After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - The Ghost of Anne Boleyn

Episode Date: December 7, 2023

We talk the ghost of Anne Boleyn, Queen of England before Henry VIII chopped off her head, with the marvellous Tracy Borman.Where can Anne Boleyn's ghost be seen? What form does it take? And why does she haunt us so? Get ready for carriages pulled by headless horses, spooky palaces, a weird floating cylinder thing...and a single moment in history that has haunted England, and now Britain's, imagination for hundreds of years.Tracy's new book "Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I: The Mother and Daughter Who Changed History" is out now.Edited by Tom Delargy, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code AFTERDARK sign up now for your 14-day free trial http://access.historyhit.com/checkout/subscribe/purchase?code=afterdark&plan=monthly

Wendy's has a new breakfast deal. Mix and match two items of your choice for only $4. Breakfast wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small seasoned potatoes or small hot coffee. Choose two for $4 at Wendy's. Available for a limited time at participating Wendy's in Canada. Taxes extra. On a dark October night in 1817, Edmund Lenthal Swift, a poet, lawyer and master of the jewel office,

was dining with his family in what had once been the rooms occupied by Henry VIII's ill-fated wife, Anne Boleyn, in the Tower of London. The gentlemanly Edmund was in the act of offering a glass of wine and water to his wife when she paused and exclaimed, good God, what is that? A cylindrical figure like a glass tube had appeared hovering between the ceiling and the table. Its contents, wrote Swift afterwards, seemed to be a dense fluid, white and pale azure, like the gathering of a summer cloud, and incessantly rolling and mingling within the cylinder. This ghostly object moved slowly up the table, before pausing over his wife's shoulder. She screamed out, oh Christ, it has seized me!

At that, the gallant Edmund slammed his chair back against the wall and rushed upstairs to warn his children's nurse. The cylindrical spirit, whatever or whoever it was, passed through the wall and disappeared. Hello and welcome to After Dark, Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. My name is Dr Anthony Delaney. And I'm Dr Maddy Pelling. And they say that if there are unresolved questions around somebody's death, then their spirit can linger. So it should come as no surprise that Anne Boleyn has become one of our most preeminent ghosts.

And today we're exploring Anne's ghosts and the places that she haunts in the company of none other than Dr. Tracey Borman. And as you probably know, if you're listening to After Dark, Tracey is the acclaimed author and historian whose new book, Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth I, The Mother and Daughter Who Changed History, is out now. And we have some copies littered around. So if you see that on a bookshelf, go and get yourself a copy. Tracey, first of all, welcome to After Dark.

We're absolutely delighted to have you. Thank you. Now, we know that part of your job is as a curator at Historic Royal Palaces, as well as being an author of fantastic books. In that capacity, spending time in those historic buildings, some of which were familiar to Anne, have you ever seen a Tudor ghost? a Tudor ghost? Not seen. I have had one ghostly experience, potentially ghostly experience, who knows, in my, what is it now, 15 years of working at historic royal palaces. Now, fittingly enough, I was on a ghost tour when this happened and I was walking along, I'm not making this up, the Haunted Gallery at Hampton Court. This is a little too fitting.

A bit too convenient. I'm not plugging our ghost tools, I promise. But the Haunted Gallery is named after Henry VIII's fifth wife, Catherine Howard, whose unquiet spirit is said to run screaming along this stretch of the palace. Regardless of whether she does or doesn't, there have been more sightings, faintings along this corridor than anywhere else, either at Hampton Court or any of the other palaces. Now, I got halfway along the haunted gallery and the lights were out and all of a sudden it was as if I'd stepped into a deep freeze. The temperature plummeted and I looked around me for a source of draft, you know, window, door, nothing, solid wall. And then just as suddenly the temperature went back

