Ghost Story- Burton Agnes Hall

In a beautiful Elizabethan mansion lived three daughters who worked endlessly to improve their home. The youngest named Anne was particularly obsessed with the renovation. While walking, Anne was attacked by ruffians and died a few days later. Before her death she made her sisters promise to keep her head in the house and never bury it, or she would return and make them regret it.

Anne’s sisters promised, but after her death the sisters buried her, head and all, in the family crypts. Soon loud crashing noises, slamming doors, and loud groans, disrupted the family’s life in the hall.

The sisters investigated their sister’s remains and discovered that while her body was in a normal state of decay; her head was only a skull. Anne’s skull was dutifully placed in her home.
Anne’s spirit has been quiet since except for a few instances when her skull has been disturbed, such as when a servant girl threw it out a window into a passing cart. The horse pulling the cart refused to move forward, despite a savage whipping, until the head was removed.

This story is a great subversion of player expectation. We’ve all seen stories with ghosts looking for their lost head, but this ghost doesn’t want to be reunited with its body.

I also like that Anne loved her home so much she wouldn’t leave it. A ghost may not be malevolent, just protective of its home, but still be in the way or dangerous.  A player could be at a friend’s home and disturb a previous occupant, and then have a slight curse until it’s made right (say 2 black dice to all actions or initiative pools are halved due to being kept up all night by ghostly noises).

Maybe Anne is guarding something in her home and the renovations are all attempts to hide it from someone. Her skull could be the keyhole she peeks through from the other side, to keep an eye on her secret. So if you need a hiding place for a Tudor Artifact, Burton Agnes Hall could be the place.

Or if you want Anne to be a more sinister figure, it could be that Anne was so obsessed with renovations because the improvements on her house were an attempt to tap into the massive house’s Genus Loci to make a magical siphon. Her skull is kept so her spirit can watch over and influence all later improvements to that end.

 During the late 1800s Sir Henry Somerville Boynton kept a large collection of stuffed birds in the hall, so if you want a creepy or memorable manifestation of Anne’s ghost that is a possibility.