"Ghastly ghost, watching me scrub"

Did you know …

That it was on this day, November 18, in the year 1802, that the first ghost was officially discovered? It’s true!

While people had been reporting ghost sightings for years, authorities considered all of the supposed witnesses to be too poor to give a reliable account. So it wasn’t until 1802, when the 75-year-old Duke of Gloucester reported seeing a spirit as he (the Duke, not the spirit) took his evening bath, that the existence of ghosts was officially confirmed.

The ghost in question was apparently that of a young woman, and was observed sitting on a stool next to the Duke’s bathtub, eating ghostly chestnuts and watching as the Duke bathed. The Duke attempted to roust the ghost, but she would not move. Whether she could not hear or if death threats are simply not threatening to the already-dead isn’t clear. The Duke himself refused to get out of the tub until the lady left, several hours later, when she finished her chestnuts. By this point he was nearly hypothermic, and disgustingly pruny. When he was sufficiently warmed and smoothed, the Duke ordered the house searched for the ghost, so that she could be punished somehow. That she was never found, the Duke claimed, was proof enough that the bath-watcher was a ghost, and not, as others have claimed, just a servant whose face the Duke had never bothered to remember. This was sufficient evidence for the authorities (the Wales Office, I believe) to declare ghosts “both real and offensive in their lasciviousity.”