Transcriber’s note

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

A more detailed transcriber’s note can be found at the end of this document.

HAUNTED PLACES
IN ENGLAND

HAUNTED PLACES
IN ENGLAND

BY
ELLIOT O’DONNELL

AUTHOR OF
“SOME HAUNTED HOUSES OF ENGLAND AND WALES”
“TWENTY YEARS’ EXPERIENCE AS A GHOST HUNTER”
ETC. ETC.

LONDON
SANDS & CO.
15 KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN
1919

PREFACE

In presenting this volume to the Public, I wish to emphasise the fact that all the names of people and houses mentioned in it (saving in Chapter X.), in connection with the hauntings, are fictitious.

ELLIOT O’DONNELL.

May 5, 1917.

CONTENTS

HAUNTED PLACES IN
ENGLAND

CHAPTER I
THE CHAIR
THE CASE OF A HAUNTED HOUSE IN RED LION SQUARE

I am not a psychometrist—at least not to any great extent. I cannot pick up a small object—say an old ring or coin—and straightway tell you its history, describing all the people and incidents with which it has been associated. Yet, occasionally, odd things are revealed to me through some strange ornament or piece of furniture.

The other day I went to see a friend, who was staying in a flat near Sloane Square, and I was much impressed by a chair that stood on the hearthrug near the fire. Now I am not a connoisseur of chairs; I cannot always ascribe dates to them. I can, of course, tell whether they are oak or mahogany, Chippendale or Sheraton, but that is about all. It was not, however, the make or the shape of this chair that attracted me, it was the impression I had that something very uncanny was seated on it. My friend, noticing that I looked at it very intently, said: “I will tell you something very interesting about that chair. It came from a haunted house in Red Lion Square. I bought it at a sale there, and several people who have sat in it since have had very curious experiences. I won’t tell you them till after you’ve tried it. Sit in it.”

“That wouldn’t be any good,” I answered; “you know I can’t psychometrise, especially to order. May I take it home with me for a few nights?”

My friend smilingly assented.

The chair was put in a taxi, and in less than half an hour was safely lodged in my chambers. I was living alone just then, for my wife had been suddenly called away to the country, to the bedside of an aged and ailing relative. I say alone, but I had company—a lady tabby that, apparently abandoned by her lover, persisted in showering her attentions upon me. For hours at a time she would perch on the writing-table in my bedroom, whilst I was at work, and fix me amorously with her big green eyes.

The moment, however, this most eccentric of feline beauties perceived the chair, she sprang off her pedestal and dived under the bed; and from that hour to this I have never seen her. The chair did not frighten me, but it brought a new, and I cannot say altogether pleasant, atmosphere into the place. When I was in bed and the gas was out, I could swear the chair moved, that it shifted nearer and nearer the window—always the window, as if it was most anxious to make its escape and hie back to its old home. And again there were times when, barred from this avenue of escape, it rocked. Yes, I could distinctly hear it rock backwards and forwards on the parquet floor with ever increasing rapidity and violence, as though blind with fury at being balked. And then, again, it groaned, groaned in the deepest and most hopeless misery—misery that the eternally damned alone can know and suffer. Certain now that there was something there that badly needed human consolation, I addressed the chair, and, failing to get any verbal answer from it, I tried a code of raps. That failing, I sat in it for several hours two successive nights, and experimented in automatic writing. The result was nil. Resolving to give it another trial, but this time without a planchette, I chose a Friday night when the moon was in the crescent, and placing the chair on one side the hearth, facing the window, I threw myself back in it and closed my eyes. For some minutes I was still vividly conscious of the old surroundings: the flickering fire flames—seen through my closed lids; the old grandfather clock on the landing outside solemnly ticking; the eternal whistling and hooting of the taxis as they whizzed along in the street beneath.

Then by degrees, quite imperceptibly, I lost cognisance of all these things; and, intuitively, I began to feel the presence of something strange and wholly novel in the room. I felt it steal forth from a piece of dark and ancient tapestry my wife had hung on the wall. It was merely a shadow, an undefined shadow, a shadow such as the moon, when very low in the heavens, might possibly fashion from the figure of a man; but yet it was not a man, nor a woman, nor anything with which I was in any way familiar. For a moment it stood still, watching me from its vague, formless, indefinite eyes. Then it made a forward movement, stood still again, and yet once again advanced.

Coming up behind my chair, it bent low over me, and placing its long, cool spirit hands over my eyelids, imparted to me a steadily increasing sense of numbness. All thought was gradually annihilated; it was succeeded by a blank, just such a blank as suddenly comes to one when in the hands of the anæsthetist. Now, up to this evening, I had presumed, as nearly everybody does presume, that, in the case of mental blanks, every particle of consciousness is lost, totally arrested, and held, for the time being, in complete subjection. But on this occasion—at the very moment memory reasserted itself—I had recollections of some great metempsychosis, some stupendous change in my entire constitution, a change that affected all that we term mind, and spirit, and soul.

I struggled earnestly and desperately to recall the exact nature and process of that change, which I now believe underlies all so-called blanks, and I achieved this much: I recalled travel—a mad, rushing plunge or descent into something—something quite different from anything I had known before—a descent into some plane, or sphere, or condition, wholly and completely apart from the physical, and what is generally understood and classified as the mental plane, sphere, or condition. In my efforts to recollect, I have arrived at that same pitch since; but whenever I have been on the verge of getting beyond it, of forcing back a minute recollection of how that metempsychosis was enacted, of all the stages in it, there has been a lapse—my memory has dimmed. Yet brief and slight as these remembrances have been, they have assured me of one great truth, namely—that the state of blank never actually exists. Some part of us—the part that alone retains consciousness—is extracted and borne far away from the actual material body; but on its return, on its reunion with the physical—with our gross and carnal, earthly self—all memory of this delicate and finely poised consciousness is at once swallowed up and obliterated. If such were not the case, if everything were indeed a blank, and the spiritual as well as the material part of us were suspended during what we term unconsciousness, we should be forced to the conclusion that the soul has no separate existence, that it cannot survive the body, and that the immortality of man, the infinite perpetuation of our identity, in which we have so fondly believed, is but a chimera. I am, however, certain—I could, if need be, swear to it—that even in the deepest slumber, in the wildest delirium, in the most seemingly omnipotent and annihilating blank, all is not lost, something remains, and that something is the psychic and spiritual consciousness, the very thing that constitutes what we term soul. In the first stage, then, of my cognisance of thought, again I struggled with memory, and the struggle overcoming me, I gradually lapsed into the mere consciousness of existence without thought. How long this condition lasted I cannot say, but with startling abruptness thought returned, and I became madly anxious to ascertain my present state—how it differed from my former—and my whereabouts. I was conscious of sound and light and motion, but conscious of them merely from the point of observation, as things quite outside myself—things that in no way sensibly affected me. What particularly impressed me was the silence—the passivity—of what, I believed, constituted my body. I could detect no heart movement, no pulsation whatever. I seemed to be there—to have a very familiar form—but to be nothing more than form—to have no tangibility. So far my eyes had seen; but, purposely, I had not allowed myself to discriminate objects. I was intuitively certain my power of vision had become supernormal; and I dreaded to employ it for fear I should see too much—too acutely. I had a stupendous sense of impending horror. At length, however, I was impelled by an irresistible fascination to look. I did so, and in an instant became the spectator of a drama. Before me, seated at a grimy wooden table, were two men, clad in the fascinating garb of the latter part of the eighteenth century—long coat, befrilled vest, knee breeches, and peruke. Two mugs of ale were placed in front of them, and the one man kept on sipping, while the other, seldom touching the ale, took long and vigorous puffs at a pipe. The room had a very low ceiling, blackened with smoke, and traversed by enormous oaken beams; a chimney corner, in which sat an old man, munching something out of a very dirty-looking bag, and, at the same time, taking occasional pinches of snuff; and a couch, stowed away in one corner, and piled several feet high with a variety of books, papers, cushions, and wearing apparel.

The general atmosphere of the place suggested an inn or tavern. It was with the two men in the foreground, however, that something told me I was most concerned. They appeared to be about the same age and of the same class; but there all similarity ended. The one was tall and thin, with dark, deep-set, and very restless eyes—and oddly noticeable hands. They were large and sinewy, with peculiarly long fingers and protruding knuckles. His companion was small and shrivelled, with watery blue eyes and a particularly weak mouth.

“Strange we should meet like this, John,” the shorter of the two remarked, taking a big gulp of ale. “Ten years since we last saw one another, and that was in Bristol. Do you recollect the occasion?”

“Do I recollect it?” the other responded. “Can I ever forget it? You had just come from her. She had accepted you. Money, of course. I had nothing to offer her but love. Love! What’s the good of love without prospects?”

“It was a fair fight, John.”

