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The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall
So, she’s referred to as the Brown Lady because she’s wearing a brown brocade dress.
For this story, you can actually Google “Brown Lady of Raynham Hall” and you’ll find several pictures of what looks like a creepy specter on a giant staircase. Raynham Hall is this country house in Norfolk England, and it has been in the Townshend family for 4 centuries. To call it a house is a bit of a stretch since it’s a pretty spectacular mansion.
A little aside: doesn’t it seem like all the ghosts that you see tend to be women?
So, the story goes a little something like this: Once upon a time, there was a playboy named Charles Townshend. He was born in 1694 (but you know he’d still be trying to get it on with the ladies if he was alive). He was a high ranking politician and had a bit of a rivalry with another politician, Robert Walpole, who was actually the prime minister of England. Walpole bought a house in the area, and Townshend felt threatened by his power, and that’s where Dorothy Walpole, Robert’s sister, comes into the picture. Now Charles Townshend was married to this woman, Lady Elizabeth Pelham, but when he saw Lady Dorothy Walpole, he asked her to marry him. The way the story is written, it’s unclear whether he had even vacated his first wife from the house before moving Dorothy in. In fact, it almost sounds like he was married to both of them at the same time – but that could just be incomplete story telling from the book. Anyway, The marriage may have actually been sort of a peace treaty between Townshend and Walpole. – because what else are women good for? Just kidding. They’re also useful for having sex and making heirs.
So Dorothy married Charles, but, legend has it, that she was involved with another man – Lord Thomas Wharton. He was also a party guy, and a lecher, so Lady D. had wonderful taste in men. Legend has it that when Charles found out that Dorothy was having an affair with Thomas Wharton, he locked her inside Raynham hall, and wouldn’t even allow her to see her kids. Apparently, Thomas didn’t lift a finger to help her either so she was imprisoned there. So, I don’t understand how her brother, Robert Walpole, didn’t come to her aid either – maybe he had to leave it be to keep the peace. Anyway, Dorothy got small pox and died. And that was when she proceeded to haunt the ever-living-fuck out of the place.
Not really, though, it wasn’t until 1835 (over 100 years later) that she decided to show up. Some man named Colonel Loftus (first name Colonel) was spending Christmas at Raynham. Basically, he was returning to his bedroom, and saw a woman dressed in a brown brocade gown standing in front of his room. He wanted to get a good look at her face, but she vanished. Imagine having to go to sleep after that. Maybe he had a wife in his bed as well, it doesn’t say in the book. The next night, it happened again! In the book it says, “This time, Loftus made a note of her empty eye sockets and her glowing countenance.” He was like, “wait right there, I’m gonna get my sketch pad.”
The next story is of a man named Frederick Marryat. He heard the stories of the Brown Lady and basically wanted to debunk them. He thought that smugglers were using the house, and were trying to keep people away. So he went to stay in the very bedroom that she seemed to frequent. He also kept his revolver with him. On the third night he was there, she finally appeared to him. She was holding a lamp, and lifted it. When she did that, you could see that she had sunken grotesque features. He still thought that she was somehow a hoax, so he shot her in the face! Now, imagine if she was a hoax, that’s quite a thing to do. Fortunately, she was a real ghost, and the bullet lodged itself in the wall behind her.
The thing I don’t get is how people decided that she must be lady Dorothy Walpole based on how she resembled a painting of DP. How does a ghost with sunken eye sockets resemble anyone? If I die, and a ghost with sunken, hollow features shows up, I’m going to be very put out if people are like, “Hey, this looks just like Savanna.”
But what really catapulted our famous Brown Lady into the Limelight was an incident which occurred in 1936. And the incident was that someone got a picture of her. These two photographers from Country Life magazine captured a shot of her coming down the staircase. Who knows if this was all a hoax. It may very well have been. Supposedly paranormal researcher, Harry Price, looked into this and said it was all authentic. The negative from the film was found to not be tampered with.
Have you ever gotten an email from a dead person?
Jack Froese was 32 years old when he dropped dead suddenly from cardiac arrhythmia in June of 2011. 5 months later, two of his friends received emails from him. One of the emails, titled, “I’m watching,” said, “Did you hear me? I’m at your house. Clean your fucking attic!” So this was actually an inside joke between Jack and his friend, Tim Hart, who received the email. If this was a hoax, how would the hoaxer know that shortly before Jack died, he had told Hart that he needed to clean his attic? Also, who would do that … not to mention wait 5 months to do it? The other note from jack was sent to his friend Jimmy McGraw. McGraw actually had broken his ankle a few weeks before receiving his email, also in Nov 2011. So Jack’s email basically said that he knew McGraw was going to get hurt, and that he tried to warn him. Now, McGraw was basically at home, and had only told a few people about his injury; so again, this adds to the mystery of these emails.