up again. And I scarpered back along the corridor to rejoin my group. And the tour leader saw the look on my face and saw how pale I'd gone. He said, did something happen there? And what I described, he said, yeah, basically so many people have said the same. On that single point, they can't find a source for such a dramatic fall in temperature. But I keep an open mind. I would love to see a ghost. Never have. Yeah, it definitely spooked me. The idea that history is somehow proximate to us,

that it's just there beyond some kind of veil. I mean, it's a very tantalising idea, isn't it? I think we all would like to see it go. Exactly. I love the idea that people leave something of themselves, that walls have some kind of memory, that some impression of the person of the event lives on. Of course, it defies science. And I deal with a lot of sceptics in my job, and I'm sure everything

can really be explained. But I just love the prospect that some things can't. One of the things that makes us most jealous about your job, Tracy, is that you get to spend an awful lot of time in some incredibly world-famous historic sites. So if you don't mind, let's take listeners back to the 19th of May, 1536. And we're at the Tower of London. What was happening on that day, for listeners who might not know, that would cause potentially this haunting that Maddy recounted at the top of the episode? Yes, and what a great story that was. So at nine o'clock in the morning on the 19th of May, 1536, Anne Boleyn, the famous, infamous second wife of Henry VIII, was led from her apartments

inside the tower, the short walk to the scaffold that had been built for her execution. She had been condemned for adultery and treason. And she was led there. She mounted the steps of the scaffold and a great crowd had gathered. It was supposed to be a private execution, but the doors of the tower had been left open and a great crowd had gathered, about thousand people to witness the final moments of Anne Boleyn. And she delivered a speech praising Henry VIII, her husband, who had sent her to her death. And then she knelt and started to pray. And the swordsman whom Henry had thoughtfully sent for from Calais to dispatch his second wife, swung the sword once above his head to gain purchase and then decapitated Anne with a single stroke. And her body was bundled into an old arrow chest. They apparently hadn't thought to get a coffin.

I think probably nobody expected Henry to go through with this. And she was buried without ceremony three hours later in the chapel of St. Peter Advincula, which is the tower chapel. And there she lies to this day. It's such a moment of real trauma. Trauma, obviously, for Anne to have to go through that and to meet her end in that way. But trauma for England, for the political situation in that moment, this idea that there were people thinking, you know, there would be maybe a last minute reprieve for Anne and that she would get away. Am I right in thinking that she certainly hoped for that herself and she walked onto that scuffle thinking any moment now, Henry will change his mind? Yes. I firmly believe nobody thought he would go through with this. That's why there were lots of elements that went wrong, the leaving open the tower doors,

the fact they hadn't got a coffin. And you're quite right, Maddy, that as Anne was walking to the scaffold, she was seen to keep looking over her shoulder as if, you know, where's this messenger, with my pardon, from the king. And I think it's likely that the day before her execution, the king. And I think it's likely that the day before her execution, so we know that Henry had sent Archbishop Cranmer to persuade Anne to agree to an annulment. Why would she? I think Henry offered her her life. So, you know, if you agree to this, I will spare you. We don't know for sure, but I certainly think Anne was expecting that this was just some terrible lesson she was being taught and she would be reprieved. It says something about who she was as a person and that she was so dignified, or at least I'm sure that she was in reality completely terrified and panicking inside, but that she was able to present herself in this way and to give herself a voice and a platform when women in this era, I mean, of course, she's the Queen of England. So she has a platform in a way that other women don't, but she is living and meets

her death in an era when women don't have that much power and that much control over their own lives and their own voices. And I wonder if that's part of the reason why we have this cultural idea of her ghost. And we're going to talk about some of the locations that she supposedly appears in. But I think there's something there about her enduring beyond her death and that she's so powerful that we still feel these traces of her today. And of course, that's something that really comes in. I mean, possibly, you know, in the days after her death that people are so interested in that moment and that trauma. But certainly by the 19th century, there's a real interest in, I suppose you could call it sort of

