The Radiant Boy: Knebworth's Yellow Ghost and Chillingham Castle's Blue Boy

[00:00:00] - [Speaker 0]
A glowing boy climbs out of the fireplace at the foot of your bed. He walks towards you, growing taller with every step. And then just before he disappears, he tells you how you're going to die. And a year later, you're dead. Oh.

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And you're gay. Yeah. These ghosts only appear to gay men. Watch out Troy Sivan because there's a new demon twink in town. Hello.

[00:00:28] - [Speaker 0]
And welcome back to another episode of Citegeist. I'm your host, Joshua Spellman. Today's ghost took me from a nineteen eighties queer newspaper in Norfolk, Virginia, all the way back to eighteenth century England, and then back again to the present with Charlie x e x? Yeah. I'm just as confused as you are.

[00:00:46] - [Speaker 0]
Today's ghost is an apparition that's been seen across the British Isles, with many castles claiming one of their very own. Even after it's been proven that he doesn't even haunt their castle. Doesn't even go here. But before we can begin to break down the legend, we must first learn the alleged history of the Radiant Boy. Who is the Radiant Boy?

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Or perhaps a better question, what is the Radiant Boy? More of a folkloric trope than a singular ghost. Radiant boys are glowing apparitions of children that were murdered by their mothers. They appear only to gay men to bestow bad luck and foretell a tragic end. These spirits are most often found in the Cumberland area of England.

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But of all these glowing ghosts, two in particular outshine all the rest. Our first story takes us to Lord Castlereagh, the second Marquess of Londonderry. Though at the time of this tale, he was more humbly known as Captain Robert Stewart. Captain Stewart was traveling far from home and being quite fond of sport was out hunting. But he got so caught up in pursuing his prey, he hadn't realized how far he had strayed.

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In looking up toward the sky, he wasn't sure what would eclipse the sun first. The trees as the sun sank below the horizon, or the dark storm clouds rolling in from the west. It wasn't long before billowing winds and needle like rain were pelting at the captain's skin. Eventually, he saw a great house in the distance, one that was somewhat familiar to him. Knebworth House overseen by Lord Lytton.

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Captain Stewart made haste and eagerly knocked on the door. He was greeted by a servant and quickly ushered in. Lord Lytton, was familiar with Captain Stewart's father, greeted him warmly and bade his servant to prepare a room for the captain. Now, Lord Lytton already had company, so the servant prepared the only room that was in any state to be occupied. But to be frank, Captain Stewart was so downtrodden, he would have been happy to sleep in front of the fire in the kitchen.

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So he was grateful that he would be provided a soft bed to sleep in. Lord Lytton provided the captain with leftovers from the grand dinner he had hosted earlier that evening, and even invited the captain to go shooting with him the following day. After some time, the servant came down to fetch captain Stewart and led him to his room. Stewart, not expecting much, was overjoyed when he stepped through the door. A large four poster bed set at one end of the room with a large fire plate at its feet, a fresh fire roaring behind the grate.

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Oh, he couldn't wait to sink into the plush pillows that called to him like a siren. He then the servant took off his soaked clothes and put on the new linens that the servant had kindly laid out for him, and he got into bed. The captain was so tired, he couldn't recall when he fell asleep. But at some point in the night, he was ripped from the clutches of slumber by a blinding light. Fearing an ember from the fire had set the room ablaze, Captain Stewart leapt from bed in a panic.

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But he noticed that the fire was nothing but a gentle smolder. He realized that the light was coming from the fireplace, but not from the fire. It was coming from somewhere up in the chimney. He stepped closer to get a better look. At first, he thought perhaps a bird's nest had caught fire since his room had been sparsely used.

