The Naked Lady of Houghton Hall

Houghton Hall had been derelict

Since the Roundheads came and went,

They said that it couldn’t be restored

No matter how much you spent,

But I loved that place and its spacious grounds

So I went against advice,

I paid a pittance and thought I’d get

A part of it looking nice.

 

It still had the stately central stair,

It still had the marble floors,

It needed a bit of the lead replaced

But still had the cedar doors.

The windows needed a scrub and clean

Were original pebble glass,

It soon was done though my Bank was lean

And I moved right in, at last.

 

There wasn’t much furniture at first

To muffle its ancient walls,

My footsteps echoed around the floors

Of its entry, rooms and halls,

It was only then that I saw her walk

In the gloom of a winter’s night,

And found I’d bought, along with the Hall

A ghostly woman in white!

 

She glided along the balustrade

Came steadily down the stair,

I stood well back in the entryway

Pretended I wasn’t there.

Then she stopped and grabbed at the bannister

And let out a dreadful wail,

It seemed to swell from the hounds of hell

And I felt myself grow pale.

 

She seemed to fade on the stairway there

And her wailing went as well,

The hair stood up on the back of my neck

For I felt she’d come from hell.

So I asked around with the village folk

If they knew, they said they might,

And for a bribe of a drink or two

Described the woman in white.

 

It seems she had been Lord Houghton’s bride

When the Roundheads came to call,

And Ireton’s men had shot the Lord,

He told them to kill them all.

She died on the central stairway there

She died from a single shot,

While the Roundheads plundered the ancient hall

With her corpse left there to rot.

 

I felt for her, yes, I really did

It was such a gory tale,

But it got too much when at night I hid

For she came each night to wail.

My eyes were haggard, I couldn’t sleep

I was feeling so uptight,

And then I came across the cupboard

That clothed the woman in white.

 

The cupboard stood in an upstairs room

That I hadn’t quite restored,

I hadn’t bothered for in the gloom

The damp had swollen the door,

And in a drawer was a pile of clothes

So old, that she kept for best,

And there preserved with a bullet hole

Was the very same woman’s dress.

 

I took the dress and I hid it well,

Then waited for her that night,

Till she came stumbling down the stair,

She did, the woman in white.

But there was no sign of the dress on her

Just camiknickers in silk,

And pain and sadness were in her wail

Though her skin was white as milk.

 

A week went by and she still came down

That stairway to keen and wail,

So I went back with my sleepless frown

And I hid it, without fail,

The camiknickers, the stockings, shoes

And I left that cupboard bare,

Invited a crowd from the local hunt

To come, to stand and stare.

 

And she came just once on that fateful night

She was naked and serene,

Then she saw us all in the entryway

And the woman stood and screamed.

If you need to get rid of a troublesome ghost

You must cause some slight mishap,

She never came back down the stairs again

Once we all just stood, and clapped.

 

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[Barbz]

The loveliness of woman, kept this ghost alive, until you found the bullet hole, she died, did not survive. Her wailings and her vision, a sight for folks to see, kept his dream alive, for now he was ghost-free. Barbz