When I was not working, I usually spent my time playing football or cricket, to both of which sports I was devoted, and, when I was not thus engaged, I used to tramp across hill and dale continually exploring the country in search of adventure.
But in those days I did not look for ghosts—they came to me; they came to me then, as they had come to me before, and as they have come to me ever since.
With my early experiences of the Unknown—which experiences, by the way, extend over the whole period of my youth—I have dealt fully in former works; so that in this volume I propose to confine myself to later experiences, commencing approximately with my début as an investigator of haunted houses and superphysical occurrences in general.
To begin with, however, let me state plainly that I lay no claims to being what is termed a scientific psychical researcher. I am not a member of any august society that conducts its investigations of the other world, or worlds, with test tube and weighing apparatus; neither do I pretend to be a medium or consistent clairvoyant.
I am merely a ghost hunter; merely one who honestly believes that he inherits in some degree the faculty of psychic perceptiveness from a long line of Celtic ancestry; and who is, and always has been, deeply and genuinely interested in all questions relative to phantasms and a continuance of individual life after physical dissolution. Moreover, in addition to this psychic faculty, I possess, as I have already hinted, a spirit of adventure; and since this spirit is irresistible, had I not decided to become a ghost hunter, I should doubtless have embarked upon some other and hardly less exciting pursuit.
The actual cause of my decision to adopt ghost-hunting as a profession was an experience which befel me in the summer of ’92. I was at that time a student in Ely Place, Dublin, and being in search of rooms, was recommended to try a house within a stone’s throw of the Waterloo Road.
A widow named Davis, with two leviathan daughters, Mona and Bridget, ran the establishment, and as the vacant apartments were large, apparently well ventilated and exceedingly moderate in price, I decided to take them. Consequently, I arrived there with my luggage one afternoon, and was speedily engaged in the tiring and somewhat irritating task of unpacking.
When I retired to rest that first night, I certainly had no thought of ghosts or anything in connection with them; on the contrary, my mind was wholly occupied with speculations as to how I should fare in the coming weekly examination at Crawley’s, whether the extra attention I had recently bestowed on mathematics would be of any service to me, or whether, in spite of it, I should again occupy my place at the bottom of the class. I remember thinking, however, as I blew out the light and turned into bed, that there was something about the room now—though I could not tell what—that I had not noticed by daylight; but I soon went to sleep, and although I awoke several times before morning—a phenomenon in itself—I cannot say that I thought then of any superphysical element in the atmosphere. It was not until I had been there several nights that the event occurred which effectually shaped my future career.
One evening the two girls, Mona and Bridget, were making so much racket in the room beneath me, that I found work impossible, and being somewhat tired, for I had stuck very close to it all day, I resolved to go to bed. On my way thither I encountered two young men, T.C. students, who were also lodging in the house, hotly engaged in an argument; and they appealed to me to express an opinion. I told them what I thought, as they followed me upstairs; then, when I reached my room, I abruptly bade them good-night, and, entering, locked the door behind me.