Some Haunted Houses of England & Wales.

by Elliott O'Donnell

THE STORY

My invitation to spend the Christmas holidays with Lady Wentworth came as a delightful surprise.

Imagine me a poor, insignificant little schoolmistress in St. Rudolphs, suddenly blossoming out into a much envied guest at Catchfield. Who can blame me if I indulged in a momentary outburst of pride?

So far my lot in life had not been all couleur de rose. Losing my husband shortly after our marriage, I had been obliged to do something for a bare living.

My education though fair had fallen short of Girton or a degree, and I was barely qualified to teach any but very small children. Had I but foreseen the future, I might no doubt have done better. As it was my position was only that of a kindergarten schoolmistress in St. Rudolphs.

I do not think you can truly estimate a person’s disposition till you see how they behave to those who have the misfortune to be in subordinate positions, nor can you always tell a shoddy lady from a real one until you have discovered how she treats her governess and servants. Until I taught in St. Rudolphs I had no idea how thoroughly common were the majority of its so-called aristocracy, but one term was quite sufficient to show me that dealing with such hopelessly and innately vulgar people would be almost more than I could bear.

It was therefore scarcely a matter of wonder—that when Christmas drew nigh—the Christmas after my first sojourn in St. Rudolphs—I was almost beside myself with joy on receiving a pressing invitation to stay at Catchfield Hall. Nothing soothes the sensitive nature of a snob more than to call other people snobbish. The parents of my children were of the middle class—middlish—snobs with a very big S, and should any one need a proof of the correctness of this assertion let me point to him the fact that whenever a moneyed person came to reside within any get-at-able distance whatever, the people I have designated as “snobs” made all haste to call on them; even the bishop whose object in coming to St. Rudolphs was obviously only “to confirm,” was inundated with invitations to dinner, and the rival claims to eligibility of those invited to meet him, were openly discussed at afternoon tea and bridge parties. Let me also add that their club, ludicrously labelled “select,” boycotted one of its members for some trivial remark, true enough, but like so many other homely truths better left unsaid, and that these very people who had sat in judgment, themselves indulged in the most scathingly rude remarks to those who for certain reasons were obliged to “grin and bear it.”

Therefore I repeat again, the parents of my children were snobs, and being snobs would not allow any one in the humble position of a schoolmistress to say any thing that might in any way be construed into snobbishness.

Depict to yourself then how indignant they were, and how I laughed up my sleeve when I let slip, quite by mischance you understand, the fact that I was going to spend Christmas with my near, my very near kinsman Lord Robert Wentworth.

A schoolmistress related to a peer! How preposterous! how absurd! how snobbish! and they laughed at first scornfully, then incredulously—then pityingly, and I—I humbly bowed them out of the house, and running upstairs continued my packing. Vale St. Rudolphs! Welcome Catchfield!

Under these circumstances you can imagine why I tell you all this—it is to show you how more than overjoyed I was at the thought of eating my Christmas pudding among gentlefolk.

When I got out at Highfield—the nearest station to Catchfield—my lord’s brougham stood in waiting.

“They are very full up at the Hall, madam,” the coachman said, touching his hat respectfully, “otherwise miladi would have sent one of the motors, but they have both had to go out longish distances.”

“Is there a house-party?” I faltered, giving one of the horses—I love horses—a gentle pat on the head.

“What! didn’t you know? I beg your pardon, madam,” the fellow added suddenly, recollecting himself, “but it is the Coming of Age party of the Hon. Walter early next week that has fetched well-nigh half the county; you see he is the eldest son—and—well, madam, there is to be a very big ball. I made sure madam knew all about it.”

I shook my head despairingly, balls were not for such as I. I had neither a dress nor yet the money wherewith to buy one. Most decidedly I ought not to have come! I glanced at the man to see if he understood my misgivings, apparently he did not; perhaps he would not; his manner at all events was in no degree less deferential, and as he shut the carriage door with the courtly air of an old gallant, I compared him with the parents at St. Rudolphs—the comparison of course being all in his favour.

I will not attempt to describe the exterior of Catchfield, it has been done so often and so well in historical romances, in biographies, and in County Directories that any additional effort of mine would be at once superfluous and poor.

I arrived there late—too late for dinner—and partook of a dainty supper laid expressly for me in the ball-room presumptive. Fancy supper by myself in a ball-room! But there was apparently a doubt as to which of the rooms would be used for the occasion, his lordship being somewhat reluctant at present to allow this handsomely, I might almost say sombrely, furnished apartment to be used for such a frivolous purpose.

Remembering Robert’s sanctimonious bringing up I was not in the least surprised at his qualms, my only wonder being that he countenanced a ball at all, but of course that was miladi’s doings. I much wished to inquire why a solitary meal for such as I should be served in a room of such splendid dimensions, and one that in most households would undoubtedly have been used as a drawing-room, but I refrained, not desiring to appear inquisitive in the eyes of the servants. Her ladyship arrived as I was finishing my second cup of fragrant coffee, and despite a certain languid hauteur characteristic of the nobility, especially of the MODERN nobility, she appeared to welcome me.

I felt this, and yet somehow I was puzzled—puzzled at an indescribable something in her manner that was quite apart from pride—something that left me with the decidedly unpleasant impression she was surely acting a part, and—yet—why should she? Why should her ladyship be anything but frank with the poor and inoffensive cousin of her husband?

But what was it that made her eyes fall as they encountered mine, and wander furtively round the room; and why that sudden look of fear that crept into them as they alighted on the fireplace.

“You wont mind sitting here till bedtime, will you?” she observed, “I will tell Webster, my maid, to bring you your candle at eleven o’clock. If there is anything you want, you have only to tell HER. All our guests play bridge, and I concluded from what Robert told me you didn’t approve of gambling, so I thought you would be happier here. We are expecting other anti-gamblers in a few days, so your banishment will only be temporary! You will excuse us for a time, wont you?”

What other reply could I give but “O yes! most certainly! It is indeed kind of you to allow me the use of such a lovely room, &c.,” and Lady Wentworth departed from my presence with a gracious—a most patronising and highly gracious smile. I was of course charmed and flattered, as any poor connection by marriage should be, but I wished all the same that Robert had also come to welcome me, I should have felt more at ease with Robert! I liked Robert, and—well, I did not like his beautiful and accomplished wife. Had he come only for two minutes I should not have minded, but I was tired, I felt neglected, and I longed for kindness. Kindness after St. Rudolphs. It was not like Robert, we had been such friends in our youth; children together, playmates, chums! Had money and position changed his nature?

Money! I grew dispirited! I was poor! terribly poor! I was lonely! Oh, so lonely!

The room was huge, the night cold and the fire SMALL—very small.

Drawing my chair close to it I simulated ease; I tried to feel cosy! Cosy!

What a barrier, an insurmountable barrier, was poverty to pleasure! Would Robert’s wife have banished a countess? Fancy a countess experiencing a reception such as this! A countess in a vast room empty save for draughts and a Liliputian fire! A countess! I laughed! I was growing common like the mediocre parents of St. Rudolphs. Vulgarity is catching! It is both epidemic and endemic.

Had Robert told her I disapproved of playing cards for money? Of course not, that was a society taradiddle! He couldn’t know my scruples or he would never have asked me to meet his wife. She, she had guessed my poverty by my profession—all schoolmistresses are poor; every one that teaches is poor—education must be gratis. A cold blast of air from the chimney made me shiver. The room was indeed draughty! and how still! I did not altogether like such stillness, it got on my nerves. And how dark! Why were not all the gas jets lighted—why only this one? Because I was poor; the poor should learn to be economical, and example is better than precept! Hence this feeble flicker: a flicker that failing to reach the further extremities of the chamber, left the corners enveloped in shrouds of darkness—of a black impenetrable darkness I could neither fathom nor comprehend. The furniture was superb, but it was of too funereal a texture and colour to be pleasing to me just then, I would have preferred something of a brighter tone.

The floor was covered by a carpet that must assuredly have been made expressly for that room since it stretched right up to the skirting, concealing every particle of bare board.

I could not see the pattern, I could only devise by the soft tread of the carpet that it was either of Persian or Turkish manufacture. In some places, where kissed by the moonlight, it was almost white, whilst in other parts it was rendered black by a hotch-potch of countless shadows lying thick upon it.

Through the great bay windows opposite me, a magnificent panorama of lawn, meadows and rivers, beyond which I fancied I could detect the needle-like front of a steeple, spread itself before my eyes. All this natural beauty lay enhanced by a thin covering of gleaming snow. It was Christmas! The glamour of the hour and season enchanted me; past injuries and St. Rudolphs were forgotten; I was at peace with all men.

At peace! What wouldn’t I give if I could always be so; if these broad acres, this noble mansion, this stately apartment were mine—mine—ALL MINE—and the stillness of the room again oppressed me.

Where were the many guests miladi had mentioned? Where were the sounds of revelry? The high-pitched voices of women, the hoarser tones of men, the indistinct murmuring of conversation such as I had sat and listened to in days of yore; how it had hummed and buzzed around me when plunged in pleasant reverie, it then had no more effect on my hearing than the lapping of the gentlest waves on the seashore. There were no such sounds now; these massive walls were a sure, impenetrable barrier to whatever might be going on outside—this room—far from being filled with giddy babblers—was empty, distractedly, painfully EMPTY, empty save for the dancing moonbeams and the moving shadows.

But was it empty? My heart gave a violent, sickly throb as I recollected the look of disquietude, of grave, of indisputably grave apprehension in miladi’s eyes as she peered around! Of what had she been afraid—of the approaching twilight, of the shadows, of the gloom; and as I cast a terrified glance ahead of me I fancied—foolish fancy! that those palls of darkness I have already mentioned had come out further from the nooks and crannies and were fast approaching me.

Those of us who have ever ridden on horseback by night across some dreary wilderness, or along a lonely road have doubtless had occasion to observe a strange alteration in the behaviour of our beast; its psychic propensities have been suddenly and mysteriously awakened; it fights shy of some particular tree, or stone, or gap in the hedge; its ears twitch, its flanks quiver, it is all on the tremble, the slightest sound would now make it take the bit between its teeth and bolt; it is afraid not necessarily of what it has seen, but what it fears may be there! And—to an anomalous species of terror I found myself a bounden slave.

I dreaded to think of the effect even the most trivial sound or incident might now produce on my agitated mind. Had I been able, I would have risked the displeasure of my hostess and left the room, but I COULD NOT; every atom of strength seemed to have quitted my body—I was pro tempore cataleptic—PARALYSED.

A faint and almost imperceptible movement suddenly attracted my attention to a square patch of light on the carpet immediately before me.

