Legend of the Mistletoe Bough

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The Legend of the Mistletoe Bough is a ghost story associated with several mansions and stately homes in England, especially in Hampshire.

The tale tells how a new bride, playing a game of hide-and-seek during her wedding breakfast, hid in a chest in an attic and was unable to escape. She was not discovered by her family and friends, and suffocated. The body was allegedly found many years later in the locked chest. The tale is the subject of an old ballad, written by Thomas Haynes Bayley in 1884.

Notable claimants for the story's location, some still displaying the chest, include Bramshill House and Marwell Hall in Hampshire, Basildon Grotto in Berkshire, Minster Lovell Hall in Oxfordshire, Brockdish Hall in Norfolk and Bawdrip Rectory in Somerset.

Bramshill House, now a police training college, is perhaps the strongest candidate. It is reputedly the most haunted house in Hampshire and its most famous ghost is supposedly that of the young woman, holding her bridal mistletoe bough, who roams the house looking for someome to release her. She is associated with the family of Sir John Cope. However, although the story is very specifically set in the Christmas season (hence the mistletoe), the year sometimes given as 1737 - and the groom was apparently a Lovell, its details have not been confirmed for any of the suggested locations.