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But before he could reach the hearth, a naked boy materialized before him shimmering in gold with long locks of yellow hair. Startled, the captain froze and stared at the youth, and the youth stared back. They stood like that for some time before the boy lifted his hand and drew his forefinger across his throat three times before he was pulled backward and up into the chimney by some unseen force, taking all the light in the room with him as he went. Standing in the dark, the captain quickly grew angered. Now he was not a spiritual man, and he was convinced that this was some indecent prank set upon him by Lord Lytton.

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Captain Stewart begrudgingly climbed back into bed, and stewing, he did not sleep for the rest of the night. Instead, he rehearsed in his mind over and over the mouthful that he was going to give Lord Lytton at breakfast. When the sun finally broke over the horizon, Captain Stewart stomped down the stairs and into the dining hall announcing his immediate departure. Lord Lytton looked at him stunned, reminding him that he had agreed to go hunting with him. But Captain Stewart suddenly looked at him coldly before turning on his heel and leaving.

[00:05:38] - [Speaker 0]
Lord Lytton, exasperated, gave chase and asked the captain what was wrong. And captain Stewart went on to explain how he did not appreciate the elaborate prank that was pulled on him, and he couldn't imagine treating guests with such antics. Lord Lytton assured him he had no idea what he was talking about. But then his face went white, and an exasperated sound left his lips as he rang for his servant. The servant came running in and Lytton grumbled at him, what room did you put our esteemed guest in last night?

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Well, the servant started. You know the place was full with your other guests and the only room I could ready was was the boys room. But but don't worry, I I lit a fire to prevent him from coming out. Lord Lytton, now clearly angered said, you fool. You should have known better.

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And went on to explain to Captain Stewart that a boy, the radiant boy, appears sometimes in that room, but only to a select few. Those destined for a rapid rise to prosperity followed by a sudden fall and a tragic end. And to these that he shows himself to, the boy foretells the method of their demise. Now Captain Stewart acquiesced, though he was never convinced of Lord Lytton's story, Not even just a few days later when his brother, the heir to his father's power and fortune suddenly drowned, leaving the captain as his father's sole heir. Again, years later, when the captain's sudden rise to power began, he still did not think back to that night.

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First, Captain Robert Stuart became Viscount Castlereagh in 1796. Then after his father's death in 1821, he became the second Marquise of Londonderry, inheriting both his father's title and his wealth. Even then, did he not begin to question the grim omen of that glowing ghostly child? Despite his ignorance, the story unfolded just as promised. Wealth, power, and a sudden rise beyond anything he could have ever dreamed, culminating in blackmail for his homosexuality, and ending with a blade drawn across his own throat in 1822, just as the boy had shown.

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Some say that Knebworth's radiant boy, known as the yellow boy, still waits in that cold crumbling chimney at Knebworth house. But luckily, he hasn't shown his shining face in centuries. However, there are other radiant boys throughout England and Ireland. Corby Castle has its own ghostly boy. And inside the pink room at Chillingham Castle lives the infamous Blue Boy.

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While this haunting might sound quaint, it is anything but. You see, in 1588, a young boy discovered documents belonging to the castle's owner. And these documents weren't just any bits of paper strewn about. They were papers meant for the Spanish Armada intended to help them to defeat the English. And this boy's discovery cost him dearly.

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The boy was sealed alive within the castle walls along with the documents. His corpse lay hidden in the walls for centuries until renovations in the nineteen twenties uncovered them once more. He was still wearing his little blue clothes, and his little fingertips were nothing but worn down nubs from his desperate attempts to claw his way out of the castle's 10 foot thick walls. They say that sometimes at the stroke of midnight, you can hear the boy's screams of pain and agony emanating from the pink room. And those lucky or unlucky enough to sleep in that room have seen the figure of a boy shining and radiant, dressed all in blue, approaching them from the fireplace.

