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The Brown Lady Of Raynham Hall

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MaxMolyneux

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Anyone reckon the picture taken there was real? How could a photo be faked in those days when it was taken just if anyone thinks it's faked?

Even if it was double exposure how could it be shaped like a person?

Commonly thought to be the ghost of someone call Dorothy Walpole

castleofspirits.com/brownlady.html

Original link dead, archived version below

https://web.archive.org/web/20050216090612/http://www.castleofspirits.com/brownlady.html
 
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Dead easy to fake with a double exposure, as to why it's person shaped it's because that's the shape of the person in a long cloak or a statue or whatever that they used as the basis of the ghost.

How to do it:
have camera on tripod, take underexposed picture of friend in cloak on the stairs. Ask friend to move away take another picture from the same position.

Take picture of friend in cloak against dark background then take picture of stairs.

Shoot through an image drawn on glass with vaseline.

Double exposure with a cutout in the lens hood.

People had been faking spirit photos since the 1860s with far more primitive camera equipment.
 
What makes the image see through and bright like that though?

Could be a real one this one though.
 
A dark filter, with a clearer patch at the centre?
 
Possibly, the room would have to have enough light in though. That doesn't look like it has a dark filter on it though.
 
Funnily enough, a mate of mine has the original glass plate negative of the ghostly photo. Unfortunately he (Dennis Bardens) died last year, and I don't know what happened to it. It probably wound up in the hands of Alan Murdie, ex-Chairman of the Ghost Club.
 
Raynham Hall Ghost

I don't know if the Rayham Hall ghost photograph is genuine or not, but one of the things which seems to argue in favor of its authenticity is the fact that the two photographers were PROFESSIONALS whose enterprise it was to photo-document the homes of the upper-class nobility. Why in the world would they have pulled this absolutely pointless hoax on one of their high- echelon clients? Were both of these guys professionally and socially suicidal?

One of the strangest things about the "ghost" is that measured against the risers of the stairs it is no more than FOUR FEET TALL!

Hasn't anybody other than me noticed the similarity of the image to standard, garden variety statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary? Right down to the folds in the robe! So if the photograph IS a fake, I suspect that some such statue was used.
 
MaxMolyneux said:
"How could you tell it was 4 feet tall from a photo?" :?
Click to expand...

By comparing the spirit with the height of the individual steps (risers) behind it. Riser heights have been fairly standard for centuries. because that's what childrens' and adults' legs can easily manage.

But please note that this is not "my" theory or observation.The "four feet" figure has been discussed several times in various analyses of the Raynham Hall photograph.
 
So how many steps to the foot then? :?

Even if you goby two steps to a foot she'd by over 5? :?

ANyway people were smaller back then so she could of possibly been only 4 foot or could of been a child.
 
Stair Heights

Max, six inch risers seem awfully shallow.

In my apartment building it takes 18 steps to climb 14 or 15 feet from the first floor (British, ground floor) to the second. (There's a landing and a turn involved but I'm merely counting the landing as a larger step.) The stairs are original (save for a couple of replacement boards over the decades), constructed when the house was built in the early 1880s.

With six inches risers that would need to be 28 or 30 steps.

Standard American is about nine inches, but I think that "grand staircases" (American and British both), such as at Raynham, may be even higher.
 
Again

Max, I've just been re-examining the Raynham photograph and I really can't justify that "four foot" estimate either.

But what I CAN tell you is that when the photograph has been subjected to photometric analysis by experts (which I certainly am not), one of the their objections has been that the subject can be no more than about four feet tall.

I'll try to find some references.
 
Not really shallow they'd just be small steps. Ones in my house could be about 8 or 9.

Women are naturally smaller though and in those days people were smaller so she could of been 4 feet or a bit bigger or even could be a child.

Looks about 5 foot to me.
 
You know, that pic used to terrify and amaze me when I was a kid reading "Mysteries of the Unexplained" books and so on.

There is something about it that just doesn't "ring true" for me anymore. It looks kind of fake-o.

Has it been debunked? What do you guys think?
 
Timble2 said:
Dead easy to fake with a double exposure, as to why it's person shaped it's because that's the shape of the person in a long cloak or a statue or whatever that they used as the basis of the ghost.

How to do it:
have camera on tripod, take underexposed picture of friend in cloak on the stairs. Ask friend to move away take another picture from the same position.

Take picture of friend in cloak against dark background then take picture of stairs.

Shoot through an image drawn on glass with vaseline.

Double exposure with a cutout in the lens hood.

People had been faking spirit photos since the 1860s with far more primitive camera equipment.
Click to expand...

Why not just take a pic of the person, wind the film on (assuming not digital!) with the film release button pressed in to stop it actually winding on, then take a pic of the stairs with exactly the same frame. With a few practice shots it's possible to get close to the desired effect.
 
wenshep said:
You know, that pic used to terrify and amaze me when I was a kid reading "Mysteries of the Unexplained" books and so on.

There is something about it that just doesn't "ring true" for me anymore. It looks kind of fake-o.

Has it been debunked? What do you guys think?
Click to expand...

Hasn't been debunked yet no.
 
The spectre of the Brown Lady will haunt us no more
By Jonathan Thompson
Published: 08 October 2006

In life, she was a notorious society beauty. Dorothy Walpole, sister of Sir Robert, Britain's first Prime Minister, scandalised Georgian society by having an affair with a penniless lord before marrying an older widower - and dying, aged 40, in mysterious circumstances.

But her infamy spread around the world in 1936, more than 200 years after her death, when she was allegedly captured on film - in what many experts claim is the world's most compelling "ghost" photograph.

