This, the Queen’s London residence, was built in 1703 for John Sheffield, the first Duke of Buckingham. George III was the first monarch to own it.
Long before, a priory stood on the site on what was then an inhospitable site surrounded by marshland. Some say that it is the ghost of a monk who died in the monastery’s punishment cell that haunts Buckingham Palace. He always appears on Christmas Day on the terrace over the gardens to the rear of the building. He is bound in heavy chains and dressed in brown and he clanks and moans back and forth for a bit before fading away, not to be seen again until the next Christmas.
The palace has another, more contemporary ghost from the reign of Edward VII. Major John Gwynne, the King’s private secretary, became divorced. No big deal to us, but back then that meant he was shunned by polite society. In absolute dejection, he retired one night to his first-floor office with a revolver and shot himself in the head. Since that day, staff working in the vicinity have occasionally heard a gun firing in the room where the suicide occurred.