The adjacent country, consisting of large stretches of smiling meadows, dales, and table-lands, is very fair for the eye to dwell upon, and it is only at night, when the shadows from the many spinneys are cast upon the gleaming roads and silent tarns, or when the wind, rustling through the elms and oaks, sound like the breaking and falling of surf on the seashore—it is only then that the place presents an entirely different aspect to the psychic mind and one conjures up—GHOSTS.
During the period of my early visits to Guilsborough, the history of the village was unknown to me, nor did I for one moment associate it with superphysical manifestations till I was staying at the hamlet of Creaton, some three miles distant, and had to tramp home late at night.
I must confess, then, that I was unquestionably glad to leave the crossroads at the top of Crow Hill and the lonely turnpike behind and find myself snugly ensconced within the very material precincts of the Cricketers’ Arms.
The route I took, led me past the long-disused burial-ground of some Nonconformist Fraternity, a spot one never seemed to notice by day, but which struck me as singularly eerie at night.
On this particular night in question, I did not leave my friend’s house in Guilsborough till close on twelve, an hour when all village folk are in bed and the place is wrapped in the most profound silence. The sound of my footsteps, as I briskly pounded down the road, echoed and re-echoed through the village. I welcomed the sound; it was nice to have even that for a companion. I am not as a rule nervous, I have been too much by myself in life to be an abject coward, yet I must confess I never anticipated the walk from Guilsborough along the lonely turnpike-road after nightfall without an uncomfortable itching in my back.
I was just beginning to get that sensation when I arrived at the rusty gates of the cemetery, and was confounded beyond measure on seeing a curious, grotesque sort of creature climb over the iron bars and confront me. The moonlight was so powerful that it left nothing uncovered or concealed.
A frightful terror laid hold of me—what—what in the NAME OF HEAVEN could it be?
Gazing at it with a fascination as hideous as the thing itself, I took in every feature—the long, loose limbs, the thin body, the huge hands and feet, the little repulsive head, the white fulsome, pig-like face, and the protruding, sapphire eyes.
For some seconds—to me an eternity—we watched one another in breathless silence—the Elemental (for as such I at length recognised it) being the first to take the initiative. The unfathomable stare in its eyes gradually deepened into a horrible and very unmistakable expression of malignant joy in which all the most undesirable of human vices seemed blended: its monstrous hands rose like wings on either side of its head, the fingers twitching convulsively in greedy anticipation of clutching me; its legs slowly crouched as if about to spring—and then—just as the crucial moment arrived and the acme of my terrors was reached—the spell was broken—the leaden weights fell from off my feet—my limbs became endowed with a thousandfold their natural elasticity—and—turning round—I fled.
So ended my first and only experience with a Guilsborough ghost. I have taken very good care since then to give that burial-ground a very wide berth after nightfall. But now comes the most extraordinary part of it. I had heard off-and-on that a certain house in the village (since pulled down) was supposed to be haunted; that one bedroom in particular had struck those occupying it as containing an invisible “presence” both inimical and horrible.