“Fair fight, Wilfred!” John replied. “You may call it fair, if you like, but I don’t. What chance had I when you pointed to your bank-book and said, ‘If I die I can settle all that on her’? I could promise nothing. I hadn’t a cent in the world beyond my weekly pay. Thirty shillings. And how pleased you were with yourself when you came to see me that last evening in Bristol. Do you remember what you said? ‘It’s the fortune of war, my boy. You’ll soon get over it. Work.’ As if I didn’t work! But I took your advice, though I hated you for it; and I left Bristol. After what had happened I loathed the place. An uncle of mine offered me a clerkship in his office in Holborn, and I stuck so hard to my job that I eventually became a partner.”

“Then you’re a rich man, John?”

“Comfortable, but not rich, Wilfred.”

“And you’ve forgiven me? Got over that little love affair, eh? Well, well. Matrimony is not all bliss, John. At least that was my experience. Poor Jenny! But of course I have not told you. I’m much to be pitied, John.”

“She’s dead!”

“She is,” Wilfred said, filling his mug with ale and raising it to his lips, “and I’m a lonely widower. But how did you know?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” John replied. “I get my information through channels that are barred to men like you.”

“Witchcraft, I suppose,” Wilfred said, with a sneer. “But why this mystery? Someone in Bristol city wrote to you.”

“No, they didn’t,” John answered. “I know no one in Bristol city now. Your first suggestion was nearer the truth. Your wife, Wilfred, often comes to see me. I know all about the way in which you treated her.”

“The way in which I treated her!” Wilfred cried, starting upright in his chair, his face flushing angrily. “God’s truth, man, what do you mean by such a statement?”

“I mean exactly what I say,” John answered. “For the first two years you treated her tolerably well. Then someone else caught your fancy. Jenny was neglected, despised, and on one occasion actually beaten.”

“It’s a lie!” Wilfred gasped, springing to his feet, as if to leave the table.

“No, it’s not,” John retorted, “and you know it. Come, sit down, man, and go on drinking. Love never was in your line, drink is. Besides, as you say, she’s dead, and what’s the use of quarrelling over a corpse, even though she were beautiful as—as——” He didn’t finish his sentence, but leaning forward thrust Wilfred back into his chair.

For some seconds the two men sat and looked at one another—Wilfred sullen, frightened, and resentful; John imperturbable save for the perpetual restless movement of his eyes, and an occasional peculiar twitching of his upper lip and hands.

“A rum,” John said at length, “or a gin? Or both?”

“Rum.”

“Very good, let it be rum.” He called the waiter, and a rum was served.

“You’re not drinking to-day, John,” Wilfred remarked, taking a long pull at the rum and looking more amiable.

“No, I’m quite off spirits,” John replied—“at least, spirits of that kind.”

“Spirits of that kind!” Wilfred sniggered. “Why, whatever other kind of spirits are there? What a mysterious fellow you are, John.”

“Am I?” John laughed. “Perhaps I’ve reason to be. I live in a big house, all alone, in Red Lion Square.”

“New houses, aren’t they?” Wilfred commented. “And big rents?”

John nodded, the same nod answering apparently both questions.

“But you haven’t told me yet,” Wilfred went on, “how you knew Jenny was dead.”

“I’ve seen her,” John said very quietly. “She comes to me regularly.”

“Seen her? Comes to you regularly? You must be mad, John—mad or hoaxing. How can you see her, and why should she come to you?”

John shrugged his shoulders.

“I told you you wouldn’t believe me,” he replied. “No one does. Yet I can swear to you it’s true. She appeared to me last night and told me you would be here this afternoon. That is how I happened to meet you.”

“You overwork yourself, John,” Wilfred said, taking another long pull at the rum. “Too much work is just as harmful to one’s temperament and chances in life as too little. Moderation, my boy, moderation, I say. That’s always been my keynote. I should like to see this house of yours.”

“You shall,” John said, “and the spirits. Not hers—I don’t think you will see hers—but the rum and brandy. I’ve excellent brands of both—smuggled over from abroad last week.”

“And yet you don’t drink!”

“No, I got them in entirely for your benefit. Come. We will go to my house. It’s more comfortable than here. A big fire, nice easy chairs, tobacco, and bottles—bottles with plenty in them.”

“And you’ve forgiven me, John?”

“Forgiven you!” John replied, rising from the table and putting on his hat. “Forgiven you! Do you think I should ask you round to my house, to drink the best vintage London can offer you, if I hadn’t? Come. Come along at once.”

Wilfred rose with some difficulty from his seat, and the two men went out into the street. The scene then changed, and I found myself in a big, gloomy house, following them up a long flight of wooden stairs.

The moment I entered the house I became the victim of an anomalous species of fear. I saw nothing, but I instinctively knew that strange, indefinable presences were there, watching us with sphinx-like faces. I felt them, standing in the doorways, lurking in the angles of the hall and landings, and peering down at us from over the balustrades. I felt that they were merely critical at present, merely deliberating what attitude they should adopt towards us; and I felt that the whole atmosphere of the house was impregnated with a sense of the utmost mystery—a mystery soluble only to those belonging, in the truest sense, to the spirit world—Neutrarians—spirit entities generated solely from spirit essence and never incarcerated in any material body—spirits initiated into one and all of the idiosyncrasies of spirit land. The man John gave no outward signs of being in any way affected by these presences; but it was otherwise with Wilfred. The silence and darkness of the house unmistakably disturbed him, and as he panted up the staircase, following his long and lean host with none too steady a step, he cast continual looks of apprehension about him. First, I saw him peer over his shoulders, down the stairs behind him, as if he fancied something, to which he could apply no name, might be treading softly at his heels; then I watched his eyes wander nervously to the gloomy space overhead; and then, as if drawn by some extremely unwelcome magnet, to the great, white, sinewy hands of John. Arriving on the second floor, they crossed a broad landing and entered a spacious room, which was fitfully illuminated by a few dying embers in a large open grate. John produced a tinder box, lighted a trio of tall wax candles, and resuscitated the fire. He then left the room, reappearing in a few minutes with an armload of bottles.

“Make yourself comfortable, Wilfred,” he said. “Take that easy chair and pull it up in front of the fire. Rum or brandy?”

Wilfred, whose eyes glittered at the sight of the spirits, chose rum. “I’ll have a little brandy afterwards,” he said, “just to wash down the rum. Moderation is my password, John, everything in moderation,” and, helping himself to the rum, he laughed. John sat opposite him, and I noticed, not without some emotion, that the chair he took was the exact counterpart of the one in which I had left my material ego.

“John,” Wilfred exclaimed after a while, “this house is most extraordinarily still. I—I don’t like such stillness——” He was more than half drunk. “Why do you live alone? Damned silly habit to live alone in a house like this.” Then he swallowed a big gulp of rum and leered.

“All habits are silly,” John replied. “All life is silly. Death alone is sensible. Death’s a fine thing.”

Then there was a pause; and a gust of wind, blowing up the staircase, set the door jarring and made the windows rattle.

“I don’t like that remark of yours, John,” Wilfred suddenly stuttered. “Death’s a fine thing?—Death’s the work of the devil. It’s the only thing I fear. And the—the wind. What’s that?”

From the hall below there came a gentle slam, the soft closing of a door.

John shrugged his shoulders and stirred the logs until they gave out a big blaze.

“It’s a noise,” he said. “This house is full of noises. Every house is full of noises, if only you take the trouble to listen for them.”

Another pause, and Wilfred helped himself to some brandy.

“Noises, like women,” he said, “want keeping in their places. They’ve no business wandering about on nights like this. Hark!”

The faintest sound possible broke the stillness of the house; but it suggested much. To me it was like a light, bounding footfall on the first flight of stairs, those nearest the hall.

After listening a moment John spoke. “It’s only Jenny,” he said; “at least, I fancy it’s only Jenny. But there are others. God alone knows whence they come or why. The house at times is full of them. So far I have only felt their presence—and heard. Pray to Heaven I may never see them—at least, not some. Do you hear that?”

There was a gentle rustling on the landing, a swishing, such as might have been caused by someone in a silk dress with a long train.

“It is—it’s Jenny!” John went on. “I told you—she comes every night.”

Wilfred made no reply, but the hand that held the glass shook so much that the brandy ran over and splashed on the floor.

There was again silence, then a creak, the faint but very unmistakable turning of a door handle.

Wilfred’s face blanched. He tried to look round, but dared not.

“I’m afraid too,” John murmured, his teeth slightly chattering. “I never can get over my initial terror when she first arrives. God! What horror I have known since I lived here.”

The latch of the door gave a click, the sort of click it always gives when the door springs open, and a current of icy air blew across the room and fanned the cheeks of both men. Wilfred attempted to speak, but his voice died away in his throat. He glanced at the window. It was closed with heavy wooden shutters.

“It’s no use,” John sighed, “there’s no escape that way. Make up your mind to face it—face HER. Ah!” He sank back as he spoke and closed his eyes.

