Miss Dalrymple did not have any further experiences there herself, but some time afterwards one of her great-nieces remarked to her, "Did you know, auntie, 'The Lichens' was haunted?" and went on to say that on one occasion, when going upstairs, she had seen the figure of a woman in a grey dress bending over the basin in the bath-room as if engaged in rinsing her hands. Thinking it was the head nurse, she was going on her way unconcernedly when she saw the nurse coming towards her from quite a different part of the house. Greatly astonished, she at once made enquiries, in reply to which the nurse assured her that she had not been in the bath-room for at least an hour. The figure in grey was repeatedly seen, always in or near the bath-room, and always appearing as if rinsing her hands. Once, too, when one of the children was alone in a downstairs room that opened on to the lawn, a hideous, trampish old man, carrying a sack, approached the window, and, after peeping in at the child with an evil smile, placed his fingers knowingly alongside his nose and glided noiselessly away into the shrubbery. The child ran out at once and asked the gardener to look for the man, but despite a vigorous search, no such person could be found.
Another inmate of the house, on going one day to her bedroom, heard something behind her, and, turning round, perceived, to her unmitigated horror, the luminous trunk of a man, which had apparently been dismembered. The body, which was bobbing up and down in mid-air, approached her rapidly, and, moving aside to let it pass, she saw it vanish through the door of the room Mrs. Dalrymple had occupied. After this ghastly manifestation, T.C. Dalrymple, Esq., fearing, for the sake of his family, to remain any longer in such a place, left "The Lichens," part of which has since been pulled down and rebuilt. Miss Dalrymple's heart has never been sound since she felt the ghostly hand on her shoulder, the horror of which phenomenon, as any of her friends can testify, turned her hair white.
As to the cause of the hauntings, that must be entirely a matter of conjecture, since, with regard to the former history of the house, nothing definite is known. A very vague rumour is current that many years ago it was the rendezvous of all manner of rips and roués, and, strange though it may seem, the fact that the phantasm of the woman, seen there, was wearing a modern costume, does not preclude the idea that the said phantasm belonged to a bygone period. Such an anachronism is by no means uncommon in cases of haunting, but it renders the task of theorising on ghostly phenomena all the more difficult.
It may be asked with regard to this case—had the phantasm of the woman any connection with that of the tramp, the mutilated body and the hand; and my answer to that question is, that all four phenomena were, in all probability, closely allied with one another. Very possibly an old man had been murdered there by his paramour, who, after cutting up his body, had bribed a tramp to dispose of it, in which case the house would, of course, be haunted by the earth-bound spirits of both the victim and agents of the crime. But it is quite possible, supposing the phenomena are genuine phantasms of the dead, that the tragedy did not take place in that house at all, but was enacted in some far-away spot, one or more of the principals being in some way connected with "The Lichens." However, as I have already said, it is one of those cases that must, by reason of the uncertain history of the house, always remain a mystery.
A haunting of a similar nature occurred quite recently at a house near Leeds. The place, which had stood empty for a very long while, was eventually taken on a lease by my informants, Mr. and Mrs. Urquhart. Neither of the latter had had any previous experience with the superphysical, at which both were more or less inclined to scoff. One evening, shortly after their arrival, Mrs. Urquhart was alone in the study, and, looking up from her needlework, saw what at first sight appeared to be a luminous disc—but which speedily developed into a head—emerge from the wall opposite, and, bobbing up and down in mid-air, slowly approach her. It was a woman's head, the woman having obviously been decapitated, the expression in the wide open staring eyes showing every indication of a cruel ending. The hair was long and matted, the skin startlingly white. Mrs. Urquhart was at first far too terrified to move or utter a sound, but as the ghastly object floated right up to her, the revulsion she experienced was so great that the spell of her inertness was broken and she fled from the room.
When she told her husband what had occurred, he exclaimed laughingly, "Why, my dear, I never knew you had such a vivid imagination! You will soon be asking me to believe in hobgoblins and pixies." Whereupon Mrs. Urquhart bit her lips and was silent.
However, after dinner Mrs. Urquhart, hearing a great commotion in the study, ran to see what was happening, and discovered her husband and his friend, looking ghastly white, thrashing the air with walking-sticks. Catching sight of her, they both cried out, "We've seen the head—the beastly thing came out of the wall, as you described, and floated towards us!"
On hearing this, Mrs. Urquhart recoiled in horror, nor could she be persuaded ever again to enter the room. Her husband, whom the experience had effectually cured of scepticism, at once fell in with her proposal that they should immediately quit the house, and soon after their removal they learned that the place had been pulled down. From the fact, revealed by subsequent enquiries, that some years previously an old woman had been murdered there, it is quite evident to my mind that what the Urquharts and their friend saw was both objective and superphysical; but whether the apparition was a phantasm of the dead, or an impersonating elemental, can only be decided by an adequate knowledge of the character of the murdered person in whose likeness the phenomenon appeared.
Hauntings of a very disturbing nature go on (or, at least, did so a short while ago) at a house in Rugeley, where dreadful groans are frequently heard proceeding from a room on the ground floor. My informant, however, would not say whether or not the house was the one in which the notorious Palmer poisoned his victims; but here again it seems more than probable, that the sounds are due to the presence of an Elemental attached to the spot by the sacrifice of human blood.
I am hoping, at no great future date, to make a series of investigations in houses that have been the scenes of unsolved mysteries, since I believe it quite possible that I should experience such superphysical demonstrations as would give me the direct clue to the identity of the perpetrators of the crimes.