Prince Louis' former nursery at Kensington Palace was allegedly haunted by the ghost of "Peter the Wild Boy", it has been claimed. While the Prince and Princess of Wales moved their family out of Apartment 1A in 2022, relocating to Adelaide Cottage on the Windsor Estate before heading to Forest Lodge in November 2025, their former London base holds a deeply spooky history.
The mysterious figure behind the legend
Among the grand halls of the historic palace, the most unexpected spectre said to roam the corridors is Peter, a mysterious figure who is rumoured to have lingered in the young royal's former bedroom. Brought to Britain from Hanover by King George I in 1726, Peter fascinated the monarch with his feral lifestyle in the woods and his inability to speak.
It has been widely believed the boy suffered from the rare genetic condition Pitt-Hopkins syndrome. Despite George's daughter-in-law Caroline of Ansbach's – who was then-Princess of Wales – deep concern for his wellbeing, all desperate attempts to teach him how to speak or write were unsuccessful.
A portrait and a lingering spirit
Today, a striking portrait of Peter at George I's court still hangs in the royal residence. And while he lived to the age of 70 before being laid to rest at St Mary's Church in Northchurch near Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, his spirit is rumoured to have never left the palace grounds.
But Peter is far from the only terrifying phantom lurking within Kensington Palace. Back in the 1970s, Princess Margaret's housekeeper was left shaken after spotting a mysterious woman dressed in Regency-style clothing inside the apartment. In the chilling encounter, the housekeeper and the royal butler were jolted awake in the dead of night by a blood-curdling scream – despite being completely alone in the building at the time.
Other royal ghosts reported
Terrified guards and residents have long reported spine-tingling sightings across the estate, including the ghosts of Queen Caroline and Queen Victoria's aunt, Princess Sophia, who has been spotted eerily working at a spinning wheel. Even King George II is said to haunt the royal residence to this day. The grief-stricken monarch's spirit is reportedly heard lamenting his lost soldiers from the Seven Years' War, desperately crying out into the empty halls: "Why won't they come?"
