A very stately Halloween horror story: Princess Margaret’s lady-in-waiting reveals how a ghost tormented by her husband haunted her childhood home Holkham Hall and is the inspiration for her new murder-mystery

 Lady Anne Glenconner — friend and confidante of Princess Margaret and best-selling author — grew up at Holkham Hall in Norfolk where the family and their staff lived cheek-by-jowl with a very persistent ghost. 

Here, on the eve of Halloween, in a spine-tingling account, she explains how the spectral intruder became the star of her latest murder-mystery...

When I look back on my childhood at Holkham — a colossal Palladian mansion on the north Norfolk coast with a huge, imposing Marble Hall at its centre, ornate state rooms and four enormous wings — I have many fond memories.

We played hide-and-seek and rode our ponies and our bicycles around the 3,000 acres of grounds within the walls of the park. 

I adored helping my beloved grandfather look after some of the family treasures, including the Codex Leicester, a priceless manuscript written by Leonardo da Vinci himself.

But I also have some darker memories — of my sister Carey waking up screaming night after night, haunted repeatedly by the ghost of a young woman who had suffered terribly when she lived at the Hall.

We first came across the ghost shortly after we moved into the Family Wing in 1948, having previously lived in a nearby house.

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Lady Anne Glenconner (pictured) — friend of Princess Margaret — grew up at Holkham Hall in Norfolk where the family and their staff lived with a very persistent ghost

My family consisted of my father, Viscount Coke, who became the 5th Earl of Leicester on the death of my grandfather the following year; my glamorous mother; my sisters Carey, 14, and Sarah, four, and me, then aged 16.

Carey's bedroom was next to mine so I would regularly hear her scream out in terror. My mother would rush from her own room to comfort her, but Carey was inconsolable, crying and shaking.

This went on for at least a year. At first my mother assumed Carey was simply having nightmares, but my sister explained that she was being woken up by a lady dressed in old-fashioned clothes.

And when she told my parents more details of the lady's appearance, they realised she was describing Lady Mary Coke, nicknamed 'The White Cat' for her fair hair, pale skin and fierce eyes.

Two centuries earlier, Lady Mary had been kept as a virtual prisoner by her husband and his family — in what was now Carey's bedroom. She was long reputed to haunt the house, but no one had warned my sister.