Tudor horror, really, in the guts and gore of the period and in these political and emotional machinations that are going on around Henry and his wives. So the story that we told at the beginning is Edmund Lenthal Swift, who I think is the nephew of Jonathan Swift, the 18th century poet, I think. At the time, he's serving as the master of the jewel office at the Tower, and he and his family see the ghost of Anne, supposedly, or this cylindrical form that they take to be her. Which is pretty random, right? A little bit. I was waiting for the Anne Boleyn connection as you were telling the story,

Maddy. I was like, Where is she going to appear? I mean, it's hardly convincing, is it? You know, it does take place in her room, supposedly. And I think that's the thing that has linked this story to Anne. And I know that Edmund Swift was so terrified of this encounter that he actually had extra guards posted at his room. He needs to calm down. I mean, yeah, he kind of does. That was a cylinder appeared and he's like, well, I need extra guards.

I mean, if a cylinder appeared right now. Well, I wouldn't go out and get myself a bodyguard, but either way, I would be frightened. Yeah, I don't know what he thought the guards would do. But I wonder, Tracey, if you can maybe speculate a little bit about why in the 19th century and really until today, why are we so obsessed with Tudor history? I'm sure as an author who's written so extensively about the Tudor period, you know, you can really attest to this, that there is a really enduring interest in this period and in Anne in particular. Why is that? There is, there is. It's interesting that this really gets going

during the Victorian period. Although I would argue that the sort of Anne Boleyn cult, the cult of Anne Boleyn starts in the reign of her daughter, Elizabeth, who really focuses so much on rehabilitating her mother, putting her back to the place she deserves in history as this quite extraordinary woman, visionary queen. But the Victorians, they really latched onto this and Anne just caught their imagination. I think some of that might have to do with a particular author, historian from the Victorian period, Agnes Strickland, who wrote her multi-volume

Lives of the Queens of England. And she spent a lot of time on Anne Boleyn and the other Tudor queens as well. And it was a hugely popular work. And actually, we see most of the ghost stories associated not just with Anne, but the other six queens. In fact, the other palace ghosts generally, we can't trace them much further back than the Victorian period. This is when it really gets going. They have this love of the dark world beyond what may be seen. But Anne Boleyn, it's interesting that she caught the imagination of the Victorians because I think why we love her today is she's so relatable. She seems so modern. She came from a world dominated by men, where women were literally seen as inferior in every single respect. But Anne does not fit that mould.

She has ideas. She's outspoken. She's feisty. And she doesn't conform. And ultimately, that's a big part of why she falls, quite apart from not giving Henry the son. But the Victorians loved that too. And I guess that was an age they had a woman on the throne. So even though we see the Victorians as very conventional and kind of buttoned up,

I guess it chimed with them. It's interesting to me that it's the 19th century and particularly the Victorians who have the majority of these encounters with Anne Boleyn's ghost. I think there's another story from the tower specifically. And I guess we can talk about the tower as this sort of, I suppose,

a site of cultural memory and imagination more broadly. But there's a story of one of the guardsmen there who comes around a corner one night, you know, on duty. And he sees the ghost of, well, who he takes to be Anne Boleyn, a headless female figure moving towards him. And he readies his bayonet and challenges it. And when the figure just continues to come towards him and actually moves through him, he tries to bayonet it and he faints when he can't do that and i think actually he's found then passed out on duty which uh i think probably would um no it was a ghost maddie it was a ghost yeah i think it's a very good excuse he definitely hasn't been drinking and it definitely wasn't anything normal it was it had to have been a ghost yeah yeah no i agree i think

it's a very reasonable excuse for being asleep on duty. But there's something there about people maybe wanting to see these things, expecting to see them. And I suppose the Tower in particular, because it's a site that is almost quite literally soaked in the blood of so many really formative figures of British history. It's so atmospheric. I've spent a lot of time at the Tower after dark. Whether or not you believe in ghosts, it has a fairly unique atmosphere and you can almost sort of breathe in the history. For me, it's a huge privilege just walking the footsteps of Anne Boleyn,

