Kings, Monks and a Phantom Spinning Wheel Said to Roam Britain's Royal Residences

WINDSOR, ENGLAND — Britain's royal residences are said to house a larger company than the Royal Family alone, according to a Halloween-season roundup in The Mirror, which gathers accounts from staff and visitors of ghostly figures, footsteps and gunshots in empty rooms.

At Windsor Castle, described as the oldest occupied castle in the world, apparitions of Henry VIII, George III and Elizabeth I have reportedly been seen. Citing Visit Britain, the article says Elizabeth I's footsteps are heard on the bare floorboards of the library before she appears. Henry VIII is said to hobble through the deanery cloisters, and George III reportedly was seen at a window days after his death in 1820.

At Buckingham Palace, which dates to 1703 and stands on land once occupied by a monastery, rumour holds that a monk in a brown cowl prowls at night. Staff, according to My London, have on numerous occasions reported a single gunshot in the office of Major John Gwynn, private secretary to Edward VII.

The London residence once home to the Prince and Princess of Wales is said to be haunted by Princess Sophia, an aunt of Queen Victoria, and by Peter the Wild Boy, reportedly in the nursery. Staff have claimed to hear a spinning wheel, a nod to Sophia's skill as a seamstress. King George II is said to still ask a question he allegedly uttered at his death in 1760, while gazing from a window.

At Sandringham, the biographer Kenneth Rose recorded in his diary that a local parson held a little service in a downstairs bedroom after servants complained of a haunting. The parson, he wrote, felt "some sort of restlessness" in one room. At Balmoral, a kilted figure is said to be John Brown, Queen Victoria's servant, seen in a corridor.