To my horror something was coming THROUGH the floor. Slowly, very slowly, first of all a head, a head surmounted with long dishevelled black hair, then a FACE! God save me from seeing the like again—a face that might have once been beautiful, or plain, or ugly, but was now—NOTHING—nothing—I won’t describe—nothing but the GRAVE; then shoulders, bust, what was once a body, legs. Held in its arms in close embrace—was the figure of a baby—in a like state of nudity and decay.

For a moment, only for a moment, they stood swaying silently to and fro in the moonlight, and then with a snakelike movement of her body the phantom of the woman glided across the room, vanishing in the recess containing the large bay window.

After the subsidation of intense terror at this hideous spectacle I had been compelled to witness, the pulsating of my heart once again becoming normal, I was able to reflect with comparative calmness on what I had seen.

I say with comparative calmness, for a strong suspicion now entered my mind that Lady Wentworth may have anticipated all along what would happen, and that I had been put in that room as a mere experiment to see whether it were still haunted. The bare idea of such perfidy filled me with so great an indignation that I seriously thought of trumping up some excuse and returning home; my resolutions being shattered only by the opportune arrival of Cousin Robert, whose cordial welcome acting like a stimulant made me decide to remain.

With a thoughtfulness that had singled him out from among his companions as a boy, he noticed my weariness, and putting it down to the fatigue of my journey went in search of his wife’s maid.

Need I say that I was thankful to get to bed and there, despite my ghostly adventures, I slept very soundly till the gong went for breakfast, at which free and easy meal I made the acquaintance of some very charming guests.

Miladi was of course too much in request to spend more than a few minutes with poor, insignificant me; she expressed an earnest hope that I had not been too dull for words and that I had found the room warm and comfortable. “At all events,” she added, “you can sit and read there without fear of interruption. I know how fond of books you ‘clever’ people are—you must go into the library and choose some. You were not disturbed last night were you?”

Though this question was put in the most artless manner possible and with all apparent ingenuousness I detected a half frightened, half inquiring expression in her eyes that she vainly tried to stifle, an expression which converted the suspicion I had entertained into a conviction, a conviction that this woman was isolating me to serve some deep and subtle purpose.

I tried to get out of the lady’s-maid what this purpose might be, but if Webster knew she most certainly showed no signs of it, being doubtless as accomplished an actress as her mistress.

As one may readily conclude I looked forward to the evening with little equanimity, offering up fervent prayers for any incident that might add to the duration of dinner.

Now I hate grand dinners as a rule; their regality unnerves me; I am appalled at the number of people; at the dazzling display of plate, at the multiplicity of the courses (many of the dishes being unknown to me), at the ceaseless flow of conversation, at the clatter of glasses, at the wine, at everything; but on this occasion I simply revelled in it; the greatest formalities appealed to me as pleasantly distracting; I was poor, my companions wealthy scions of the aristocracy. I had nothing to do but eat—eat and be silent; be silent and listen; listen and look, and I saw all that one would have wanted to see in the atelier of the very best costumière in Paris or the West End.

My own dress was shabby but what of that! No one seemed aware of it, no one noticed me; I was a nonentity, mute, a consuming machine; in no one’s way because each of my neighbours was far too engrossed in eating to care about carrying on a conversation.

Once I thought a lady cast a half enviable glance at my hands; they are my best point, particularly so, when nicely manicured—and once I imagined, dear Robert, but there, THAT was only imagination.

Well the dinner, like all good things, came to an end at last. I enjoyed the dessert most; the bonbons were heavenly; every one ate them as if they were hungry; I caught myself actually pitying our hostess. At a signal from miladi, we all got up; I left the other ladies in the hall; they trooped away to fetch their purses, whilst I, feeling very much like some poor whipped schoolgirl, slunk off to the ball-room.

It was not until the door closed behind me, I understood the full horror of the situation; I was alone! for the second time within twenty-four hours—in that chamber—Alone! Alone save for those foul pollutions that might rise at any instant from beneath the floor. I believe, even then, I would have flown had not the stubbornness and pride innate in all my family restrained me. Come what would, her ladyship should never call me a coward.

So—I stuck to my post with heroic resolutions. Much as I suffered the previous day, my sufferings then in comparison with now were small, nor did the dreadful anticipations that tortured me without cessation as I sat there, waiting for the boards to part asunder, in any way surpass the awful realisation. Step by step, detail by detail the psychic drama was repeated in all its damnable horror; my recovery after witnessing it being slower on this occasion, accompanied by relapses into a state of terror too painful even to recall.

Yet I survived and succeeded in so far pulling myself together, that I met the kindly greeting of her ladyship at breakfast next morning with a calm and unembarrassed air. She did not suspect me. Once again the ordeal came and miladi, with a refinement of cruelty worthy of her steel-blue eyes and thin lips, herself conducted me to the fatal ball-room.

“To-morrow, you will have company,” she murmured, her face shining white amid that semi-gloom, “I must apologise for not giving you more light, but—for some UNEARTHLY reason or other—only one of those gas jets will ever burn. Odd is it not?” And as her eyes met mine, I walked to the fire and burst out laughing.

She was disarmed! Could any one laugh who was afraid of ghosts?

She speedily, VERY speedily left me and once again I underwent it ALL.

Suspense—horror—prostration. I think I suffered more this third night than on either of the other two.

Yet, long before morning I had recovered from the shock.

I saw a look of genuine relief rush into her ladyship’s face as she encountered my smiling countenance: whatever apprehensions she might have had with regard to THAT room were now unquestionably removed.

“It must be cleared out without further delay!” I heard her remark to Robert, “the floor will take some time polishing—and—remember the incandescent burners!”

The incandescent burners! I chuckled, what effect would THEY have on GHOSTS. I half expected she would now tell me why she had been anxious I should remain in the room: she was assured it was no longer haunted, why trouble about the past?

But a moment’s reflection made me think that after all it might be “the past” she was most anxious to conceal; hauntings, especially of so gruesome a nature as this, usually point to some blot on the escutcheon, to a disreputable something in the history of the house—and that is why so many people object to seeing their family ghosts appear in print.

Accordingly, miladi, having the honour of the Wentworths at heart, would take very good care she did not give me as much as a hint as to what she herself, quite possibly, attributed to legends.

Webster did indeed favour me with the information, that neither her ladyship nor any one else, save Lord Wentworth and the old charwoman (who dusted) were ever known to enter the room, at all events since SHE had been at the Hall, and that was well nigh ten years; which information clearly implied that entrance was strictly forbidden.

It was interesting to speculate what course miladi would have adopted, had I told her what I had seen! She was proud, domineering and tactful; would she have “pooh-poohed!” the whole thing; commanded me to be silent; resorted to bribery, or what? I couldn’t imagine her pleading—and yet—the Honour of the Old Aristocracy is very dear to them; they sometimes value it more than—life.

*****

The next few days passed agreeably and all too quickly for me. The non-card playing element, though rather stiff and prudish, were kindly disposed towards me, no doubt on account of my shy disposition and impecunious widowhood.

Of Robert I saw very little; the host and hostess in a big house never have a moment to spare. To prepare the ball-room an extra staff of servants was employed incessantly for three days, at the end of which time it was pronounced ready for the occasion.

I can find no words to convey to others the singular way in which the altered room impressed me. Though stripped of all its massive, gloomy furniture, brilliantly illuminated with many jets of incandescent gas (Robert had a strange aversion to electricity) and adorned with festoons of Oriental flowers, banners, and the gayest coloured bunting, it still retained an air of sadness, and an indescribable something, that nothing, nothing short of total annihilation, could ever eradicate or modify.

Her ladyship clad in a snowy dress of the most costly material trimmed with the rarest lace, her fair arms and bosom glittering with the Wentworth diamonds, looked like a fairy queen standing on the threshold of an enchanted castle.

I looked closely at her but could see no remnant of apprehension either in her eyes or gestures, she was perfectly at ease and sublimely unconscious of aught but the enjoyment of those around her and the importance attached to herself, the well-dressed handsome hostess.

With Robert it was otherwise; in spite of his smiles, his bows, his many pretty actions of old-world gallantry, I could see that the wan, grey spirit of unrest stalking at his elbow never left him. He would have staked his soul to glance occasionally at the spot before the fireplace, but fear lest some one might see him effectually held him back. This continual mental struggle, unsuspected even by his wife, was only too obviously apparent to me, and I seemed to hear a sigh of relief—of deep and earnest relief—issue from his lips when the orchestra began.

And now all was symphony and movement. There was much glare and glitter and piquancy; snake-like evolutions, spasmodic convergences, dexterous extrications, all performed and repeated with mathematical precision and untiring repetition.

The music changed—the waltz gave place to a novel and somewhat wildly executed fandango. It was her ladyship’s whim to include in her programme exotic dances; a resuscitation of long-forgotten Terpsichore, they were undoubtedly the distinguishing and characteristic features of her entertainments, raising them far above the commonplace, and gaining for miladi a world-wide and much-coveted reputation. She hated anything merely popular and vulgar.

In this dance that now commenced and which I beheld for the first time, there was much of the beautiful, the wanton, the bizarre, and just a suspicion of “something” which might have shocked a very exacting “Grundy.”

As the greater number of the guests, like myself, were unacquainted with it, the floor was left comparatively free for the performers, the onlookers lining the walls, the doorway, and the big bay window.

Never had I witnessed such enthusiasm; the dancers, throwing their very heart and soul into their antics, gyrated and pirouetted in such lively fashion as evoked spontaneous outbursts of applause from the delighted, albeit bewildered and somewhat puzzled spectators.

The faster the music, the quicker the feet, the louder the clapping.

And now, at a moment when the revelry had reached its height and the attention of all was riveted on the dancers, a sudden commotion in their midst made everybody wonder. What was it? What had happened?

I glanced at the clock, Robert glanced too; our eyes met, and I read in his a deadly fear; it was the hour for the dead to rise.

The space in front of the fireplace was now deserted, and the dancers, grouped around on either side, were eagerly peering forward to ascertain the cause of their alarm.

Curiosity, repulsion, and horror—horror wild and undiluted—were now depicted on every countenance as the gently heaving boards, slipping noiselessly asunder, revealed two hideous heads, rising as it were from the bowels of the earth.

Slowly, very slowly, with a gradation suggestive of machinery, the phantoms I knew so well at length came into full view. But stupendous as was the sensation this unlooked-for tableau produced, not a sound was uttered—and, as if to accentuate the silence, the music broke off abruptly, dancers, audience, and orchestra being similarly affected.

For a few seconds the female phantom, clutching in one arm its loathsome burden, paused irresolutely beside its tomb—and then, shaking a hand in the direction of the Honourable Walter, it made a sudden dart at the spot where he stood.

A thrill of the most intense horror accompanied this unexpected movement, all eyes being now transferred to the wretched youth.

I gave one glance at my cousin Robert—I dare not look again—his expression was frightful—he could do nothing to help his son—his position was that of the damned.

