Sandringham House in Norfolk was the setting for a "little service" in 2000 after staff refused to enter one of its rooms because they believed it was haunted. The service was attended by the late Queen Elizabeth II, the Queen Mother and Lady-in-Waiting Prue Penn, and was conducted by a local pastor.
The revelation came from the diaries of the late society columnist Kenneth Rose, which were published after his death. Rose wrote that the service took place in one of the downstairs bedrooms of the 18th-century mansion, a room that had been used by King George VI, the late Queen's father, before his death in 1952.
Service to bring tranquillity
Sharing the account with the Daily Mail, Rose wrote: "Prue Penn [the Queen Mother's lady-in-waiting] tells me that at Sandringham in the summer, the Queen invited her to attend a little service in one of its rooms conducted by the local parson. The only other person present was the Queen Mother."
He added: "Some of the servants had complained that the room was haunted and did not want to work in it. The parson walked from room to room and did indeed feel some sort of restlessness in one of them. This the Queen Mother identified as a ground-floor room which had been turned into a bedroom for George VI during his last months."
Rose described the service as "not exactly of exorcism, which is the driving out of an evil spirit, but of bringing tranquillity." The congregation of three took Holy Communion, and special prayers were said for the repose of the King's soul in the room in which he died. He also noted that the oppressive atmosphere may have been because of Princess Diana, as he "had known such things before when someone died a violent death."
Other reported incidents at the estate
King Charles reportedly grew nervous while looking at some paintings at the estate in the mid-1980s. A courtier said in 2011: "Everyone believes there are ghosts because so many have experienced them, including Prince Charles. There are old parts of the house where nobody wants to go or be alone."
A source also revealed: "After crying, 'Oh heck!', the Prince grabbed the first print and got out as quickly as he could. He was petrified. There have been lots of incidents in the library. There is an old clock in there and the hands move by themselves. There is a smaller part of the library where a servant once had a kip, only to be woken by books flying from the shelves."
Footman Shaun Croasdale also reportedly fled the cellar screaming in 1996, after believing he saw the ghost of the Queen's favourite servant, Tony Jarred, who had died a year earlier.
