Another Devonshire house, D——n Hall, the ancestral home of an old and well-known family, is haunted by a lady who sometimes surprises visitors unaccustomed to her little ways.
On one occasion a husband and wife, who happened to be staying at D——n, were both dressing for dinner on the first evening of their visit. Suddenly, without any warning, the door of the wife's room was opened, and in walked a beautifully dressed woman, with grey or powdered hair turned off her forehead and worn very high. Without appearing to take the slightest notice of Mrs. Blank the intruder passed through the room, opened the dressing-room door, went in and shut the door behind her. Petrified with astonishment, Mrs. Blank stood for a moment staring after the apparition, then dashing into the dressing-room she exclaimed, "Where did that lady go?" (There was no other door except the one communicating with the bedroom.) The husband, who was calmly dressing, was naturally somewhat surprised at the question; explanations followed; he had seen nothing and thought his wife must have been dreaming. But over-flowing with wonder, Mrs. Blank went downstairs, and seeking her hostess confided to her the singular incident, adding that she supposed the "lady" was a fellow-guest who had in some way mistaken her room; but where had she disappeared to when she entered the dressing-room? "Hush," was the reply. "It was no living person you saw, but the ghost; only don't breathe a word to any one else here. There is no harm in her; and she has often been seen before by people staying in the house." And with this casual explanation Mrs. Blank was fain to be content.
A story very similar to the above is told by Mr. Henderson in "Folk-lore of the Northern Counties" about a house in Perthshire, where the figure of a very beautiful woman was one evening seen on the staircase by a visitor staying in the house. In this case the hostess informed her friend that the apparition had frequently been seen before, but always by strangers, never by any member of the family.
The following incident is said to have happened quite lately in another Scotch country house. Two sisters, one quite a young girl, went to stay at this place, and were given rooms close to one another. One night the younger sister suddenly woke up. The room was dimly lighted by a bright moon, and there, close by the bed, the girl saw, apparently rising out of the floor, a human hand. Thinking she had nightmare she closed her eyes and vainly tried to sleep, but feeling impelled, in spite of fear, to look again, there was the hand—nothing else—close by her bedside still. This time she felt horribly frightened, and hurling herself out of bed, she rushed to her sister's room, which she insisted on sharing for the rest of the night. In the morning she told the elder girl what she had seen, declaring she could not pass another night in that room. Her sister scolded her a little for what she considered foolish imagination, and begged her to say nothing of the "bad dream" to their friends, as people did not like it to be thought that there was anything ghostly about their houses.
Later in the day the son of the family was taking the elder sister over the house, which was old and interesting. Presently he remarked, "We have a ghost here, too, you know." The visitor pricked up her ears, and asked what form the ghost was supposed to take. "It is a hand," was the reply, "nothing else." "Then my sister saw it last night," exclaimed the girl, whereupon she was much surprised to see her companion turn pale and seem agitated. But in reply to her questions he would say nothing further, leaving his listener wondering uncomfortably if the appearance of the spectral hand was a bad omen; and if so, whether it boded ill to the owners of the house or to the individual who had had the disagreeable experience of seeing it.
Before leaving Scotland we must mention an Aberdeenshire house, described to us by a friend as inhabited by the ghost of an old lady, who regularly appears in a certain room once a year. Evidently her unrest is caused by an uneasy conscience, if tradition be correct; which says that she was a wicked old person who flourished in the early seventeenth century. Having a deadly feud with a neighbouring family, she decoyed them with false promises and an invitation to a feast into the tower of the house. Then she had the doors locked, and setting fire to the tower, she got rid of her enemies in one horrible holocaust.