I looked at Wilfred. His vertebrae had totally collapsed; he sat all huddled up in his chair, his weak, watery eyes bulging with terror, and the brandy trickling down his chin on to his cravat. All this scene, I must tell you, was to me most vivid, most acutely vivid, although I was but a passive participator in it. The same feeling that had possessed me on my entrance into the house was with me even in a greater measure now. I felt that pressing on the heels of this wind, this icy blast of air, were the things from the halls and landings, the distractingly enigmatical and ever-deliberating things. I felt them come crowding into the room; felt them once again watching. Something now seemed to go wrong with the wicks of all three candles; they burned very low, and the feeble, flickering light they emitted was of a peculiar bluish white. While I was engaged in pondering over this phenomenon my eye caught a sudden movement in the room, and I saw what looked like a cylindrical pillar of mist sweep across the floor and halt behind John. It remained standing at the back of his chair for a second or so, and then, retracing its way across the floor, disappeared through the door, which, opening wide to meet it, closed again with a loud bang. John opened his eyes and reaching forward poured himself out some brandy.

“I told you I didn’t drink spirits,” he said, “but her visit to-night has made a difference. Come, Wilfred, pull yourself together. The ghosts—at least her ghost has gone; and as for the others, well, they don’t count. Even you may get used to them in time. Come, come, be a man. For a sceptic, a confirmed sceptic, I never saw anyone so frightened.”

Appealed to thus, Wilfred slowly straightened himself out, and peeping round furtively at the door, as if to make sure it really was shut, he helped himself to some more brandy. John leaned forward and regarded him earnestly. After some minutes Wilfred spoke.

“Those candles,” he said, “why don’t they burn properly? I have never seen candles behave in that fashion before. John, I don’t like this house.”

John laughed. “Matter of taste and habit,” he said. “I didn’t like it at first, but I like it now.”

Another pause, and then John said suddenly, “More brandy, Wilfred?”

“No, I’ve had enough,” Wilfred replied, “enough. John, I must be going home. See me to the door, John; the front door, I mean, John. See me to the door, there’s a good fellow.” He tried to rise, but John put out one hand and pushed him gently back into his seat.

“It’s early yet,” John said, “far too early to go home. Think what a long time it is since we last met. Ten whole years. To some people almost a lifetime. Are you tired of life, Wilfred?”

“Tired of life?” Wilfred echoed. “Tired of brandy, perhaps, but not of life. What a question to ask! Why?” And again glancing furtively at the door he tried to rise.

Once more John put out his hand and thrust him back. “Not yet,” he said; “the hour is far too early. What were we talking about? Being tired of life. Of course you are not. How foolish of me to ask you such a thing! You who are so rich, respected, admired, beloved. You are happy in spite of your sad bereavement. You are a man to be missed. With me it is otherwise. I long to go to the spirit land, for it is there only I have friends, really genuine, loving friends. I am not afraid to die. I want death. I yearn for it. Yearn for it, Wilfred.”

“Spirits! Death! Always spirits and death in your company,” Wilfred responded. “Let’s talk of something else—something more cheerful. I want cheering, John. This house of yours is depressing—most horribly depressing. You say it is new?”

“Comparatively new,” John replied, and he started fumbling in his vest pocket.

“Comparatively new,” Wilfred repeated, his eyes watching John’s fingers attentively,—“and it has ghosts. Why, I thought it was only old houses that were haunted.”

John chuckled. “So people say,” he replied, “and they tell me I am mad to think there are ghosts here. They say it is impossible. What is your opinion, Wilfred?”

“Why,” Wilfred said, watching John’s movements with increasing interest, “that’s my opinion too. A house to be haunted must have a history. And this house has none, has it? John!” The last syllable was uttered in an altogether different tone. It was not the voice of a drunken man.

For a brief moment John hesitated, trembled. He seemed to be in the throes of some great mental strain, some acute psychological crisis. But he speedily overcame it, and drawing his hand out suddenly from his vest, he produced a huge, murderous-looking clasp knife.

“True!” he said, “true. So far this house has no history. No history whatever. But it will have one, Wilfred. It will.” And baring the blade of his formidable weapon, he crouched low and crept forward.

.......

The next day I took the chair back to its owner. I had had enough of it—quite enough; and I told him my experiences.

“Odd!” he said, “very odd. The impressions you received when sitting in the chair are almost identical with those of the other people who have sat in it. I wonder if a murder did actually take place in that house? I shouldn’t be at all surprised. There is an old stain on the floor of one of the rooms on the second landing, and they say that, despite the most vigorous washing, it still retains its colour—red, blood-red.”

CHAPTER II
THE HEAD
A DERBYSHIRE HAUNTING

Some few years ago, two men were trudging along a road, not twenty miles from Sudbury, swearing heartily. It was not the first time they had sworn, not by any means, but it is extremely doubtful if either of them had ever sworn before quite so vehemently. There were, one must admit, extenuating circumstances. Having missed the last train, they were obliged to walk home, a distance of twelve or more miles, and having been overtaken by a rainstorm, they were soaked to the skin. True, the rain had now ceased, but as they had covered only six miles, they still had six more to go, and at every step they took, the water in their boots soaked through their socks and squished between their toes. Just as they arrived at a spot where the road swerved a little to their left and took a sudden dip, a clock from a distance solemnly chimed twelve.

The younger of the two men came to a halt and lighted his pipe. “Hold on a minute, Brown,” he shouted; “I can’t keep up this infernal pace any longer. Let’s take an easy.”

Brown turned and joined his companion, who had seated himself on a wooden gate. Below them, in the dip, the darkness was sepulchral. The hedges on either side the road were of immense height; and high above them rose the trunks of giant pines and larches, the intertwining branches of which formed an archway that completely obliterated the sky. A faint speck of light from afar flickered occasionally, as if through a gap in the foliage; but, apart from this, the men could see nothing—nothing but blackness.

“A cheerful spot!” Brown remarked, “as gloomy a bit of road as I’ve ever seen. And how quiet!”

The other man blew his nose. “Not so quiet now,” he laughed, “but how everything echoes! What’s that? Water?”

Both men looked, and, apparently, from the other side of the hedge, came the gentle gurgle of quick flowing water.

“Must be a spring,” Brown observed, “flowing into some stream in the hollow. The darkness suggests the Styx. A match, if you please, Reynolds.”

Reynolds gave him one, and for awhile the two men puffed away in silence.

Suddenly something whizzed overhead; and they heard the prolonged, dismal hooting of an owl.

“This is getting a bit too eerie, even for my liking, Brown,” Reynolds remarked; “supposing we move on. I always associate noises like that with a death.”

“I wish it were my mother-in-law’s,” Brown laughed, “or my own. But there’s no such luck. I’m cold.”

“So am I,” Reynolds replied. “Deuced cold! Come on, do!”

He slid off the gate as he spoke and strode into the centre of the road.

The moon, temporarily unveiled, revealed as wet a landscape as one could possibly imagine. Everything dripped water—bushes, trees, ferns, grass, hats, clothes—whilst every rut of the road, every particle of soil, shone wet in the moon’s rays. A deep, settled calm permeated the atmosphere. It was the stillness of night and moisture combined.

“What’s the matter? Aren’t you coming?” Brown asked impatiently.

“One moment,” Reynolds replied. “I believe I heard footsteps. Hark! I thought so, they’re coming this way! Someone else lost their train, perhaps.”

Brown listened, and he, too, distinctly heard the sound of footsteps—high-heeled shoes walking along with a sharp, springy action, as if the road were absolutely hard and dry.

“A woman!” he ejaculated. “Odd hour for a woman to be out here.”

Brown laughed. “Pooh!” he said. “Women are afraid of nothing nowadays except old age. Hullo! Here she comes!”

As he spoke the figure of a woman—slight and supple, and apparently young—shot into view, and came rapidly towards them.

Her dress, though quaint and pretty, was not particularly striking; but her feet, clad in patent leather shoes, with buckles that shone brightly in the moonlight, were oddly conspicuous, in spite of the fact that they were small and partially hidden ’neath a skirt which was long and frilled, and not at all in accordance with the present fashion. Something about her prevented both men from speaking, and they involuntarily moved nearer to one another as she approached. On and on she came, tripping along, and never varying her pace. Now in a zone of moonlight, now in the dark belt of shadows from the firs and larches, she drew nearer and nearer. Through the hedge, Brown could dimly perceive the figure of a cow, immensely magnified, standing dumb and motionless, apparently lost, like he was, in spellbound observation. The silence kept on intensifying. Not a breath of air, not a leaf stirring, not a sound from Reynolds, who stood with arms folded like a statue; only the subdued trickle, trickle of the spring, and the hard tap, tap, tap of the flashing, sparkling shoes.

At last the woman was abreast of them. They shrank back and back, pressing farther and farther into the hedge, so close that the sharp twigs and brambles scratched their faces and tore their clothes. She passed. Down, down, down, still tripping daintily, until the sepulchral blackness of the dip swallowed her up. They could still hear her tap, tap, tap; and for some seconds neither spoke. Then Reynolds, releasing his clothes from the thorns, muttered huskily: “At last I’ve seen a ghost, and I always scoffed at them.”

“But her head!” Brown ejaculated, “where was it?”

