ukroyal

Many of Britain's most famous cyclical ghosts are of former monarchs or consorts who seem unwilling, or unable, to
relinquish the present for the past. A cyclical apparition is a recurring phenomenon, triggered by certain environmental
conditions. At least four are said to haunt various parts of Windsor Castle- Henry VIII in the deanery, Elizabeth I in the
library, Charles I in the Canon's House, and George III in the room where he was restricted during his periods of madness.
Sightings of George III have also been reported from Kensington Palace, where the specter of his predecessor, George II
who died here, is sometimes seen gazing at the weather vane. Hampton Court is home to the spirits of three of Henry
VIII's six wives- Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, who carries a lighted taper as she walks from the Queen's Apartments, and
Catherine Howard, giving voice to terror-stricken shrieks.

Anne Boleyn's ghost is either fond of travelling or has a number of replicates because she has been reported elsewhere
too. A brightly illuminated, gliding version has been spied on Tower Hill, she was imprisoned in the Tower of London
before her executions. Each year on the anniversary of her execution (May 19th), she appears at Blicking Hall in Norfolk
where she lived for a time as a child, but her arrival foretells her ultimate doom, for she is headless, her head in her lap,
inside a coach drawn by four headless horses. The tower of London was a prison to other noble personages down
through the centuries, and this is reflected in the assortment of apparitions reported there, including Henry VI, the two
Princes in the Tower (Edward V and his brother) and Lady Jane Grey. A very different gray lady, believed to be the ghost
of Mary I, who overthrew Lady Jane, frequents the tapestry room of Sawston Hall in Cambridgeshire; and Mary's mother,
Catherine of Aragon, lives on in Kimbolton Castle, Huntingdon, where she died in 1536.

A more recent member of Britain's ghostly royal family is George IV, who acted as Prince Regent during George III's
periods of insanity. He is sometimes seen walking along one or other of two underground passages linking the Brighton
Pavilion and the Dome concert hall, which was a stable when he was alive. At the other end of the royal time scale is
William II, killed while hunting in the New Forest in 1100, but still seen today on the Cadnam to Romsey road, the route
taken by the cart carrying his dead body all those years ago.

Perhaps the most astonishing, and distant, member of Britain's royalty to linger in a contemporary limbo of the lost,
however, is none other than Boadicea (Boudicca), Queen of the Iceni, who committed suicide during the first century AD
rather than be captured by the Romans. The many centuries that have passed since then have created a Britain
immeasurably different from the one she knew, but she has still not abandoned it, for a spectacular apparition of this
valiant warrior queen riding her chariot has occasionally been sighted even in modern times, emerging from mist near
Ermine Street, a Roman road in Lincolnshire.