“Then the enigma is solved,” I said. “You are the ghost!”
“I soon shall be,” the creature replied, “for I’ve eaten nothing for more than two days.”
“Well, I’m afraid I cannot give you any more than this,” I said, “for it’s all I have with me.” And I handed her some biscuits and bread and cheese.
Never shall I forget the savage joy with which she snatched the food from my hand and crammed it into her big, gaping, fleshless jaws. No animal in the Zoo was half so voracious. When she had finished it all, and drained the last drop of whiskey, she drew her lean and dirty, albeit well-shaped, fingers across her mouth, and cursed me.
“Get you gone,” she snarled, “and leave me here. I tell you this is my house. I’ve as much right to it as you or anyone else. Get you gone, or I’ll spit at you.” And not wishing to be spat upon, I picked up my flask and departed.
I encountered another ghost of this order three nights later in a house in Manchester. The house was furnished, but was untenanted, as the owner, a rich and eccentric old lady, believed it to be haunted. She wrote to me, àpropos of my book, “Ghostly Phenomena,” and suggested I should try and exorcise the ghost. Now I do not altogether believe in exorcism. There are occasions upon which it has been practised with success, mostly in cases of haunting by phantasms of the sane dead, but there are also many cases, within my own experience, in which it has been practised with no result whatever.
At all events, with my elastic views regarding denominational religion, I did not feel disposed to try it, and so I wrote and told her. She replied, “Come in any case, and give me your opinion as to the nature and cause of the phenomena.”
I went. The house was in a quiet, sleepy thoroughfare, not three minutes walk from the Whalley Road. It was big and roomy, and would have been attractive but for the walls, the papers of which had obviously been chosen by someone who did not possess even the most elementary conception of what is pleasing in colour and design. As it was, my artistic susceptibilities were so grossly outraged, that I could well have imagined, the place haunted by neutrarians of the most undesirable order.
I visited the house in the early evening, and the subdued light from the fast-fading sunshine, filtering through the drawn Venetian blinds, produced a singularly sad, and, at the same time, ghostly effect. I had come unaccompanied, for nothing on earth would persuade the old lady or any of her domestics to set a foot in the house, and as I wandered through room after room, the intense hush began at length to tell on my nerves. When I was on the staircase leading to the top storey, I fancied I heard a slight noise, and a sudden faintness coming over me, I had to clutch hold of the banisters to prevent myself falling. I went on, however, and opening a door at the top of the stairs, found myself in a large room communicating with two other rooms by means of doors, both of which stood slightly ajar. I had passed through the first, and was half across the floor of the second, when I suddenly felt one of my ankles caught hold of. The shock was so great that all the blood in my body seemed suddenly to dry up, and again I all but fainted. Forcing myself to look down, however, I perceived a skinny hand and arm protruding from under the dressing-table, and assured by the appearance of it that it belonged to nothing ghostly, I struck at it with my stick, kicking out vigorously at the same time.
With terrible howlings there now crawled from under the table a long and lanky idiot boy. It transpired that he was the son of one of the old lady’s servants, and that he was enjoying a nice, comfortable home at her expense. His mother used to visit him every evening, and this evening he had hidden under the table with the intention of frightening her. Unfortunately for them both, however, he had frightened me instead. The servant, of course, lost her post, and the old lady, assured that there was no longer any fear of ghosts, came back to the house, and, at my suggestion, had all the walls re-papered.