Near Hartley Wintney, in Hampshire is Bramshill House, a very fine Jacobean mansion. However the site was home to several earlier buildings, dating back at least as far as Norman times. Naturally such an old place has more than a few ghosts. But it is home to a once famous Christmas tale of terror too - the story of The Mistletoe Bough. In Victorian times, the tale was turned into verse, and a reading or recitation was a popular party piece at Yuletide gatherings. According to legend, the events of the Mistletoe Bough enfolded thus.
At Bramshill House, Lord Lovell was preparing to marry a young bride, a relation of Sir John Cope. And the wedding was to take place at Christmastime. At the wedding celebrations, the mistletoe that was hung up everywhere inspired a game of hide and seek, in which the bride would hide and whichever young man who found her could claim a kiss.
She chose to hide inside a carved chest. However what she didn't know was that the chest could only be opened from outside. The bride could not get out, and while the guests sought high and low, no one thought to look in the old carved chest. They did not find her - it was as if she had vanished into thin air.
It was some fifty years later that a now old Lord Lovell finally came across the old forgotten chest, and found inside a mouldering corpse dressed in white and clutching a sprig of mistletoe...
And that is where the traditional telling of the tale ends. However at Bramshill Hall, many folks down the years have reported seeing the ghostly form of a girl in white, carrying a sprig of mistletoe. Most frequently she has been seen in what are now administrative rooms, in particular the Fleur de Lys Room, but she has been sighted in several different locations in the house.
And aside from being spotted by many folks over the years, the woman in white has been seen by royalty too. For in the late 1940s, the Romanian royal family were staying at Bramshill. And both the family and their staff reported seeing the ghost of a beautiful girl in a white, old-fashioned dress. In fact the queen twice asked for her children to sleep in a different room because they were disturbed by a ‘woman in a white' who ran through their room. Later an exorcism was performed here at the request of King Michael; he was worried by his children asking when the 'White Lady’ was going to return to play with them.
However, it seems that the ritual was not a success as the white lady has continued to be seen to this very day…
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