Do the Molyneux Haunt Croxteth Hall?

The Liverpool City Council is calling for some counsel of the paranormal kind, following the appearance of a possible phantom on closed-circuit TV footage from 400-year old Croxteth Hall. The video seems to show a glowing apparition wandering about the grounds, late at night.

Investigators called the evidence "intriguing," but have said little else. However, local superstition may back-up claims of a haunting. Croxteth Hall was originally built in 1575 and was passed down through the Molyneux family until 1972, when the last, direct descendant died without naming an heir. Croxteth Hall then became the property of Liverpool and the once private grounds are now open to the public.

Local superstition holds that William Philip Molyneux revisits Aintree Racecourse every year during the Grand National. He was the 2^nd Earl of Sefton and laid the foundation stone for the racetrack. Could he be the mysterious phantom? Or is it Hugh William Osbert Molyneux, 7^th Earl of Sefton? Perhaps he feels the grounds are still his, as he bequeathed them to no one? Or maybe he is there to visit his wife, who died some eight years later and was the last to inhabit the estate?

Whomever, or whatever, it is, the film clearly shows some phenomenon which appears humanoid in shape and size and moves definitively across the grounds.

© C Harris Lynn, 2009