From Scotland to Northumberland is not a far cry, and on our way South you must listen to an odd little story connected with a house called Wickstead Priory in that county. The friend who told me was staying at Wickstead when the incident happened. I will call her X.; and her room happened to be on the opposite side of the corridor to a large bedroom occupied by a married sister of the hostess. One evening, while X. was dressing for dinner she heard some noise and commotion going on in this other room, and later in the evening, she asked its occupant what had been the matter. "Oh," was the reply, "I had such a fright! I am sure you won't believe me, but as I sat doing my hair before the looking-glass, a horrid-looking little monk came and peered over my shoulder. I saw him plainly in the glass, but when I turned round, no one was there!"
I have before remarked on the disagreeable habit so common amongst ghosts of appearing by one's bedside at dead of night. In fact, a large percentage of the ghost stories one hears contain the words, "He (or she) looked round, and there was a figure standing by the bed," &c. &c. And a tale which I heard on excellent authority of a Staffordshire house concerns a "bedside" spook of the most conventional pattern, which succeeded in thoroughly astonishing, if not alarming, a Colonel and Mrs. West, who were paying a visit to Morton Hall. The owner of the house was a cousin of Colonel West's, whom he had not seen for a long time, and of whom he knew little, having been soldiering abroad for many years. On the first night of their visit, towards the small hours, Mrs. West woke up quite suddenly, and although the room was dark, yet she could somehow perceive distinctly a figure advancing towards the end of the bed, seeming to emerge from the opposite wall. Very startled, Mrs. West woke her husband, who also saw the figure—by this time stationary at the foot of the bed—and called out to it, "Who are you, and what do you want?" But at the sound of the voice the figure retreated, and seemed to fade away. The rest of the night passed undisturbed.
Next morning Colonel West said to one of the children of the house, "A nice trick you played us last night." For after much discussion, he and his wife had come to the conclusion that the only reasonable explanation of what they had seen was that they had been the victims of a clever practical joke. The child addressed looked puzzled, and when questioned said that nobody had played any tricks at all. Later on, their hostess came to Mrs. West, and said she was extremely sorry to hear from her little girl that they had been disturbed the night before, adding that owing to the house being full the Wests had been given the haunted room. For knowing they were complete strangers to Morton, and probably knew little of its traditions, it was thought very unlikely they would be troubled by anything uncanny. They were then asked what they had seen, and Mrs. West described the mysterious "figure," saying that it resembled a woman wrapped in flowing garments, and carrying a bundle under her arm. "That was the ghost," replied the cousin's wife. "Years ago a woman was murdered in that room, and ever since then she has occasionally appeared to people, dressed as you describe and carrying her head under her arm."
Wherein lies the decided element of creepiness contained in my next story? Perhaps it may be that it deals with a haunting of a most unusual and remote character, having its origin in some unknown disturbance of the very elements themselves. It relates to a very well-known English house called Ainsley Abbey, where not so very long ago there was a large party staying for the local hunt ball; among the guests a certain Mrs. Devereux. Knowing that she would be very late returning from the ball, this lady told her maid not to wait up for her, but to go to bed at her usual time. So what was Mrs. Devereux's surprise when she came back in the early hours of next morning, to find that the maid had disobeyed her injunctions, and was waiting in her room. When asked why she had not gone to bed, she told her mistress that she had done so but had been so disturbed by the "terrible storm"—thunder and great gale—that she could not rest and grew too frightened to stay in her room. She sought the house-servants, but to her surprise they had noticed no storm, and laughed at her when she said there was a high wind raging round the house. Finally she resolved to wait in her mistress's room, adding that she was thankful the party had got back safely, as she had felt concerned at Mrs. Devereux being out in such awful weather. As the night had been perfectly calm and fine, Mrs. Devereux was much astonished at this tale, but at last concluded (though she did not say so) that her maid must really have been asleep and dreamed of the storm. But happening to mention the matter as a joke to her host next day, she was surprised to find it treated with the greatest interest, and to be told it was no case of a dream. That occasionally people who came to stay at Ainsley could hear sounds that they always described as a thunder-storm and hurricane of wind blowing round the house. In fact, it was a species of haunting which had never been accounted for. Like an echo of Dante's