The crucial moment arrived—no one breathed—the Things from the Grave reached Walter—there was no hesitation—they passed RIGHT THROUGH him. I looked at the wall, I rubbed my eyes—the spectres had vanished!

A convulsive throb now ran through the assemblage, the revellers exchanged frightened and embarrassed glances, there was a general movement to the door, the room emptied, the dance was over.

*****

I did not see her ladyship again—I merely received a message of farewell, but Robert came to say good-bye.

“I wonder,” he said, gazing at me with his pensive harrowed eyes, “I wonder very much if the ghosts appeared to you when alone in that room? If so you have indeed been brave, and to keep it secret served us right. The story of the hauntings,” he continued, “has up to the present been revealed only to the male members of our family, but to you I feel that an explanation is due. At any rate, you are a Wentworth and have given me ample proof that you may with safety be entrusted with a secret.

“It seems years ago that one of my ancestors got entangled in some way or another with a beautiful gipsy. She begged him to marry her; he refused; and fearful lest the affair should leak out and so bring discredit upon the family, he murdered her, burying her body, together with that of her child, underneath the ballroom floor. At least so the MS. states, and no one, as far as I am aware, has ever disproved it.

“Tortured with remorse and a victim to the orthodox fears of a murderer, my unhappy forefather took poison, commanding in his will ‘that the ballroom should never again be used for a frivolous purpose,’ an injunction which, until last night, has been faithfully obeyed.

“The Wentworths, as you may naturally suppose, have kept the story strictly to themselves—the male heirs alone being usually acquainted with it.

“I did not altogether credit the story of the haunting though my father swore he had seen the cursed apparitions. Moreover he told me that they appeared periodically—every night at 11 P.M. from the 20th to the 31st of December. He also warned me, and here I am much to blame, on no account to permit any outsider to be in the room, ‘for if you do,’ he added, ‘THEN, something terrible will happen.’ I own I was sceptical and bitterly I regret it now. I had never seen an apparition, and what my father told me he had seen, I attributed to Suggestion, the natural consequence of dwelling too much on the horrible details of the story.

“Maud shared my scepticism and when she wanted to use the room, brought forward the most ingenious arguments to overcome my scruples.

“I declared it was impossible—it would be sheer sacrilege. I was accused of inconsistency. I disbelieved! how then could there be any danger!—the injunction in the will was unreasonable and absurd. In short, I had no peace, I had to yield, so making the stipulation that we should first find out some means by which we could prove that there was no foundation for the story of the haunting, I reluctantly gave my consent.

“Somewhat to my astonishment, Maud had already formed a plan for testing the room. She had heard me speak of you, you were a Wentworth; if you discovered anything we could rely on you to keep it secret—and so my wife suggested that you should be put in the room, ‘just to sample it.’ I hesitated, I did not speak. I suppose my silence gave consent: the rest you know. I won’t press you to tell me if you saw those beastly things, if you did the sequel only serves us right. Anyhow nothing can excuse my having sanctioned disobedience to that injunction in the will.

“The fact and the nature of the haunting is a secret no longer—the cause none but a Wentworth shall ever know.

“I need hardly enjoin you who are one of us to maintain silence on that point.

“We shall shut up the house for a time, until, in fact, the worst of the affair has blown over—and—when we meet again, let us hope it will be under happier circumstances.”

We never met again; within six months of my departure, both Robert and his son were dead—killed in a motor accident abroad. The property is now in the hands of distant, of VERY distant relations, and I feel no compunction in saying what I know about it.

Only—if you repeat this to Mr. Elliott O’Donnell, please substitute fictitious names.

BURLE FARM, NORTH DEVON
THE HEADLESS DOG AND THE EVIL TREE

Technical form of apparitions: Elemental

Source of authenticity: First-hand evidence

Cause of hauntings: Unknown

Between my exit from the stage in 1900 up till quite recently I had the great, the very great misfortune to be a teacher in a small town in the north of England.

I say misfortune because I found the contrasts between exciting stageland and the monotonous schoolroom, between the generous and jovial theatrical fraternity and the mean and petty local parents, too decidedly pronounced to be other than excessively unpleasant.

I had small patience with the mediocre abilities of very mediocre children, and still less with the continual and unwarrantable interference of their ill-mannered and doting mothers. No lot in life could have been more thoroughly uncongenial than mine; indeed, it would have soon become unbearable had it not been for the constant influx of strangers whose presence in the town made an oasis in the desert.

It is to one of these visitors—Miss Medley—that I owe the following story.

“Some years ago,” she began, “I received an invitation to spend August with a very crochety old aunt of mine residing at Burle Farm, North Devon.

“There was nothing at all extraordinary in the appearance of the house; it belonged to a type common in all parts of England. It was a low, rambling building of yellow stone with a good, substantial, thatched roof and ample stabling. The rooms, sweet with the scent of jasmine and honeysuckle, compared more than favourably with the stuffy dens in which I had been obliged to live in London; whilst the diamond-shaped window-panes and massive oak beams serving as supports to the ceilings, struck me as being quite delightfully quaint.

“My aunt, too—a rosy-faced old lady in a mob-cap—appeared quite in harmony with her surroundings. She was kindness itself—indeed, no one could have made me feel more thoroughly at home.

“‘Folks do say the house is haunted,’ she laughed, ‘particularly one room—but there! I have never seen anything, and I don’t suppose you will.’

“‘A ghost!’ I cried, ‘how awfully exciting! oh! do let me sleep in the haunted room,’ and I continued to plead till the kind-hearted old lady reluctantly consented.

“‘You mustn’t blame me if the ghost should visit you, Rosie,’ she said; ‘remember I have warned you.’

“‘There is nothing I should enjoy better than seeing a real bona-fide spook, auntie dear,’ I rejoined, smiling; but my aunt shook her head reprovingly, and no more was said on the subject until the next day.

“I awoke that night as the clock struck two—indeed, I fancied my awakening was due to that striking, it seemed so unusually loud and emphatic.

“It was a fine—indeed, I might say glorious—night, for although there was no moon, the heavens were so brilliantly illuminated with myriads of scintillating stars, that I could see every object around me almost as clearly as if it had been day.

“A sudden movement near the foot of the bed made me recollect my aunt’s admonition. I listened, experiencing none of those pleasant anticipations of which I had spoken so boastfully.

“I knew no one could have entered the room, as I had taken the precaution to lock the door, having first of all looked under the bed and made a thorough examination of the hanging wardrobe. Consequently my visitor, unless a mouse or a rat, could be nothing material.

“I devoutly wished I had slept in one of the other rooms.

“A faint and sickly odour now became perceptible whilst the noise hitherto uninterpretable developed into a series of unequal knocks just as if some big animal were lying on the floor ‘scratching’ itself.

“Determined not to appear frightened I put my hand out of bed and called ‘Trot! Trot! is that you?’ (Trot being the name of my auntie’s retriever.)

“Something instantly jumped up and, coming round the bed, stood by my side. Wondering whether it could be Trot, though at a loss to understand how he could have got into the room without being seen, I stretched out my fingers and to my intense relief touched a furry coat—the stench at the same time becoming so truly awful that I retched.

“I could, of course have satisfied myself as to the identity of my visitor by merely looking, but this, I am ashamed to say, I was too great a coward to do; a strange feeling telling me that I was in the presence of something unnatural.

“Running my hand fearfully along the shaggy skin of the animal, I felt for its head, discovering to my intense horror that it had none, the neck terminating in a wet mass of something soft and spongy.

“Unable to restrain myself any longer, I now looked, perceiving to my infinite terror a huge shock-haired spaniel, headless, and in the most abominable state of decomposition.

“I gazed at it for some seconds too appalled either to stir or utter a sound—this paralytic condition continuing till an abortive effort of the phantasm to jump on the bed loosened my tongue and I shrieked for help.

“The dog immediately vanished.

“My feelings had been, however, so outraged by what I had witnessed that nothing would have induced me to pass the remainder of the night in that room—my own idea was to get out of it with the utmost celerity.

“I did so—nor did I ever again—not even by daylight—venture to cross its threshold.

“My aunt, poor dear, was very much upset at the occurrence.

“She could not imagine how it was other people could see the ghost while she could not. And her scepticism was but natural; she was unable to grasp the idea that the psychic faculty is a gift, only granted to the few, and as rare as that either of music or painting.

“Other reasons for her incredulity in this particular occult manifestation lay in the enigmatical nature and purport of the phenomenon.

“In what category of ghosts would one classify a headless dog; Was it the spirit of a dog that had been decapitated on earth?

“She had never gathered from the Scriptures that beasts had souls—what then was this phantom of a dog?

“I suggested it might be a Poltergeist or Elemental, one of those purely bestial creations that for various reasons which you explained at your recent lecture—always haunt certain localities?”

“Yes!” I said, interrupting Miss Medley, “the sub-animal type of elemental is fairly common—if you refer to the June number 1908 of the magazine published by the Society for Psychical Research you will see an extremely well authenticated case of the haunting of a village by a white pig with an abnormally long snout and I could enumerate many other similar instances. But continue!”

“My aunt,” Miss Medley went on, “informed me that the house had once been occupied by a lady who had lived a very selfish—not to say sensual life. She had settled down at Burle, after having been divorced twice, and her weekly routine was one incessant whirl of pleasure.

“She died without the consolation of the Church, surrounded by a crowd of fawning money-hunters and over-gorged poodles, so that for this, as well as other reasons I think there may be an alternative solution to the haunting. Is it not possible that what I saw was actually the spirit of this worldly woman, which thoroughly brutalised by long indulgence in sensuality had gradually adapted that shape most befitting IT.”

“And the moral of that, Miss Medley,” I observed, “is—if you do not wish to become a beast do not live like one! Yes! there is much to be learned from a study of the different types of phantasms—more I believe than from any pulpit discourses. Is that your only psychic experience?”

Miss Medley shook her head. “No!” she said, “I had another very gruesome one at Burle. After the dog episode my aunt thought fit to warn me not to pass along a certain road after dusk. ‘There is an elm standing close to it,’ she said, ‘which the people about here declare to be haunted; as you have seen one ghost you may see another—so please be careful!’

“Now you might think that after such a disagreeable experience I would have followed my aunt’s advice, but curiosity getting the better of discretion I disobeyed her and, selecting a fine evening for the enterprise, set out to the tree.

“As it was two or three miles away, and I was dearly fond of riding, I hired a horse and going along at a jog-trot approached the forbidden spot at about eight o’clock.

“The lane in which the haunted elm stood was narrow, trees of all sorts and sizes lined it on either side, and the shadows, intensified by the thickness of the foliage overhead, almost obliterated the roadway.

“All was dark and silent. I no longer wondered at the villagers fighting shy of such a place; it looked a positive cock-pit of spookdom.