of the other people who were so strongly associated with the Tower. And just going back to the Victorians, they had a fascination with the Tower of London in particular. This is when it really enters its heyday as a tourist attraction. I love the fact the Victorians did love the Tower, but for them it wasn't quite medieval enough. So they sort of re-medievalised the tower, pulling down 13th century walls and rebuilding them as they thought they should be. And so actually, a lot of the tower that we see today was the construct of the Victorians. Do you know, I didn't know that. It's so interesting that it gets a sort of theme park treatment almost. Yes, yes.

Really interesting. And if you go to the tower today, and I don't know if I should admit this, and you see the memorial to Anne Boleyn and the other people executed inside the tower, because there aren't many of those. There's only, I think, about 11 people. The rest were on Tower Hill, the side of the tube station. That memorial for Anne Boleyn is in the wrong place. She wasn't executed on Tower Green. She was executed right outside where you go and see the crown jewels, in between the jewel house and the White Tower. You won't see any memorial,

any trace, but that actually was the spot. So listeners, yes, next time you're at the tower, go to just beneath the clock where you go in to see the crown jewels. That was the side. And the queue for a photograph there will be shorter. Yes, exactly. It's interesting as well that you were talking earlier about elements of Anne Boleyn's personality or her archive that appeals to people today. And it got me thinking as you were speaking

about the elements of her personality that might have specifically appealed to Victorians, even though some of her attributes may seem counter-Victorian almost. But I suppose she was a dedicated wife in many ways, and that would have appealed. It's just interesting to think about how multifaceted she is and so can endure over these generations.

And she shapeshifts throughout time. We make her what we need her to be. She is a mirror to our own society, I think. Yes, she is. So I think you're absolutely right in that she would have been celebrated as a wife. And that final speech of hers, full of praise for the man who's putting her to death.

By the way, I think that's all for Elizabeth. Anne wants Henry to look kindly on those she leaves behind. And you see this with scaffold speeches. People don't tend to criticise the monarch. But the Victorians, I think, as well, admired Anne as a mother. I think they admired her piety because she was described in Elizabeth's reign as the root of the Reformation. And would Henry have even gone down the path of reform

had it not been for Anne Boleyn? And, of course, the Victorian period was a very God-fearing period as well. So we continue to be fascinated by her. I love it because of all his wives, Anne was the one Henry wanted to be forgotten. He had all trace of her removed, her emblems, her initials. He would hate the fact that she has the greatest following today. Love it. Love that. Right. who's ready for another ghost story? Yes. Wendy's has a new breakfast deal. Mix and match two items of your choice for only $4.

Breakfast wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small seasoned potatoes or small hot coffee. Choose two for $4 at Wendy's. Available for a limited time at participating Wendy's in Canada. Taxes extra. Catherine of Aragon. Anne Boleyn. Jane Seymour.

Anne of Cleves. Catherine Howard. Catherine Parr. Six wives, six lives. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and this month on Not Just the Tudors, I'm joined by a host of experts to tell the stories of the six queens of Henry VIII who shaped and changed England forever. Subscribe to and follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you want to see Anne Boleyn's ghost this Christmas, then it's not to the Tower of London that you should go, but to Hever Castle in Kent instead.

Now, Hever has long claimed that Anne's spirit returns on Christmas Eve to cross a bridge in its grounds, which is why a young man from the Society of Psychical Research arrived at the castle on December 24th, 1979. Armed with a camera loaded with ultra-sensitive film, he set himself up on the bridge to wait for the young Queen's arrival. sensitive film, he set himself up on the bridge to wait for the young queen's arrival. He had been there many hours when, on the 12th stroke of midnight, a white spot surged from the shadows and gradually took the form of a headless woman. The young man, delighted, took a photo. He didn't have time to take another. The ghost, at astounding speed, rushed in his direction and passed straight through him. But the next day, when he went to develop the film,

he found that the ghost, by traversing through his camera, had completely exposed the film inside. I like that we have some modern 20th century technology creeping into this ghost story now. Where are we? 1979. Yeah, 1979. So, Tracey, can you just tell us, first of all, we've moved now from the Tower of London to Hever Castle, which is in Kent.

