Kings and knights, Princesses and priceless jewels: these are the things of great fairy tales and films.  Yet for Europe, these things are simply a part of history, not some elaborate Hollywood set.  Often romantic yet inevitably bloody, this incredible past has left behind more than castle ruins and crown jewels.  Many ongoing hauntings around Europe can be traced back to those violent historical eras.

King Henry VIII

One man alone is responsible for several famous British hauntings: King Henry VIII.  His penchant for lopping off the heads of his wives certainly helped that little claim to fame, but many others who are associated with him yet didn’t die by his whim are also still hanging around in certain castle corridors.

Naturally, Anne Boleyn is the most famous of these ghosts.  Henry married her after annulling his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.  Anne had been Catherine’s maid of honor.  A very short three years later, Jane Seymour captured the attention of the finicky King, and he trumped up a story of infidelity that put Anne in the middle of an incestuous relationship with her brother, George, and both were executed treason.  Both Anne and George are said to haunt their childhood home, Blickling Hall in North Norfolk.  Anne is said to approach the castle by coach, her decapitated head resting on her knee, each year on the anniversary of her death (May 19th, 1536), followed by her brother George walking behind the coach.  Anne has also been seen inside the fantastic country estate.

The crunching of gravel at midnight on May 19 at Blickling Hall heralds the ghost of Anne Boleyn

 Anne’s ghost has also been spotted numerous times at the Tower of London, where she was beheaded, and particularly in and around the chapel where she spent her last night on Earth.

Jane Seymour wed Henry shortly after Anne’s head rolled, and in October of 1537, she bore him a son, Edward.  She died of Puerperal fever shortly after his birth, and she is said to haunt Hampton Court, the palace she inhabited with Henry.  Her ghost is said to walk a staircase in Hampton Court with a lit candle, headed to the Silver Stick Gallery, where she passes through a halo of light and fades away. 

Henry’s fifth wife, Katherine Howard, had been a lady-in-waiting for his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, and had been Anne Boleyn’s first cousin.  She married Henry around 1540, when she was no older than 19, and he was pushing 50.  Henry was truly smitten with Katherine, believing her to be his “rose without a thorn” and “the very jewel of womanhood.”  What Henry didn’t know, however, was that Katherine grew up in a very permissive household and had taken several lovers before she met Henry, and, unfortunately for her, she didn’t give up that habit after marrying him.  Within just a year of their marriage, rumors of her infidelities began circulating.  Eventually, Henry discovered that she was having an affair with her cousin, Thomas Culpepper, and she was executed at the Tower of London in February of 1542.  When Katherine was arrested at Hampton Court, she managed to get away from her captors long enough to run screaming down the hall to the chapel where Henry was praying for her soul.  She begged him to spare her life, but he ignored her pleas, and she was dragged off to her execution.  Her spirit is a frequent sight at Hampton Court to this day.  She is often seen and heard repeating her screaming run down the hallway to the chapel, and is occassionally spotted in the garden.

Haunted Hampton Court

Other spirits that are said to make occassional appearances at Hampton Court who were at one point involved with Henry VIII.  One is Cardinal Wolsey, who built Hampton Court, sold it to Henry, was arrested for treason and died before his execution date.  Another is Dame Sybil Penn (known as the gray lady of Hampton Court), nurse to Henry’s children, Edward and Elizabeth.  She died of smallpox and it is said that she can be heard at her spinning wheel from time to time.  Several other less reknown hauntings have been reported at Hampton Court, though these mentioned above directly relate back to Henry’s time at the Palace.

Then there is my favorite haunting at Hampton Court.  Watch this:

That little video clip, supposedly taken from a security camera, got a lot of press there for a while.  My opinion?  Can you say “guy in a period costume having trouble closing a fire door?”  Seriously, if anyone really thought that was anything other than a flesh and blood, LIVING human being…???

Dismissing that and moving right along, the violence surrounding the life and wives of Henry VIII certainly makes for some chilling reading, and his daughters, Queen Mary I (a.k.a., “Bloody Mary”) and Queen Elizabeth I certainly weren’t boring during their reigns at the throne.  They seem to have left less residual spirit energy in their wakes, however, so we shall end our story here.

Yours in this life and the next!

GhOsTwRiTeR KiM