“At about twenty or so yards from the notorious elm my horse showed unmistakable signs of uneasiness, laying back its ears and shivering to such an extent that it was only by dint of alternate threats and caresses that I succeeded in urging it forward. Arriving at a spot level with the tree the animal shied, and had I not been a pretty good horse-woman I might have met with a nasty accident, but I stuck to my seat like a leech, and using my whip smartly drew in the reins. My horse fell back on its haunches; reared—plunged headlong forward—took the bit between its teeth and—we were off like the wind.

“Fortunately I was prepared; leaning back in my saddle I enjoyed rather than otherwise so mad a career. But my pleasure received a sudden check when I perceived, to my horror, the figure of a tall woman dressed in black striding along by the side of us and keeping pace with us without any apparent effort.

“Heaven alone knew where she came from unless from the tree; I fancied I had heard something drop from the branches at the moment my horse shied. As the woman was wearing a cloak drawn over her head, I could not see her face but from the grotesque outlines of her limbs and body, I concluded it must be unpleasantly bizarre.

“We kept together in this extraordinary fashion until we came in sight of Burle, when she quickened her steps, and tearing off the hood thrust her face upwards into mine.

“It was awful—utterly and inconceivably AWFUL—so awful that I felt the very marrow in my bones freeze with horror while my heart stood still.

“She had no hair; her head was round and shiny, whilst her face, yellow and swollen, was covered all over with circular black spots causing it to bear a striking resemblance to one of those old-fashioned carriage dogs!!! Her eyes were black and sinister; she had no nose, whilst her mouth was—horrid—the most horrid thing about her.

“With a diabolical grin she grabbed at my jacket and would, I believe, have torn me from my seat had we not at this moment, in the very nick of time, arrived within sight of the gates of Burle Farm.

“My aunt, with several other people, was awaiting me, and as with a desperate spurt I galloped up to them, the infernal hag let go her hold of my jacket, slackened her pace and vanished.”

CARNE HOUSE, NEAR
NORTHAMPTON
THE MAN IN THE FLOWERY DRESSING-GOWN
AND THE BLACK CAT

Technical form of apparitions: Phantoms of the dead and possibly animal: Elemental.

Cause of haunting: Murder

Source of authenticity: First-hand evidence

Should any one wonder why I continually select Northamptonshire and Gloucestershire as the scenes of my ghost stories, let me hasten to explain that my reason is obvious enough—with both these counties I have had a lifelong intimacy and naturally have had more facilities and opportunities for collecting suitable material from them than from any other.

I have not the slightest doubt other counties can show equally long lists of haunted houses, only I have not found them so easy of access, moreover the genial nature of the inhabitants of Northamptonshire (especially) has attracted as well as aided me in my research, and although the burly Midland yeoman is inclined to scoff at things superphysical, his satire is not so objectionable as is that of the supercilious middle-class Londoner.

Again, Northamptonshire is very rich in well preserved old country mansions—I know of no other county where there are so many—and as most of these houses have at one time or another witnessed some grim tragedy, it is not surprising that they are now the scenes of occult manifestations.

Doubtless one would find similar phenomena in smaller habitations were the latter of the same early date, for crime was then just as prevalent among the poor as among the rich, but the inferior material with which cottages have been built causes their comparatively speaking early dissolution, and we rarely find a cottage now standing which was built more than a century ago.

From this it must not be deduced that hauntings are confined to old buildings nor that past crime alone begat ghosts; nothing of the sort, modern villas are frequently subjected to psychic phenomena whilst the phantoms of present-day suicides and murderers are decidedly as numerous as of yore.

But whereas in olden times, crime was fairly common in villages, it is now chiefly confined to towns, and the houses that have witnessed murders, &c., are not infrequently entirely demolished or made to undergo some very radical alterations—hence the ghosts disappear with their surroundings.

This more so, perhaps, in the provinces than in London, as there are too many crimes in the latter for any particular one to be remembered for any length of time, not long enough in fact to permanently damn the letting of a house.

The word ghost is very elastic, it may be used in reference to many different types of spirits, and is, in fact, only the designation for that genus of which the departed soul of man is but a species.

Now Northamptonshire is very rich in species; species of all kinds; spirits of men, of beasts, of vegetables! and species of elementals—elemental being in itself, a genus which includes many various types, too numerous indeed, for any attempt at classification in this work.

It is no uncommon thing to meet with some locality (usually barren) or village (generally on the site of barrows or Druidical remains as, for example, Guilsborough) where the nature of the hauntings is dual; a complexity that is, fortunately, of rarer occurrence in houses.

Concerning the latter, Lee mentions one instance, i.e., “The Gybe Farm,” in his book, “More Glimpses of the Unseen World” whilst I will take this opportunity to quote another case of dual haunting, i.e., Carne House, which is situated at the utmost extremity of a village to the south-east of Northampton.

My informant, Mrs. Norton, frequently resided in the house in her childhood and youth, and it was from her lips that I heard the following story which I recollect only too well.

*****

My first impression of Carne House was one of extreme aversion; I can see it now as I saw it then—vast, sleek, and white, like some monstrous toadstool, or slimy fungus.

Bathed in the moonlight—for we did not arrive till late—it confronted us with audacious nudity; not a plant or shrub being trained to hide its naked sides. There was something unspeakably loathsome in the boldness of its carriage—something that made me glance with fear at its wide and gaping windows and glance again as I crossed the threshold into the dark and lofty hall.

The passages of the house, both in number and sinuosity, resembled a maze; they recalled to my youthful mind the story of Dædalus, and I half expected to see the figure of the Minotaur suddenly arise from some gloomy corner and pursue me through the labyrinth.

Nor were my fears entirely groundless, for I had hardly been in the place a month before I had a very unpleasant experience.

Chancing one morning to go on an errand for my mother to a room that had in all probability once served as a laundry, but which was now restricted to lumber, I was startled at hearing something move either in or on the copper. Thinking it must be some stray animal, or, may be, a rat, I threaded my way through a sea of packing cases, and standing on tip-toe, peeped very cautiously into the copper.

To my intense surprise I found myself looking into a very deep and sepulchral well, at the bottom of which was a man. I could see him distinctly, owing to a queer kind of light that seemed to emanate from every part of his body. He was draped in a phantastic costume that might have been a kimono or one of those flowery dressing-gowns worn by our great-great-grandfathers. He was bending over a box which he was doing his best to conceal under a pile of débris, and it was undoubtedly this noise that had attracted me.

Too intent on his work, he was apparently unaware of my close proximity, until, satisfied that the box was well hidden, he straightened his back and looked up.

His face frightened me; not that it was anything out of the normal either in feature or complexion, but it was the expression—the look of evil joy that suffused every lineament before he saw me, changing to one of the most diabolical fury as our eyes met. I was at first too transfixed with terror to do more than stare, and it was only when, crouching down, he took a sudden and deliberate spring at the wall and began to climb it like a spider, that I regained possession of my limbs, and turning round, fled for my life.

Oh! how long that room seemed and what an interminable succession of furniture now appeared to barricade the way.

Every yard was a mile, every instant I expected he would clutch me.

I reached the door only just in time—happily for me it was open—I darted out, and as I did so the outlines of a hand—large and ill-shapen—shot fruitlessly past me.

The next moment I was in the kitchen—the servants were there—I was saved—saved from a fate that would assuredly have sent me mad.

When I related what had happened, to my mother, she laughingly informed me I must have been dreaming, that there was NO WELL there, nor was there any man in the house save my father and the servants; yet I fancied I could detect beneath those smiling assurances a faint and scarcely perceptible horror—and she never let me visit that room again—alone!

But was I dreaming—was there no well, and had that man been but the fancy of a childish and distorted brain?

Sometimes I answered “Yes,” and sometimes “No.”

After this little incident, a manifest, though of necessity, subtle change took place in our household; the servants became infected with a general spirit of uneasiness, which although only shown in my presence by their looks, convinced and alarmed me far more than any fears, even the most terrible, would have done had they been outspoken. I was positive they lived in daily anticipation of something very dreadful—something that lay concealed in those dark and tortuous corridors or in that grim and ghostly room.

My dreams at night were horrible, nor did I again feel that in this respect I was singular as I overheard some one remark that no one ever passed the night without awakening with a sudden and inexplicable start.

I say inexplicable—would that it had always remained so!

It was August when my next definite adventure occurred. I use the word definite as I had had several other experiences, but of too brief and uncertain a nature to enable me to draw any precise conclusions.

Once, as I had been walking along one of the passages, I had heard the noise of something clanking, and had been put to instant flight by the sound of heavy footsteps echoing suddenly in my rear, and again—but this isn’t really worth recording; let me proceed with that night in August.

Well, I slept in a room at the end of a corridor, my nearest neighbour, Miss Dovecot our governess, occupying a chamber some dozen yards away. I do not think I need describe any article of furniture the room contained; every piece was strictly modern, and had been brought with us from a newly furnished house in Sevenoaks. The fireplace and cupboard are, however, deserving of comment; the former was one of those old-fashioned ingles Burns delights in describing, and which are now so seldom to be seen; an inn at Dundry, near Bristol, containing, I believe, the finest specimen in the kingdom; whilst the latter, which I always kept securely locked at night, was of such far-reaching dimensions that it might well be termed in modern phraseology a linen room.

On the night in question, I had gone to bed at my usual time—eight—and I had speedily fallen to sleep, as I was in the habit of doing; but my slumber was by no means normal.

I was tortured with a series of disturbing dreams, from which I awoke with a start to hear some clock outside sonorously strike twelve. As an additional proof of my wakefulness, I might add (pardon my explicitness) I was sensibly affected by a constant irritation of the skin, due, I believe, to a disordered state of the liver, which in itself was a sufficient preventive to further sleep.

It must have been half-past twelve when I heard, to my intense horror, the cupboard door—which I distinctly recollect locking—slowly, very slowly, open.

My first impulse was to make a precipitate rush for the door, but, alas! I soon became aware that I was powerless to act; a kind of catalepsy, coming on suddenly, held my body as in a vice, whilst my senses, on the other hand, had grown abnormally acute.

In this odious condition I was now compelled to listen to the Thing—whatever it might be—slowly crossing the floor in the direction of my bed.

The climax at length came, and my cup of horrors overflowed, when, with an abruptness that was quite unexpected (in spite of the direst apprehension), the Thing leaped on the bed, and I discovered it to be an enormous CAT.

I can unhesitatingly add the epithet—Black—for the room, which a moment before was shrouded in darkness, had now become a blaze of light, enabling me to perceive the colour as well as the outline with the most unpleasant perspicuity.

It was not only in intensity of colour (the blackest ebony could not have been blacker) that the cat was abnormal, but in every other respect; its dimensions were not far removed from those of a large bull-dog, and its expression—the eyes and mouth of the beast were more than bestial—was truly Satanic. Stalking over my legs, its tail almost perpendicular and swaying slightly like the nodding plumes of a hearse, it squatted down between the bedposts opposite, transfixing me with a stare full of malevolent meaning.

