Doddington Hall, the Elizabethan house west of Lincoln, is said to keep two very different ghosts. The gentler is the Brown Lady, who appears to new brides alone in one of the bedrooms — a woman in an old-fashioned, long stiff brown dress who sits smiling at the bride for only a few seconds before fading. Far from frightening, those who have seen her describe feeling soothed, as though she were giving her blessing or recalling the early happy days of her own marriage.
The story
The second haunting is grim. On the anniversary of her death a young woman is said to appear on the roof of the hall and fall from it, screaming, having lost her footing while trying to escape a lustful master. Her cry is said to still be heard as she plunges, a yearly echo of a violent end.
Both traditions are recorded by the University of Lincoln's Haunted History of Lincolnshire project among the county's better-attested house hauntings. Doddington's Brown Lady should not be confused with the far more famous Brown Lady of Raynham Hall in Norfolk; the two are wholly separate spirits who happen to share a colour of dress.