The photograph known as 'The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall' is probably the most famous picture of a ghost ever taken. Captured on 19 September 1936 by two photographers, the picture shows a curious transparent image, suggestive of a hooded figure, apparently descending a wooden staircase in Raynham Hall, Norfolk.

The photograph is visually impressive and has been reproduced in numerous books and articles since the 1960s, and more recently on television and websites as photographic proof of the existence of ghosts. However, a file which has been in the possession of the Society for Psychical Research for some 70 years reveals that the Brown Lady picture is not all that it seems and that there is, in all probability, a mundane explanation for it.