“Like the ghost of Tehiddy,” I ejaculated.
“I have never heard of the ghost of Tehiddy,” Jarvis rejoined, “but I cannot conceive anything more gruesome than the Hackham Terrace apparition. Let me tell you some of Mrs. Belmont’s experiences.
“You must know the house is quite new, the Belmont’s being the first tenants, and that nothing has been discovered, so far, that can in any way account for the hauntings.
“To proceed, about a month after they had taken the house, every one was aroused in the middle of the night by a succession of the most unearthly screams, coming, so it seemed, from the basement of the house.
“For some seconds no one ventured out of their rooms, and then, Mrs. Belmont very pluckily taking the lead, other members of the family followed her down-stairs.
“Arriving at the commencement of the passage leading to the kitchen, they all saw an indefinable black object lying on the ground.
“Frozen to the spot with horror, the Belmonts watched the thing slowly rise, developing as it did so until it assumed the appearance and dimensions of a gigantic naked woman. But what was so inconceivably horrid about her was the face: she had no eyes, their places being filled by ordinary flesh.
“Confronting them for some moments in silence, she suddenly and without the least warning assumed a horizontal position in mid-air, dematerialised, and passed through the wall in the guise of a rectangular mass of pale blue light. Could anything be more ghastly?”
“It has parallels in the luminous woman known as Proctor’s ghost, Wellington, near Newcastle, and in a house, also new, in Portishead. Can you tell me any further experiences there?”
“Yes,” Jarvis rejoined; “one of the servants was breaking coal in the cellar one evening, when the hammer was unceremoniously snatched from her hand, the candle blown out, and a blue, tatooed arm thrust so roughly against her face that one of her front teeth was actually loosened.