



Produced by Shaun Pinder, eagkw and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)







  TWENTY YEARS’ EXPERIENCE AS A
  GHOST HUNTER




  Twenty Years’ Experience
  as a Ghost Hunter

  BY

  ELLIOT O’DONNELL

  AUTHOR OF “THE SORCERY CLUB,” “WERWOLVES,”
  “SOME HAUNTED HOUSES OF ENGLAND AND WALES,”
  “HAUNTED HIGHWAYS,” ETC., ETC.


  WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
  PHYLLIS VERE CAMPBELL
  AND
  H. C. BEVAN-PETMAN


  [Illustration]


  HEATH, CRANTON, LTD.
  FLEET LANE, LONDON

  _First Published, November, 1916._

  _Second Edition, February, 1917._




AUTHOR’S NOTE


In presenting this volume of ghostly reminiscences to the Public
I would lay stress on the fact that, in order to avoid the danger
of incurring an action for slander or libel, I have—save where
expressedly stated to the contrary—resorted to the use of fictitious
names for all persons and houses. For the reproduction of one or two
articles I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. Ralph Shirley.

      ELLIOT O’DONNELL.

1916.




CONTENTS.


  CHAPTER                                                       PAGE

     I. I COMMENCE MY GHOSTLY INVESTIGATIONS IN DUBLIN            11

    II. I AM PURSUED BY PHANTOM FOOTSTEPS                         23

   III. SOME STRANGE CASES IN SCOTLAND                            34

    IV. I TRAVEL ACROSS THE UNITED STATES AND DO SOME GHOST
          HUNTING IN SAN FRANCISCO                                49

     V. A HAUNTED OFFICE IN DENVER                                58

    VI. CASES OF HAUNTINGS IN ST. LOUIS, NEW YORK, AND CHICAGO    69

   VII. A HAUNTED WOOD, AND A HAUNTED QUARRY IN CANADA            86

  VIII. HAUNTINGS IN THE EAST END                                105

    IX. NIGHT RAMBLINGS ON WIMBLEDON COMMON AND HOUNSLOW HEATH   122

     X. MY VIEWS ON A FUTURE LIFE FOR THE ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE
          WORLDS                                                 136

    XI. A HAUNTING IN REGENT’S PARK, AND MY FURTHER VIEWS WITH
          REGARD TO SPIRITUALISM                                 148

   XII. A HAUNTED MINE IN WALES                                  159

  XIII. THE POOL IN WALES THAT LURES PEOPLE TO DEATH             169

   XIV. I GO ON WITH THE HISTORY OF MY LIFE, AND NARRATE A
          GHOSTLY HAPPENING IN LIVERPOOL                         183

    XV. SOME STRANGE CASES IN BIRMINGHAM, HARROGATE, SUSSEX AND
          NEWCASTLE                                              194

   XVI. WAR GHOSTS                                               206

  XVII. A CASE FROM JAPAN                                        223




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                              FACING
                                                               PAGE

  1 “WE BOTH LOOKED IN THE DIRECTION HE INDICATED”                39

  2 “WHO IS THAT TALL, GOOD-LOOKING GIRL, STELLA, THAT I’VE
      SEEN FOLLOWING YOU INTO THE BUILDING....”                   63

  3 “BUT THERE ARE OTHER GHOSTS—IF YOU LIKE TO TERM THEM
      SO—THAT ARE MORE TROUBLESOME”                              82

  4 “I LOOKED UP, JUST IN TIME TO SEE THE GIRL FLASH ME A LOOK
      OF SUBTLE WARNING”                                          94

  5 “THE THING CAME RIGHT UP TO THE WINDOW, AND THEN RAISED ITS
      FACE”                                                      101

  6 “WHAT GIVES ME THE WORST FRIGHT IS A TREE....”               141

  7 “MY GOD! THERE’S DICK! HE’S JUST BEHIND YOU”                 167

  8 “I SUDDENLY CAUGHT SIGHT OF A LARGE EYE”                     205




  Twenty Years’ Experience
  as a Ghost Hunter

CHAPTER I

I COMMENCE MY GHOSTLY INVESTIGATIONS IN DUBLIN


In starting a book of this sort, I believe it is usual to say something
about one’s self.

I was born in the ’seventies. My father came from County Limerick, and
belonged to the Truagh Castle O’Donnells, who, tracing their descent
from Shane Luirg, the elder brother of Niall Garbh, the ancestor of
Red Hugh, rightly claim to be the oldest branch of the great clan. He
graduated at Trinity College, Dublin, was for some time vicar of a
parish near Worcester, and died in Egypt, under mysterious and much
discussed circumstances,[1] soon after I came into the world.

      [1] See “The Oriental Zig-zag,” by C. Hamilton.

My mother was English; she belonged to an old Midland family, and only
survived my father a few years.

Although I am generally known as a ghost hunter, needless to say it
was not for such a career that I was educated, first of all at Clifton
College, then at an Army crammer’s, and finally at Chedwode Crawley’s
well-known coaching establishment in Ely Place, Dublin. There I read
for the Royal Irish Constabulary, and, attending regularly, remained
for a little over two years. I can safely say these two years were two
of the happiest I have ever known, for my companions at that time were
the nicest set of fellows I have ever met, and amongst them I formed
many lifelong friendships.