[00:09:51] - [Speaker 0]
While these radiant boys may appear in different castles and are called different names, they are all the same. They're all young boys, all shining, all appearing in front of a fire with locks of golden hair. And with them always comes a grim prediction of a meteoric rise and a cataclysmic fall. But somewhere between all of them, perhaps hiding in the bricks of the chimneys in which they reside or inside documents long lost to time, lies the truth. A tragic end foretold by a glowing demon twink in a chimney, it doesn't get much gayer than that, does it?

[00:10:34] - [Speaker 0]
And I think that's probably the best point to start picking at first, especially since it's how I first stumbled upon the story. The claim that the radiant boy only shows himself to gay men, it's an odd detail and you probably caught it too. In fact, I know you did. You're so smart. That little detail is exactly what kicked off my investigation.

[00:10:53] - [Speaker 0]
I read that line and thought, that doesn't seem quite right. But I'm getting ahead of myself. As you know, I try my best to stray away from rich straight old white man dies in his opulent mansion trope whenever humanly possible when I'm selecting episode topics. And so I found myself on Old Dominion University's special collections and archives blog, specifically on a post titled LGBTQ plus ghost stories sounds like my bread and butter. And in this article, they mentioned that the October 1989 issue of r community press, a Unitarian Universalist gay newspaper, featured a ghost called the Radiant Boy, and they described him as a glowing apparition who appeared to gay men in the middle of the night.

[00:11:35] - [Speaker 0]
I mean, how could I resist a topic like that? And to begin my research naturally, I wanted to get my eyes on that original article. So I tracked down the digitized October 1989 issue, and I found nothing. Not a single ghost story, actually. There were there was nothing there.

[00:11:52] - [Speaker 0]
And so I checked five years forward and five years back, and I still found nothing. And so I went back to the original blog post wondering if I had misread something, and I didn't. It clearly stated October 1989, twice, actually. But then I noticed that they had a screenshot of the article, and in the corner of the shot, under the newspaper heading, it said October 1997. But to the archive's credit, the third time is the charm, and they did list the issue correctly in the source list at the bottom, but I ain't reading that.

[00:12:24] - [Speaker 0]
So this is the second time in two weeks that a library has personally wronged me and you by proxy, but I digress. Other than that one line about the radiant boy only showing himself to gay men, which I promise we'll get to in a bit, almost everything in the article checked out. In fact, they actually had a truer account of the story than the version that I told you. You see, there are actually two versions of Castlereagh's encounter with the radiant boy. And the one that I shared, the one where the apparition appeared at Knebworth House after staying with Lord Lytton, and then it predicted his death, is a complete fabrication.

[00:13:02] - [Speaker 0]
It was a little white lie that started off as a nineteenth century prank, but unfortunately, is now the most commonly told version of the story. Lord Lytton probably heard Cassowary's encounter and used it to lend credibility to his own practical joke. You see, Lord Lytton, despite being a noble and a serious figure, was actually a little bit of a prankster. And when he would have guests, he would tell them his version of that story and would tell them that that radiant boy, the yellow boy appeared in the queen Elizabeth room. And he would often allow his curious and brave guests to stay there if they dared, only to sneak up in the middle of the night to scare them.

[00:13:42] - [Speaker 0]
You see, after Lord Lytton's death, there was renewed interest in this story of the yellow boy of Knebworth. And it began to circulate alongside his tributes and obituaries. It got so out of hand that a syndicated newspaper article titled, Lax truth only, cold facts destroy an entertaining ghost story, It's published in papers all over the world. And this article unearthed an old letter from Lord Lytton's son, and the letter goes as follows. I answer your letter of the twelfth ultimo in desperate and unavoidable haste.

[00:14:16] - [Speaker 0]
Mister Frith's autobiography is all wrong about the story of the yellow boy. That story was told of sir Walter Scott of Lord Castlereagh, who was said to have seen the yellow boy in some house in Ireland at the time when he was secretary for Ireland just before the union. And the story went that the apparition then predicted to him the mode of his death. But the incident certainly did not occur at Knebworth, nor do I think Lord Castlereagh was ever there. Yours very faithfully, Lytton.

