Are these the most haunted country manors in the land?

This article was first published in the December 2024 issue of Tatler

The year was 2006, and the Duchess of Rutland had gathered a clique of friends at Belvoir Castle for the weekend. Among them was the effervescent Susannah Constantine. Following a breakfast of eggs and bacon, the group was given a tour of the castle. All seemed to be going well – until they were led up a flight of stairs to the nursery bathroom. When Susannah crossed its threshold, she began to cry; then she collapsed onto the ground in hysterics. ‘My husband had to pull me back out of the room,’ she tells Tatler. According to the Duke of Rutland, a six-year-old boy drowned in the bath there hundreds of years ago. ‘I think he was trying to speak to me. My own son, Joe, was six at the time,’ says Susannah.

Grand, creaking houses and eerie castles have always been steeped in ghostly lore. Take Lancaster Castle, a former medieval prison said to be haunted by the spirits of an old monk, a child, an elderly woman and Old Demdike, a 'witch' imprisoned there centuries ago. Or Glamis Castle, the ancestral home of the Carls of Strathmore and Kinghorne – ‘A dark, dark place,’ one exorcist informs Tatler.

Even the most down-to-earth members of high society find themselves swayed by rumours of their ghostly guests. Case in point: Lord Montagu at Beaulieu Palace House, reputedly one of the most haunted properties in Britain, where Arthur Conan Doyle claimed to have contacted a ghost during a thrilling séance. It is allegedly inhabited by a ‘Lady in Blue,’ believed to be Isabella, Countess of Beaulieu, who died in 1786. The current lord says he has never encountered a ghost at home, but he is certain they exist.

Today, ghost stories have never been so popular, especially on screen. This year was a summer of horror, with film releases such as Never Let Go, Longlegs and Cuckoo featuring Hollywood's most gilded stars. News broke in July that Vanessa Redgrave and her husband, Franco Nero, are set to star together in The Estate, about an aristocratic family haunted by apparitions as they try to save their ancestral home. And in August, the Mexican director Guillermo del Toro filmed his new adaptation of Frankenstein at Aberdeen's Dunecht House, tweeting from a nearby hotel: ‘Nothing has happened yet, but the atmosphere is oppressive and I am not gonna [spend] much more time there.’

Among the Gen Z set, there is newfound interest in ghostly tales, spurred on by horror fans on TikTok, where they share chilling tales under the banner 'HorrorTok'. It boasts two million posts and has given rise to a new trend of young women spotlighting their 'witchy' facial features – think a pointed nose or prominent chin. So next time you're visited by an apparition at a crumbling castle, make sure to catch it on video. These days, the law rules: pics or it didn't happen.

Some deny the existence of any paranormal lodgers living rent-free in their palatial seats. Take the Howden family, who live on the Cornbury estate. ‘It's very haunted, but the Howdens would never admit it,’ says a regular guest. Others share details of ghostly goings-on. At the Grade II*-listed Georgian home of George and Rose Hulse, there is, according to Rose, a ghost in the house that prefers the light to be on in a particular room. If the room is not lit, an eerie feeling pervades – one so intense that George, a self-professed ghost sceptic, religiously keeps the light on.

But in high society, ghost stories are rarely shared via social media; instead, they pass from generation to generation like some kind of eerie inheritance, kept alive by dynamic storytellers. The Hon Edward Lytton Cobbold, heir to Knebworth House, shares a tale that has been told by one Lytton Cobbold to the next. (His Victorian ancestor, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who adorned the house with Gothic grotesques and gargoyles, was so fascinated by the occult that he wrote a novel called The Haunted and the Haunters.)

‘It is said that some of those who spend the night in our Queen Elizabeth Room have been visited by a golden spirit of a young boy, who sits on the end of the bed and tells you how you are going to die,’ Edward tells Tatler. Lord Castlereagh apparently reported seeing the boy run his finger across his throat in 1822. A few months later, he was found dead, having slit his own throat. ‘I have yet to hear of anyone recently having had the experience; these days, that room is more famous for Mick Jagger leaving his underpants at the bottom of that bed after the Rolling Stones concert in 1976.’

Not quite so rock'n'roll is a tale passed through the Linzee Gordon clan at Cluny Castle. The parents of the current chatelain, Cosmo Linzee Gordon, told him that one afternoon they disappeared into separate parts of the castle. They each detected the smell of delicious cooking coming from the kitchen and thought the other had made the evening meal. When they went down to investigate, it transpired that neither one of them had been cooking. Nor had anyone else...

The Countess of Carnarvon at Highclere Castle, meanwhile, says she has seen Highclere's ghouls herself. ‘It was about four or five in the afternoon in November,’ she begins. ‘I was walking down the corridor when a man, about 5ft 9in, began walking towards me.’ Her pet Labrador, who was behind the door, started barking uncontrollably. Realising that the man was, in fact, an apparition, she told her son, who was four at the time and riding a toy bike down the corridor, to pedal faster. ‘It's never been my favourite corridor to walk along,’ she says. Since then, she's contacted a priest at Westminster Abbey to ward off unwanted guests.

Another to have had their home cleared of spirits is Lady Cara Willoughby, of Birdsall House in Yorkshire. ‘There's an 11th-century chapel in the garden; we had a fair few [ghosts] who didn't want to stay, and the house is a calm and peaceful place as a result.’ These rebellious apparitions aren't bound by walls. One chatelaine reveals she was left spooked after meeting a ghost one grey February morning in Dorset: ‘I decided to go out for a half-day with the Portman [Hunt], the meet being at a farm a mile from home. As I approached the farm, from my horse I could see over the hedgerow into a field where horses, hounds and foot-followers were assembled.

‘Among the latter I spotted a well-known local figure, Captain Brown, standing alone; tall, spare, moustached and bespectacled, with his dark brown tweeds and his thumb stick. As I trotted by, I hailed him over the hedgerow, but he was looking into the middle distance and didn't see me. This was no surprise as he was stone-deaf. About three hours later, I arrived home in time for a late lunch, and my mother sat with me to hear about the day. I mentioned that I had seen Captain Brown and she said, “That's impossible. He died two days ago.”’

Viscountess Marchwood, aka Annie Penny, a qualified spiritual healer, explains that it is most commonly children who see apparitions. ‘Ghosts visit children when they are stuck in this world and need help moving on, as [children] have more empathy,’ she says. (Society style connoisseur Serena Hood can verify this. She says that she was once visited by a housekeeper dressed in uniform while ill in bed as a child.) Lady Marchwood is often called upon by high society when it comes to exorcisms – she has spent much of her working life banishing ghosts from stately seats, including a bishop from a castle in Yorkshire and 16th-century spirits from a house built on an old battlefield. ‘After my visit, she tells Tatler, ‘the whole army moved on to the light’ – a poetic way of saying they ‘went to Heaven’.

According to Lady Marchwood, ancestors like to advise current chatelaines about how to run the estates they have long left behind. Amaryllis Fraser (the great-great-granddaughter of the 2nd Earl of Balfour, who helped set up the Society for Psychic Research in 1882) agrees: ‘I believe ancestors are coming through to give help.’

Perhaps that's true, especially if one considers the Hulses' story: after their engagement, George and Rose went to stay at the Hulse family seat, Breamore House, and Rose was visited by a spirit in the night. Apparently, this particular apparition regularly checks on women marrying into the Hulse family, ‘to get to know them’, she says. Rose experienced nothing untoward – clearly she had the ghostly nod of approval.