ALONE WITH A GHOST IN A CHURCH
The following case is sent me by a correspondent:
I once knew a young man by the name of Charles D. Bradlaugh, who took a delight in ridiculing ghost stories and, whenever possible, in proving them to be due to fraud, trickery or hallucination. He stated he was “afraid of nothing.” I said to him one day in conversation: “If you are as fearless as you say, would you be willing to spend a night alone, locked up in a Church with a corpse freshly placed in its coffin?”
He replied that he would do it any time; so the test was shortly arranged. One of the parishioners had just died, and had been placed in the crypt of the church, with the lid of the coffin removed. The lights were all extinguished; we locked the door after us, and went away, leaving Bradlaugh and the spirits to fight it out between them.
What occurred during the night must be told in Bradlaugh’s own words, as nearly as I can recall them:
“When I heard the key turn in the door, that night, I confess that a strange feeling came over me for the first time in my life. I wanted to get out; but of course I knew it was useless; and in the next place my pride forbade my leaving. Shaking off the superstitious fear that had settled upon me, I turned away; and proceeded to explore, as best I could, the whole of the church.
“A bright moonlight fell in through the windows, casting queer shadows in various directions; and across the long rows of pews and the altar at the far end of the church. I walked about, looking at everything curiously, as it had been long since I found myself inside a church. Then I proceeded to the crypt, and, walking boldly up to the coffin, I gazed long and earnestly at the corpse lying within it, as though to familiarize myself with it. I went on the principle that ‘familiarity breeds contempt.’ When I had done this, I went back to the nave of the church, and, finding a comfortable place, I lay down, and was soon in a state bordering on sleep. I should have been asleep, probably, very soon; but, just as I was dropping off, I heard a faint sound coming from the direction of the crypt. It was like a deep sigh, and this was followed by other sounds which I find it hard to describe. All I know is that, in the quiet and stillness of that awful place, those sounds, slight as they were, were truly appalling, and chilled the very blood in my veins. Their very indistinctness added to their terror. I could not conceive what could make such uncanny noises. I sat up, and strained my eyes in the darkness, trying to penetrate the gloom. Then I heard the first faint footsteps coming up the stairs from the crypt! At first, these were faint, but they became louder and louder; until finally I could hear them plainly. Undoubtedly they were foot-falls, as though a human being were mounting the steps from the crypt where the corpse had been laid!
“I rose from my seat, my hair standing on end, while queer, cold shivers ran up and down my back. I advanced one or two paces toward the door, hardly knowing what to expect. Then, as I looked, I saw step into the bright moonlight, the corpse that a few moments before I had seen lying in the coffin downstairs!
“Frantic with fear, I rushed at the corpse, still shrouded, as it was, in the white wrappings which, torn and dishevelled, still enveloped the body. I raised one hand as though to strike the ghost, and thrust the hateful thing from me; when I felt a stunning blow on the point of my jaw, and a moment later I had lost sensibility. When I awoke, you were all round me. You know the rest.”
To make a long story short, it turned out that the supposed “corpse” was not really dead at all, but in a sort of trance; and had been buried prematurely. He had revived in the night; and was advancing into the church when he encountered Bradlaugh in the doorway. Thinking him a robber or an assassin, he had struck first; and, being a powerful man and a good boxer, he had knocked out Bradlaugh by a blow on the jaw. When we arrived in the morning, we found Bradlaugh senseless, and the “corpse,” now stripped of his grave clothes, bending over him, dashing cold water in his face!