Can you imagine if you’re Jack’s mom? She got nothing.
Justice From Beyond
Ok, so anyone out there who thinks they might murder someone, take heed to this story. Even if you cover all your bases, the ghost of the person you murdered might just appear to her mother and spill the beans. So this is the story of a woman named Elva “Zona” Heaster. In 1895, when she would have been around 22, she met this hot dude named, get ready, Edward Stribbling Trout Shue. I feel like at least one of those names was excessive. Edward was a blacksmith, and Zona would go to his shop all the time to flirt with him … ask him to Shue her pony, forge her a sword…if you know what I mean. Anyway, he couldn’t resist so the two were married; but Zona’s mom, Mary Jane Heaster, didn’t like Edward – he gave her the creeps. Three months after they were married, Edward went to the market and decided to send the neighbor boy to his house to check with his wife to see if she needed anything – makes a lot of sense that he didn’t bother to ask her before he left home. So this neighbor kid, Andy Jones, was rather young, which makes this a pretty cruel prank because, as you all might have guessed, Andy found Zona just lying dead at the foot of the stairs with her eyes open. At first, the poor little kid was like, “Mrs. Heaster?” but it didn’t take him long to realize that she was dead, so he sent up the alarm. So along comes Dr. George W. Knapp, the town doc. It took him a while to get there, and when he did, Mr. Heaster had already taken his wife up to their bedroom, dressed her, and laid her body out. At the time, this was unusual because this was women’s work, but people chalked it up to grief. Also, completely unsuspiciously, he’d dressed her in a high necked dress with a stiff collar and placed a veil over her face. Do you think you know who did it?
So the good doctor noticed bruising on her neck, and tried to examine it, but Edward became overwrought with grief, and held his wife’s body close to his – just making a huge fuss; and it worked! The doctor bought the act – who would buy that? Dr. Knapp finally just said that Zona had an “everlasting faint,” but then later said it was “childbirth” not even really sure if she’d been pregnant.
Ok, so during the funeral, Zona was lying in the coffin and the entire time, Edward stood really close and guarded her body from everyone. I think he was making a huge play to make everyone think that he was just suffering so much, and that’s why he was behaving erratically. But get this, he placed a pillow on one side of her head, and a rolled up sheet on the other side of her head, and tied a scarf between the two! He said, tearfully, that this would keep her comfortable and aid in her final rest.
The crazy thing is that people liked Edward, so most didn’t suspect anything – they just thought he was behaving strangely due to grief. This is the thing about sociopaths, they tend to be liked.
Of course, Zona’s mom, Mary Jane Heaster, knew exactly what had happened and wanted justice. Mary Jane started praying every night for her daughter to come to her and give her a clue as to what happened – i feel like I wouldn’t have needed any help with this – even when they were carrying her coffin to the burial ground, people were like, “doesn’t her neck look loose…like, maybe it was broken…?” Finally, the ghost of Zona appeared to Mary Jane, night after night getting clearer and clearer. The ghost demonstrated to Mary Jane what had happened – Edward basically twisted Zona’s neck all the way around like an owl, or like what some kid with mental problems does to their barbie dolls – I’m talking about a friend. Zona’s ghost demonstrated this to Mary Jane by twisting her head all the way around – this action doesn’t affect ghost health, but it’s quite deadly for humans. Remember growing up, when your mom would say, “don’t twist your head all the way around, it’s bad for you.”
Anyway, Mary Jane, with this ghost story, was actually able to convince some people that Zona’s body needed to be examined again, and, as you might expect, it was clear that she’d been choked and then her head snapped, which gives me the creeps. The author of the book says that the fact that Mary Jane knew how Zona had died was proof that the ghost had appeared to her, but I feel like it was pretty obvious already.
So they needed more proof that Edward did it, and that’s when they looked into his past and found that he’d been married two times before. The first wife lived to tell the tale because, while they were married, Edward went to jail for stealing horses. She divorced him, but reported that he beat her all the time. The second wife, Lucy, died within a year of their marriage under mysterious circumstances. I mean, this guy had some serious rage issues. He ended up being convicted at trial, and died 3 years later in prison of some infection.
