Haunted Places in England

by Elliott O'Donnell

“Some friends of friends of mine, the Parminters, recently took a small house in Sydenham. Now Sydenham is not in the hey-day of its popularity. Scores of the bigger houses are to let, and the smaller ones—the majority at least—have not even that air of genteel respectability which characterises houses of the same size in some of the less remote suburbs. Of course the train service is responsible for much—even to think of a twenty-five minutes’ journey into Town by train, when one can go any distance on tube in next to no time, is both intolerable and demoralising. But the decay of the Palace—the Palace that twenty years ago all London flocked to see—is in itself sufficient to have generated that all-pervading atmosphere of sadness that seems to have permeated people and houses, alike, with its spirit of abandonment and desolation. However, as a set-off against the many disadvantages of Sydenham, including its high rates and dull, unattractive shops, there is its wonderful air—the purest, so many doctors say, in England. And, after all, what is of more consequence than pure air which means health? At least, so the Parminters argued when they gave up the idea of living right in Town and bought this little two-storeyed villa close to the Crystal Palace Station.

“It had stood empty for years and was in a sad state of dilapidation; but the owner, being on the verge of bankruptcy, had no money to lay out on it.

“‘I will let you have it for a very low figure,’ he had said to them, ‘provided you take it as it stands.’

“The sum named was £120, and this the Parminters considered, in spite of there being a pretty stiff ground rent, a bargain price. Consequently, they closed with the offer, had the house renovated, and eventually moved in. On the day after their arrival Mrs. Parminter made a discovery. Stowed away in the loft was a long, weather-worn, bolster-shaped, brown wooden trunk, bearing on it two steamship company’s labels, one marked Suez and the other London.

“There was no address on it—no name. The Parminters made inquiries of the builder who had done the repairs and of the late owner of the house, and neither could give them any clue as to the person to whom it belonged. The landlord declared that he had gone through all the rooms, including the loft, immediately before giving up the keys to Mrs. Parminter, and that he could swear that when he did so there was nothing in the house at all, no trunk of any description; whilst the builder declared that both he and his men, when doing the repairs, had seen the trunk in the loft and had concluded that it belonged to the Parminters.

“‘Well, as nobody seems to want it, we had better keep it,’ Mrs. Parminter remarked. ‘I wonder what it contains! It would be a pity to force the lock, we must get a key to fit it.’

“As no one happened to be going out just then, the trunk was pushed on one side, and the Parminters, having many other things to occupy their minds, did not give it another thought. Tired out with all the worry and work of ‘moving in,’ they went to bed early that night, in the room immediately beneath the loft, and fell asleep almost as soon as they had lain down. Parminter had the digestion of an ox and, never over-taxing his brain, slept, as a rule, right through the night. On this occasion, however, he awoke with a violent start to hear a strange, scraping sound on the floor overhead.

“It was just as if someone was drawing the rough edge of a stone backwards and forwards on the floor.

“This went on for some seconds; then it abruptly ceased, and the stairs, leading from the landing outside the Parminters’ room to the loft, gave a series of loud creaks. Of course stairs often creak, and one excuses their conduct on the ground of natural causes. The wood, we say, cannot expand or contract, when certain changes in the temperature take place, without making some little noise, and vibration due to the passing by of some heavy vehicle must be accompanied by some slight sound. But why, I ask, do we not hear creaks in the daytime, when the traffic is more constant and changes in the temperature quite as marked? Parminter was not an imaginative man; on the contrary, he was practical to a degree. He had a hearty contempt for anything in the nature of superstition, and regarded all so-called psychists either as charlatans or lunatics. Yet, when he listened to this creaking, he was bound to admit that there was something about it that bothered and perplexed him. He got up and opened the door. There was no moon, but, on the staircase, there was a long streak of leadish blue light, that moved as Parminter stared at it, and slowly began to descend. The stairs creaked under it and, though he could see nothing beyond the light, he could hear the most peculiar rattling, scraping sound, as if some metal-clad body was in course of transit. The thing, whatever it was, at last arrived on the landing, where it remained stationary. A feeling of unutterable horror and repulsion now came over Parminter, and, springing back into the room, he shut and locked the door. The noise awoke his wife, and they both stood by the door and listened, as the creaking and rattling was renewed and the thing crossed the landing and descended the stairs into the hall. Presently there came a savage snarl, which ended in a shrill whine, that was almost human in the intensity of its agony and terror, and after that, silence.

“‘Puck!’ Mrs. Parminter ejaculated, her teeth chattering. ‘What can have happened to him?’