I have never been to Hever, to my great shame. So can you just set the scene a little bit for us? What is this building like? Oh, Hever is one of my favourite places on earth. It is the most beautiful manor house, moated manor house. If you were to design a sort of medieval moated manor house, it would be Hever. Very romantic, beautiful grounds. Now we know, like the tower, it has been altered by the Astors who took over Hever Castle many years after Anne Boleyn. But the heart of it is still there and the rooms that Anne would have known.

So it's an incredibly atmospheric place. And what I love about Hever is Anne Boleyn absolutely adored it. It was so formative in her history. She spent her childhood there. She wasn't actually born there, but it was certainly her childhood home. And it was also where her relationship with Henry unfolded. She kind of used it as a refuge, I think. I'm not sure how much she wanted Henry. And you see her returning to Hever quite a lot as he's pursuing her. And sometimes he goes after her there at Hever. And even once she's almost queen, she's still escaping to Hever whenever she can. And so for me, there's such a strong resonance there with Anne.

And you certainly, if you believe in such things, kind of feel Anne's presence throughout Hever. It's the most beautiful place. I can tell you as well, you are allowed to stay there. They have rooms I would highly recommend and you get the whole place to yourself after dark we must go and record an episode there producer Freddie is in a corner and we are putting this on the list for a future episode business expense justifiable it is amazing now a dear friend of mine was the curator at Hever Owen Emerson and he shared with me a ghost story because I've friend of mine was the curator at Hever, Owen Emerson,

and he shared with me a ghost story because I've been doing a lot of research at Hever. I've been sort of not living there, but spending so much time there. And Owen told me, and for me, it's always when it's out of the horse's mouth that it's most powerful, about this occasion when he was with a friend and they were exploring Hever together. And his friend said, look, just Berlin's, if you can hear me, give me a sign, kind of flippantly. All the lights started to flicker.

Oh, wow. And then this light appeared in an upstairs window that they could see and they both went to investigate. Nobody there. Light had disappeared. They were the only ones in the castle. Now you might say, yeah, yeah. Now Owen is a straight up guy.

He's not going to make up a story like that. I completely believe him. And yeah, it really gave me shivers down the spine when he told me. And he said he just couldn't explain it. It's the only thing that's happened. And it was just in response to literally a plea. Come on, show yourselves. And it must have been amazing for him as the curator of that building,

someone who's so familiar with its spaces and its history, to experience it in a different way and to feel that connection potentially. Exactly. And I could just tell the look on his face as he was relating this story. faces he was relating the story. It had clearly shaken him, you know, moved him because he's spent his life immersed in researching Anne, in her story, in where she lived. But this, I guess, gave it a whole other dimension. Particularly that type of experience and that type of venue does speak to something along the lines of a supernatural element to heritage properties. Now, I'm not necessarily saying that that's manifestations of ghosts, but it's something otherworldly. I know on a personal level, when you go to a lot of these sites, there is just something different about setting foot in these places where the

energy changes. I've said this to Maddy so many times. I'm a big one for touching surfaces, even sometimes when you're not supposed to. Please don't do that. Don't blame me. But there's something about the actual contact that they also made contact with. So, you know, you talked about walking in footsteps of Anne Boleyn earlier, Tracey.

It's sometimes just being on that same path, putting your hand on a jam of a door that they may have rested their hand on. There's something supernatural for me about that just in the feeling of it and how again I've spoken about this before in the podcast but how history becomes present tense yes in that way and and so maybe that's just a manifestation of that in some way absolutely and you can't beat actually being in the spaces so even though those spaces have changed at at Hampton Court, for example, my favourite room in the palace is called Apartment 33.