The author, who may have had a hard time believing this ghost story herself, said that the state was so convinced of Mary Jane’s ghost story, that on a historical marker near Zona’s cemetery it says, “
Interred in the nearby cemetery is Zona Hester Shue. Her death in 1897 was presumed natural until her spirit appeared to her mother to describe how her husband Edward killed her. An autopsy on the exhumed body verified the apparition’s account. Edward, found guilty of murder, was sentenced to prison. Only known case in which testimony from a ghost helped convict a murderer.
Ghost Stories by H.L. Tidy
Insane Asylum Ghost Story!
Ok – so I’ve saved the best, and worst, for last. Best because who doesn’t love ghost stories about insane asylums, and worst, because I’m about to talk about some dark stuff. Ok, so this story is about what used to be called the Lunatic Hospital in Taunton Massachusetts. This place opened in 1854. Anyway, this place apparently housed some notorious folks, most notably a woman named Jane Toppan. Now, Jane was a lovely girl, who just had the unfortunate affliction of poisoning the elderly and infirm while gaining sexual pleasure from watching them die. So can you really blame her? You know how everyone thinks that watching folks die is sexy. So, i’ve listened to a lot of true crime, but this chick never entered my radar. She truly was a serial killer, in that she got a sexual thrill from her murders. I was so surprised about this, that I actually googled her name, and wikipedia seemed to confirm what the author is saying – Jane Toppan happened.
So, I think the way serial killers are created is that they start out as sociopaths – or people who do not have empathy, and then they’re treated really badly. If you look at Jane’s past, she was raised pretty shittily, so probably that’s how she somehow became a serial killer. She trained to be a nurse and, I quote from the book, “She claimed that the sight of patients close to death aroused her sexually. She would dose them, get into bed with them, and hold them close as they passed away.” What is that?
She got fired from a few jobs, in one case for administering opiates recklessly. She then goes home to where her adoptive sister is, murders her, and then tries to seduce her widowed brother in law. I’m surprised she wasn’t successful in seducing him because her plan was watertight. Here’s what she did, she poisoned him, and then nursed him back to health. It sounds like an It’s always Sunny in Philadelphia plot. But when that didn’t clinch the deal, she poisoned herself, so he’d have to nurse her back to health – I mean, she was really just exercising all of her feminine wiles. None of this worked, and he kicked her out.
Finally, she was just leaving such a huge string of dead bodies behind that she got caught. I imagine the conversation went something like this,
“Ms. Toppan, we have reason to suspect you guilty for murder.”
“What? Me? I would never dream…”
“We have eyewitness testimony and rock solid proof.”
“Ok, well, then let’s cut to the chase or we’ll be here all night. I killed 30 people. Killed em for sexual pleasure, and I don’t plan to stop.”
My Imagination
So when she went to court, she actually wanted to plead guilty and go to jail because apparently, she would have had a chance at serving her prison sentence and then getting out of jail, I don’t know how. But everyone else agreed to charge her as not guilty by reason of insanity, so she had to go to an insane asylum for the rest of her life.
So that was a digression from the focal point of this story which is the Lunatic Hospital of Taunton. The story goes that there was all sorts of devil worshiping and satanic rituals going on there, and even around the grounds. Inside the hospital, many of the staff would take poor, unsuspecting patients down to the basement to sacrifice them in some sort of cult practice. Many of the asylum patients would refuse to be taken down to the basement, and would therefore lose their outside privileges. The author points out that many people notice that the basement remains cool, even during the summer! How’s that for your smoking gun evidence – a basement which is cool. More compelling, though, is the fact that there are blood markings on the wall down there.
Apparently one dude went to work for the asylum, and wanted to see the basement for himself, but when he got to the last step, he stopped short and “
… described what could only be a paranormal experience. As he closed his eyes, he felt every single case of torture and pain that each of the tormented Souls trapped within the hospital went through. He raced back upstairs and resigned from his job that very day.
Ghost Stories by H.L. Tidy
I would say that description is missing some details … what does he mean he felt all the pain and torture? I do sort of hope that one of them was Jane Toppan – I mean, at least she kind of deserved it. No one deserves that kind of treatment really, but she did.
There is a man in white who is often seen by the staff and the residents there. He’ll stand in the corner of the patient’s rooms, watching them. Some have seen him crawling closely along the wall.
Apparently, one patient escaped the hospital and hid in the cemetery, but then he felt a hand on his shoulder, which gripped so hard it left bruises. When he looked up, there was no one there, and he heard a voice in his ear say, “Leave.” So he went right back to the hospital where he stayed the rest of his days.
Ok – that’s it for tonight! See you next time, and Happy Halloween!