“Spedlin’s Tower, the scene of one of the best accredited and most curious ghost stories perhaps ever printed, stands on the south-west bank of the Annan, in Dumfriesshire. The ghost story is simply this:—Sir Alexander Jardine, of Applegarth, in the time of Charles II., had confined in the dungeon of his tower of Spedlin’s, a miller named Porteous, suspected of having wilfully set fire to his own premises. Sir Alexander being soon after suddenly called away to Edinburgh, carried the key of the vault with him, and did not recollect or consider his prisoner’s case till he was passing through the West Port, where, perhaps, the sight of the warder’s keys brought the matter to his mind. He immediately sent back a courier to liberate the man, but Porteous had, in the meantime, died of hunger.
“No sooner was he dead, than his ghost began to torment the household, and no rest was to be had within Spedlin’s Tower by day or by night. In this dilemma, Sir Alexander, according to old use and wont, summoned a whole legion of ministers to his aid; and by their strenuous efforts, Porteous was at length confined to the scene of his mortal agonies, where, however, he continued to scream occasionally at night, ‘Let me out, let me out, for I’m deein’ o’ hunger!’ He also used to flutter against the door of the vault, and was always sure to remove the bark from any twig that was sportively thrust through the key-hole. The spell which thus compelled the spirit to remain in bondage was attached to a large black-lettered Bible, used by the exorcists, and afterwards deposited in a stone niche, which still remains in the wall of the staircase; and it is certain that, after the lapse of many years, when the family repaired to a newer mansion (Jardine Hall), built on the other side of the river, the Bible was left behind, to keep the restless spirit in order. On one occasion, indeed, the volume requiring to be rebound, was sent to Edinburgh; but the ghost, getting out of the dungeon, and crossing the river, made such a disturbance in the new house, hauling the baronet and his lady out of bed, &c., that the Bible was recalled before it reached Edinburgh, and placed in its former situation. The good woman who told Grose this story in 1788, declared that should the Bible again be taken off the premises, no consideration whatever should induce her to remain there a single night. But the charm seems to be now broken, or the ghost must have become either quiet or disregarded, for the Bible is at present kept at Jardine Hall.”
Another example from Scotland now follows, all the more remarkable, because it is still asserted that in a certain part of the mansion unusual voices, and supernatural footsteps are said to be still heard, a fact to which the late Mr. Hope Scott often testified:—Sir Walter Scott relates a striking occurrence which happened to him at the time Abbotsford was in the course of erection. Mr. Bullock was then employed by him to fit the castle up with proper appurtenances, when during that person’s absence in London the following extraordinary circumstance took place:—In a letter to Mr. Terry in the year 1818 Scott wrote:—“The night before last we were awakened by a violent noise like drawing heavy boards along the new part of the House. I fancied something had fallen and thought no more about it. This was about two in the morning. Last night at the same witching hour the same noise recurred. Mrs. S., as you know, is rather timbersome; so up I got with Beardy’s broadsword under my arm,
‘Sat bolt upright
And ready to fight.’
But nothing was out of order; neither could I discover what occasioned the disturbance.” Now, strangely enough on the morning that Mr. Terry received this letter he was breakfasting with Mr. Erskine (afterwards Lord Kinneder) and the chief subject of their conversation was the sudden death of Mr. Bullock, which on comparing dates must have happened on the same night and as near as could possibly be ascertained at the same hour, these disturbances occurred at Abbotsford. One might be induced to maintain that some drunken workmen or disorderly persons were on the premises, but this method for accounting for the coincidence will at once be exploded on reading the following passage from Scott to the same gentleman:—“Were you not struck with the fantastical coincidence of our nocturnal disturbance at Abbotsford with the melancholy event that followed? I protest to you that the noise resembled half-a-dozen men hard at work pulling up boards and furniture, and nothing could be more certain than that there was nobody on the premises at the time.”
