"About the second week of my stay in Moret-sur-Loing, I was taken ill with a violent cold and feverish pains. I could not discover any cause, though my friend attributed it to a night's rowing on the river Loing. For a few days I was confined to my room and my only consolation was to look at a little pot of flowers which I had bought at the local market. The flowers were bright scarlet and in pleasant contrast to the general gloominess of the apartment. At last, however, utterly worn out with my illness and the long succession of harassing nights, I persuaded my friend to leave the hotel, which she reluctantly did, and we returned to England.
"On our way home we met a fellow artist who told us she had also been staying quite recently at Moret, and then it transpired that she, too, had had rooms at the Hotel de la Chalette, but had given them up as they were so depressing. Upon hearing this I related my experiences, whereupon she exclaimed, 'How odd! A girl whom I knew very well used to go very often to the Hotel de la Chalette, and occupied the very room you slept in. She was very much attached to the place and when she was dying in England continually expressed a longing to be there. She died in the very greatest agony—just such agony as that of the woman you describe—and fought against death to the very last. She was most unresigned and rebellious. I wonder if the sensations you experienced were in any way due to her?'"
I think so without a doubt, and that the phantasm Miss Debrett saw is either that of the earth-bound spirit of the unhappy girl who, when dying, wished herself at the Hotel de la Chalette, or that of an impersonating Elemental;—let us hope it is the latter. Death wishes are, I am sure, frequently fulfilled, and, consequently, cannot be regarded both by utterer and audience with too much seriousness. The strong desire of the girl to cling to life—on this earth—proving that her spiritual aspirations were strictly limited—was almost a sufficient guarantee that her spirit would remain earth-bound.
Miss Viola Vincent, a well-known Society beauty, has furnished me with an account of a house presumably haunted by a Phantasm of the Dead. It is a large country house not very far from London, and the case was reported to Miss Vincent by an old servant of the name of Garth. Garth, who had no idea at the time that the house was haunted, was taking a short nap on her bed one afternoon when she heard the door slowly open and on looking up, saw to her astonishment a little sinister old man, who tiptoed up to her bed and, leaning over her, placed his finger on his lips as if to enjoin silence (an unnecessary precaution as Garth was far too terrified either to utter a sound or to move). On perceiving her fright, a subtle smile of satisfaction stole over the man's face, which Garth describes as yellow and wizened. He left the bed and, turning round, glided surreptitiously through the open doorway. Greatly mystified, Garth mentioned the affair to the other servants, who, instead of laughing at her, at once exclaimed, "Why, you've seen old S——. He committed a murder, just outside the door of your room, many years ago, and is frequently seen about the house and grounds. If you examine the boarding in the passage carefully, you will see the bloodstains." As Garth refused to sleep in the room again, a valet of one of the visitors was put there, and he experienced precisely the same phenomenon.
Garth constantly saw the phantasm of the man in various parts of the building. Sometimes she would meet him face to face on a staircase, sometimes he would creep stealthily after her, down one of the numerous, gloomy corridors. Indeed, she never seemed to be free from him, and, in the end, her nerves became so upset that, although the situation was an excellent one, she was obliged to relinquish it. When in the orchard, Garth, on several occasions, heard the sound of galloping horses and saw the misty figures of two people engaged in earnest conversation. On approaching them, however, they invariably melted into fine air. Miss Vincent enquired into the case, and, eventually, got into communication with other people who had witnessed the same phenomena.
I think it is highly probable that the apparition of the old man, at any rate, was a phantasm of the dead, that is to say, the earth-bound spirit of the murderer; for despite the tendency there is nowadays for pseudo-humanitarians to sympathise with the perpetrators of revolting and cruel murders, it is very certain that the Higher Occult Powers hold no such erroneously lenient views, and that he who spills human blood is bound by that blood to the earth. Hence murderers—or at least such murderers as are not genuinely repentent—are chained for an unlimited time to the scenes of their crimes, which they are compelled willy-nilly to re-enact nightly.
Another case of haunting by the phantasm of a murderer, or murderers, was told me by Miss Dalrymple, aunt of the famous singer, T.C. Dalrymple. Her experiences began the night of her arrival at "The Lichens," the house her nephew was then renting, near Felixstowe.
On retiring to rest she found the servants had made a very big fire in her room, and growing somewhat apprehensive about it, she got out of bed and took some of it off. Then, thinking that her alarm was rather foolish, and that, as there was a proportionately large fender, no danger could possibly arise, she put the coal on again and got back into bed. A few minutes afterwards the room was pervaded with a current of icy cold air, that blew over the bed and rustled through her hair. The next instant, she felt a cold, heavy hand laid on one of her shoulders, and she was steadily and mercilessly pressed down and down. Her terror was now so intense that she could neither move nor articulate a sound, and she could almost hear the violent palpitation of her heart. After what seemed to her an eternity, but which was, in all probability, only a few seconds, the hand was removed, and Miss Dalrymple then heard seven loud thumps on the table at the foot of the bed, after which there was silence, and the manifestations ceased. Miss Dalrymple, however, was too upset to sleep, and lay awake all night in a great agony of mind, lest there should be any further disturbances. When the maid brought her some tea in the morning, the latter immediately exclaimed, "Oh, madam, how dreadfully ill you look!" to which Miss Dalrymple replied, "Yes! I have been feeling very ill, but do not, on any account, tell your master or mistress, as it will only worry them."
Miss Dalrymple then took one of the older servants into confidence, and asked her if the house was haunted.
"Well, madam," was the reluctant response, "people do say that there is a house in this village that is haunted by the ghost of a murdered lady, but I am not quite sure which house it is"—an answer which implied much.