“Don’t ask me,” Reynolds replied, his teeth chattering. “She had no head. At least I didn’t see any. Dare you go on?”

“What, down there?” Brown said, nodding in the direction of the dip.

“Well, we must, if we are to get home to-night,” Reynolds retorted, “and I’m frozen.”

“Wait till that noise ceases, then,” Brown answered. “I can’t stand seeing a thing like that twice in one night.”

They stood still and listened, until the tapping gradually died away in the far distance, and the only sound to be heard was that of the water, the eternal, never ceasing, never varying sound of the water. Then they ran—ran as they had never run since long ago Rugby days—down through the inky darkness of the hollow and out—far out into the brightness of the great stretch of flat country beyond; and, all the time they ran, they neither looked to the right nor to the left, but always on the ground just ahead of them.

.......

For a week the horror of what they had seen was so great that neither of the two men could bear to be alone in the dark; and they kept a light in their respective rooms all night. Then a strange thing happened. Brown became infatuated, he did nothing but rave, all day, about the ghost. She had the prettiest figure, the whitest hands, the daintiest feet he had ever seen, and he was sure her face must be equally lovely. Why couldn’t he see it? There was nothing about the neck to show she had been decapitated, and yet the head was missing. Why?

He worried Reynolds to death about it, and he gave no one else any peace. That waist, those delicate white fingers, those rosy, almond-shaped nails, those scintillating shoe buckles! They got on his brain. They obsessed him. He was like a maniac.

At last, at the suggestion of Reynolds, who wanted to get rid of him for awhile, he came up to London and paid visits to most of the professional mediums and occultists in the West End.

Some advised him one thing, and some another. Some immediately went into trances and learned from their controlling spirits all about the headless phantom, who she was, why she paraded the high road, and what had become of her head. But it was significant that no two told him alike, and that the head he so longed to see had at least a dozen different hiding-places. At last, when he had expended quite a small fortune, and his brain was much addled with psychic nomenclature, with detailed accounts of the Astral Plane, Karmas, Elementals, Elementaries, White Lodges, and What not, he interviewed a woman, living somewhere in the Bayswater direction, who suggested that he should hold a séance in the haunted hollow, and who promised, with a great show of condescension, to act as his medium if he would pay her the trifling sum of twenty pounds.

At first Brown declared the thing impossible, since he did not, at that moment, possess twenty pounds, which was literally true; but the prospect of seeing the ghost’s face at length proved too much for him, and he decided to pawn all he had, in order to gratify his longing.

He closed with the offer. When the night fixed for the séance arrived, the weather conditions were all that could be desired; the air was soft and calm, the moon brilliant, the sky almost cloudless, and promising only the finest weather for days to come. As the medium insisted upon a party of at least four, Brown persuaded a Mr. and Mrs. de Roscovi, Russians, to come, and they all set out together from Sudbury shortly after ten o’clock. Brown had made many inquiries in the neighbourhood as to the phantom figure, but he had only come across two people who would tell him anything about it. One, a farmer, assured him that he had on several occasions seen the ghost when driving, and that, on each occasion, it had kept abreast of his horse, even though the latter was careering along the road half mad with fright. But what terrified him most, he said, was that the apparition had no head.

The other, a blacksmith, said he had seen the woman twice, and that each time he had seen her she had been carrying something tucked under her arm, which he had fancied was a head. But he had been too scared to look at it very closely, and he only knew for certain that where her head should have been there was nothing. Both he and the farmer said they had heard all their lives that the road was haunted, but for what reason they had never been able to discover, as within the past sixty years, at any rate, neither murder nor suicide was known to have taken place near the hollow. This is as far as Brown had got with his investigations when he set out from Sudbury on the night in question. The de Roscovis did not think, for one moment, that the ghost would appear. They said, few people apparently had seen it; its visits in all probability were only periodical; and weeks, months, or even years might elapse before it put in an appearance there again.

“That may be, but then we have a medium,” Brown argued. “I engaged her to invoke the ghost, provided it would not come of its own accord. You can invoke it, can’t you, Madame Valenspin?”

Madame Valenspin now seemed rather dubious. “I have never tried in the open before,” she said, with a slight shiver, “but I will do my best. The conditions seem favourable; but I can’t say definitely till we arrive at the exact spot.”

Brown, however, could not help observing that the farther they advanced into the country, which became more and more lonely, the more restless and uneasy Madame Valenspin grew.

Once or twice she halted, as if irresolute whether to go on or not, and the moment she caught sight of the hollow she came to a dead stop.

“Not down there,” she said. “It’s too dark. We’d better stay here.”

It was frightfully still. Brown listened for the murmuring of water. There was none. The recent hot sun had probably dried up the spring. Through the same gap in the hedge he saw a big cow—possibly, so he thought, the same cow—and he took it as a favourable augury for the appearance of the ghost that the animal, as before, was gazing fixedly into the open space, as if momentarily expecting to see something.

Behind it, away back in the broad expanse of field, were other cattle, their skins startlingly white; all motionless, and all in attitudes suggestive of a sense of anticipation, of a conscious waiting for something. The sepulchral hush was uninterrupted saving by bats, assuredly the biggest and blackest Brown had ever seen, wheeling and skimming, with the faintest perceptible whiz, whiz, whiz, in and out the larches; and the soft intermittent fanning of the leaves as the night breeze came rustling over the flat country and continued its career down into the hollow. A rabbit scurried across the road from one gate to another, its white breast shining silver, and some other small furry creature, of a species undetected, created a brief pandemonium in a neighbouring ditch. Otherwise all nature was extraordinarily passive.

“The figure went right down into the hollow,” Brown said. “I think we ought to try there. What do you think, Mrs. de Roscovi?”

“I am of the same opinion as Madame Valenspin,” Mrs. de Roscovi replied, glancing apprehensively at the dip. “I think we had far better stay where we are.”

“Very well, then,” Brown said, “let’s begin. You are mistress of the ceremonies, Madame Valenspin. Will you tell us what to do?”

Madame Valenspin moved to one side of the road, and stood with her back resting against a gate. “Keep quite close to me,” she said, “and I will try and go under control. Ah!” She ejaculated the last syllable so sharply that Brown and Mrs. de Roscovi both started. She then began to mumble something, and then, breaking into a shrill, high-pitched key, stated that she was no longer Madame Valenspin but a spirit called Anne Heathcote, who was her temporary control. Anne Heathcote, so the audience were informed, was the ghost of a girl of very great beauty, who had been murdered in an adjoining field, close on a hundred years ago. There was no apparent motive for the deed, which was accomplished in a peculiarly barbarous fashion, the head being cut right off and thrown in a pit that had long since been filled in. The criminal was never caught.

“Can’t you appear to us with your head on,” Brown asked, “just as you were in your lifetime?”

“No,” the alleged spirit replied. “I am forbidden to do so. My visits are only periodical, and I shan’t be able to materialise again here for at least ten years.”

“Then there is little hope of my ever seeing you,” Brown said, bitterly disappointed.

“None,” was the somewhat abrupt answer.

“But why should you haunt this place at all?” Mr. de Roscovi asked. “What reason is there for your being earth-bound?”

“My sins,” the control replied. “I was a very wicked girl.”

“I don’t care whether you were wicked or not,” Brown put in mournfully. “I want to see you. If your face is in keeping with your limbs and figure, it must indeed be lovely. Is there no way of seeing you—just for a second?”

“None,” the control answered. Then, with much more emphasis, “None.”

But hardly had the alleged Anne Heathcote spoken, when far away in the distance came the sound of footsteps. Tap, tap, tap!

“Why! By Jove!” Brown shouted, “there she is! I recognise her step. I should know it in a million.”

For a minute everyone was silent, the tapping growing more and more audible. Then Madame Valenspin, in quite her own voice, exclaimed excitedly: “Let us be going. The spirits tell me we mustn’t remain here any longer. Let’s go back by the fields.”

She fumbled with the latchet of the gate, against which she had been leaning, and hurriedly tried to raise it.

Mrs. de Roscovi said nothing, but gripped her husband by the arm. The steps approached rapidly, and presently the same dainty form, Brown had previously seen when with Reynolds, once more figured on the horizon.

“It is—it is she!” Brown whispered. “Look—the waist, the arms, the hands, the shoes. Silver buckles! How they flash!”

