The Alleged Haunting of B—— House / Including a Journal Kept During the Tenancy of Colonel Lemesurier Taylor

by Unknown

In relation to his experiments at B—— Mr. "Etienne" writes:—

"Lord Bute has asked me to describe a seismographic instrument which I used during my short visit to B——. The instrument consisted of a light wooden frame or platform which rested on three billiard-balls. The balls in their turn rested on a horizontal plate of plate-glass. Through two wire rings in the centre of the platform already mentioned a needle stood perpendicularly, resting on its point on the plate of glass. The centre of the plate of glass (and the area round it and within in the triangle describable with the balls at its angles) was smoked. You will see that the parts of such an instrument are held together by gravitation, and a very little friction, and that a tremor communicated to the plate will not simultaneously affect the platform. The needle-point describes on the smoked surface which it moves across the converse of any movement of the plate which is not simultaneously a movement of the platform, and the error between this and the description of the tremor drawn by an absolutely fixed point—say the earth itself—has been calculated on a replica of this instrument as equal to the error of a pendulum thirty feet long."

It will be noticed that the phenomena began, so far as Miss Freer was concerned, upon the night of her arrival in the house, February 3rd, and ceased (if we except the sound heard by Mr. Etienne), after the service performed by the Bishop on the morning of May 6th. This period comprises ninety-two days, but from these must be subtracted the seventeen days between Miss Freer's leaving B—— on the morning of April 9th, and that of the departure of Mr. Myers's medium, Miss "K.," on the morning of April 26th.

Of the remaining seventy-five days, Miss Freer was absent from the house for four days, from March 16th to March 20th, and for two nights after Miss "K.'s" leaving; during this latter interval, however, Lord Bute was himself on the spot. On the other hand, she remained in the house for eight days after the service performed by the Bishop, during which time no phenomena occurred.

Of the sixty-nine days of which a record is kept in the journal, viz., from February 3rd to May 14th, exclusive of twenty-three days for the reasons already indicated, daytime phenomena occurred upon eighteen days, and night phenomena upon thirty-five nights.

To these must be added the night of April 27th, the occasion of the vision seen by Carter the housemaid during Lord Bute's visit. Thirty-four nights, or almost exactly half the period, were entirely without record of any phenomena whatever. This is without counting the seven nights of the last week, during which there were observers for longer or shorter periods in the house, none of whom recorded any sight or sound of a supernormal kind, unless it were the percussive or detonating noise heard by Mr. "Etienne."

The term "night" is here understood to cover the period between the hour of going to rest at night, to that of leaving one's room next morning, even if the phenomena occurred in the daylight hours of the early morning. The term "day" is used to cover the hours of active, waking life, from breakfast to bedtime.

To sum up the character of the phenomena, it may be well to begin with those that are visual.

1. The phantasm of the Rev. P. H——. This was seen once only, and by Miss Langton, on the night of February 17th. Of the identity no doubt can be felt, since Miss Moore and Miss Freer afterwards recognised the accuracy of the description on meeting the Rev. P. H—— for the first time, in a crowded railway station on May 25th. This is the only one of the apparitions which is undoubtedly that of a living person, and like many such apparitions, it occurred at an hour when it is probable that he was asleep. B—— is a place to which Father H——'s thoughts were naturally and disagreeably drawn, and to which his attention had been called anew. On awaking, he would probably have no recollection of the circumstances, or at the utmost would have an impression of having dreamt that he was there.

2. The woman once seen by Miss Freer in the drawing-room. She was older than Sarah N——, who died at the age of twenty-seven, but of whose haunting of B—— there is some tradition, but assisted by the parish register of marriages and births it is not difficult to form a guess at the identity of the phantasm. As there is some uncertainty as to whether the person in question is still living, though it is probable that she is dead, the vision is mentioned here before those as to which there is no reason to doubt that they represent the dead. There is reason to believe that the same apparition has been seen by former occupants of the house, and it is alleged to be that of a member of the S—— family.