Creature Feature Friday: The Tulip Staircase Ghost
Perhaps one of the most inexplicable ghost photographs that has not yet been debunked, the Tulip Stair Ghost is the focus of our Creature Feature Friday!
Image of Hardy’s original photo from Burials and Beyond.
1) While vacationing in 1966, the Reverend Ralph Hardy took the now-famous photo of the Tulip Staircase Ghost in the Queen's House section of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England. Hardy developed his pictures back home in British Columbia and realized that, in taking a photo of the Tulip Staircase, he had captured a ghostly apparition as well!
2) The Hardy family immediately let The Ghost Club back in England examine the photograph, and it went on to be scrutinized by many experts, including the Kodak Film Company. Neither Kodak nor the Ghost Club could conclude the picture had been faked or tampered with in any way.
3) The Tulip Staircase Ghost photo was snapped with a Zeiss Ikon Contina with Kodachrome 35mm color film, in natural daylight and without the use of a flash. Hardy accounted for every photo on that particular roll of film, and neither before or after the ghost photo was there any indication of another figure or form that could account for the sudden ghostly visage.
Image from richard-howard.com.
4) The Queen’s House, which encloses the Tulip Staircase, was designed by Inigo Jones and built between 1616 and 1635. Originally intended to be the residence of Queen Anne of Denmark, wife of King James I, construction was halted in 1617 after Anne’s death. In 1629, King Charles I commissioned the house to be completed for his wife Henrietta. Unfortunately civil war forced Henrietta to flee after moving in, and Charles I was eventually executed. Henrietta returned to the Queen’s House from around 1660 to 1662. In 1805, the house was given to a charity for orphans of seamen, and in 1934 it became a museum. The Queen’s House is noteworthy because it was the first classical building to be constructed in Britain, and the Tulip stairs themselves are also most likely the country’s first self-supporting spiral stairs.
5) Although the Tulip Staircase Ghost is the most famous of paranormal activities captured at the Queen’s House, it is not the only story of a haunting inhabitant. Over the centuries visitors have reported hearing phantom footsteps, slamming doors, and the choral chanting of children’s voices. Someone once witnessed a pale woman mopping up blood at the bottom the steps, which is allegedly the apparition of a maid who fell to her death down the Tulip Stairs over 300 years ago. In 2002, a gallery assistant and two colleagues reported seeing a woman in a whitish crinoline dress “glide across the balcony, and pass through the wall of the west balcony.”
Although the identity of the Tulip Staircase Ghost may never be known, the Queen’s House certainly sounds like a very haunted one!
For another ghostly Creature Feature, check out Creature Feature Friday: The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall!
