“The next moment, I lay benumbed, as it were, in my seat, while the maniac advanced from a dark corner of the room, bearing in her right hand a human skull replete with some poisonous sort of drink. This horrible potion was lifted to my lips, which seemed to shut in vain against it, the long, bony fingers of the phantom being thrust into my mouth, so as to force a passage for her accursed mixture. It trickled down to my very heart in slow, cold drops, and when lodged there seemed, by a sudden transition, to burn and glow like flames of Etna; spellbound as I was, such extreme agony passed my powers of endurance. I uttered a frantic cry and sprang up from the chair, darting towards the hag by whom my torment was inflicted. The glare of her red eyes grew stronger as I advanced, and a lean, sallow arm was put out to repel me. Fearing the detested touch, I hastily drew back; some article of furniture intercepted me; I fell, and was plunged from the fall into a chasm, which opened through the floor. The shock of this awoke me, and the first proof I obtained of my actual perception was the sound of that hoarse scream which a few hours before had been uttered in the forest. This scream was repeated—it seemed to issue from the windows. I heard the casement flap, as if a strong wind were shaking it; and though my sinews shrank and withered at the noise, yet I staggered to this window as fast as my feet would carry me. A ray of light flashed in as I reached it, and there, pressed close against the glass, I saw the same pale, bloodless visage that has been already figured to you.
“Maddened by the sight, I clenched my hand and drove it fiercely at the apparition.
“Its lips quivered—the scream rang again through the apartment. I was found next day without sense or motion, my hand dreadfully cut, and the window shivered to pieces.”
PARK HOUSE, WESTMINSTER
THE CAVALIER’S GHOST
Technical form of apparition: Phantasm of the dead
Source of authenticity: Miscellaneous collection of Ghost Stories by Baxter, Wesley and Simpson
Cause of haunting: Murder
(The following story is told ad verbum in the language of the eye-witness, the quaintness of his style being accounted for by the period in which he lived.)
“I was always a very strong-minded man, and, until the time about which I am going to speak, always ridiculed the idea of ghosts.