An exclamation of horror interrupted him. It was from Mr. de Roscovi. He had moved to one side of the road, dragging his wife with him, and the two were standing huddled together, their eyes fixed in a frenzied stare at the phantom’s neck. Brown, forcing his attention away from the long slim hands which so fascinated him, followed their glances. The neck was not as he remembered it, white and slender as far as it went, but it ended abruptly in a grey nothingness, and beyond this nothingness Brown fancied he discerned the dimmest of shadows. He was appalled but fascinated, and intense curiosity far outweighed his fear. He was certain she was beautiful—beautiful to a degree that immeasurably excelled any feminine loveliness he had hitherto encountered. He must see her face. He did not believe her head was missing; he believed it was there on her body right enough, but that for some specific reason it had not materialised. He turned to Madame Valenspin to inquire the cause, and was greatly astonished to see her beating a hasty retreat across the fields. The figure had now come up to where he was standing, and tripping past him, it sped swiftly down the dip. Brown at once gave chase. He had not gone many yards before the darkness of the dip was on him; and the only clue he had to his quarry’s whereabouts was the sound of the shoes—the constant tap, tap, tapping. On and on he went, however, and at length, emerging from the darkness, he perceived a wooden stile and beyond it a tiny path, threading its way through a clump of firs that gradually grew thinner and thinner till they finally terminated in what appeared to be a broad clearing. Mounting the stile and springing off on the other side, the woman tripped along the path, and, turning for a moment to beckon Brown, disappeared from view.

The intense loneliness of the spot, emphasised a thousandfold by the eerie effect of the few straggling moonbeams that fell aslant the stile and pathway, and the knowledge that he had left his companions far behind made Brown falter, and it was some seconds before he could gather up the courage to continue his pursuit. A light girlish laugh, however, proceeding apparently from the spot where the figure had vanished, determined him. He saw once again vividly before him that willowy waist, those slim, delicate fingers, and those coquettish little feet. Were the devil itself to bar his way he must see her face. Sweating with terror, and yet withal obsessed with a passion that defies description, Brown mounted the stile and hastened in the direction of the laugh. Again it rang out, charged to overflowing with innocent fun and frolic, irresistibly girlish, irresistibly coy. This time there was no mistaking its locality. It came from behind a small clump of trees that bordered on the clearing. Wild with excitement and full of love madness, Brown dashed round the clump, and then halted. Floating in mid-air was a head, a head that looked as if it had long since been buried and just disinterred. The eyes alone lived, and they were fixed on Brown’s with a mocking, baneful glitter. Hanging on either side of it was a mass of long fair hair, suggestive of a woman.

Every detail in the face stood out with hideous clearness in the brilliancy of the moonlight, and as Brown stared at it, petrified with horror, the thing laughed.

CHAPTER III
THE CUPBOARD
A CASE OF HAUNTINGS NEAR BIRMINGHAM

People often wonder why new houses—houses without any apparent history—should suddenly begin to be haunted, often by a variety of very alarming phenomena, and then, just as suddenly, perhaps, cease to be haunted.

Of course one can only theorise, but I think a very possible and feasible reason is suggested, in the case I am about to relate.

Five years ago Sir George Cookham was living at “The Mayfields,” a large country house some ten or twelve miles south-east of Birmingham. He was greatly interested in criminology, inclining to the belief that crime is almost entirely due to physical malformation; and used to invite all the great experts on the subject to stay with him. It was one week-end, towards the middle of September, that Dr. Sickertorft came; and he and Sir George had some very heated arguments. Sir George was one of the most eccentric men I have ever met, and one of his many idiosyncrasies was to carry on his discussions walking.

On the morning of Sickertorft’s departure he and Sir George were arguing—Sir George, at the same time, perambulating the corridor of the ground floor of the house, for about the hundredth time—when Dr. Sickertorft suddenly remarked: “I wonder if this house is haunted?”

“Haunted!” Sir George laughed. “Why, of course not. It’s new. My father built it only sixty years ago. A house to be haunted must be old, must have some history. And the only tragedy that has occurred here was when a servant I once had, losing control of his temper, killed one of my most valuable dogs. That was a tragedy, both for the servant and the dog. There has been nothing else to my knowledge—nothing beyond one or two quite peaceful deaths from natural causes. But why do you ask?”

“Because,” Sickertorft replied, “that cupboard over there, opposite the foot of the stairs, to me, strongly suggests a ghost. Something peculiarly diabolical. Something that springs out on one and imparts the sensation of being strangled.”

“The only ghosts that haunt that cupboard,” Sir George chuckled, “are boots and shoes, and, I believe, my fishing rods. Ghosts are all a delusion—a peculiar state of the brain due to some minute osseous depression or cerebral inflammation.”

“I don’t agree with you,” Sickertorft said quietly. “I am positively certain that there are such things as ghosts, that they are objective and of many kinds. Some, in all probability, have always existed, and have never inhabited any human body; some are the earth-bound spiritual egos of man and beast; and some we can create ourselves.”

“Create ghosts!” Sir George cried. “Come, now, we are talking sense. Of course we can create ghosts. Pepper did, Maskelyne and Devant still do, and so do all the so-called materialising mediums.”

“I don’t mean spoof ghosts,” Sickertorft responded. “I mean real ones. Real superphysical, objective phenomena. Man can at times create them, but only by intense concentration.”

“You mean materialised thought forms?”

“If you like to term them such,” Sickertorft replied. “I believe they are responsible for a certain percentage of hauntings, but not all.”

“Well, I’ve never seen any of your ghostly thought forms nor, in my opinion, am I ever likely to,” Sir George growled. “Show me one and I’ll believe. But you can’t.”

“I don’t know so much,” Sickertorft muttered, and, with his eyes still on the cupboard, he followed Sir George into his study.

.......

A week later Lucy, a maid at “The Mayfields,” was walking past the cupboard on her way to the dining-room, when something, as she subsequently described it to the cook, came over her, and she ran for her life.

“I didn’t hear anything nor see anything,” she explained. “I only felt there was something nasty hiding there, ready to spring out.”

The following night she had the same experience, and her terror was so great that she ran shrieking into the dining-room, and it was some moments before she could make any coherent statement. Lady Cookham was very angry with her, and said it was all nonsense. There was nothing whatever wrong with the cupboard, and, if it occurred again, she must go. It did occur again, the very next night, and Lucy, without waiting for her dismissal, gave notice. She said this time she heard a laugh, a low chuckle, very sinister, and suggestive also of the utmost glee. The door of the cupboard creaked and, she believed, opened a little; but on this point she could not be absolutely certain. She only knew her horror was infinitely greater than it had been on former occasions, and that when she ran, she was convinced something very dreadful ran after her.

The following evening, just about the same time, the butler went to the cupboard for a pair of shoes. He had just picked them up, and was about to go off with them, when someone breathed in his face. He sprang back in astonishment, striking his head somewhat badly against the edge of a shelf, whereupon there was a laugh—a short, sharp laugh, expressive of the keenest satisfaction. This was too much for the butler. Dropping the shoes, he dashed out of the cupboard and never ceased running till he was in the servants’ quarters.

He told the housekeeper, and the housekeeper mentioned the matter to the head parlourmaid; so that in a very short time the whole household got to know of it, and the cupboard was given as wide a berth as possible.

The next victim was the governess. Sir George had two children, both girls, and at present they were too young to go to school. The governess was a Cambridge graduate, who boasted of being utterly materialistic and of having a supreme contempt for weak nerves, and, to quote her own words, “poor simpletons who believe in ghosts.”

She was passing the cupboard one evening, three nights after the butler’s experience, when an irresistible impulse came over her to explore it. She opened the door and stepped inside, then someone closed the door with a bang and laughed.

“Who are you?” the governess demanded. “Let me out at once. How dare you!”

There was no reply, but when she stretched out her hand to feel for the door, she encountered something very cold and spongy, and the horror of it was so unexpected that she fainted.

In falling she struck the door violently. It flew open, and she was found some seconds later in a state of semi-insensibility, lying half in the cupboard and half across the corridor.

When Lady Cookham heard of what had happened, she was furious. “The cupboard can’t be haunted,” she declared, “it’s ridiculous. Someone is playing us a trick. I’ll call in the police.”

The local inspector being summoned, examined the cupboard and cross-questioned the servants. But he discovered nothing. Lady Cookham now determined to unravel the mystery—if mystery there were—herself. She gave all the servants save one—the new maid Hemmings, whom she had engaged in the place of Lucy—a fortnight’s holiday, and got in a supply cook from Coventry. The governess was allowed to remain, but she was strictly forbidden to go anywhere near the cupboard after midday.

When evening arrived, Lady Cookham, arming herself with a revolver and horsewhip, commenced to watch. Her first vigil passed uneventfully; but the next night, just as she had arrived at the cupboard and was taking up her stand facing it, the door slowly began to open. Lady Cookham is about as good a specimen of the thoroughly practical, strong-minded English sportswoman as one could meet anywhere. Up to the commencement of the present war she rode regularly with the Pytchley hounds, had a cold douche bath every morning, and spent a month at least every summer yachting in the English Channel.

She had never known fear—never, at least, until now. “Who’s there?” she demanded. “You had better speak sharp, or I’ll fire!”

There was no reply, however, and the door continued opening.

Had she seen anything, she doesn’t think she would have been so frightened, but there was nothing—absolutely nothing visible. Her impressions were, however, that something was coming out, and that that something was nothing human.

It moved stealthily towards her—and she could define a soft clinging tread, just as if it had tentacles that kept adhering to the boards. She tried to press the trigger of the revolver, but her muscles refused to act, and when she opened her mouth to shout she could not articulate a sound. It was now close to her. One of its large, clammy feet touched her, and she could feel its clammy, pungent breath fanning the top of her head.

