I survived a night at Hampton Court Palace with the ghosts and ghouls

It was an ominous start to the evening.

"So which part of Hampton Court is supposed to be haunted?" I asked Manuela Pessina, one of the Royal palace's senior guides.

"All of it," she replied with a half smile.

"But where you're sleeping is perhaps the most active of all."

Like 59 other hardy souls I'd agreed to bed down in one of Britain's spookiest spots, a building steeped in centuries of bloody history.

By day Hampton Court in South-west London's leafy suburbia exudes a Wolf Hall-style charm with its intricate courtyards and tranquil rolling parkland.

Lit up at night however, the famous Tudor palace takes on a more sinister feel and once inside, the dimly lit corridors and cold, echoey stone staircases do little to ease the tension.

As part of Hampton Court's 500th anniversary celebrations Historic Royal Palaces invited 60 guests to a Dusk Til Dawn sleepover.

The £120-a-head tickets sold out within minutes with visitors flocking from as far as Norway and the US.

My bed for the night would be a sleeping bag on the floor of the Cartoon Gallery just along the landing from the aptly named Haunted Gallery.

As Manuela explained: "It's where we get a lot of sightings and unexplained phenomena and it's a very, very spooky place, especially at night.

"To be honest though, everywhere in Hampton Court gives you chills when you are working late.

"It's not uncommon for staff to report a feeling of being watched or having doors inexplicably slam behind them when there's no one around.

"Smells too, you can sometimes pick up phantom scents. It's weird."

The Haunted Gallery is home to Hampton Court's most celebrated ghost, the wretched spectre of Henry VIII's fifth wife Catherine Howard. Four hundred and seventy three years after being beheaded her troubled spirit reportedly runs down the corridor letting out a bloodcurdling scream.

Before tales of the supernatural though, the assembled guests, some in fancy dress, enjoyed a champagne reception with a jovial Cardinal Wolsey, the man responsible for much of the development of the palace.

Later, we tucked into a slap-up Elizabethan dinner of beef stew and rice before being put through our paces by William Shakespeare in the Great Hall and given the low-down on Georgian dancing and etiquette, as well as salacious gossip and scandal of the era.

It was close to the witching hour when stories of the grand old palace sent a chill down the spine.

Our costumed guide Christian led us through the midnight gloom with his trusty lantern, regaling us with some of the lesser-known tales.

We heard of burly security guards being terrorised by poltergeists, of strange crashing and banging sounds from behind locked doors and of cleaners finding a heavy chandelier swinging of its own accord in the Guard Chamber.

Even more frightening was the story of the ghostly monk who stalked Henry VIII's apartments.

Staff and guests have sighted a large hooded figure with a deformed face lurking in doorways.

The tour took us to the normally roped-off grace and favour apartments on the top floor.

These spacious homes were given by the monarch in recognition of loyal service to crown or country, with the last warrants being granted during the 1980s.

Most of the rooms are now used for storage, housing discarded magazines and shelves yet some remain as a time warp to the period.

In one kitchen dated floral wallpaper and a 1970s cooker and grill provided a particularly eerie backdrop to the ghostly tales.

Peering out of a window, our black-clad guide told us to look toward the Long Water, an artificial lake illuminated by moonlight that runs eastward from the back of the palace.

In 1887 a three-year-old boy ran off and drowned in the lake, a tragedy that would later befall a young girl in 1927 after she had gone to feed the ducks.

Fast forward 40 years and a four-year-old boy narrowly avoided the same fate, luckily being rescued by a passer-by.

When asked by his mother why he had plunged into the icy water, he replied: "To play with the other children."

With that spine-tingling tale it was time for bed, directly underneath the spot where the devastating Hampton Court fire broke out in 1986. If that wasn't cause enough for nightmares we were told that the historic building is also a breeding ground for the cardinal spider, the biggest house spider in Britain.

However despite my initial fears the only thing that went bump in the night was me when I tripped over my sleeping girlfriend en route to the toilet at 3am.

That's not to say the evening was entirely without mystery.

On looking back at a photograph I took of a privy I spotted a faint ghostly outline of a small child.

Remembering the stir caused by "Skeletor", the pale-faced ghoul caught on CCTV in 2003, I emailed the palace my image.

"It's most probably a trick of the light," came the reply.

Maybe, but in the dead of night Hampton Court is one of those places where your mind can run amok.

To find out more visit hrp.org.uk/HAMPTONCOURTPALACE