Upper rooms in a corner of the Old Court of Corpus Christ are said to be haunted by a ghost usually supposed to be that of Dr Butts, Master of the college of 1626-1632, and Vice-Chancellor of the university during the terrible outbreak of plague in 1630. The responsibilities he bore then appear to have preyed on his mind. In a letter to Lord Coventry, High Steward of Cambridge, he writes of the sufferings of the townspeople and adds, ‘myself am alone, a destitute and forsaken man, not a Scholler with me in College, not a Scholler seen by me without’. On Easter Sunday 1632, he was due to preach before the university but never appeared. When they looked for him, they found him hanging by his garters in his rooms, and since that time his ghost has haunted the college.
The haunted rooms were above the kitchens, and it was said in the 1880s that no college servant willingly remained in the kitchens at night.
According to an article which appeared in the Occult Review of March 1905, in 1904 an undergraduate who had the set of rooms opposite was at work there at about 3:00pm one afternoon around Easter-time when he became aware of feeling uneasy. He got up and looked out of the window and saw a man with long hair leaning out of an upper window in the opposite rooms. Only his head and shoulders were visible, and he remained perfectly still, fixing the undergraduate with a glare. The student ran upstairs to get a better view, but by the this time the figure had gone. He then rushed across the court to investigate but found the door locked. He later discovered that the owner of the rooms had been out all afternoon.
After the apparition had been seen again, the undergraduate asked a friend interested in spiritualism – and four other students – to comet o his rooms and hold a séance. They all knelt down and prayed, then commanded the spirit to appear. It duly did so, although only the room’s occupant and the student interested in spiritualism saw it. They described it as appearing as a mist which slowly consolidated into the form of a man seemingly shrouded in white and having a gash on his neck. The phantom moved slowly around the room, and the two who could see it advanced on it with a crucifix, but they seemed to be thrust back by some invisible force. Crying, ‘it drives me back’, they became unnerved. A few days later, another séance raised the spirit again, but the meeting was inconclusive.