Then something icy cold and indescribably repulsive sought her throat and slowly began to throttle her. She tried to beat it off and to make some kind of noise to attract help, but it was all to no purpose. She was powerless. The grip tightened. All the blood in her veins congealed—her lungs expanded to the verge of bursting; and then, when the pain and horror reached its climax, and the identity of the hellish creature seemed about to reveal itself, there was a loud crack, and with it the acme of her sufferings, the final conscious stage of excruciating asphyxiation passed, and she relapsed into apparent death. She supposes that, for the first time in her life, she must have fainted. The crack was the report of her revolver. In her acute agony, her fingers had closed convulsively over the trigger, and the weapon had exploded.

The noise proved her salvation. No psychic phenomena can stand violent vibration, and Sir George Cookham, arriving on the scene at the sound of the report, found his wife lying on the ground unconscious, but alone. He heard her story, and refused to be convinced.

“It’s a case of suggestion,” he argued. “Lucy was a highly strung, imaginative girl. She had, in all probability, been reading spook tales, and hearing a noise in the cupboard had at once attributed the sound to ghosts. That was quite enough for Wilkins. Servants are ready to believe anything—especially if it is propagated by one of their own class. Miss Dennis is a hypochondriac. All governesses must be. The nature of their work necessitates it. She heard a well-garnished account of what was supposed to have happened from Wilkins, probably from Lucy too, and the neurotic state of her nerves did the rest. Of course when it comes to you, my dear,” he said, “it is more difficult to understand. But as there are no such things as ghosts—as they are a scientific impossibility—it must have been suggestion.”

“I’m certain it was not,” Lady Cookham retorted, “and I’m going to leave the house and take the children with me. It’s not right for them to stay.”

Sir George protested, but Lady Cookham had her own way, and in less than a fortnight there were notices in the Field, and other papers, to say that “The Mayfields” was to be let furnished.

“We’ll give it a year’s trial,” Lady Cookham said, “and, if the people who take it are not disturbed by anything unusual happening, we will conclude the hauntings are at an end and return.”

A few days after this conversation Sir George met Dr. Sickertorft on the platform of Coventry Station. Though the day was almost sultry, the doctor was muffled up in an overcoat, and appeared very pale and thin.

“So you are leaving ‘The Mayfields,’” Sickertorft remarked. “Has the ghost been too much for you?”

“Ghost!” Sir George cried angrily, “what the deuce do you mean? We have let the house for awhile, but not on account of any ghost. My wife wants to be nearer London.”

“Then the stories that have got afloat are all moonshine,” Sickertorft replied, with a smile, “and you are still just as sceptical as ever.”

“I am,” Sir George responded; “and if you hear any more reports about ‘The Mayfields’ being haunted, kindly contradict them.”

Sickertorft smiled. “I will make a bet, Sir George,” he said, “that you will be converted one day.”

“You may bet as much as you like, but you’ll lose,” Sir George answered furiously. And turning his back on Sickertorft, he walked away from him without another word.

The following day Lady Cookham and the children left, and Sir George finding himself the sole occupant of the house, the servants having left at midday, telephoned to Sydney N. Morgan, a well-known private detective who specialised in cases of theft and blackmail, asking him to come. On his arrival at “The Mayfields” that same evening, Morgan listened to all Sir George had to say, and then made an exhaustive examination of the premises, paying particular attention to the cupboard in the hall.

“Well?” Sir George asked. “What is your opinion? Rats?”

“Not human ones, at any rate,” Morgan replied. “Anyhow, I can find no traces of them. I incline to your theory of nerves.”

“Imagination first and then suggestion.” Sir George grunted. Now that he was alone there with the detective, he began to have misgivings. The house seemed strangely large and silent. But ghosts! Bah! There were no such things. He said as much to Morgan, and they both laughed.

Then they stared at one another in amazement, for, from afar off, there came an answering echo, a faint yet distinctly audible—chuckle.

They were standing at one end of the corridor on the ground floor when this happened, and to both of them the sound seemed to emanate from the cupboard. “What was that?” Sir George asked. “The wind?”

“It may have been,” Morgan said dubiously, “but there’s no getting away from the fact that it was a queer noise for the wind to make. I made sure I looked everywhere.”

“I’ll go upstairs and get my revolver,” Sir George observed. “It may come in handy. Will you remain here?”

They looked at one another furtively, and each thought they saw fear in the other’s eyes.

Both, however, had reputations to sustain.

“I’ll wait down here, Sir George,” Morgan said, “and keep an eye on the cupboard. You’ll call if you want me.”

“I will,” Sir George replied. “I shan’t be gone more than a minute. Be on your guard. It’s just about this time the alleged disturbances begin.”

He hurried off, and Morgan watched his long legs cross the hall and hastily ascend the main staircase. The hall occupied a large space in the centre of the house, and overlooking it was a gallery connecting the east and west wings.

Sir George’s room—that is to say, the room he was reserving for himself on this occasion—was in the east wing, the first to be reached from the gallery, and Morgan could almost see it from where he stood in the hall. His gaze was still fixed on Sir George’s retreating figure when a noise from behind him made him turn hurriedly round, and he distinctly saw the cupboard door open a few inches. Moving towards the cupboard, he then saw, as the door opened wider, a huge indefinable something emerge from it. Morgan admits that the most sublime terror seized him, and that he shrank back convulsively against the wall, totally unable to do anything but stare. The shape came towards him with a slow, shambling gait, and Morgan was at length able to compare it with an enormous fungus. It had arms and legs truly, but they were disproportionately long and crooked, and hardly seemed to belong to the body.

There was no apparent head. The whole thing was vague and misty, but suggestive of the greatest foulness and antagonism. Morgan’s horror was so great as it passed him that he believes his heart practically stopped beating, and so tightly had he clenched his hands that the print of his finger nails remained on his palms for days afterwards. It left him in time, however, and he watched it shuffle its unwholesome way across the hall and surreptitiously begin to ascend the staircase.

He tried to shout to Sir George to put him on his guard, but his voice refused to act and he could do nothing.

Up and up it went, until at last it reached the gallery and crept onward into the east wing.

He then heard Sir George cry out, “Hullo, Morgan! Is that you? Anything——” There was then a moment of the most intense silence, and then a shriek. Morgan says it was like a woman’s shriek—it was so shrill, so uncontrolled, so full of the most abject terror. For a moment it completely paralysed Morgan, but he seems then to have partially recovered. Anyhow, he pulled himself sufficiently together to run up the stairs and arrive outside Sir George’s door in time to hear sounds of a most violent struggle. Tables, chairs, washstand, crockery, were all hurled to the ground, as Sir George raced round and round the room in his desperate efforts to escape. Once he caught hold of the handle of the door and turned it furiously. “Let me out!” he shrieked. “For mercy’s sake let me out!” and again Morgan heard him rush to the window and pound madly on the glass.

Then there came another spell of silence—short and emphatic—then a shriek that far eclipsed anything Morgan had hitherto heard, and then a voice—a man’s voice, but certainly not Sir George’s—which, speaking in sharp, jerky sentences that conveyed with them a sense of strange far-offness, said: “You’ll believe now, Sir George. You’ll believe now. Damn you, you’ll believe now!” Then there were sounds as if someone was being shaken very violently to and fro, and Morgan, utterly unable to stand it any longer, turned tail and—fled.

.......

When Morgan returned some half an hour later, accompanied by the lodge-keeper and one of the under-gardeners, they found Sir George lying in a heap on the floor—unconscious. He did not die, however, neither did he go mad; but his heart was badly affected, and he subsequently developed fits.

Nothing would induce him to describe what had actually taken place, and this, added to the fact that he never again set foot within “The Mayfields,” caused his friends to draw their own conclusions. Morgan told me all about it, and I at once wrote to Dr. Sickertorft. I was too late, however; Dr. Sickertorft had been dead some weeks—he had died of cerebral tuberculosis exactly three months after Morgan’s visit to “The Mayfields.” I was informed that he attributed the fatal malady to supernormal concentration.

CHAPTER IV
THE EMPTY LEASH
A CASE OF HAUNTING IN ST. JOHN’S WOOD

I have so often been accused of writing too exclusively about the horrid types of spirit, such as earth-bound murderers, suicides, and elements, that I am more than pleased to be able to present to my readers a case of a different kind. Until quite recently Barcombe House, St. John’s Wood, was haunted by the ghost of a very lovely little girl, who, it is believed, died of a broken heart because a dog to which she was very much attached had to be destroyed. I obtained particulars as to the hauntings from a Mr. John Tyley, whose verbatim account I will endeavour, as nearly as possible, to reproduce.

“Guy Darnton is a very intimate friend of mine. Some people call us inseparables, and I suppose we are—though at times, I believe, no two men could so thoroughly hate one another. Indeed, to such an extremity has this spirit of execration and dislike been carried that I have on occasions actually accused him of being my very worst—my most cruel, and certainly my most subtly destructive—enemy. But even then, even at the moment when my abhorrence of him has been most acute, I have always accorded him—reluctantly, I admit—one great redeeming quality—his affection for and kindness to Ghoul.

