The National Botanic Garden of Wales, with its great glass dome, was built on the estate of Middleton Hall near Llanarthne, a Regency landscape of lakes and walks that had decayed after the house burned in the 1930s. Before the Paxton family built their mansion, Middleton belonged to the Adams family, and one of the estate's stories comes from them.
According to the account given by Nick Brunger, a daughter of Edward Adams travelled to India, and there her infant son died. The child's body was embalmed and shipped home to Wales for burial. When it arrived, her father saw that the little corpse had turned black, and in horror or disgust he had it thrown into the lake. The mother, returning to find her child had never been buried, died in grief. Her ghost, the Grey Lady, has been seen moving between Principality House and the lakes, still looking for her son so that he can be given a proper grave.
The same account mentions a man in Victorian clothes, and a ghostly figure caught on video. The story has no date or name for the mother and has not been confirmed from records, but it is attached to a real family and a real landscape.
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