THE RATIONALE OF HAUNTED HOUSES.
That a very old house should gain the reputation of being haunted is not surprising, especially if it has been neglected and allowed to fall out of repair. The woodwork shrinks, the plaster crumbles away; and through minute slits and chasms in window-frames and door-cases there come weird and uncanny noises. The wind sighs and whispers through unseen fissures, suggesting to the superstitious the wailings of disembodied spirits. A whole household was thrown into consternation, and had its repose disturbed, one stormy winter, by a series of lamentable howls and shrieks that rang through the rooms. The sounds were harrowing, and as they rose fitfully and at intervals, breaking the silence of the night, the stoutest nerves among the listeners were shaken. For a long time the visitation continued to harass the family, recurring by day as well as night, and especially in rough weather. When there was a storm, piercing yells and shrieks would come, sudden and startling, changing anon into low melancholy wails. It was unaccountable. At length the mystery was solved. Complaints had been made of draughts through the house, and as a remedy, strips of gutta-percha had at some former time been nailed along the window-frames, while its owners were at the seaside. This, for some reason explainable upon acoustic principles, had caused the disturbance. Even after the gutta-percha had been torn away, a sudden blast of wind striking near some spot to which a fragment still adhered, would bring a shriek or moan, to remind the family of the annoyance they had so long endured.
Meantime, the house got a bad reputation, and servants were shy of engaging with its owners. A maid more strong-minded than the others, and who had hitherto laughed at their fears, came fleeing to her mistress on one occasion, saying she must leave instantly, and that nothing would induce her to pass another night under the roof. There was a long corridor at the top of the house, and the girl’s story was, that in passing along it, she heard footsteps behind her. Stopping and looking back, she saw no one; but as soon as she went on, the invisible pursuer did so too, following close behind. Two or three times she stood still suddenly, hoping the footsteps would pass on and give her the go-by; instead of which, they pulled up when she did. And when at last, wild with terror, she took to her heels and ran, they came clattering along after her to the end of the passage!
The mistress suspected that some one was trying to frighten the girl, and she urged her to come up-stairs and endeavour to find out the trick. This the terrified damsel refused to do, so the lady went off alone. On reaching the corridor and proceeding along it, she was startled to find that, as the maid had described, some one seemed to be following her. Tap, tap, clack, clack—as of one walking slipshod with shoes down at heel—came the steps, keeping pace with her own; stopping when she stopped, and moving on when she did. In vain the lady peered around and beside her; nothing was to be seen. It could be no trick, for there was nobody in that part of the house to play a practical joke.
Ere long the cause was discovered in the shape of a loose board in the flooring of the corridor. The plank springing when pressed by the foot in walking along, gave an echoing sound that had precisely the effect of a step following; and this, in the supposed haunted house, was sufficient to raise alarm.
It happened to us once to be a temporary dweller in a mansion that had a ghostly reputation. We were on our way to Paris, travelling with an invalid; and the latter becoming suddenly too ill to proceed on the journey, we were forced to stop in the first town we came to. The hotel being found too noisy, a house in a quiet street was engaged by the week. It was a grand old mansion, that had once belonged to a magnate of the land; fallen now from its high estate, and but indifferently kept up. Wide stone staircases with balusters of carved oak led to rooms lofty and spacious, whose walls and ceilings were decorated with gilded enrichments and paintings in the style of Louis XIV. At the side of the house was a covered-way leading to the stables and offices. This was entered through a tall porte cochère; and at either side of the great gates, fixed to the iron railings, were a couple of those huge metal extinguishers—still sometimes to be seen in quaint old houses—used in former times to put out the torches or links carried at night by running footmen beside the carriages of the great. The stables and offices of the place were now falling into decay, and the porte cochère generally stood open until nightfall, when the gates were locked.
We had been in the house for some little time before we heard the stories of supernatural sights and sounds connected with it—of figures flitting through halls and passages—the ghosts of former occupants; of strange whisperings and uncanny noises. There certainly were curious sounds about the house, especially in the upper part, where lumber-closets were locked and sealed up, through whose shrunken and ill-fitting doors the wind howled with unearthly wails. In the dining-hall was a row of old family pictures, faded and grim; and the popular belief was that, at the ‘witching hour,’ these worthies descended from their frames and held high festival in the scene of former banquetings. No servant would go at night into this room alone or in the dark.