I was so fully occupied in watching it and trying to solve the enigma I saw so plainly written in its every gesture, that I did not realise I had other visitors, till a sudden uncertain twitching in the light made me look round. I then perceived with a start a fire was burning in the grate.

A fire, and in August—how incongruous! I shivered.

But it was no delusion; the flames soared aloft, adopting a hundred fantastic yet natural shapes; the coals burned hollow, and in their crimson and innermost recesses I read the future.

But not for long. My cogitations were unceremoniously interrupted by the appearance of the man-in-the-well, whom I was startled to perceive seated in the chimney-corner in the most nonchalant attitude possible—nursing a baby!

Anomalous and mirth-provoking as is such a sight in the usual way, the existing circumstances were grim enough to excite my horror and raise anew my worst forebodings.

Supposing he saw me now? There was no escape! I was entirely at his mercy. What would he do?

I glanced from him to the cat, and from the cat back again to him. Of my two enemies, which was most to be feared? The slightest movement on my part would inevitably arouse them both, and bring about my immediate destruction. The situation did not even warrant my breathing.

The minutes sped by with the most tantalising slowness. The clock struck one, and neither of my visitors had budged an inch—the man in the flowery dressing-gown still nursing the baby, and the black cat still staring at me. Mine was indeed a most unenviable position, and I was despairing of its ever being otherwise, when a sudden transmutation in the man sent a flow of icy blood to my heart.

He no longer regarded his burden indifferently—he scowled at it.

The scowl deepened, the utmost fury pervaded his features, converting them into those of a demon. He got up, gnashed his teeth, stamped on the ground, and lifting up the child, dropped it head first into the fire. I saw it fall. I heard it burn!

The hideous cruelty of the man, the abruptness of his action, proved my undoing. Oblivious of personal danger, I shrieked.

The effect was electrical. Dropping the poker, with which he had been holding down the baby, the inhuman monster swung round and saw me.

The expression in his face at once became hellish, absolutely hellish.

My only chance of salvation now lay in making the greatest noise possible, and I had commenced to shout for help lustily, when at a signal from the man, the enormous black cat crouched and sprang.

What followed I cannot exactly remember, I have dim recollections of feeling a heavy thud and of some one or some THING trying to tear away the clothes from my head, after which there came a very complete blank, and when I recovered consciousness, the anxious countenances of my parents and governess were bending over me.

The next night I slept with my sister.

My health had been so impaired by these encounters, that my parents decided to move elsewhere; the furniture was once again packed, and within a month of the above incident we had taken up our abode in Clifton, Bristol.

The history of the hauntings was subsequently revealed to me by the owner of the house. It had once been inhabited by a man of the name of Darby, who seems to have been a sort of wholesale butcher.

His elder brother dying, the family estate passed to the latter’s eldest son, a child of two, and Darby determining to succeed to the property, invited the widow to stay with him. She did so—she was a weakly creature—and he got rid of her by putting her to sleep in a damp bed. The children were next disposed of, the younger by being burnt (as I had witnessed) and the elder, aged two, by being smothered to death by a black cat. Darby is said to have deliberately made the cat sit upon the infant’s mouth as it lay asleep. But these rapid deaths, as might have been expected, aroused suspicions. The nurse, who had been an unwilling party to the burning of the baby, turned King’s Evidence, and a warrant for his arrest was issued. As is often the case, however, the officers of the law were a bit too late. When they arrived at the house, the quarry had flown, nor could his whereabouts be discovered for many years; not, indeed, till fifty years after the crimes, when his skeleton was found at the bottom of a disused well he had himself sunk in one of the back kitchens. Under the skeleton lay an iron box containing many valuables, rings, &c., which he had been doubtless striving to hide when death in some unaccountable form or another overtook him. What became of the cat, history does not say.

The place had always borne a reputation for being haunted—it was on that account my parents had got it at so low a rental—and the ghosts seen there (undoubtedly those of Darby and his cat) corresponded in every detail with the phenomena that had so terrified me.

I am aware that many deny the existence of souls in animals—let them do so—but do not let them be too dogmatical, for where Life ends all is mystery.

Still there is an alternative theory to account for the appearance of animal phantoms, which is, I think, quite within the realms of possibility: the black cat I saw, if not the spirit of the one made such hideous use of by the old man, was undoubtedly an elemental—a spirit representative of a popular crime, a vice—Darby’s evil genius—that ever hovered at his heels in his lifetime and is more loth than ever to leave him now that his physical body is dead and his soul earthbound.

HARLEY HOUSE, PORTISHEAD
THE BLACK ANTENNÆ

Technical form of apparitions: Poltergeists (or Elementals)

Source of authenticity: First-hand evidence

Cause of hauntings: Unknown

The following account of a haunted house is taken from the diary of a gentleman—since deceased. The narrator was the owner of the house, and, being a professional man, asked me to give fictitious names, lest the publication of the story should be detrimental both to his practice and to the letting of the place:

“Before I commence my story,” he writes, “I think it expedient to state that both my parents are dead, my father having died many years ago and my mother quite recently. The latter had lived to the very ripe age of ninety, had possessed an unusually strong will, was a most devout Roman Catholic, and took the deepest interest in everything that concerned our welfare. She had two peculiarities: (1) A strange aversion to children; (2) a positive loathing and dread of blackbeetles. The house stands alone, some thirty yards or so from the road, and is well concealed from view by a high brick wall and numerous trees.

“There are four bedrooms upstairs, two on either side of the landing—which for clearness I will number—viz., No. 1 occupied by my wife and I; No. 2 my sister Mary’s room; No. 3 my sister Joan’s room; No. 4 the spare bedroom in which my mother died. The top storey consists of two attics inhabited by the servants.

“January 1, 1906, we first became aware of the disturbances—violent knockings being heard about midnight on the walls and floor of room No. 4. On hurriedly entering it, we could discover nothing. But on leaving the room the noises were repeated and kept up till two or three in the morning.

“January 5. A recurrence of the disturbance—only much louder.

“January 6. Have in a carpenter who makes a thorough examination of the wainscoting and reports ‘no traces of rats, mice nor any other animals.’

“January 10. Tremendous knockings again in room No. 4, the door of which is swinging to and fro violently. A loud clatter on landing as though half a dozen children were engaged in the roughest horse-play. The uproar terminates in a terrific crash on the panel of No. 3 door. Joan rushes out of her bedroom thinking the house is on fire and sees a strange, green light some six by two feet long moving across the landing. It disappears in room No. 4.

“January 15. We are all awakened by a loud crash and on reaching the landing find a big, black oak chest from the coach-house, lying there on its back. Every one much alarmed.

“February 1. My sister Mary awakened at midnight by feeling something tickle her cheeks. She puts out her hand to brush it away and encounters something cold and scaly. Her shrieks of terror bring us all into her bedroom—there is nothing there.

“February 3. My wife and I are aroused by feeling our bed gently lifted up and down, and on my getting out for a light, I tread on something indescribably disgusting. It feels like a monstrous insect!!

“February 4. The knocking very bad all night—particularly in room No. 4.

“February 5, 6, 7, ditto.

“February 10. The clothes mysteriously taken off Joan’s bed and transported to room No. 2.

“February 15. Both servants undergo our experience of February 3.

“February 16. The knockings still continued and distant sounds heard as of some one coming upstairs and turning the handles of all the room doors.

“February 17. Scufflings on the landings, and in the passage as though caused by a troop of very noisy children.

“February 19. Knockings in room No. 2. The washstand and a heavy mahogany wardrobe moved some feet out of their places. Mary, who was awake at the time, saw the shunting of the furniture, but could detect no sign of any agent.

“March 1. About 8.30 A.M. after Martha had laid the breakfast things she went downstairs to finish a cup of tea. On her return to the breakfast room she found it in the wildest state of disorder; chairs over-turned, ashpan and front of grate removed to furthest extremity of room, all the pictures taken down from the walls and laid face upwards on the floor, and the cups, saucers, plates, knives and forks piled in one heap in centre of table; all this had been done without either breakage or noise.

“Terrified out of her wits Martha rushed upstairs to our door, and nothing would induce her to enter the breakfast room again alone.

“March 3. On returning home about 10 P.M. from a neighbouring town, we found the servants sitting huddled together, half dead with fright in the kitchen. They had heard knockings and the most appalling thuds ever since we had gone out; and on entering our room (No. 1) we found it in an absolute turmoil: the bed-clothes in a promiscuous pile on the floor, the duchess table turned round with its face to the wall, the pictures ditto—but—nothing broken.

“March 15. Awakened in middle of night by three loud crashes in room No. 3, after which we distinctly heard our door open and some one crawl stealthily under our bed.

“We at once lit a candle—no one was there.

“March 18. Knockings in both the attics. The servants badly scared.

“March 21. As Joan was running downstairs about mid-day, she received a violent bang on her back as if some one had hit her with the palm of their hand. She came to my study in a very exhausted condition, and it took her some minutes to recover.

“March 24. Found my mother’s shoes, which we were certain had been locked up in a bureau, placed where she had always placed them in her lifetime—i.e., on the hearth-rug before the dining-room fire.

“March 31. My mother’s favourite arm-chair found upside down in front of the fire-place in room No. 4.

“April 2, 11 P.M. As Mary was stooping to look under the bed for fear of burglars, she was suddenly pushed down and the mattresses and bedclothes were thrown on the top of her. Her frantic struggles and muffled screams being, fortunately, overheard by my wife (I was in London at the time), she was immediately extricated. No injury, only bad shock.

“April 3, midnight. The contents of a large chest of drawers in room No. 3 suddenly emptied on to the floor. Loud crashes in all parts of the house.

“April 10, 11 P.M. On going up to bed, we find room No. 4 aglow with a pale green light and filled with a faint sickly odour, which we at once recognised as identical with that smelt there at the time of my mother’s decease and which we considered was peculiar to her disease.

“I must mention that after her death, the room had been thoroughly renovated, the old flooring replaced by new, the walls repapered and everywhere well disinfected with the strongest carbolic. My mother had died at 11 P.M.

“April 12, 13, 14, 15; 11 P.M. The same light and smell.

“April 20. Joan fell over some large obstacle in the hall, hurting herself badly. She could see nothing, but was half suffocated with a stench similar to the one already described.

“April 30, 2.20 A.M. Both my wife and I distinctly felt something brush across our faces. We lit a candle and perceived to our horror two long black antennæ (like the antennæ of a monstrous beetle) waving to and fro on our pillow.

“We spent the rest of the night on the drawing-room chairs and sofa.

“May 1. Shut up the house.”

Note.—An attempt to solve the mystery surrounding these hauntings will appear in a subsequent volume.

