The reticence people in general show towards having their names and houses mentioned in print has led me to substitute fictitious names in most of the cases referred to in this chapter.
In one of my former works I alluded to a phantasm with a pig's head I saw standing outside an old burial ground in Guilsborough, Northampton. Some years after the occurrence I was discussing the occult with my father-in-law, Henry Williams, M.D. (late of Chapel Place, Cavendish Square), and was very much surprised when he told me that he, too, had witnessed the same or a similar phenomena in Guilsborough. I append the statement he made with regard to it:—
"Guilsborough,
"Northampton,
"January 23, 1909.
"I well remember many years ago, when a boy, running upstairs into the top room of a certain house in Guilsborough and seeing a tall, thin figure of a man with an animal's head crouching on the bed. I was so frightened when I saw it that I ran out of the room as fast as I could.
"Henry W. Williams, M.D."
My father-in-law had certainly made no mention of what he had seen to me before he heard my experience, neither had I the slightest idea that such a phantasm had been encountered in the village by any one but myself. Close to the house where he saw the phenomena I believe an ancient sacrificial stone was once found, whilst in the same neighbourhood there are the remains of a barrow and numerous other evidences of the Stone Age; hence the pig-faced phantasm may have been either a Vice Elemental attracted to Guilsborough by the human blood once spilt on the sacrificial stone, or by certain crimes committed in and around the village in modern times, or by the thoughts of some peculiarly bestial-minded person, or people, buried in the now disused cemetery; or, again, the phantasm may have been the actual earth-bound spirit of some very vicious person, whose appearance would be in accordance with the life he or she led when on earth. Which of the two it is I cannot, of course, say: that is—for the present, at least—beyond human knowledge.
I have recorded another haunting of a similar nature.
Writing to me from Devizes on May 15th, 1910, Mr. "I. Walton" says:—
"Dear Sir,
"I have just been reading your book, 'Haunted Houses of London.' It recalls to my mind a hideous apparition which I witnessed about ten days ago, and which made such an impression on my mind that I send you particulars of it.