Over the years, this extraordinary image, called "the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall", has been the cornerstone of countless claims for the supernatural.

Now, 70 years after the picture was taken at Raynham Hall in Norfolk, a leading paranormal investigator has stumbled across evidence that it is a fake.

Alan Murdie - a barrister and also a researcher into the supernnatural - found the evidence in a dusty folder in the manuscripts department of Cambridge University library.

The file details an exhaustive investigation into the phenomenon shortly after the image was taken. Conducted by the Society for Psychical Research, it concludes that there is almost certainly a mundane explanation for the "spectral" image in the photo.

The evidence includes the discovery that the camera may have leaked light on to the photographic plate.

A descendant of Lady Walpole, the Hon Jonathan Walpole, said even if it wasn't his ancestor in the photo, she may well still be haunting the Hall. "The father of one of my friends swore that she walked past him on the stairs once."
Click to expand...

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_b ... 819654.ece
 
I suppose you've all been reading about this in the latest Fortean Times? I didn't find some of the debunking terribly convincing though - the stuff about the disjointed staircase for example. Surely the staircase DOES get wider at the bottom? And they were saying the painting on the left was repeated below itself. But this doesn't ring true either to me. In any case, everything would be disjointed or repeated, which it clearlly isn't. Also they were talking about each stair being doubled at the top. Which I couldn't see at all.
Does the staircase still exist? I've got a funny feeling it doesn't, but I might be wrong.
 
MaxMolyneux said:
How could a photo be faked in those days.....
Click to expand...

Max, Max, Max, why is it that younger people conceive of the 1930s as if they were the plague years of the early 14th Century? <g>

By the 1930s amateur photographers, let alone professionals, had been successfully making "trick" photographs for 70 years.

Every edition of the Kodak amateur photographers' manual from at least the 1910s onward contained an entire chapter on taking such photographs, many of the examples given convincing by even 2006 standards.
 
Timble2 said:
Dead easy to fake with a double exposure, as to why it's person shaped it's because that's the shape of the person in a long cloak or a statue or whatever that they used as the basis of the ghost.
Click to expand...

Yes, but why would two PROFESSIONAL society photographers working with the nobility have DONE it? They had absolutely nothing to gain and MUCH to lose.
 
Because they WERE 'professional' photographers who knew how to do it, and the 'nobility' are famously not the brightest bulbs in the box. :lol:

Faking a photo of a well-known ghost would be a perfect trick to play on an English aristocrat. I'd do it. :D

No, I wouldn't, because I couldn't bring myself to appear sycophantic enough. ;)
 
escargot1 said:
Because they WERE 'professional' photographers who knew how to do it, and the 'nobility' are famously not the brightest bulbs in the box. :lol: Faking a photo of a well-known ghost would be a perfect trick to play on an English aristocrat. I'd do it. :D
Click to expand...

But would you want to scam the nobility if photographing them and their homes was your bread-and-butter? That sounds extremely counter-productive to me. It's almost masochistic.
 
Yup. The nobs love their ghosts. Producing a 'genuine spirit photograph' for them would be extremely flattering. And it wouldn't enter their heads that a mere commoner was daring to take the mick. :lol:
 
We have 3 alternative explanations -

1. A real ghost
2. A clever fake.
3. A misinterpreted photograph.

We have experienced photographers taking the picture, a location with a strong previous history of haunting, (incidentally by a named aristicratic lady) and plenty of people who want to believe.

The photo is normally cropped so as not to show other anomalies, which to most viewers seem to give the game away as some kind of double exposure. The light is changed too, giving a different impression from the original.

All in all, I'm in favour of Option 2.
 
escargot1 said:
3. A misinterpreted photograph.
Click to expand...

I've given considerable thought to this one myself - might the image have been some really unusual solar reflection through a window? Perhaps a reflection of a piece of garden statuary (see last paragraph below).

Another possibility I've never seen mentioned - might the masters of Raynham Hall have REQUESTED a "nice ghost photo" from the photographers?

And as I mentioned here earlier (and also on other Fortean/Paranormal lists) there's a remarkable similarity between the ghost image and standard garden statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary, right down to the folds in the robes. Also the height's about the same.
 
Eponastill said:
I suppose you've all been reading about this in the latest Fortean Times? I didn't find some of the debunking terribly convincing though - the stuff about the disjointed staircase for example. Surely the staircase DOES get wider at the bottom? And they were saying the painting on the left was repeated below itself. But this doesn't ring true either to me. In any case, everything would be disjointed or repeated, which it clearlly isn't. Also they were talking about each stair being doubled at the top. Which I couldn't see at all.
Does the staircase still exist? I've got a funny feeling it doesn't, but I might be wrong.
Click to expand...
No, lots of people had trouble with that! Its also discussed on the FT 215 thread
 
Uncropped Photo

Can some member of the congregation kindly supply a link to a nice, large JPEG or GIF of the UNCROPPED photograph?
 
I can't remember if I have seen one on the 'net or elsewhere but there is one in the long article on it in the FT. If all else fails, a scan of that would do.

The difference is quite striking. ;)

As to the nobs asking the photographers to produce a juicy ghost-shot - no, never in a million years. An English aristocrat, dishonest? Where's my horsewhip? :shock:

The alternative is that the said aristicratic is stupid. Lying or thick - hmmm. Difficult call. :lol:
 
I've had a quick look on the web and this is the best copy of the photo that I can find: -

http://www.ghosts.org/ghpics/brown2.gif

It's plain that the 'double-exposed painting' which helped form the argument in the recent FT article is in fact part of a landing halfway down the stairs...
 
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