THE WAY MEADOW, SOMERSET
THE INVISIBLE HORROR

Technical form of haunting: Unknown

Source of authenticity: Personal and other experiences

Cause of haunting: Unknown

In my boyhood days I was very fond of making long excursions on foot, my peregrinations taking me many miles from Bristol, which was at that time my home. On one of these occasions I took a route that led me past Bath, and eventually arrived at a village that particularly fascinated me.

Lying in a hollow by the side of a sluggish river, or stream, it presented an exceedingly attractive appearance to my somewhat romantic eyes. I especially liked the whitewashed cottages, with their thatched roofs, diamond-fashioned window-panes, walls and trellised arches covered with jasmine and Virginian creepers; their tiny gardens crowded with foxgloves and roses, and their quaint, their very quaint chimney-pots, from which arose spiral columns of fleecy-looking smoke.

It was a pretty village, a pre-eminently peaceful village; a village that was rendered almost fantastic by the close proximity of a queerly constructed water-mill; it was a sunny village, remarkably hot in summer, but intensely cold in winter.

The stream to which I have alluded ran its tortuous course through a succession of open meadows. In the corner of one was a pond, a deep and silent piece of water that was supposed to be connected in some way with the miniature river. It struck me as a very proper place for a bathe, the weeping willows that fringed its margins affording an effectual screen to the prying eyes of children; whilst the gently sloping banks of spongy grass were softer to the tread than any towel.

To add to my inducements the sun was unusually hot, which made the thought of a bath very tempting after my long tramp over dry monotonous roads.

Plunging in, I was, however, immeasurably surprised to find that, despite the abnormal heat, the water was icy cold, and that the scalding rays from above did not appear to have the slightest effect on the temperature.

Taking a few rapid strokes, I found myself nearing the opposite bank, and was preparing to turn about when a sudden panic seized me, and, fancying I was being pursued, I scrambled ashore.

Seeing nothing, and consequently assured that my fears were due to the trickeries of imagination, I once again entered the water and was well on my return voyage when I experienced the same sensation. I seemed to feel the presence of some extremely hostile and repulsive body—something that lived in the pool and bitterly resented intrusion. So strong was this feeling that I would not on any account have bathed there again—at least, not alone.

In response to my inquiries in the village, I learned that the meadow, which went by the name of “The Way,” bore a very evil reputation, being carefully avoided by the local people after nightfall. Though nothing had been actually seen there, those who had attempted to cross the field in the dusk emphatically declared they were assailed by an “invisible something” that was indescribably cold and horrid, and that they only escaped from it after the most strenuous exertions.

Nothing short of force would induce a dog or a horse to enter the meadow, and farmers fought shy of letting their cattle graze there; indeed, should any farmer be so foolish as to do so his beasts invariably died.

I suppose I looked a trifle sceptical at this, as the blacksmith remarked: “Don’t smile, sir; if you saw Way Field, and especially the pool, after twilight, you would form a very different idea of it to what you do now. In the day-time it is, as you see, all sunlight and daisies, an ideal spot for tea in the hay; but in the evening the aspect undergoes a complete change. The temperature is invariably lower there than it is in any of the other meadows, whilst the shadows that crowd upon the grass are not in the least representative of any trees! Curious, sir, is it not?”

I readily agreed it was curious, and I was so deeply impressed by all that had occurred that, years afterwards, when chance once again brought me in the district, I lost no time in setting off to visit the pond.

To my astonishment it was gone, and its site was now occupied by the kitchen garden of a large house, evidently the abode of some person of means.

I made inquiries and had but little difficulty in obtaining an introduction to the owner who was not only acquainted with what I already knew, but was able and willing to give me further information, with the stipulation, however, that on no account must I mention either his name or that of the locality. He wanted, he explained, to sell the place and he could not hope to get a fair price for it, if the story of the hauntings appeared in print.

“I have been here three years!” he began, “during which time I have had no less than eight housekeepers and twenty-five servants (my usual staff consists of four); that signifies a good few changes. Eh?”

“Yes, it has been a confounded nuisance!” he went on, “none of them would stay on account of the ghost! I pooh-poohed the thing at first, although I honestly felt there was something very queer about the place, but when one after another came to me with the same yarns, I was obliged to admit there might be something in it.

“Their complaints, though differing slightly in small technicalities—due, perhaps, to their unequal descriptive powers—were on the whole co-incidental; frightful dreams, sudden awakenings without any apparent cause, strange creakings on the staircases, the foot-falls of something soft and indefinable, the rattling and turning of door handles, and over and above everything else the most pronounced feeling of insecurity.

“‘I won’t on any account remain downstairs after the rest have gone to bed,’ one of my housekeepers observed on my asking her to sit up for me, ‘the very first night I stayed here—before I had heard any rumour of the place being haunted—I underwent the most unpleasant sensations on being left alone. I instinctively felt some uncanny creature had begun to walk the house as soon as the lights were out. No, sir. I am ready and anxious to fulfil all my other duties, save this, and if it is really indispensable, why I fear, sir, you must get someone else in my place.’

“This I promptly did, but all to no effect. The newcomer had not been with me a week before she approached me with a very woe-begone face.

“‘I am sorry, sir,’ she said, ‘I must give notice. I am by no means nervous, indeed I have always laughed at ghosts, but there is something unmistakably the matter with this place, especially the garden!’

“‘The garden!’ I exclaimed, ‘Come, it’s the first time I have heard there’s anything amiss with the garden.’

“‘But not the last, I’ll warrant you,’ she remarked caustically. ‘Why sir, unless I am very much mistaken, the origin of the disturbances lies in that garden, over there,’ and she shot a bony forefinger (why should housekeepers invariably have bony fingers?) in the direction of the filled-in pond. ‘As I was gathering some lettuce there last night I felt (I could see nothing) some horribly cold and sticky thing clasp me in its arms. It must have been hiding among the raspberry canes. Struggling with all my might I managed to free myself just as a mass of fetid jelly was closing over my throat and mouth. Oh! how desperately I struggled, and what a blessed relief it was to be free from that loathsome presence. I can assure you, sir, I ran across the garden as fast as any girl, nor did I pause for one second, till Johnson and one of the maids came to my assistance. They did not ask me what had happened, bless you sir, they knew! Nor was a word said about it at supper, no one dare even as much as mention the thing by gaslight!’

“It was useless, Mr. O’Donnell, to try and persuade the woman to remain with me after THAT, she went and, by the bye, I have just heard she has recently undergone an operation for tumour in some provincial hospital.

“With my next housekeeper I was rather more fortunate. She stayed with me for more than six months before showing any of the usual signs of restlessness.

“Then she came to the point without the least embarrassment, springing her surprise on me over the breakfast cups.

“‘I must leave!’ she said demurely, proceeding at the same time to pour out the coffee, ‘there is a certain dampness here that is very trying to one subject to rheumatism, as well as to one’s nerves.’

“I started guiltily. ‘A dampness! Nerves! you astonish me,’ I stammered, ‘pray explain yourself.’ She did so.

“‘What I mean is,’ she observed, ‘that I can never enter the lower part of the kitchen garden without being persistently followed by a “mist”—I should have put it down to mere imagination, had I not accidentally heard some one speak about the ghost, and I at once concluded that the mist must in some way be connected with it—am I not right?’

“Of course I assented—what else could I do?

“‘I thought so,’ she went on demurely, ‘I suppose you do not think it necessary to tell your applicants the place is haunted?’

“I shook my head feebly and muttered: ‘Continue.’

“‘Last night,’ she said, ‘the mist was more pertinacious than ever—it not only pursued me in the garden, but came to my window after I had gone to bed. I was looking at the moon when the temperature of the room suddenly fell to zero, the moonlight blurred, and to my amazement I saw the mist clinging to the window-pane. Mr. ——, I am not a nervous woman as a rule, but I wouldn’t stay in this house another month under any conditions.’

“She went—and once again I had to go through all the bother of advertising. The wretched thing now began to haunt more vigorously than ever. It attacked Emily, the cook, on the kitchen staircase, and Mark, my general factotum, in the stables, both leaving in consequence, and both being afterwards taken very ill. Indeed it was the report of their illness that prompted me to wage war against the ghost—if I had to leave the house, it should not be till I had ascertained something more definite about my enemy. I would try and discover its identity—what it actually was! With this end in view I laid every trap imaginable, my ingenuity being at length rewarded by finding a faint and barely perceptible impression on the surface of a very large tray full of a carefully prepared mixture of gelatine and wax. I had placed the tray in one of the passages usually frequented by the EVIL PRESENCE. On examining the impression under a powerful microscope I fancied I could detect innumerable granules composed of radiating threads with bulbous terminations.

“Elated at my success and wondering very much what it represented, I took a photograph of the impression and sent it to a medical friend—a bacteriologist—in London, whom I knew to be interested in psychical research. In the course of a few days he came to see me, and, pointing to the wax tablet, remarked:

“‘I showed the photograph you sent me to some of my colleagues, and we came to the conclusion that the impression bore a distinct likeness to a number of actinomyces, which, as you may know, are a kind of fungi inimically disposed to every kind of animal—cattle in particular. Indeed they are in the main responsible for one of the most common and deadly bovine diseases which is called actinomycosis, and is acquired by cattle eating infected barley or other cereal, the actinomyces adhering to the tongue or jaw.

“‘In man the disease is very similar in its clinical character and may be caused by a number of organisms belonging to the streptothrix group (I fear this is rather too technical for you) forming colonies in the tissues and obtaining access to the body from a carious tooth or not infrequently from the tonsil.

“‘The disease is sometimes wrongfully diagnosed as tuberculosis; it usually occurs in farmers, millers, and others who are brought in contact with grain; it has a tendency to spread locally, and although not dangerous in itself, may become so by attacking important organs or by becoming generalised, thereby giving rise to pyæmic abscesses in all parts of the body.

“‘In the description of the assault on your housekeeper, to which you gave special prominence (and rightly so) in your letter, you mentioned that the EVIL PRESENCE tried to “get at her mouth”—well that would be in strict accordance with the modus operandi of actinomyces, the primary endeavour of which is to obtain a passage through the lips. Furthermore, you gathered from local gossip that the unfortunate woman had undergone an operation in some provincial hospital for tumours; now tumours are usually one of the sure indications of the nature and progress of the disease.

“‘Lastly, you referred to fatality in any cattle allowed to graze in the haunted meadow. Now you know from what I have already told you that cattle are the favourite victims of the fungi.

“‘From these deductions then, one must inevitably arrive at the conclusion—that the haunting here is due to nothing more or less than the phantasm of a giant mass of ACTINOMYCES—and as this type of spirit would undoubtedly be proof against exorcism my only advice to you is to shut up the house and go.’