[00:14:48] - [Speaker 0]
Which honestly, this reply is a little funny because while the letter tries to set the record straight and confirm that no haunted room exists at Knebworth, it wasn't entirely accurate because it still perpetuated this idea that the radiant boy, whatever castle he was found in, predicted how you would die. And despite this letter's existence and its wide publication across countless newspapers, many publications still to this day list the yellow boy as one of Knebworth's resident ghosts. Though, to their credit, the Knebworth estate itself does not claim him. And that's probably because it has plenty of other ghosts to boast about. Hell, The Sun ran an article in 2024 claiming that one of its ghosts was tormenting Charlie XCX on the set of one hundred nights of hero, which was filming at KKnebworth.

[00:15:43] - [Speaker 0]
The ghost was apparently messing around with camera equipment and audio equipment. And of course, the article goes on to suggest that the ghost that was tormenting Charlie was a radiant boy. But you and I know that it wasn't. And honestly, a more likely culprit was that they were just feeling the rush with some poppers and Troye Sivan. But I digress.

[00:16:04] - [Speaker 0]
But speaking of Troye Sivan, we should probably talk about the part of the story that says the radiant boy exclusively shows himself to gay men. Because what is all that about? While it obviously isn't true, there is a reason why our own community press included that detail. Yes, it was partially to stay on theme with gay ghost stories, but Lord Cassowary was a controversial figure. You see, he was born in Ireland in 1769, and he joined the Irish House of Commons in 1790.

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He was largely responsible for the union of Ireland in Britain. And while his stance was quite unpopular, as you could imagine, he truly believed that he was doing what was right for his country. And although he even promised Catholic emancipation as part of the union, and he also promised Ireland representation in the new union, Both of those were ultimately struck down by the king, which made his already unpopular position extremely unpopular, which led to chants of high gallows in a windy day for Billy Pitt in Castlereagh from his constituents, which honestly, rough. This public pressure eventually led him to resign along with having a little itty bitty mentee bee, which probably foreshadowed more dire things to come in his future. But Castlereagh eventually reentered politics, and he served as the president of the board of control, then as a secretary of state for war in the colonies before eventually becoming the foreign secretary.

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Now despite his wins and contributions to taking down Napoleon, Cassowary remained a very unpopular figure amongst the Irish. And I think we could I think we could understand why. But he was still well liked by those who actually knew him personally. But all the while, Cassowary was still subjected to many scathing songs, poems, limericks, and essays. But he took it all on the chin or so it seemed.

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After Cassowary's father died in 1821, he returned to Ireland and was elevated to the second Marquise of Londonderry. And this is where things began to fall apart despite being in a really good favor with the new king, king George the fourth. A funny anecdote is during the procession through Londonderry, which is Ireland by the way, if you didn't know, everyone was cheering for both the king and Castlereagh, who is now lord of Londonderry. And the king turned to him and remarked, hey, I thought everyone in Ireland hated you. And Castlereagh just looked at him and said, they do, but it's not because of my politics.

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It's because of my immense beauty. Once again, he seemed to be taking everything in stride, and he was known for being incredibly good looking. He wasn't just saying that. But regardless, this joy and frivolity and taking things on the chin didn't last long. And Cassowary's relationships with his colleagues were beginning to sour, likely due to his descent into madness.

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You see, Cassowary began accusing himself of crimes and he became paranoid that his friends were turning against him. At one point, Cassowary became utterly convinced that he was involved in a sexual scandal, believing that he was caught with a sex worker who he thought was a woman, but turned out to be a man. This delusion was likely derived from a similar scandal that was all up in the headlines at the time, and that was a scandal of the Bishop of Clair, who was caught with a soldier with his pants down. The scandal was huge, and it led to countless political cartoons, pamphlets, and limericks. And Lord Castlereagh was probably hearing a lot of him, and historians believe that Castlereagh wasn't actually gay, and it was likely just a byproduct of his paranoia and mental decline.