The following account of a haunted locality is from the pen of a scholarly and accomplished clergyman[33] in the diocese of Ripon:—“Some years ago I was residing in a village about eleven miles from York, and one mile and a half from another village, in which was the Post Office for the surrounding district. Whenever I had reason to suppose a letter was lying there for me, I used to anticipate the delivery of it on the following morning, by calling for it myself in the evening before. One night, in the latter end of November, I was going, for this purpose, along the path through the fields, and when I was midway between the two villages, I passed through a little hand-gate, and after going about twenty yards from it, I was startled and alarmed by a succession of the most horrible shrieks that can possibly be conceived. They seemed scarcely human, though I felt at the time that they were certainly uttered by some man or woman, imitating the piercing scream of a hog when the fatal knife is being plunged into its throat. The panic that seized me vanished in a moment, as the thought instantaneously flashed across my mind that I was being made the victim of some ploughman’s joke. Being armed, as I then invariably was, with a particularly tough and stout cudgel, I ran back to the little hand-gate on tip-toe, intending to take condign vengeance on some rustic, whom I felt sure I should find crouching down behind the low hedge. Just as I reached the hand-gate, the sounds suddenly ceased, and to my utmost astonishment I could see no one, although it was quite impossible for any person within the distance of two or three hundred yards to have escaped my observation. The full moon was shining brightly, with the very thinnest of fleecy clouds before her face, which did not obscure her light, but only made the whole country distinctly visible in every direction, from the absence of all strongly-defined shadow. Then, again, I must confess, an unaccountably superstitious awe crept over me, and, instead of pursuing my intended route, I returned to my own home.
“On the following morning, when reflecting on what had happened, I began to take a philosophical and reasonable view of the singular occurrence. In passing through the little gate I might, as I thought, have left it ajar, and that soon after it lost its nice equilibrium, and swung back to its accustomed resting-place. The hinges might have given a creaking sound, which the lonely solitude of the night had intensely magnified in my imagination. So much for the philosophical view. I then determined that I would put this view to the proof, and see if I could by any means get the gate to produce any noise similar to what I fancied I had heard. This was the reasonable view. I took care, however, to put my determination into practice at the earliest period of the evening, just, in fact, as the daylight had departed. Accordingly I was at the little gate between five and six o’clock, but in spite of all kinds of efforts it would make no sign, but swung backwards and forwards on its hinges with noiseless smoothness. In the midst of my experiments a very intelligent man, a Gardener by calling, came up. He was a resident of my own village, but had been working in the other village, and was then returning home from his day’s labour. He expressed some surprise at seeing me there at that time of the evening, and I gave him a brief account of the reason. ‘Well, sir,’ said he; ‘if you will walk back with me, I will tell you something more about that little hand-gate.’ I consented immediately, and he said to me as follows: ‘Some years ago, when we were all children at home, my mother had been to the other village, where she remained till night; on her return homewards, just as she passed through the little gate, she saw some kind of figure lying close by it, huddled together in a strange, mysterious manner. She was horror-stricken, and fled from the spot as fast as possible. On reaching her own cottage, she flung open the door, and fell fainting on the ground before her astonished and frightened children. When she came to herself, and was asked what had caused her evident terror, she told what she had seen, and where she had seen it. She could, however, give no definite description of the figure she had seen. She could only say, “It was something hideous.” But never could she be induced to pass that place again after night-fall, as long as she lived.’ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘this is a very remarkable coincidence.’ ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘but I will tell you something more remarkable still. About forty years ago the land between the two villages was unenclosed. It was nothing more than a wild, uncultivated common. One night, about that period, as the villagers were going to bed, loud and piercing shrieks were heard coming from the common. Some of the men dressed themselves hastily, with the intention of going and seeing what was taking place. Some woman, as it seemed to them, was evidently being ill-treated. They set off on their kindly-intentioned errand, but as the sounds completely ceased, and the night was very dark, they thought it impossible to reach the exact spot where their services might be required. They went to bed, and slept soundly. On the following morning one of them was going to work at the other village, and as he passed over the common he was almost distilled to a jelly with the effect of fright at the appalling sight that suddenly met his gaze. A woman was lying before him, huddled up on the ground, quite dead, with her throat cut from ear to ear. She had evidently been murdered, on the preceding night. Who she was, whence she came, why or by whom she had been murdered, was never known, and probably never will be in this world. When, a short time after this dreadful event, the common was enclosed, it so happened that the little hand-gate was put up close to the spot where the woman’s lifeless body was found.’