“Afterwards, with a view to corroborate my friend’s theory, partly for his satisfaction, partly for my own, I am afraid, Mr. O’Donnell, I agreed to rather a cruel thing—the proposal being that we should experiment on one of our dogs—Spot. Turning him loose in the lower extremity of the garden, we took up a position in the loft of a neighbouring barn, where we clearly saw each act in the grim but exciting drama.

“To begin with, Spot did not at all appreciate being left alone. From the very first he manifested distinct signs of uneasiness, his preliminary barks of disapproval speedily changing to those of fear and culminating in howls of positive terror, as tucking his tail between his legs, he careered madly round the enclosure.

“He did not, however, keep up this pace for long, but soon showed unmistakable signs of flagging, coming to an abrupt halt sooner than we had expected.

“The Evil Presence had, we felt sure, got hold of him.

“Thrust back on his haunches and snapping viciously, his eyes protruding and his mouth foaming, poor Spot presented such an appearance of impotence and terror that I rose to interfere and would doubtless have done so, had I not been persuaded to the contrary by my medical friend, whose professional interests he either could not or would not sacrifice for the sake of sentiment.

“Poor Spot eventually died, and our post mortem pointed to ACTINOMYCOSIS—his body being literally perforated with abscesses.

“Thus you see, Mr. O’Donnell, in discovering the identity of the phantasm I accomplished—in part at all events—my purpose; the cause of the haunting must, I am afraid, remain a mystery.”[5]

NO. — HACKHAM TERRACE
SWINDON
THE GHASTLY SCREAMS ON
THE STAIRCASE

Technical form of apparition: Phantasm of dead

Cause of hauntings: Unknown

Last December I journeyed up from Cornwall, as usual, to the annual concert given by my old school, Clifton College, and at the subsequent House Supper I made the acquaintance of several O. C.s who were considerably my juniors in point of age.

We chatted together for a long time, and in the course of our conversation touched upon the superphysical.

“You couldn’t have a better authenticated instance of a haunted house,” one of my young friends remarked, “than that of No. —, Hackham Terrace, Swindon. Isn’t that so, Neilson? You come from Swindon.”

Neilson agreed.

“I know the people who live there,” my informant, Jarvis, continued, “and they have seen and heard the phantasm over and over again.”

“What form does it take?” I asked.

“A shrieking woman’s.”

“Like the ghost of Tehiddy,” I ejaculated.

“I have never heard of the ghost of Tehiddy,” Jarvis rejoined, “but I cannot conceive anything more gruesome than the Hackham Terrace apparition. Let me tell you some of Mrs. Belmont’s experiences.

“You must know the house is quite new, the Belmont’s being the first tenants, and that nothing has been discovered, so far, that can in any way account for the hauntings.

“To proceed, about a month after they had taken the house, every one was aroused in the middle of the night by a succession of the most unearthly screams, coming, so it seemed, from the basement of the house.

“For some seconds no one ventured out of their rooms, and then, Mrs. Belmont very pluckily taking the lead, other members of the family followed her down-stairs.

“Arriving at the commencement of the passage leading to the kitchen, they all saw an indefinable black object lying on the ground.

“Frozen to the spot with horror, the Belmonts watched the thing slowly rise, developing as it did so until it assumed the appearance and dimensions of a gigantic naked woman. But what was so inconceivably horrid about her was the face: she had no eyes, their places being filled by ordinary flesh.

“Confronting them for some moments in silence, she suddenly and without the least warning assumed a horizontal position in mid-air, dematerialised, and passed through the wall in the guise of a rectangular mass of pale blue light. Could anything be more ghastly?”

“It has parallels in the luminous woman known as Proctor’s ghost, Wellington, near Newcastle, and in a house, also new, in Portishead. Can you tell me any further experiences there?”

“Yes,” Jarvis rejoined; “one of the servants was breaking coal in the cellar one evening, when the hammer was unceremoniously snatched from her hand, the candle blown out, and a blue, tatooed arm thrust so roughly against her face that one of her front teeth was actually loosened.

“She screamed, and the arm vanished.

“Still another incident: One of the Belmont boys, Percy, was preparing to get into bed one night, when something caught him sharply by the foot, and looking down, he saw to his surprise a large hairy hand encircling his ankle.

“He particularly noticed the nails, which, though filbert in shape, were excessively long and dirty.

“Mumbling a prayer, the first that came into his mind, he emphasised it by a violent kick. He could not say which produced the desired effect—the prayer or the kick—but the hand let go its hold, and the next moment a shapeless mass of blue something rising from the bed, and hovering for the briefest duration of time on a level with his eyes, disappeared through the ceiling.

“On another occasion, when Mrs. Belmont was in the conservatory watering flowers, one of the pots behind her suddenly fell to the ground with a crash.

“She turned round and found herself confronted by a blue face that occupied the spot where the pot had stood.

“Too dismayed and startled even to think of escape, she stood rooted to the spot, gazing at the evil thing in open-mouthed horror. What was it?

“Though resembling a man in contour and features, its expression was too thoroughly bestial to belong to anything human.

“The eyes, deep, sunken and lurid, leered malignantly at her, whilst the mouth was distorted into a diabolical grin.

“The apparition had no body.

“Mrs. Belmont is of the opinion she might have stayed there till doomsday had not the unexpected arrival of the gardener scared the thing away—it disappeared as he entered the greenhouse door and its place was once again taken by the flower-pot!

“Mrs. Belmont had another unpleasant experience only this week.

“As she was crossing the landing to her bedroom one morning, some one seized her by her shoulders, and, pulling her violently backwards, threw her on the floor.

“She was then gripped by the throat (so firmly that the impressions of the fingers could be seen next day), and on looking up she encountered the same awful face she had seen in the conservatory.

“The hateful thing was now in full possession of a body which, blue and hairy, accorded well with the strangely animal expression in its eyes.

“Mrs. Belmont was too fascinated and horror-stricken to struggle, and she thinks she would undoubtedly have been strangled had not succour once again arrived at the most opportune moment.

“Her rescuer this time was Bruce, a very pugnacious Irish terrier.

“Nothing daunted, and contrary to what one is led to expect from the generality of psychic tales, Bruce flew at the figure.

“The phantasm immediately dissolved into a blue vapour and vanished.

“I could enumerate many other occasions on which similar occult phenomena occurred in the house; sometimes the eyeless woman would be seen gliding down the staircase or heard screaming in the passages; at other times the blue man would pounce upon his unsuspecting victims out of some dark sequestered corner, or frighten them to the verge of a fit, by simply peering at them through a door or window—the manifestations always terminating in a bluish vapour.”

“The house, you say, was quite new,” I observed.

Jarvis nodded.

“Then the history of the hauntings,” I replied, “must either be in some piece of furniture or in the ground itself. The blue man with the bestial expression in his face and tatoo-marks on his arms suggests to me the probability that he is a phantasm of an ancient Celt.

“Possibly he was a suicide or murderer; possibly he was neither, but is merely tied to this earth by his animal propensities—in either case, he would hover round the place of his burial, and his naturally ferocious spirit would be rendered doubly ferocious at being disturbed.

“The woman, of course, may have been some one associated with him in this life—the lack of eyes the sign of some dreadful depravity in her nature.”[6]

APPENDIX TO NO. — HACKHAM TERRACE, SWINDON

At Jarvis’s request, I related to him the story of “The Screaming Woman of Tehiddy,” taken from a collection of remarkable narratives on the certainty of supernatural visitations from the dead to the living, impartially compiled from the works of Baxter, Wesley, Simpson, &c.

I chose this tale as the least hackneyed and best authenticated of the many accounts I had heard of similar occult phenomena. It is given in the original text, the extracts being taken from the letter of one “S. W.” to his friend “Charles.”

“I had occasion one day,” he writes, “to visit the hamlet of Barnley, some miles distant from Tehiddy, where I was staying with some relations. My stay was unexpectedly prolonged till a late hour, and having promised to be at home before night, I was compelled to set out on my return much after the period at which it ought to have been commenced. Part of my road lay through a thick and lonely forest, and I confess that the task of traversing it would have been more agreeable at an earlier opportunity.

“My spirits were affected from some indefinable cause, and the chill, dark journey I was preparing to take did not tend to raise them. I swallowed a hasty cup of coffee with my friend, shook him cordially by the hand, and mounting my horse, was soon at a considerable distance from his house.

“I was approaching the verge of the forest, and had just entered a narrow outlet from it, when I heard the roll of distant thunder and felt the wet and heavy droppings of a copious rain. Having scarcely a league farther to travel before I reached home, I determined to urge my horse to the utmost, and escape, if possible, by his speed, from the impending storm. He broke at once into a gallop, when I struck him with the spur, but had scarcely gone a hundred paces before I was thrown from the saddle by his abrupt stopping, and pitched with the greatest violence to the ground. I lay stunned for a few moments by the fall; the first thing that brought me to a sense of my situation was a hoarse scream, uttered by some person who breathed close to my ear. The rein, which I had continued to grasp in falling, was at that moment torn violently out of my hand—I heard the noise of my courser’s hoofs as he started back—the scream was repeated, and something rushed past me that clanked as it went like a horseman’s heavy iron-cased sabre. I sprang up from the earth and threw out my arms to ascertain if any individual were actually passing; but the avenue was so narrow that I touched the hedges on each side of it, and felt instantly convinced that nothing human could have gone by. A recollection now flashed upon me that there was a tale of extreme horror connected with this part of the forest, and in spite of the principles which I summoned to my aid, it was in a mood of mingled desperation and amazement that I reflected on the circumstances with which my memory supplied me.

“The infirmary of Tehiddy, about twenty years ago, contained a female patient who was known by the name of Martha, and had been admitted to that asylum at the instance of a stranger. He stated himself to be her husband, and assured the director of the institution, with the appearance of the deepest sorrow, that she laboured under a lunacy of the most stubborn sort, which nothing but the most severe discipline attributed to his house was likely to abate.

“He advanced a large sum for the maintenance of this unhappy creature, saw her lodged in one of the strongest cells of the establishment, and, having recommended an unsparing use of the scourge, thought proper to depart. His meaning was not misunderstood. The shrieks of poor Martha were heard day and night in the vicinity of her dungeon, and suspicions soon prevailed that she was being sacrificed to the cruelty of her merciless keepers. An investigation of the case was proposed by some humane and spirited people, but a calamity of the most awful kind put a stop to their endeavours. Martha was found dead on the borders of the forest, at the very spot I have described to you, a piece of ragged iron being clenched in her grasp, with which she had torn and gashed her throat in a dreadful manner. The escape of this wretched being was never well explained, and hints were dropped that she had not left the prison alive. Her bloody and mangled remains excited a strong sensation among those who inspected them. Marks of the chain and the whip were conspicuous on every part of her body, and long tufts of her thin grey hair were glued together by the stream that had issued from a deep fracture in her head. The tokens of suicide, however, were undeniable, and the remains of the poor maniac were in consequence buried near the place where they were found.

