C1 and the supernatural: fact or fiction?

Olivia M (L6)

C1 is among one of the most historic buildings on the Marlborough College campus. It was owned by the prestigious Seymour family before becoming an Inn. Then in 1843, when the school was founded, it became part of our campus.

It was a spring morning, and the sun was flooding through the windows of the building. A man was leaving the house to go to work and to take a shortcut he left through the basement. He was walking along the corridor and approached a door with a glass window (door A in the diagram). In order to leave, he would need to pass through this door and exit through the opposite door (door C). However, when approaching door A, through the glass, he saw a white shrouded figure. The figure was moving across the hall and having come through door B, it then exited through door D. It was walking as though the floor was a meter below, so the figure could only be seen from the knees up.

Not processing what he had seen, he continued on his path and entered the small hall which all four doors (A, B, C and D) connected onto. A moment later he realised that both doors B and D were locked and that it would have been logically impossible for someone to pass through them unless they had the keys, however he looked after the keys and knew that they were upstairs. Confused, he called out to see if anyone was there, but he received no reply. He carried on and left through door C which led outside. Puzzled by what he had just encountered he went round the corner and looked in the window of the room which door D led to. There was nobody inside. So, what had he seen?

Due to the bright sunny morning, he thought maybe he had been mistaken and the figure he saw was in fact his reflection in the sunny windows. So, the next day, at the same time and when the sun was in the same place he went back to the place where this incident occurred to see if it could have been his reflection. He concluded that he must have seen something as when he tested it out, his reflection moved in the opposite direction to that which the figure had moved in.

Now suspecting that the shrouded figure he saw must have been a ghost and having read the archived accounts, he assumed it must have been the notorious White Lady. A ghost which was typically known to haunt the ground floor and basement and had been spotted on several occasions. The fact that this figure had appeared to be seen from the knees up, as if the floor was a meter below, did make sense as over time the structure of the house had moved and changed, therefore the floor levels would have differed between the time of this story and the time when the suspected ghost would have been alive. Before this encounter, if asked whether he believed in ghosts the man would have always replied with a definite no. Now his answer has changed.

There are some theories as to why ghosts might exist. People may believe in the supernatural due to the theory that when a person dies their spirit remains with us and it may then take on the form of a ghost. The reason people would use to say that there is no such thing as ghosts is that there is no scientific evidence for their existence, and many would put sightings down to wishful thinking or our minds playing tricks on us. So, is this sighting of a ghost fact or fiction? You decide.