We've got lots of apartments all named after the Grace and Favour residents in the Victorian period. And Apartment 33 is the room where Jane Seymour, Anne's nemesis, gave birth to the future Edward VI and where she died a few days later. And it's been so much altered. We've got kind of Georgian panelling. We've got flip charts. It's an HR training room today. It's not open to the public. But you still get that sense and you're standing where history happened, if you like. And for me, that's irreplaceable as an experience. We, as historians, spend a lot of time in libraries and online researching,

but there's something about being in the space. Going into that space, you can realise, you know, oh, the view from the window that they could see wasn't exactly what I thought it was. Or, you know, they could see this landmark in London. You think about Anne in the Tower. What buildings could she see? Could she see her own gallows being constructed and being in that space gives you some of those answers and it allows you to I guess have a closeness to the people in the past and whether or not that is supernatural or paranormal I think there's no

substitute for it on the subject of Anne Boleyn and spaces she would have known, if there's one myth I would like to bust during this podcast... Please do. It's where she was kept because until recent times, everybody went to the Queen's House. And I've heard people say it myself on tours. Oh, it's called the Queen's House after Anne Boleyn because this is where she was housed.

It's that kind of timber-framed building, which is the constable's residence now on Tower Green. It wasn't there. It was in the old royal palace, which now demolished. So on the kind of green next to the White Tower, where the raven's cages are actually now. But it no longer exists. And actually the queen's house was not named after Anne Boleyn.

It was named, or still is named after, the reigning sovereign. So it's now the king's house. So it changes with each monarch, if there's a change of gender of monarch. So there you go. I'm afraid what was called the queen's house is now the king's house has nothing to do with where Anne Boleyn.

And therefore, because I read a lot as well, she looked out of her windows to see the five men accused with her being executed. She could not possibly have had any view of Tower Hill, the execution site, from her apartments. I love busting a myth. We love that. We do love that. Okay, so we've had Anne in the Tower. We've had Anne at Hever. And now we're going to go to Blickling Hall in Norfolk. going to go to Blickling Hall in Norfolk. In 1940, the residents of Blickling Hall in Norfolk told a member of the English Folklore Society that they were so used to seeing Anne Boleyn's ghost

that they took no notice of it, which is a surprise considering the nature of her manifestation. On the anniversary of her execution, the 19th of May, a coach would pull up, drawn by headless horses, and tear through the grounds surrounding Blicklin Hall, with Anne, also headless, inside, dressed all in white and bathed in a red glow, holding her bleeding head on her lap. Some also claim that her brother George, also headless, chases, screaming after

her. That is so dramatic. I mean, you can't, she's bathed in a red glow and she's holding her bleeding head on her lap. That is personally how I will be coming back after I die. It's a really casual return. But Rosie, I actually haven't heard of Blickling Hall.

So how does that fit into Anne Boleyn's story? Well, it's where she was born, almost certainly. For a while, Blickling and Hever kind of fought it out between them. No, we're the birthplace, we're the birthplace. But I think even Hever now acknowledged they're the childhood home, but the Boleyns were a Norfolk family and Blickling was one of their power bases, if you like. So it's likely that Anne was born at Blickling. And I, so, okay, full disclosure, I know this story intimately because people still gather on the 19th of May at night to see this apparition.

And I went there one year, not necessarily expecting to see it, but I thought, I just want to know what this is all about. And I love Blickling, shameless plug alert. My very first book was about Henrietta Howard, a mistress of George II, and she was born at Blickling. So I kind of came to Blickling through the Georgians and then discovered the Anne Boleyn collection. As two Georgian historians, we have to say that anything through the Georgians is the best way.

