At Hampton Court Palace

The brush strokes are indeed amazing capturing my attention and halting my progress down the hallway. The portrait is huge, truly an impressive feat of artistry. A regal gaze stares out of the canvas and I am captured by the familiar face and stance, who would not recognise Henry VIII? His fleshy features surround those piercing eyes. He’s not a nice man. Powerful, proud, arrogant, yes, but not nice, yet the portrait fascinates me.

With deep reluctance I move on from the painting to admire the next one. Our tour guide has drawn his flock of gawkers further down the gallery and around the corner. I can hear their voices, a harsh and dissonant bleating about art, spewing forth an encyclopaedic narrative of each era represented in the gallery. I’m glad to let them wander ahead. They have no respect for the history of the place. I, on the other hand, feel an almost sacred, reverent need to soak the energy of five-hundred years of human occupation. I am almost transported back to a time of courtiers filled with intrigue and political machinations.

Every room in this palace can tell a story. I am enraptured by the history, knowing that I walk in the footsteps of kings and queens, giants of history. It’s enough to make me feel very small.

I turn the corner to the long gallery and I shudder, shoving my hands firmly into my pockets. Its freezing today, the sun unable to push its head through the thick blanket of dark, stormy clouds. Fortunately the old building of Hampton Court Palace is well protected from the weather, and although it’s colder inside this section, it’s better than outside where the rain refuses to ease. A flash of lightening blazes through the window, accompanied almost immediately by thunder, causing the electric light illuminating the chandelier to flicker alarmingly, before it dies. A strangled gasp escapes my lips. I am left alone in dimly lit gallery, where the only illumination is from the large window, and in this weather it hardly throws any light at all.

My tour group must have exited the gallery at the other end, so I begin the trek along the carpeted corridor in the dark, disappointed not to be able to view all the beautiful artwork. I only take a single step, when I freeze completely. The temperature plummets around me with no apparent cause. A chill sizzles down my spine, hot and cold at the same time and I feel beads of perspiration form on my brow, even as I shiver.

A piercing wail reverberates through the corridor, a ghostly scream that chills the marrow in my bones. My heart pounds erratically, a desperate attempt to escape from the cage of my ribs. Its thunderous beats echo in my ears, almost drowning out the unearthly shriek that rings in the air, an echo that lingers ominously.

Everything seems to happen in slow motion, and a sense of fear envelops me, a feeling of being trapped within my own body unable to escape. From the shadows emerges a spectral figure, a woman draped in a long gown and hooded cloak. Her presence seems to bathe the dim gallery in an eerie glow, her aura casting no discernible shadow. She races wildly down the corridor towards me, but her feet make no sound on the cold floor. The terror etched on her wide-eyed face must mirror my own expression. I try to urge my body to run, to flee, but I am unable to move.

My mind is slow to process what my body instinctively knows— this woman is not real. Oh she’s real, I can see her, but I shouldn’t be able to see right through her. The woman stumbles to a breathless halt in front of a door not too far from where I stand in mute and frozen horror. She looks around urgently, before her white hand raps upon the wood of the door. I don’t hear the knock, but I hear the scream as she cries out in terror, and her whole body jerks backwards. She struggles with an unseen force that drags her back the way she has come, her feet desperately, kicking and stumbling. Her screams echo in the gallery as her head thrashes back and forth, arms flailing, and hands clawing, but to no avail. She is relentlessly drawn by an unseen force away from the door until, at the end of the gallery, still clawing at the void, she vanishes.

The horrid chill that surrounded me, dissipates, and in an instant I’m overheated, sweating and trembling as the world seems to spin. The air rushes back into my lungs in huge gasps and I’m suddenly able to move. Without hesitation, I turn and run back the way I came, not stopping until I reach the Great Watching Chamber. Surprisingly the electric lights set in the ancient wall sconces are still working here. The light is blinding after the dimness of the gallery and I stumble to a halt.

“You OK love? You’re as white as a sheet.” My eyes adjust to see a guide in the chamber with a group of tourists who had been admiring the gilded ceiling adorned with a myriad of coats of arms. As one the group turns to look at me with almost identical expressions of curiosity and disapproval.

“I…I…” I can hardly speak, my voice a trembling mess of inarticulate sounds.

“Have you lost your tour group?” Unable to form words, I nod and the tour guide smiles knowingly. “Ah, have you been in the Haunted Gallery then?”

“A woman… running,” I manage to stammer. “Didn’t you hear her scream?”

“Well aren’t you the lucky one. I believe you may have seen our resident ghost—or one of them at least. That would be Catherine Howard, Henry VIII’s fifth wife. Beheaded for adultery. It’s rumoured that she ran down that corridor to find Henry at prayer and beg for her life. However she never made it and was restrained before being forcibly returned to her chamber.”

My mouth is dry like a parched desert, so I lick my lips and swallow. I don’t feel lucky.

"I think I need to sit down.” History sounds so much better when it stays in its own time and place.