[00:19:47] - [Speaker 0]
You know, the whole, they were roommates kind of thing. But honestly, I find myself siding with the historians on this one because I can see this happening. When my grandfather had dementia, he was reading a book about Angela Lansbury, and she became his new best friend. Like, his best friend. It was everywhere for years.

[00:20:05] - [Speaker 0]
Oh, we can't leave yet. We have to go get Angela. Oh, Angela is in the other room. Oh, I'm doing some work at Angela Lansbury's house. I have to go.

[00:20:14] - [Speaker 0]
So I can see Castlereagh going through something similar while in the throes of a mental breakdown, especially when the story of the bishop was flooding the headlines and he was ingesting that a lot. I can truly see that confusion happening. But Castlereagh's delusions and paranoia only got worse, and he eventually turned on one of his good friends, the Duke of Wellington, saying, I know that you're my enemy. Apparently, they had beef. Get it?

[00:20:41] - [Speaker 0]
Beef Wellington? Anyways, concerned, the Duke of Wellington and his wife brought Cassowary down to their countryside estate to look after him and make sure that he was okay. They kept all the sharp objects away from him. They hid all their knives and he wasn't even allowed to use a fork at meals. But somehow Castlereagh still found a blade and slit his own throat, cutting his carotid artery.

[00:21:05] - [Speaker 0]
While his close friends mourned his loss, many celebrated his death with more limericks just like the ones that have followed him in life. And a point that probably angered everyone was that Lord Cassowary was permitted to be buried in Westminster Abbey despite dying of suicide. And so that angered a lot of people including Lord Byron who penned this little ditty. Posterity will ne'er survey a nobler grave than this. Here lie the bones of Castlereagh.

[00:21:36] - [Speaker 0]
Stop traveler and piss. Way harsh, by. And in a letter shortly after Castlereagh's death, sir Walter Scott wrote, you have heard of poor Lord Londonderry's death by his own hand in a fit of insanity. This explains a story he once told me of having seen a ghost in which I thought was a very extraordinary narrative from the lips of a man of so much sense and steadiness of nerve. But no doubt he had been subject to aberrations of mind which often creates such phantoms, which if you ask me is some pretty not so subtle shade on Scott's part, but he was right.

[00:22:16] - [Speaker 0]
Castlereagh had a brief mental breakdown after the union of Ireland and Britain, though he did recover. And perhaps his vision of the radiant boy was evidence that he had ongoing mental health issues for much longer than previously thought. And Scott goes on to say how Cassaret often told his ghost story at his wife's dinner parties. And that's where Scott himself heard it at one such party in Paris in 1815. But the version that Scott recalls is not anything like the fabricated version that Lord Lytton would tell later.

[00:22:48] - [Speaker 0]
The ghost story according to sir Walter Scott's biographer, J. G. Lockhart went as follows. Lord Castlereagh, when commanding in early life, a militia regiment in Ireland, was stationed one night in a large desolate country house, and his bed was at one end of a long dilapidated room. While at the other extremity, a great fire of wood and turf had been prepared within a huge gaping old fashioned chimney.

[00:23:14] - [Speaker 0]
Waking in the middle of the night, he lay watching from his pillow the gradual darkening of the embers on the hearth. When suddenly they blazed up and a naked child stepped from among them upon the floor. The figure advanced slowly towards Lord Castlereagh, rising in stature at every step until on coming within two or three paces of his bed, it had assumed the appearance of a ghastly giant, pale as death, with a bleeding wound on the brow and eyes glaring with rage and despair. Lord Casarejo leapt from his bed and confronted the figure in an attitude of defiance. It retreated before him diminishing as it withdrew in the same manner that it had previously shot up and expanded.