I'm a little bit astounded by this. I did not know that you had come to the Tudors through the Georgians. There you go, you see. Do not underestimate the Georgians, guys. I love the Georgians. Please, can we do another podcast about something Georgian? Yes, absolutely. I'm about more than just the Tudors.

But anyway, so I went there, 19th of May, and there's this big gathering there every year and they wait until midnight to see this carriage draw up with the headless Anne Boleyn. Well, needless to say, of course, it didn't appear. But I think it has the biggest following of all of the various ghost stories in terms of people actually turning out to see it and to be there and to believe it. Yet for me, it's the least believable of the ghost stories. The kind of carriage and the headlessness.

I can more buy into the stories where Anne is as she was and not just kind of carrying her head around. Anne intact and the sort of spirit of Anne I can get behind. Yeah, it reduces her story to that one moment of her being beheaded, doesn't it? Exactly. I think what's interesting about this is that it's another way of marking history. Obviously, we deal with history through, as Anthony says, visiting historical sites, through historians. We all do work to tell those

stories but also through commemorating special moments and having anniversaries and marking those and to me this is this is historical practice of a sort that it's people turning up to mark the 19th of May the day that she was executed and whilst there is obviously so much more to Anne's story and she was such a sort of deep complicated person and such an important figure in in our history we do remember the moment of her death as being incredibly shocking incredibly traumatic and I think that this is the most fascinating way of marking that can you just tell us a little bit you know set the scene for us who are the kinds of people who attend an event like this expecting to see a headless Anne pulling up in a carriage? Well, it was interesting. I would say the audience was largely made up of women. I think

there might have been one long suffering husband there, but mostly it was women, mostly sort of retired women. Most of those women were also from the local area. I was viewed with some suspicion because I was clearly not a regular on the 19th of May every year. So people didn't know why I was there. There was, I would say, 30 to 40 people there. So decent sized gathering. We gathered outside the gates to Blickling. And it was actually a really atmospheric

evening because there was a bit of mist it was one of those you know of course there had to be probably it was fake mist but I fell for it totally by the National Trust and I just absolutely lapped that up and I remember as well just the silence. There was a bit of chatter when everybody gathered and then there was just silence for the half an hour leading up to midnight. And I did get a bit spooked. I didn't expect to see the carriage or the headless ghost, but it was atmospheric.

And I just thought it felt more respectful than ghoulish, if that makes sense. It felt that these women really connected with Anne Boleyn and her story and really wanted to mark that and not just eager eyed ghost hunters. It was more about respecting Anne Boleyn. And remembering her. And remembering her. So midnight came and the clock chimed and it was all very spine tingling. And then people just quietly dispersed. And that was it. So I found it quite moving. And yeah, I'm pleased I experienced it, not as a ghostly kind of activity, but more just to remember Anne in a place that has a strong connection with her.

I could actually stay talking about this for an awfully long time but that to me seems like a really nice place to wrap it up. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Tracey. Thank you so much. And we will get you back on to talk about the Georgians.

It's a date. It's going to happen. It is. Until next time, listeners, thank you so much for joining us and the ghost of Anne Boleyn in this episode of After Dark. Please find us wherever you get your podcasts, which I'm sure you've already done if you're listening to this and leave us a review because it helps other people discover the podcast

too. That is certainly true. And please do buy Tracy's book. Tracy, give us the title of it again, please. So it is Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth I, the mother and daughter who changed history. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening. And we will see you next time. Wendy's has a new breakfast deal. Mix and match two items of your choice for only $4. Breakfast wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small seasoned potatoes or small hot coffee.

Choose two for $4 at Wendy's. Available for a limited time at participating Wendy's in Canada. Taxes extra. Well, thank you for listening to this episode of After Dark. Please follow this show wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. Don't forget, you can listen to all these podcasts ad-free and watch hundreds of documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. And as a special gift, now don't say we never give you anything, you can also get your first three months for one pound a month when you use the code AFTERDARK at checkout.