Twenty Years' Experience as a Ghost Hunter

by Elliott O'Donnell

My Blackheath and Greenwich Park experiences, or at least most of them, are narrated fully in my “Haunted Houses of London,” so that I can only refer briefly to them here.

From the impressions I got, when walking on the Common at Blackheath, I shall always believe that the superphysical influences there are particularly demoralising. It always seemed to me that Blackheath—by the way a curiously appropriate name—might be the rendezvous of the very worst type of earth-bound phantasms of the dead, and of the most vicious neutrarians.

After leaving London and entering on my scholastic career, I was first of all a master at Daventry, then tutor in an Irish family at Aldershot, and then, in succession, a master in preparatory schools at Wandsworth, Hereford and Blackheath. Of these various posts, I liked that at Blackheath the least, partly because the headmaster there was the most unmitigated snob, and my pupils hopelessly spoilt, and partly because I had such a detestation of the heath after dark.

My only consolation in those days was cricket and writing. Every evening, after my work with the boys was done, I repaired to a room over a library in Blackheath village, and it was there that I completed my first novel, “For Satan’s Sake.”

The book deals with the soul of a suicide, and was based, as I have already stated, on my experiences in America and York Road, Lambeth. I tried it with various publishers, but without success, and it was not until six years later, when I was living in a small fishing town in Cornwall, that I eventually got it taken. It so happened that a well-known novelist came to see me one day, and when I told him that I had attempted a book, he said he would like to see it. I fished it out of the box, where it had lain undisturbed for years, and he went off with it, subsequently showing it to a reader of a publishing firm—also a well-known novelist—who was staying in the town at the time, and who was so impressed with it, that he advised his firm to accept it. It did not even then come out for over a year, and the anxiety of awaiting my début as an author can better be imagined than described. The success I prayed for was not showered upon me, but the book was well received on the whole, and paved the way for other works to follow.

And now, let me hie back to London and its commons. Though Hampstead has, in all probability, its share of phantasms, my impressions there have been of a more agreeable nature than at Blackheath. I spent the greater part of several consecutive nights one summer sitting on a bench in a very rustic glade on the heath, waiting for anything that might happen. Once or twice between one and two something seemed to be making a violent effort to materialise, and I fully expected to see a figure suddenly appear before me. My impressions were that it would be the figure of a woman, and that she would be carrying a white bundle in her arms. I felt that she was in great trouble and wanted to ask me for advice. I associated her worries with a big house that used to stand somewhere near the summit of Hampstead Hill. I felt all this very acutely, and I used to repeat aloud my willingness to do anything I could to assist her.

Strange to say, a few years later, I met a lady who told me that she had had a curious experience in the same spot. She was walking through it rather late one autumn evening, accompanied by her dog, a big black retriever. When she came to the seat where I used to sit, the dog started barking and showed signs of great terror. Somewhat alarmed, she was about to hurry on, when a voice close to her said, “It’s only me, Winifred; don’t be frightened. The boat I sailed in to America was wrecked, and only the child was saved.”

The lady looked round, but there was no one in sight. On reaching home, she mentioned the incident to her mother, who exclaimed in astonishment, “Well, that is odd! I was sitting on a seat, I should think in that very spot, about forty years ago—we were living in D—— House, on Haverstock Hill, at the time—when a letter was brought me announcing the loss of a big sailing vessel in the Atlantic, on which my maid, Winnie, as we used to call her, had sailed with her husband to America. Only a very few of the passengers and crew survived, and Winnie and her husband were both drowned. But I never knew they had a child.”

Hounslow Heath should teem with ghosts, for it once swarmed with foot-pads, who, after committing every conceivable act of violence on and around the heath, usually ended their career there on gibbets. I once had rooms near the Bath Road, and spent many nights rambling about the Heath in quest of ghostly adventure. One evening I kept fancying I was followed everywhere by a tall, muffled figure, and when, in alarm, I hastened over the grass on to the roadway, I heard a low, cynical laugh. All the way home the steps seemed to pursue me, and when I got into bed and prepared to blow out the light, I saw the curtains by the window rustle and swell out, as if someone was behind them. It was a long time before I ventured to blow out the light, and, when I slept, I dreamed a dark, hooded figure was bending over me.

On another occasion, as I perambulated the heath, where the trees were thickly clustered and the undergrowth had become the densest tangle, I caught a glimpse of two men playing dice. I heard their laughter and the rattling of the box, as they shook it in the air and threw out the dice. Then suddenly their gaiety was turned to wrath—there were oaths and blows, cries and groans, and all became silent, save for the soughing and moaning of the wind through the lofty tree-tops. But as I came away from the heath, there was again that cynical laugh, and again footsteps seemed to follow me home, and again the curtain by the window of my room shook and swelled.