Twenty Years' Experience as a Ghost Hunter

by Elliott O'Donnell

I returned to England in that “tub-like” old relic of mid-Victorian steamboats, “The Argo”—long since defunct, but which for many years sailed to and from Dublin and Bristol with as many passengers and cattle as could be crammed, with any degree of safety, into her dingy and clumsy-looking hulk. I remember the passage well, for two of my fellow students were on board, and we spent nearly all the time on deck, telling ghost tales, and earnestly discussing the possibility of a future life. In the end we made a solemn compact, whereby it was agreed that the one who died first would try his level best to give some kind of spirit demonstration to the other two. Both my friends died within a few years of that date, and within three weeks of each other. The one, who had a commission in a cavalry regiment, was killed at the Battle of Omdurman, and the other, who having followed in the footsteps of his distinguished father, had become a novelist of great promise, was kicked to death by a horse. The day after the death of the former, as I was busily engaged writing the first chapter of my novel, “For Satan’s Sake,” a portion of the mantel-piece in the room in which I was working suddenly fell with a loud crash on to the grate. Of course, the incident may not have had anything to do with the death of my friend, but it was nevertheless remarkable, as previously nothing in the nature of a flaw had been noticeable in the condition of the mantel-piece. My other friend died—as I subsequently learned, i.e., after the incident I am about to narrate had occurred—at ten o’clock one Friday morning, and that afternoon as I was changing for football, the grandfather clock on the landing outside my bedroom suddenly struck ten. I went to look, and the hands pointed to three. There had been nothing amiss with the striking before, and there was nothing amiss with the striking after.

These were the only phenomena I experienced at the time these two friends of mine died.

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On arriving at Bristol, I spent some weeks in the West of England and then journeyed north to Scotland. My original intention had been to spend a few weeks with an old Clifton friend of mine, whose father owned an estate near Inverary; but, on arriving at Glasgow, I heard of such a promising case of haunting in that city, that, unable to resist the temptation of investigating it, I decided to postpone my journey west. The case, as outlined to me in the first instance, was this:—

A Glasgow solicitor, named James McKaye, desirous of taking a house close to his office, went one morning to look at one in Duke Street. He went there alone, and, carefully closing the front door behind him, proceeded to wander from room to room, beginning with the basement.

As he was going upstairs to the first floor, he suddenly heard footsteps following him. He turned sharply round; there was no one there. Thinking this was odd, but attributing it to the acoustic properties of the walls, he continued his ascent. Having arrived on the first landing, he went into one of the rooms. The steps followed him. A brilliant idea then occurred to him—he stamped his foot. There was no echo. He turned round and went into the next room, and the steps once again accompanied him. Then he grew frightened. It was broad daylight, the sun was shining brilliantly and the birds were singing; but there was something in this house that jarred on him horribly—a something that was completely out of humour with the golden sunbeams and the cheerful chirping of the sparrows. The day was hot, and the sun was pouring in through the blindless windows; but in spite of this the rooms were icy, and he was deliberating whether it was worth while to explore the house further, when he caught sight of a shadow on the wall. It was not his own shadow. It was that of a man with his arms stretched out horizontally on either side of him, and whereas the right arm was complete in every detail, the left had no hand. James McKaye now yielded to an ungovernable terror and rushed frantically out of the house.

One would naturally think that after all this McKaye would have vowed never to go near the place again. Nothing of the sort. The house fascinated him. He could not get it out of his mind; he even dreamed of it; dreamed of it in connection with some mystery that he must solve—that he alone could solve. Besides, there was not another house in the town so conveniently situated, nor so cheap. Consequently, he took it, and within a fortnight had moved in with all his family and household goods. For the first few weeks everything went swimmingly, and McKaye, who was shrewd, even for a Scot, congratulated himself upon having made such an excellent bargain.

Then occurred an incident which recalled sharply the day he had first seen the place. He was writing some letters one morning in his study, when the nurse-maid entered, white and agitated. “Oh, do come to the nursery, sir,” she implored; “the children are playing with something that looks like a dog, and yet isn’t one. I don’t know what it is!” And she burst out crying.

“You’re mad,” McKaye said sharply and, springing to his feet, he ran upstairs.