The stately edifice of Hampton Court Palace houses more than its fair share of ghostly tales and supernatural occurrences, but none is more well-known than the hapless Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of King Henry VIII. According to the narrative, her spectral figure has been frequently observed in what is now commonly referred to as the ‘Haunted Gallery’. The tale harks back to the year 1541, when the young queen’s infidelity was exposed to the King. She was arrested and confined to her lodgings within the Palace awaiting a trial that, given Henry’s temperament, would likely end in her execution. Overpowered by desperation and helpless terror, Catherine escaped her guards and ran down the lengthy gallery towards the chapel where Henry was attending the mass, presumably hoping to plead for her life. Her pleas fell on deaf ears, as guards forcibly dragged her back to her rooms; the distraught queen was later executed at the Tower of London in February 1542. Ever since her hapless death, it is said that her ghostly apparition continues to replay that frantic run and screams echoing eerily along the gallery, nicknamed ‘The Haunted Gallery’ by palace staff. Witness accounts often describe a white, distraught figure followed by the chilling screams of a young woman. In 1999, during two separate tours, two female visitors fainted exactly at the same spot in the gallery; a rather spooky coincidence that continues to ensure Catherine Howard’s ghost remains among England’s most infamous spectral presences.