We stood still and listened. There was a thump, that apparently came from a room just at the top of the stairs—then another—and then a very curious sound, as if something was bounding backwards and forwards over bare boards with its feet tied together. At a signal from Mr. Rowlandson, we immediately blew out our lights. A church clock solemnly struck twelve. We heard it very distinctly, as the Rowlandsons, being enthusiasts for fresh air, kept every window in the house wide open. The reverberation of the final stroke had hardly ceased when a loud gasp from someone in front of me sent a chilly feeling down my spine.
At the same moment the darkness ahead of us was dissipated by a faint, luminous glow. As I watched, the glow speedily intensified, and suddenly took the shape of a cylindrical column of six or seven feet in height, and this in turn developed with startling abruptness into the form of something so shockingly grotesque and bestial that I was rendered speechless.
It is extremely difficult to give a very accurate description of it, because, like the generality of occult phenomena I have experienced in haunted houses, it was a baffling mixture of the distinct and yet vague, entirely without substance, and apparently wholly constituted of vibrating light that varied each second in tone and intensity. I can only say that the impression I derived was that of a very gross or monstrous man.
The head, ill-defined on the crown and sides, appeared to be abnormally high and long, and to be covered with a tangled mass of coarse, tow-coloured hair; the nose seemed hooked, the mouth cruel, the eyes leering. The general expression on the face was one of intense antagonism. The body of the thing was grey and nude, very like the trunk of a silver beech, the arms long and knotted, the hands huge, the fingers red and club-shaped. The latter corresponded exactly with Mrs. Rowlandson’s description.
This hideous, baleful apparition was the spirit of animal man, the symbolical representation of all carnal lusts—it was Ernest Dekon—soulless.
But although this spirit was without substance, it was composed of complex forces—forces both physical and mental. It could shut and open doors, move furniture, rap and make sundry other noises, and it could also convey the sensation of intense cold, and the feeling of the most abject fear. I now found myself wondering if it possessed other properties: Was it sensible? Could it communicate in any way?
I was thus deliberating, when the figure seemed to move forward; then someone shrieked. Mr. Rowlandson struck a light, and simultaneously the apparition vanished. The effect it had had on us all was novel and striking—we were all more or less demoralized; and yet no two of us had seen the ghost the same—and some, Mr. Rowlandson and Mrs. Rushworth, had not seen it at all.
We went back again into the drawing-room and discussed it. Mrs. Rowlandson was the first to speak. She, too, had been particularly impressed by the hands, and she was sure they were the hands of Ernest Dekon.
“I can say nothing about the face,” she cried, “as it did not appear to me, but having seen the hands, I am firmly convinced that the ghost is Ernest Dekon, and that it is Ernest Dekon who is tormenting us. Can’t any of you think of a plan to get rid of him?”
“Cremation is the only thing I can think of!” cried Colonel Rushworth, who had hitherto been silent. “That is the means employed, I believe, by the hill tribes in Northern India. When a spirit—a spirit they can identify—begins to haunt a place, they dig up the body and burn it, and they say that as soon as the last bone is consumed the haunting ceases. They have a theory that phantoms of dead people and animals can materialise as long as some remnant of their physical body remains. Where did this Ernest Dekon die?”