NORFOLK, England — For nearly a century, a single photograph taken in the grand staircase of Raynham Hall has fueled debate between believers in the paranormal and skeptics. The image, captured in 1936, purports to show a translucent, veiled figure known as the “Brown Lady,” but critics argue the world’s most famous ghost photo is little more than a clever hoax or photographic error.
The legend of the Brown Lady is believed to be the spirit of Lady Dorothy Walpole, who died in the hall in 1726. Folklore suggests her husband, Charles Townshend, locked her away in her rooms after discovering an alleged affair, where she remained until her death from smallpox.
Long before the photograph, the ghost was a subject of high-society lore. During a Christmas gathering in 1835, a guest, Colonel Loftus, claimed to have seen a woman in a brown dress with “empty eye-sockets, dark in the glowing face”. A year later, Captain Frederick Marryat, a novelist and friend of Charles Dickens, fired a pistol at the apparition, reporting that the bullet passed through the figure and lodged in a door.
The story became an international phenomenon on Sept. 19, 1936. Photographers Captain Hubert C. Provand and his assistant Indre Shira were on assignment for Country Life magazine. Shira claimed to see “a vapoury form gradually assuming the appearance of a woman” on the stairs and urged Provand to take a picture. The resulting negative, published in Country Life and later Life magazine, showed the now-iconic spectral image.
Skeptics, however, were quick to offer explanations. Photographic experts have pointed to evidence of an accidental double exposure, noting a faint line above each stair tread and a misaligned reflection on the banister, suggesting two images were superimposed. Others have suggested the image was faked by putting grease on the lens or that the figure is a superimposed statue of the Virgin Mary, noting its posture and the pedestal-like shape at its base.
Adding to the suspicion is the timing. The photograph’s publication coincided with the release of True Ghost Stories, a book by the hall’s owner, the Dowager Marchioness Townshend, which featured the Brown Lady legend. Some researchers have called the photograph an “unorthodox, yet successful publicity stunt” designed to put the struggling estate “back on the cultural map”.
Whether a spirit, a hoax, or a trick of the light, the photograph transformed a piece of local folklore into an enduring paranormal mystery.