Scream at midnight

by JOSEPH PAYNE BRENNAN
Macabre House
New Haven, Connecticut
1963
Copyright Joseph Payne Brennan 1963
BOOKS BY JOSEPH PAYNE BRENNAN
SHORT STORIES
Nine Horrors and a Dream (1958) The Dark Returners (1959)
POEMS
Heart of Earth (1950) The Humming Stair (1953) The Wind of Time (1962)
I had decided to spend a leisurely summer in Europe, concentrating, if at all, on genealogical research. I went first to Ireland, journeying to Kilkenny where I unearthed a mine of legend and authentic lore concerning my remote Irish ancestors, the O'Braonains, chiefs of Ui Duach in the ancient kingdom of Ossory. The Brennans (as the name was later spelled) lost their estates in the British confiscation under Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford. The thieving Earl, I am happy to report, was subsequently beheaded in the Tower.
From Kilkenny I traveled to London and then to Chesterfield in search of maternal ancestors, the Holborns, Wilkersons, Searles, etc. Incomplete and fragmentary records left many great gaps, but my efforts were moderately successful and at length I decided to go further north and visit the vicinity of Chilton Castle, seat of Robert Chilton-Payne, the twelfth Earl of Chilton. My relationship to the Chilton-Paynes was a most distant one, and yet there existed a tenuous thread of past connection and I thought it would amuse me to glimpse the castle.