“Ghoul was an Irish terrier, just an ordinary-looking Irish terrier, with all the pugnacious and—as some unkind critics would add—quarrelsome characteristics of his race. He hated fops, those little brown Pekinese and King Charles horrors that ladies scent and comb, and stuff to bursting-point with every imaginable dainty; and whenever he saw one mincing its way along the street, he would always block its path and try to bite it.

“Yet he was an idealist. It’s all nonsense to say that animals have no appreciation of beauty. Ghoul had. He was fond of biscuits truly; but he liked other things more, far more than food. I have known him stand in front of a rose bush and gaze at it with an expression which no one but the most unkind and prejudiced sceptic could possibly misinterpret for anything but sheer, solid admiration; and I used to notice that whenever he was introduced to several ladies, he always wagged his tail hardest at the prettiest of them. But most of all Ghoul admired pretty children—dainty little girls with fluffy yellow curls and big, smiling eyes. He adored them, and he hated with equal fervour all children who were in any way physically ill-favoured. I have known him bark furiously at a boy who squinted, and snarl at and refuse to go near a girl who had a blotchy, yellow complexion and a cavernous, frog-shaped mouth.

“But I am speaking as if Ghoul were my property. He was not—at least, not in the legal sense. Darnton paid for his licence—and housed and fed him—and so had every apparent right to call himself Ghoul’s master.

“In spite of this, however, I knew intuitively that Ghoul regarded me as his actual master, and I believe the explanation of this circumstance lay in the superphysical. I am psychic, and I am convinced that the unknown is nearer, far nearer to me than it is to most people. Now dogs, at least most dogs, have the faculty of second sight, of clairvoyance and clairaudience, very acutely developed—you have only to be in a haunted house with them to see it; and there is nothing they stand in awe of more—or for which they have a more profound respect—than the superphysical. Now Ghoul was no exception. He saw around me what I only felt; and he recognised that I was the magnet. He respected me as one true psychic respects another.

“One day we were out together. Darnton had gone to the dentist, and Ghoul, tired of his own company, resolved to pay me a visit. He wandered in at the wicket gate of my garden just as I was about to set off for a morning constitutional. I greeted him somewhat boisterously, for Ghoul, when extra solemn, always excited my risibility, and, after a brief skirmish with him on behalf of my cat, an extraordinarily ugly Tom, for whom Ghoul cherished the most inveterate hatred, we set off together. It was pure accident that led me into the Adelaide Road. I was half-way along it, thinking of nothing in particular, when someone whistled behind me, and I turned round. As a rule, one may see a few pedestrians—one or two at least—at all times of the day in the Adelaide Road, but oddly enough no one was in sight just at that moment, and I could see no traces of Ghoul. I called him, and getting no reply, walked back a little distance. At last I discovered him. He was in the front garden of Barcombe House, sitting in the centre of a grass plot, his eyes fixed on space, but with such an expression of absorbing interest that I was absolutely astounded. Thinking something, perhaps, was hiding in the bushes, I threw stones and made a great shooing; but nothing came out, and Ghoul still maintained his position. The look in his face did not suggest anything antagonistic, it was indicative rather of something very pleasing to him—something idealistic—something he adored.

“I shouted ‘Ghoul!’ He did not take the slightest notice, and when I caught him by the scruff of the neck, he dug his paws in the ground and whined piteously. Then I grew alarmed. He must either have hurt himself or have gone mad. I examined him carefully, and nothing appearing to be the matter with him, I lifted him up, and, despite his frantic struggles, carried him out of the garden.

“The moment I set him down he raced back. Then I grew determined. A taxi was hailed, and Ghoul, driven off in it, speedily found himself a close prisoner in Darnton’s exceedingly unromantic study.

“That afternoon I revisited Barcombe House alone. The premises were to let, and, judging by their neglected and dilapidated appearance, had been so for some considerable time. Both front and back garden were overgrown with a wild profusion of convolvulus, thistles, and other weeds; and an air of desolation, common to all abandoned houses, hung about the place. All the same, I could detect nothing unpleasant.

“I was unmistakably aware of some superphysical influence; but that influence, unlike the majority of those I had hitherto experienced, was decidedly attractive.

“It seemed to affect everything—the ruddy rays of sunlight that, falling aslant the paths, turned them into scintillating gold; the buttercups and dandelions more glorious yellow than I had ever remembered seeing them; the air—charged to overflowing with the rich, entrancing perfume of an abnormally generous summer’s choicest flowers. All nature here seemed stimulated, cheered and glorified, and the longer I lingered the longer I wished to linger. At the far end of the garden was an arbour overgrown with jasmine and sweet honeysuckle, and on its moss-covered seat I espied a monstrous Teddy bear adorned with a piece of faded and mildewy pink ribbon. The sight filled me with a strange melancholy. The poor Teddy bear, once held so lovingly in the tight embrace of two little infantile arms, was now abandoned to the mercies of spiders and wood-lice, and the pitiless spoliation of decay. How long had it been left, and where was its owner? I looked at the sunshine, and, in the beams that gilded everything around me, I felt an answer to my queries. Most haunted places scare me, but it was otherwise here; and I was so fascinated, so eager to probe the mystery to its core, that I left the garden and, crossing a tiny stone yard, approached the back of the house. The premises were quite easy of access, as the catch of one of the windows was broken, and the shutter of the coal-house had come off its hinges. One has always supposed that the basement of any house that has stood empty for a long time must become cold and musty, but here I could detect neither cold nor mustiness. Even in the darkest recesses the sun made its influence felt, and its beams warmed and illuminated walls and flagstones alike. I now entered a large and lofty apartment, with a daintily tiled floor, spotlessly clean ceiling, artistically coloured walls, and scrupulously clean dresser. Here again the devastating hand of decay was nowhere to be seen, and indeed I thought I had never been in such a pleasant kitchen.

“I intended waiting there only until I had consumed a sandwich, but when I rose to go, something held me back, and I tarried on and on, until the evening set in and dark and strangely formed shadows began to dim the walls and floor.

“As I was mounting the stairs to explore the upper premises a gentle gust of wind blew in my face and filled my nostrils with the most delightful odour of ‘cherry-pie.’ Intoxicated, I halted, and, leaning against the banisters, inhaled the perfume to the full extent of my lungs. Then I listened. The breeze rustling past me down the stairs rattled the window panes and jarred the doors, and seemed to disseminate, in its wake, new and even more perplexing shadows. Presently a door slammed, and I distinctly heard footsteps cross the hall and begin to ascend the stairs.

“It was now for the first time that terror laid hold of me, but the fascination of it was so compelling that I lowered my head over the balustrade to listen. I tried to reason the thing out. Why, I asked myself, should these footsteps alarm me? What was it that made them different from other footsteps? Surely there was no difference. And yet, if that were so, why was I certain that they were not the footsteps of any trespasser from outside? I debated earnestly, desperately, but could arrive at no other conclusion than that there was a difference, and that this difference did not lie in the sounds themselves, but in the sense of atmosphere they conveyed, an atmosphere that was peculiarly subtle and quite incompatible with the natural. At last I knew for certain that the sounds were superphysical, and yet such was my dread of the Unknown that I fought most frantically against my convictions.

“The steps had, by this time, so I calculated, reached the first landing, and I now noticed in them a cautiousness that I had not remarked before. What should I see? There was still time for flight, but whither could I go? Behind me were a row of half-open doors, through which the sun, sinking fast, shone its last rays. The effect—a sad one—forcibly reminded me of the end of all things—death; and the sadness of it harmonised well with an air of silent expectation that seemed suddenly to have filled the whole house. My fears grew. I was certain that the oncoming footsteps could only emanate from a phantom of the most startling and terrifying description, and I bitterly repented of my rashness in coming to the house alone. With a supreme effort, I averted my gaze and turned to seek refuge in one mad headlong plunge, should there be no other haven, through a window; but the power to do so was denied me. I was paralysed. The steps came nearer, and now, some distance below me, moving rapidly up the staircase, came something bright. I watched it pass swiftly round one bend, and then another, and at the moment my suspense had reached its limit and I felt I was on the border-line of either death or insanity, it turned the last corner and shot fully into view. The reaction was then so great that I reeled back against the wall and burst out laughing. Instead of some distorted semblance of humanity, instead of some grotesque, semi-animal elemental, something too grim and devilish for the mind to conceive and survive, I saw—a child: a girl of about twelve, dressed in the most becoming frock of soft white satin, high in the waist, and from thence falling in folds to her feet. She had long bright golden hair hanging in loose curls on either side of her low white forehead; delicately pencilled eyebrows that were slightly knit, and wide open blue-grey eyes that were fixed on me with an expression of the gravest anxiety, mingled with a something enigmatical, something sorely puzzling and with which I seemed to be familiar. Again and again I have tried to diagnose it, and at times the solution has seemed very near; but it has always eluded me in the end, and the mystery is still as great and as poignant as ever. The child held a leash in one hand, whilst she stretched out the other confidingly towards me.