“He finished his narrative. I thanked him for it, and internally resolved never, if I could help it, to pass through those fields alone in the gloom of night, on any account whatever. I scrupulously kept my resolve.”
The celebrated case of the Haunted Room in the Jewel House of the Tower of London created great interest, about fifty-five years ago. Additional interest and importance have been given to it by the publication of the following authentic account of Mr. E. Lenthal Swifte,[34] which in simple but forcible language tells its own story:—
“I have often purposed to leave behind me a faithful record of all that I know personally of this strange story.... Forty-three years have passed, and its impression is as vividly before me as on the moment of its occurrence.... In 1814 I was appointed keeper of the Crown Jewels in the Tower, where I resided with my family until my retirement in 1852. One Saturday night in October, 1817, about ‘the witching hour,’ I was at supper with my then wife, our little boy, and her sister, in the sitting room of the Jewel House, which—then comparatively modernized—is said to have been ‘the doleful prison’ of Anne Boleyn, and of the ten bishops whom Oliver Cromwell piously accommodated therein.... The room was, as it still is, irregularly shaped, having three doors and two windows, which last are cut nearly nine feet deep into the outer wall; between these is a chimney-piece projecting far into the room, and (then) surmounted with a large oil picture. On the night in question the doors were all closed; heavy and dark cloth curtains were let down over the windows, and the only light in the room was that of two candles on the table.... I sate at the foot of the table, my son on my right hand, his mother fronting the chimney-piece, and her sister on the opposite side. I had offered a glass of wine and water to my wife, when, on putting it to her lips, she paused and exclaimed, ‘Good God, what is that?’ I looked up, and saw a cylindrical figure like a glass tube, seemingly about the thickness of my arm, and hovering between the ceiling and the table. Its contents appeared to be a dense fluid, white and pale azure, like to the gathering of a summer cloud, and incessantly rolling and mingling within the cylinder. This lasted about two minutes, when it began slowly to move before my sister-in-law, then following the oblong shape of the table, before my son and myself; passing behind my wife it paused for a moment over her right shoulder (observe, there was no mirror opposite to her in which she could then behold it). Instantly she crouched down, and, with both hands covering her shoulder, she shrieked out, ‘Oh, Christ! it has seized me.’ Even now, while writing, I feel the fresh horror of that moment. I caught up my chair, struck at the wainscot behind her, rushed upstairs to the other children’s room, and told the terrified nurse what I had seen.... Neither my sister-in-law nor my son beheld this ‘appearance.’... I am bound to add that shortly before this strange event some young lady residents in the Tower had been, I know not wherefore, suspected of making phantasmagorical experiments at their windows, which, be it observed, had no command whatever on any windows in my dwelling. An additional sentry was accordingly posted so as to overlook any such attempt. Happening, however, as it might, following hard at heel the visitation of my household, one of the night sentries at the Jewel Office was, as he said, alarmed by a figure like a huge bear issuing from underneath the door. He thrust at it with his bayonet, which stuck in the door, even as my chair dinted the wainscot. He dropped in a fit, and was carried senseless to the guard-room. His fellow-sentry declared that the man was neither asleep nor drunk, he himself having seen him the moment before awake and sober. Of all this I avouch nothing more than that I saw the poor man in the guard-house prostrated with terror, and that in two or three days the fatal result, be it of fact or fancy, was that he died. Let it be understood that to all which I have herein set forth as seen by myself, I absolutely pledge my faith and my honour.—Edmund Lenthal Swifte.”