“This occurrence had scarcely ceased to be the subject of conversation, when the whole town of Tehiddy was agitated by events of a yet more appalling character. Hoarse screams were heard in the still dark hours of night, and a pale bloodless face was seen pressing against several of the chamber windows. Fraud or delusion were naturally suspected in a business of this nature, and the most scrutinising inquiries were made into the evidence on which it rested. No detection took place, and the screams soon became so frequent that not a person continued to question their existence.

“It was midnight when I reached home, exhausted by anxiety and fatigue, and, being provided with a key to my apartments, the people of the house had not waited up to receive me. I drew off my boots and upper coat as a preliminary to the act of undressing, and seated myself in a large antique chair, from which, when divested of my clothes, I usually stepped into bed. Here I fell asleep owing to excessive weariness, and may the next slumber that is likely to end in so horrible a way be never broken.

“A dream was upon me full of blood and death; the shrieking maniac flitted through my brain in a thousand forms, and seemed, at one time, to stand over me brandishing a sword of fire.

“The next moment, I lay benumbed, as it were, in my seat, while the maniac advanced from a dark corner of the room, bearing in her right hand a human skull replete with some poisonous sort of drink. This horrible potion was lifted to my lips, which seemed to shut in vain against it, the long, bony fingers of the phantom being thrust into my mouth, so as to force a passage for her accursed mixture. It trickled down to my very heart in slow, cold drops, and when lodged there seemed, by a sudden transition, to burn and glow like flames of Etna; spellbound as I was, such extreme agony passed my powers of endurance. I uttered a frantic cry and sprang up from the chair, darting towards the hag by whom my torment was inflicted. The glare of her red eyes grew stronger as I advanced, and a lean, sallow arm was put out to repel me. Fearing the detested touch, I hastily drew back; some article of furniture intercepted me; I fell, and was plunged from the fall into a chasm, which opened through the floor. The shock of this awoke me, and the first proof I obtained of my actual perception was the sound of that hoarse scream which a few hours before had been uttered in the forest. This scream was repeated—it seemed to issue from the windows. I heard the casement flap, as if a strong wind were shaking it; and though my sinews shrank and withered at the noise, yet I staggered to this window as fast as my feet would carry me. A ray of light flashed in as I reached it, and there, pressed close against the glass, I saw the same pale, bloodless visage that has been already figured to you.

“Maddened by the sight, I clenched my hand and drove it fiercely at the apparition.

“Its lips quivered—the scream rang again through the apartment. I was found next day without sense or motion, my hand dreadfully cut, and the window shivered to pieces.”

PARK HOUSE, WESTMINSTER
THE CAVALIER’S GHOST

Technical form of apparition: Phantasm of the dead

Source of authenticity: Miscellaneous collection of Ghost Stories by Baxter, Wesley and Simpson

Cause of haunting: Murder

(The following story is told ad verbum in the language of the eye-witness, the quaintness of his style being accounted for by the period in which he lived.)

“I was always a very strong-minded man, and, until the time about which I am going to speak, always ridiculed the idea of ghosts.

“You must know that about two years ago[7] I went to lodge at an ancient house in Westminster, where nothing remarkable happened to me for about three months; and then, on a night in November (too well do I remember it), I saw such an appalling sight as I never before beheld.

“Even were I starving to-morrow, I would not again enter that room—no, not for a thousand pounds! I had been to the theatre, and on my way home had drunk a single pint of porter, so that no doubt of my sobriety can exist for a moment.

“My room was on the second storey of a house that, I should suppose, had weathered well-nigh four hundred years, and was in former days an isolated habitation.

“The room, surrounded by a wainscoting of oak to the height of five feet, was very lofty, and even in the lightest days, owing to the narrowness of the windows, was extremely gloomy. As I said before, I returned from the theatre, and the snuff of the candle, which I had extinguished on getting into bed, had not ceased to emit its disagreeable effluvia when I beheld—my blood freezes when I think of it—a young man, dressed in the habit of days gone by, gliding through the wainscoting on the opposite side of the apartment to where I lay.

“I was completely paralysed—trembled violently in every limb—and the perspiration fell in torrents from my brows.

“I felt for some time as if every nerve was cut asunder and every sense benumbed.

“I exerted myself to speak, but in vain; my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth, and I was obliged to remain a horror-stricken and inactive spectator of the scene before me.

“The apparition remained for nearly ten minutes, which was ample time for me to convince myself that it was no idle chimera of a diseased imagination that stood before me. Yet although it remained so long a time, I could not command sufficient resolution to challenge it or summon any one to my aid—for I felt as though deprived of all energy, and, in fact, I was so during the whole time of its visit, though my sense of perception and consciousness were painfully acute.

“The expression of the countenance was peculiarly mild, and the rich dark locks falling about the forehead and shoulders, and the mustachios of the same hue, showed in horrid relief against the ashy, chilling, and livid hue of the face.

“He wore a doublet of a kind of chocolate colour, richly embroidered with gold lace, full loose breeches of a yellow leather, ornamented uniformly with the doublet, and from each was suspended a bunch of ribbon, adorned with a metal tag, reaching down nearly to the broad and drooping tops of his light russet boots.

“A large travelling-cloak of dark blue cloth reached from the shoulders down to the heels, hanging in full folds over the left arm, which was extended towards the fireplace of my apartment.

“While I was gazing on him in stupid astonishment and terror, he raised his right hand, and lifting from his head his broad, sable-feathered hat, discovered to my agonising sight a deep and bloody wound in the centre of the forehead.

“This action he then followed up with sighs and gesticulations which, although I could not clearly understand, were apparently intended to warn me of some impending danger.

“Harrowing as the sight was to my feelings, it was a mere nothing to what I suffered when I beheld him advance, slowly and almost imperceptibly, towards the spot where I lay, and fixing his dark, piercing gaze upon me for nearly a minute, hold me in a more painful and horrid inactivity than that in which the basilisk is said to hold its victim.

“Although I knew from the expression in his eyes he wished me to speak, and much as I desired to hear from him some of the mysteries attached to the superphysical world, I could not articulate a sound (a phenomenon which I have since learned invariably happens to psychists at the crucial moment).

“At length he retired towards the wainscot, and raising both his hands in the attitude of prayer, remained apparently wrapped in deep contemplation for nearly three minutes, and then suddenly disappeared—sinking into the floor at the bottom of the wainscotting. As you may well suppose, I did not close my eyes again that night, but as soon as it was light I proceeded to my landlord’s room, roused him, and demanded to settle my account, for I determined in my own mind never to re-enter the house which was visited in so superhuman a manner.

“With astonishment in his countenance, he received the amount of my rent, at the same time inquiring what had caused this sudden aversion to my apartment.

“I answered evasively, and as I left him I thought I observed a kind of lurking consciousness of something wrong in his countenance, which led me to surmise he was fully aware of the mysterious visits of the apparition; and so it proved in the end, for, happening to meet him one day in the park, I inveigled him into confessing that it was reported in the neighbourhood that the house, and particularly the room in which I slept, was haunted by the troubled spirit of a young cavalier of King Charles the Second’s days, said to have been murdered there. ‘And,’ he added, ‘during the time he had kept the house, no less than nine people had left the apartment on account of the disturbances. He had concealed this from me,’ he concluded, ‘fearing I might add one more to the list of lodgers scared away by the supernatural vision.’”

GLOSSARY

Elemental. Otherwise known as Poltergeist. There are too many species of this genus of spirit for me to attempt a classification in this work. Broadly defined, an Elemental is a phantasm that has never inhabited any kind of earthly body whether animal or vegetable. It may be sub-human, as in the case of the Clock-ghost of Mulready; sub-animal, as in the case of the Guilsborough apparition; or sub-vegetable, as in the case of the ACTINOMYCES phenomenon near Bath.

It is generally, but not always inimically disposed towards man. One type of it, viz., the gnome, pixie, &c., avoid humanity as much as possible; other types are merely mischievous, delighting to frighten children by visiting their nurseries or pouncing out upon them when at play in some deserted building or lonely by-road; whilst other species are wholly evil, generating bacilli of foul diseases or urging man to the commission of vicious acts and crime. Their origin I reserve for another volume.

Ghost. The general name for phantasms, &c.

Hallucination. Any supposed sensory perception that has no objective counterpart within field of vision, hearing, &c.

Clairvoyance. The faculty or art of perceiving some distant scene as though an actual eye-witness. A clairvoyant is often able to describe (unconsciously) what he is witnessing.

Delusion. Fancy. When one imagines one sees or hears something and it exists ONLY in imagination. Hallucinations are either delusive, when there is nothing to which they correspond in the objective world, or veridical, when they correspond with events taking place somewhere.

Illusion. Misinterpretation of some object actually present to the sight, as, for example, when a cloak hanging on a peg is mistaken for a man, or a ringing in the ears for sounds of bells.

Metetherical World. The world beyond the ether, synonyms—spiritual, superphysical.

Phantasm. A ghost. Any occult phenomenon that is either visual or auditory as distinct from a phantom which is only visual: or, indeed, any superphysical presence that conveys the impression of touch, smell, &c.

Suggestion. Process of impressing upon a person’s intelligence or mind the thoughts and wishes of another intelligence or mind; or ideas engendered by the appearance of certain localities, furniture, &c., or simply by the atmosphere.

Printed by Ballantyne & Co. Limited
Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, London

---

[1] In the March number of the Psychical Research Magazine for 1908, a well-authenticated instance is given of a Poltergeist’s hand being seen on a pillow—“a long hand with knotty joints.”

[2] A solution as to the nature of this type of ghost will appear in a subsequent volume.

[3] All names altered by request.

[4] The different styles of writing in the following are due to certain alterations I have been obliged to make, the English of the original being so involved in places as to be nearly unintelligible.

[5] In a subsequent volume I have attempted to give a satisfactory solution.

[6] A more thorough solution to these hauntings will appear in a subsequent volume.

[7] (Probably 1780.—Ed.)

Transcriber’s note

Footnotes were moved to the end of the book. Small errors in punctuation were corrected without note. Also the following changes were made, on page
32 “or” changed to “for” (Nor was I mistaken, for, on putting)
34 “momentory” changed to “momentary” (in momentary terror of some fresh phenomenon)
47 “stifly” changed to “stiffly” (he said, bowing stiffly)
89 “nighfall” changed to “nightfall” (a very wide berth after nightfall)
94 “give” changed to “gave” (parents who gave him a liberal education)
117 ? changed to ! (they improvised an oven in the earth and ate it!)
146 “stool” changed to “stood” (lane in which the haunted elm stood)
149 “suprising” changed to “surprising” (it is not surprising that they are now).

Otherwise the original was preserved, including inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, etc.