Ghosts and Family Legends: A Volume for Christmas

by Catherine Crowe

Madam,

I have received your kind favor of the 15th, and I really feel that I must now apologize to you, for venturing so quickly to call in question the accuracy of your details. Being unaware, however, of the marvellous coincidence of the two dreams, I feel assured you at once appreciated the motives which alone impelled me to write.

Allow me, then, to attempt a narration of the particulars referred to in my last, as having come under my own observation.

Two intimate friends of mine (clergymen of the Church of England) and one of whom is unmarried, have for the last three years occupied a large old-fashioned house in the country. It is a very pretty place—stands within its own grounds—and is quite aloof from any other dwellings. It has long had the reputation in the neighbourhood of being haunted, in consequence, it is said, of a former proprietor having committed suicide there. The story goes thus, he was laid out in a chamber which is now called the spare room, and is the scene of what I am about to relate. I may as well tell you that it was only on my last visit, some six weeks since, that I became at all aware of the character of the mansion, for my friends felt so annoyed at what has taken place, that they purposely avoided communicating to their visitors what they thought might make them anything but comfortable.

On that occasion there happened to be on a visit to my friend's wife, a lady very nearly related to him. She had the spare room assigned to her as a chamber, and on the very first night of her arrival was so terrified by what took place that she would not again sleep there without company.

She stated that in the middle of the night she was alarmed by the most unearthly groanings and lamentations—the voice seemed close to her bedside. It was afterwards attended by a rustling noise, and she distinctly felt the curtains at the foot of the bed removed. Now, as my knowledge of what was going on could not be disputed, my friends admitted that it was not the first time these noises had been heard, nay, that in two instances the apparition of a form in grave-clothes had been seen; the one occurring to a young gentleman of about twenty years of age, who happened to be visiting them, and the other to one of their own servants. In the former case, it appears that the young man was sitting rather late at night in the study reading—all the family being in bed—when the form emerged, apparently, from the wall dividing the study from the haunted chamber. It remained a short time only and then melted away. So great was the young man's terror that he has never been near the place since. The servant also described a similar appearance, and no one in the house who saw her terror could believe it acted. Independently of all this, no less than four gentlemen, two of them from the University, have experienced all the unearthly groanings and be-wailings before mentioned, and in nearly every instance the parties were, like myself, ignorant of the character attributed to the house. But I now come to my own experience.

I was on a visit to my friends about twelve months since, when I met a gentleman who had just left the army for the church. He appeared about 21 years of age, and there was that indescribable something in his manner which charmed me immediately. Without any pretence to being set up—so to speak—in piety, there was yet that in his sunny countenance and air of cheerfulness, which made you feel that he had been called to a brighter path of usefulness. I certainly very much admired him, and I have since learnt that he is a general favourite. On retiring to rest I found that he was to occupy the next room—not the study side.

From a variety of causes I could not sleep—but the imaginative powers were not particularly aroused—my thoughts were of very prosy and worldly things. As near as I could recollect, about an hour after I had been in bed, I heard the most dreadful groans followed by exclamations of the most horrible kind. The voice certainly seemed in the room, and was continued for at least two hours, at intervals of about ten minutes. It was that of a man who had committed a deadly sin which could never be pardoned! The agony seemed to me to be intense.

Will you believe it, Madam, in spite of what I thought of my acquaintance of the next chamber, I ascribed it to him. I believed little in the supernatural, and concluded it to be some dreadful dream. It is astonishing the thought never struck me that a continuous dream of such a character was scarcely possible. It did not, however, and despite of its unearthly character, and the apparent woe of the unfortunate one—the despair, as I said before, of a lost soul—I continued to associate it all with my neighbour next door, until the events which occurred at my last visit entirely upset my conviction, and I became at once assured I had been doing him a great injustice.

Like some of the cases in the "Night Side of Nature," you will perceive here a great difference in the manifestations—to some it was given to hear, to others to see. Are you still of opinion that this results from what you term comparative freedom of rapport! Do you not think there are times when the material may give place to the supernatural? I admit freely the truth of spectral illusions—I have myself experienced one—but knew it to be nothing more. Still, notwithstanding this, and my further belief in a certain connection of mind and matter, I cannot altogether cast from me the persuasion that the Almighty One may at times think fit to exercise a power independent of all rule, for the attainment of certain ends to us, perhaps, unknown.