Reports about the number of ghosts in the castle vary, but there are believed to be around nine, including Thomas Bowes-Lyon, who was said to have been removed from the line of succession after he was born with a severe deformity.
While official records state that he died the day he was born, on October 21, 1821, it is rumoured that he survived and was kept hidden away by his family until he died in the 1920s, having been only allowed out to exercise at night.
Depictions of the mysterious earl also emerged in time. Jacynth Hope-Simpson in her book Who Knows? suggested the boy may have suffered a genetic defect given the child’s parents were cousins first removed.
Ghost writer Peter Underwood suggested Thomas had wasted arms and legs and resembled “an enormous flabby egg.”