Bramshill House is one of the places reputed to be the original site of the Mistletoe Bough (see Marwell Hall, Hampshire). In this famous legend the bride, at a wedding celebration or a Christmas party depending on the version you subscribe to, hides in the chest, which cannot be opened from the inside during a game of hide-and-seek. She was not discovered until too late, having died from asphyxiation. Previous owners reported that the ‘Flower-de-Luce’ Room was haunted by a girl in a bridal dress. The mistletoe-bough chest in question is displayed in the Bramshill’s reception hall, and the apparition has been reported there also.

 

Other apparitions are said to include a Grey Lady, a ‘Green Man’, a ‘young man’s ghost... in tennis gear and carrying a racket’ believed to be the son of the last Lord Brocket; an old man with a long beard; a woman from the days of Queen Anne; a ghost in a tight bodice and a full skirt; an invisible presence of a child’s small hand touches visitors; ghostly forms that float two feet above the floor level; a gardener who drowned in a lake in the north-west side has been witnessed; dogs smell or sense something in the gardens; the figure of a man in a ‘grey flannel suit on the path outside, walking towards the mansion’; and a ‘mysterious woman in white’ has been seen on the terrace.

 

According to a number of sources there are other stories of odd occurrences in the house. Little wonder that Bramshill is known as the ‘most haunted house in Hampshire’.