He gave the clothes the next day, and the spirit returned no more.[350]
Almost the same story is told of a Mrs. Guille, who gave orders that after her death a certain amount of clothes were to be bought and yearly distributed amongst the poor. This her husband neglected to comply with, so Mrs. Guille visited him one night, and told him that she would do so every night until the clothes were given. Mr. Guille hurriedly bought and distributed the clothes, and continued to do so yearly until he died.[351]
Miss Le Pelley also contributes the following ghost stories which are told at St. Pierre-du-Bois:—
“About the beginning of the century a man went to Gaspé (which the narrator said was Newfoundland, but is really on the mainland). While there, his father died suddenly, and the son came back to Guernsey to work the farm. One night his father appeared to him and told him that he would find “une petite houlette” (a little mug) on the barn wall, with something of value in it. Next morning the son went to look, and found a mug full of five franc pieces.”
“A widow in Little Sark had sold her sheep advantageously and hidden the money in the “poûtre” (the large central rafter which runs along the ceiling of the kitchen). Quite suddenly she died. Whenever her son walked about in Little Sark he met his mother, which made him feel very frightened, so one day he made his brother come with him, and together they met her, and plucked up courage enough to say:—‘In the name of the Great God what ails you,’ so then, having been spoken to first, she could tell them where her hoard of treasure was, and then disappeared, and was never seen again.”
The whole country-side is full of shreds of ghost stories and beliefs; many of these were probably due to, and encouraged by, the smugglers of olden days.
For instance a funeral procession was supposed to issue from an old lane south of Le Hurel—now blocked up—and no St. Martin’s man or woman would dare pass the place at night. But smugglers, creeping along between the overhanging hedges, with kegs and bundles on their shoulders, would have had just the same effect, especially to people who would have been far too frightened at an unexpected nocturnal appearance to stop and investigate the matter.
At the corner between Les Maindonneaux and the Hermitage, a tall figure was said to appear, and hover round the spot. When the road was widened and the wall round the Hermitage was built, a stone coffin was found full of very large bones. These bones were taken to the churchyard, and the burial service read over them, and since then no ghost has been seen.
Then, a little further on, around the pond of Sausmarez Manor, was seen an old man, dressed in a long grey coat, and a grey felt plumed hat. This is supposed by the people to be old Mr. Matthew de Sausmarez—“Le Grand Matthieu” as he is called,—but why he is supposed to return is unknown.
Even now-a-days, in quite modern most unghostly-looking houses, you hear tales of little old women, former inhabitants, being seen. In another house, where a suicide is known to have occurred, soft finger knocks are heard against the walls of one of the rooms, as of some one shut up in the room and seeking release; the door is opened, and nothing is to be seen. And in St. Martin’s the ghost of a woman, who only died a few years ago, is said to haunt the garden of the house in which she lived. Her daughter saw the appearance and was picked up in a dead faint from fright, but then the woman was supposed by all the neighbours to have been a witch, and, of course, as they say, the spirit of “une sorcière” could not rest quiet in consecrated ground.