We had with us a young footman called Carroll, the son of an Irish tenant; devoted to his masters, under whom he had been brought up. He was a fine young fellow, bold as a lion, and ready to face flesh and blood in any shape; but a very craven as regarded spirits, fairies, and supernatural beings, in whom he believed implicitly. One night, after seeing the invalid settled to rest and committed to the care of the appointed watcher, I came down to the drawing-room to write letters. It was an immense saloon, with—doubling and prolonging its dimensions—wide folding-doors of looking-glass at the end. I had been writing for some time; far, indeed, into the ‘small-hours.’ The fire was nearly out; and the candles, which at their best had only served to make darkness visible in that great place, had burnt low. The room was getting chilly, dark shadows gathering in the corners. Who has not known the creepy, shivering feeling that will come over us at such times, when in the dead silence of the sleeping house we alone are wakeful? The furniture around begins to crack; the falling of a cinder with a clink upon the hearth makes us start. And if at such a time the door should slowly and solemnly open wide, as doors sometimes will, ‘spontaneous,’ we look up with quickening pulse, half expecting to see some ghastly spectral shape glide in, admitted by invisible hands. Should sickness be in the house, and the angel of death—who knows?—be brooding with dark wing over our dwelling, the nerves, strained by anxiety, are more than usually susceptible of impressions. I was gathering my papers together and preparing to steal up-stairs past the sick-room, glad to escape from the pervading chilliness and gloom, when the door opened. Not, this time, of itself; for there—the picture of abject terror—stood Carroll the footman. He was as pale as ashes, shaking all over; his hair dishevelled, and clothes apparently thrown on in haste. To my alarmed exclamation, ‘What is the matter?’ he was unable, for a minute, to make any reply, so violently his lips were trembling, parched with fear. At last I made out, among half-articulate sounds, the words ‘Ghost, groans.’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘what nonsense! You have been having a bad dream. You ought to know better, you who’——
My homily was cut short by a groan so fearful, so unlike anything I had ever heard or imagined, that I was dumb with horror.
‘Ah-h-h!—there it is again!’ whispered Carroll, dropping on his knees and crossing himself; while vehemently thumping his breast, he, as a good Catholic, began to mumble with white lips the prayers for the dead. Up the stairs through the open door the sounds had come; and after a few minutes, they were repeated, this time more faintly than before.
‘Let us go down and try to find out what it is,’ I said at last. And in spite of poor Carroll’s misery and entreaties, making a strong effort, I took the lamp from his trembling hands and began to descend the wide staircase. Nothing was stirring. In the great dining-room, where I went in, while the unhappy footman kept safely at the door, casting frightened glances at the portraits on the walls, all was as usual. As we went lower down, the groans grew louder and more appalling. Hoarse, unnatural, long-drawn—such as could not be imagined to proceed from human throat, they seemed to issue from the bowels of the earth, and to be re-echoed by the walls of the great dark lofty kitchens. Beyond these kitchens were long stone passages, leading to cellars and pantries and servants’ halls, all unused and shut up since the mansion’s palmy days; and into these we penetrated, led by the fearful sounds.
All here was dust and desolation. The smell of age and mould was everywhere; the air was chill; and the rusty hinges of the doors shrieked as they were pushed open, scaring away the spiders, whose webs hung in festoons across the passages, and brushed against our faces as we went along. Doubtless, for years no foot had invaded this dank and dreary region, given over to mildew and decay; or disturbed the rats, which ran scampering off at our approach. The groans seemed very near us now, and came more frequently. It was terrible, in that gruesome place, to hearken to the unearthly sounds. I could hear my agonised companion calling upon every saint in the calendar to take pity upon the soul in pain. At length there came a groan more fearful than any that had been before. It rooted us to the spot. And then was utter silence!
After a long breathless pause, broken only by the gasps of poor Carroll in his paroxysm of fear, we turned, and retraced our steps towards the kitchens. The groans had ceased altogether.
‘It is over now, whatever it was,’ I said. ‘All is quiet; you had better go to bed.’
He staggered off to his room; while, chilled to the marrow, I crept up-stairs, not a little shaken, I must confess, by the night’s doings.
Next day was bright and fine. My bedroom looked to the street; and soon after rising, I threw open the window, to admit the fresh morning air. There was a little stir outside. The porte cochère gates were wide open, and a large cart was drawn up before them. Men with ropes in their hands were bustling about, talking and gesticulating; passers-by stopped to look; and boys were peering down the archway at something going on within. Soon the object of their curiosity was brought to light. A dead horse was dragged up the passage, and after much tugging and pulling, was hauled up on the cart and driven away.
It appeared that at nightfall of the previous day the wretched animal was being driven to the knacker’s; and straying down into our archway, while the man who had him in charge was talking to a friend, he fell over some machinery that stood inside, breaking a limb, and otherwise frightfully injuring himself. Instead of putting the poor animal out of pain at once, his inhuman owner left him to die a lingering death in agonies; and his miserable groans, magnified by the reverberation of the hollow archway and echoing kitchens, had been the cause of our nocturnal alarm.
Carroll shook his head and looked incredulous at this solution of the mystery, refusing, with the love of his class for the supernatural, to accept it. Though years have since then passed over his head, tinging his locks with gray, and developing the brisk, agile footman into the portly, white-chokered, pompous butler, he will still cleave to his first belief, and stoutly affirm that flesh and blood had nought to do with the disturbance that night in the haunted house.