ideomotor effect. The paper indicated that "our attempt to introduce doubt about the validity of automatic writing did not succeed." The paper noted that "including information about the controversy surrounding facilitated communication did not affect self-efficacy ratings, nor did it affect the number of responses that were produced. In this sense, illusory facilitation appears to be a very robust phenomenon, not unlike illusory correlation, which is not reversed by warning participants about the phenomenon."[2]

Psychology professor Théodore Flournoy investigated the claim by 19th-century medium Hélène Smith (Catherine Müller) that she did automatic writing to convey messages from Mars in Martian language. Flournoy concluded that her "Martian" language had a strong resemblance to Ms. Smith's native language of French. Flournoy concluded that her automatic writing was "romances of the subliminal imagination, derived largely from forgotten sources (for example, books read as a child)." He invented the term cryptomnesia to describe this phenomenon.[3]

Spiritual Automatic Writing

Also called Psychography is a concept in the spiritist doctrine by which spirits dictate or take the hand of a medium to write messages, letters, and even entire books.

History

George (Georgie) Hyde-Lees, the wife of William Butler Yeats, said that she could write automatically. In 1975, Wendy Hart of Maidenhead said that she wrote automatically about Nicholas Moore, a sea captain who died in 1642. Her husband did research on Moore, and he said that this person had resided at St Columb Major in Cornwall during the Civil War.[1]

History

George (Georgie) Hyde-Lees, the wife of William Butler Yeats, said that she could write automatically. In 1975, Wendy Hart of Maidenhead said that she wrote automatically about Nicholas Moore, a sea captain who died in 1642. Her husband did research on Moore, and he said that this person had resided at St Columb Major in Cornwall during the Civil War.[1]