“Always a worshipper of beauty, I was stooping down to kiss her little hand, when, to my consternation, she abruptly vanished, and I found myself standing there—alone.

“An intense sadness now seized me, and throwing myself on the floor I gave way to an attack of utter dejection. The vision I had just seen was in very deed the embodiment of all my boyhood’s dreams, and for the moment, but only for the moment, my old self, a little pensive boy adoring heart and soul a girl’s fair face, had lived again.

“It was all too cruelly brief; for with the vision my old ego vanished too; and I felt—I knew it had been wrested from me and hurried to some far-off place where the like of my present self could not be admitted. I rose at length chilled and hopeless, and tearing myself away from the landing with a desperate effort, wandered home. I could not rest. An intense dissatisfaction with myself, with my whole mode of life, my surroundings, obsessed me. I longed to alter, to become something different, something unsophisticated, simple, even elementary. This change in me brought me into closer sympathy with Ghoul, who, as I have said, was strangely altered himself. He avoided Darnton with the most marked persistence, and was always hovering round my doorstep and lying on the lawn. At last one day I could stand it no longer. ‘Ghoul,’ I said, ‘the same yearning possesses us both. It’s the child—the child with the lovely eyes. We must see her. You and I are rivals, old fellow. But never mind! We’ll visit the house together and let her take her choice. Come along!’

“Ghoul’s joy on entering the garden of Barcombe House knew no bounds. He tore in at the gate, capered across the grass, barked, whined, wagged his tail furiously, and behaved like the veriest of lunatics. Gaining admittance into the house as easily as before, I quickly made my way to the third-floor landing, Ghoul darting up the stairs ahead of me. Without a moment’s pause he bolted into a room immediately in front of us, and springing on to the sill of a large casement window that was wide open, peered eagerly out, exhibiting, as he did so, the wildest manifestation of excitement. Following the direction of his eyes, I looked down into the garden, and there, gazing up at us, her curls shining gold in the hot summer sun, stood the little ghost. The moment she saw me, she smiled, and, moving forward with a peculiar gliding motion, entered the house. Once again a door slammed, and, once again, there came the patter of ascending footsteps. Ghoul ran to meet her. She stooped over him, patted his head and fastened the leash to his collar, whilst I, merely a spectator, felt the bitterest pangs of jealousy. Then she looked up, and instantly the joy in her face was converted into pity—pity for me. Without a doubt Ghoul had triumphed.

“Still patting him on the head and urging him forward, she ran past me, and, mounting the window sill, glanced round at me with a mischievous smile. Even then I did not comprehend the full significance of her action. I merely stood and stared—stared as if I would never grow tired of staring, so fascinated was I by the piquante beauty of that superhuman little face. I was still staring when she put one foot through the open window; still staring when the other foot followed; still staring when she waved her hand gleefully at me and sprang out—out into the sunny brightness of the hot summer noon. I thought of Ghoul. He had sprung, too. Sprung barking and whining with a joy unequalled.

“I ran to look for him. He lay where he had fallen, his neck broken and his spirit fled.

“Darnton, of course, would not believe me. We had a stormy interview, and we have never spoken to one another since.

“The house—Barcombe House—is now let, and the occupants inform me that they have never once been troubled—at least not by ghosts.”

CHAPTER V
THE DRESSING-ROOM
CASES OF HAUNTINGS AT THE PRINCE REGENT AND OTHER THEATRES

The idea of a theatre being haunted—a theatre where everything is bright and everyone full of life—must, for the moment, strike one as preposterous. Why, the mere thought of the footlights, to say nothing of the clapping of hands and thunders of applause from the Gods, conjures up a picture which is the very antithesis of ghosts. Besides, why should a theatre be haunted? To be haunted, a place must have a history—someone must have committed a crime there, such as murder or suicide; and surely no such thing has ever happened in a theatre! Imagine a murder, a real one, at Drury Lane, or a suicide, say, at the Gaiety! Why, the thing is monstrous, absurd! And as to a ghost—a bona fide ghost—appearing on the stage or in the auditorium, why, such an idea is without rhyme or reason; it is, in fact, inconceivable, and the public—the all-wise public—would, of course, laugh it to scorn.

But stop a moment. Does the general public know everything? Is not the theatre, to it, simply the stage, and is it not profoundly ignorant of all that lies beyond the stage—away back, behind the hidden wings? Is it not profoundly ignorant, also, of the great basement below the stage with its dark and tortuous passages; and profoundly ignorant of the many flights of cold and carpetless stairs, leading to story upon story of seemingly never-ending dressing-rooms and corridors? What does it know, too, of the individual lives of the many generations of actors and actresses, call-boys and dressers who have toiled wearily up those stairs and along those dimly lit passages in between the acts? what does it know of the thoughts of all that host of bygones—of their terrible anxieties, their loves, their passions? what does it know of the tragedies with which, doubtless, many of these people have been intimately associated, and of the crowd of ghosts they have, wittingly or unwittingly, brought with them from their own homes?—for ghosts, even as they haunt houses, haunt people and mercilessly attach themselves to them. Moreover, although they have long since been forgotten, tragedies have occurred in some of the oldest of the London theatres. Hunt up the records of eighty and ninety years ago, and you will find that more than one dressing-room witnessed the tragic ending of some lesser star, some member of the crowd, a mere “walker on”; that duels were not infrequently fought in grim earnest on the boards; and that more than one poor super has been found hanging from a cobwebby beam in a remote corner of the great maze-like basement of the building.

Again, think of the site of a London theatre! Prehistoric man or beast may well lie buried there; witches accused of practising their nefarious rites on or near that site may well have been burnt there.

Think, too, of the houses that once may have stood there! Inns, with dark tell-tale stains on their boards; taverns, tainted with vice—the rendezvous of truculent swashbucklers and painted jades; and even more terrible still, cruel and ghastly slaughter-houses.

Ground, then, and houses alike, all may have had their hauntings; and the ghosts may have stayed on, as ghosts often do, haunting anew each successive building. Yes, more than one London theatre is haunted—and several of these theatres have more than one ghost.

The proprietors affect ignorance and of course tell you nothing. They like to see long queues of people waiting for admission to their show, but they have no desire to see a corresponding crowd at the box office seeking permission to sit up all night in the theatre to see the ghost. No, if you want to find out if a theatre is haunted, you must not apply to the proprietor, you must inquire of the actors themselves; and, in order to stand a really good chance of discovering the truth, you should, if possible, for a time become one of them. It was for the purpose of making such a discovery that I took it into my head one day last year to apply for a walk on at the Mercury. I had often wondered if the Mercury was haunted. I speedily found out that it was not. Still, I was not altogether disappointed, for I learned from some of my fellow-walkers on and from one of the stage hands of several very interesting cases of hauntings at other of the London theatres. There is the Prince Regent’s, for instance, which, as recently as the late nineties had a dressing-room, 25, that was always kept locked. It was in the autumn of 1897 that John W. Mayhewe was engaged to play a small but rather important part there in The Merciful Pirate. The cast was an unusually large one, and Mayhewe discovered that he had to share dressing-room 25 with another actor called Talbotson. The opening night of the play, however, Talbotson was laid up with influenza, and Mayhewe had room 25 to himself. Being one of those over-anxious people who err on the side of being ultra-punctual, he arrived at the theatre at least an hour before the curtain went up, and, on the way to his room, he paused to chat with the stage doorkeeper.

“I noticed,” he remarked, “when I was dressing for rehearsal yesterday that my room smelt very musty. Isn’t it often used?”

“It hasn’t been used since I’ve been here,” was the reply.

“Why?” said Mayhewe.

“I can’t tell you,” the doorkeeper answered surlily. “If you want to know, you had better ask the stage manager.”

Not caring to do this, Mayhewe made no further remarks, but hastened upstairs. No one was about, and the noise of his footsteps sounded strangely loud in the silent emptiness of the passages. He entered his room at last, hung his coat and hat on the door, and, crossing to his seat in front of a small mirror, sat down. “After all,” he said to himself, “I’m glad Talbotson won’t be here to-night. I’m not in a mood for talking, and the fellow bores me to distraction.” He lit a cigarette, leaned back in a more comfortable attitude, and for some minutes allowed himself to revel in the luxury of a perfectly blank state of mind. Suddenly the handle of the door turned—a solitary, isolated sound—and he sat up sharply in his chair. “Who’s there?” he shouted. There was no response. “I couldn’t have latched it properly,” he reasoned, and once again he leaned back in his chair and smoked. Five or six minutes passed in this fashion, and he was thinking of beginning to dress, when there was another noise. Something behind him fell on the floor with a loud flop.

Once again he turned swiftly round. It was his hat—a hard felt bowler. It had fallen from the door peg on which he had hung it, and was still feebly oscillating.