[00:24:00] - [Speaker 0]
He followed it pace by pace until the original childlike form disappeared among the embers. See, this version of the story lacks the prophetic elements of a rise to power and a prediction of death as well as a definite location for the encounter. And while it's hard to tell where those elements may have come from, I actually have a couple of ideas. John Ingram's 1884 book, The Haunted Homes and Family Traditions of Great Britain, restates a version of the story from missus Crow's 1859 book, Ghosts and Family Legends, A Volume for Christmas. Crow's version was allegedly derived directly from one of Cassowary's family members.

[00:24:39] - [Speaker 0]
So you would think it would probably be very accurate. And the version that Crow tells seems to be the midway point between Lytton's fabricated account and sir Walter Scott's more faithful retelling. It takes place in an unknown castle in Ireland and the boy doesn't imply Castlereagh's death in any way. However, in the morning, when Castlereagh confronts his host, the host tells him that there existed a tradition in his family that whomever the radiant boy appeared to would rise to the summit of power when we had reached the climax would die a violent death. Now even though this version is supposedly from a member of the Stewart family, I'd take that with a giant grain of salt because missus Crow was a Victorian era writer of supernatural stories, she'd actually written about Radiant Boys before with no such mention of this rise to power and death thing.

[00:25:33] - [Speaker 0]
The premise of the book that this version of Castlereagh's story comes from is essentially a retelling of ghost stories that Crowe had heard around a fire during Christmas time at an old English estate in 1857. One of the attendees told her that this story she had heard from someone in Castlereagh's family. So it's cited as being directly from a member of Castlereagh's family. It's really a retelling of a retelling retold again in a book that was published for entertainment. So reliability, not really there.

[00:26:06] - [Speaker 0]
In my opinion, it feels like the detail of this sudden rise and fall was added well after Castlereagh's death in order to capitalize on his unbecoming end for dramatic effect and narrative payoff. After all, that element of the story didn't feature in Scott's version, which was recounted directly after Castlereagh's death. The story likely evolved as time went on and these elements were added as Castlereagh's death felt further and further away. And even Corby Castle's Radiant Boy, which is completely unrelated, didn't gain this prophetic quality about it either until it was written about in the modern era, which is where I feel the lore of all the different radiant boys from all these different estates were kinda just thrown into a blender. It's difficult to tell where one story begins and another ends.

[00:26:57] - [Speaker 0]
And despite all of this liquefied lore, it hasn't stopped people from seeing these shining spirits. At the end of the day, it feels as though these radiant boys of Britain aren't necessarily a type of folkloric entity as suggested by all of the literature. The thing they have most in common is their appearance. They're all the same gender. They're all of a similar age and use the same method of manifestation.

[00:27:21] - [Speaker 0]
But I don't believe that those characteristics are enough to make them the same type of spirit, at least taxonomically speaking, since appearing in a ghostly light isn't that uncommon and neither are ghost children. And the particulars that would unite them under, like, a single ghostly species, like the omen of a rise to power and a tragic fall, and foretelling the method of your demise, are all inconsistent, and they're not applied to all the radiant boys, and they're misattributed at best and completely fabricated at worst. But despite this, it's undeniable that the name Radiant Boy is alluring and captivating, and what castle wouldn't wanna claim a Radiant Boy of their very own? And to add to that, they're all great ghost stories, even if the particulars aren't bonafide fact. But if I'm your favorite Radiant Boy, please make sure that you're subscribed to the podcast.

[00:28:14] - [Speaker 0]
And if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, please leave a review. Every single one helps so much. But more importantly, if you have a friend that would like the podcast, tell them about it. Keep our community of Bibliographers growing. And it it's it's like spooky season after all, which I have a little trick for you, which is actually a treat.

[00:28:35] - [Speaker 0]
I'll be dropping a new episode every week in the month of October to keep your hungry little minds fed and your spine chilled. But that's all for today. And remember, always check your chimney for Twinks. Stay golden. And until next time, I'll see you in the stacks.