When I was not working, I usually spent my time playing football
or cricket, to both of which sports I was devoted, and, when I was
not thus engaged, I used to tramp across hill and dale continually
exploring the country in search of adventure.

But in those days I did not look for ghosts—they came to me; they came
to me then, as they had come to me before, and as they have come to me
ever since.

With my early experiences of the Unknown—which experiences, by the
way, extend over the whole period of my youth—I have dealt fully
in former works; so that in this volume I propose to confine myself
to later experiences, commencing approximately with my début as an
investigator of haunted houses and superphysical occurrences in general.

To begin with, however, let me state plainly that I lay no claims to
being what is termed a scientific psychical researcher. I am not a
member of any august society that conducts its investigations of the
other world, or worlds, with test tube and weighing apparatus; neither
do I pretend to be a medium or consistent clairvoyant.

I am merely a ghost hunter; merely one who honestly believes that he
inherits in some degree the faculty of psychic perceptiveness from a
long line of Celtic ancestry; and who is, and always has been, deeply
and genuinely interested in all questions relative to phantasms and a
continuance of individual life after physical dissolution. Moreover, in
addition to this psychic faculty, I possess, as I have already hinted,
a spirit of adventure; and since this spirit is irresistible, had I not
decided to become a ghost hunter, I should doubtless have embarked upon
some other and hardly less exciting pursuit.

The actual cause of my decision to adopt ghost-hunting as a profession
was an experience which befel me in the summer of ’92. I was at that
time a student in Ely Place, Dublin, and being in search of rooms, was
recommended to try a house within a stone’s throw of the Waterloo Road.

A widow named Davis, with two leviathan daughters, Mona and Bridget,
ran the establishment, and as the vacant apartments were large,
apparently well ventilated and exceedingly moderate in price, I
decided to take them. Consequently, I arrived there with my luggage
one afternoon, and was speedily engaged in the tiring and somewhat
irritating task of unpacking.

When I retired to rest that first night, I certainly had no thought of
ghosts or anything in connection with them; on the contrary, my mind
was wholly occupied with speculations as to how I should fare in the
coming weekly examination at Crawley’s, whether the extra attention I
had recently bestowed on mathematics would be of any service to me,
or whether, in spite of it, I should again occupy my place at the
bottom of the class. I remember thinking, however, as I blew out the
light and turned into bed, that there was something about the room
now—though I could not tell what—that I had not noticed by daylight;
but I soon went to sleep, and although I awoke several times before
morning—a phenomenon in itself—I cannot say that I thought then of
any superphysical element in the atmosphere. It was not until I had
been there several nights that the event occurred which effectually
shaped my future career.

One evening the two girls, Mona and Bridget, were making so much
racket in the room beneath me, that I found work impossible, and being
somewhat tired, for I had stuck very close to it all day, I resolved
to go to bed. On my way thither I encountered two young men, T.C.
students, who were also lodging in the house, hotly engaged in an
argument; and they appealed to me to express an opinion. I told them
what I thought, as they followed me upstairs; then, when I reached my
room, I abruptly bade them good-night, and, entering, locked the door
behind me.

Sitting down on the edge of the bed, I quietly slipped off my clothes
and put out the light. The two men were still haranguing one another
for all they were worth when I got in between the sheets and prepared
to lie down. The room was not entirely dark; from between the folds of
the thick plush curtains that enveloped the windows stray beams from
the powerful moonlight filtered through and battled their way to the
foot of the bed. I was looking at them with some degree of curiosity,
when I saw something move. I glanced at it in astonishment, and, to
my unmitigated horror, the shape of something dark and sinister rose
noiselessly from the floor and came swiftly towards me. I tried to
shout, but could not make a sound. I was completely paralysed, and as I
sat there, sick with fear and apprehension, the thing leaped on to me,
and, gripping me mercilessly by the throat, bore me backwards.

I gasped, and choked, and suffered the most excruciating pain. But
there was no relaxation—the pressure of those bony fingers only
tightened and the torture went on. At last, after what seemed to me
an eternity, there was a loud buzzing in my ears, my head seemed to
spin round violently, and my brain to burst. I lost consciousness. On
coming to, I found that my assailant had left me. I struck a light. My
fellow-lodgers were still going at one another hammer and tongs—and
the door was, as I had left it, locked on the inside. I searched the
room thoroughly; the window was bolted; there was nothing in the
cupboard; nothing under the bed; nothing anywhere. I got into bed
again, full of the worst anticipations, and, if sleep came to me, it
was only in the briefest snatches.

At dawn the room became suffused with a cold, grey glow, and the
suggestion of something horribly evil standing close beside the bed
and sardonically watching me impressed me so strongly that, yielding
to a sudden impulse of terror, I hid my head under the bed-clothes,
and remained in that undignified position till the morning was well
advanced and I was “called.”

I got up, feeling downright ill, and although the sunlight
metamorphosing everything now made the mere thought of a ghost simply
ludicrous, I hurried out of the room as speedily as possible. Nor did I
venture to pass another night there.

My landlady did not demur when I asked her to transfer me to another
apartment, and later, before I took my final departure from her house,
she confessed to me that it was haunted. She believed that it had been
used as a private home for mentally afflicted people, and that someone,
either one of the patients or a nurse—she did not know which—had
died, under extremely painful circumstances, in the room I had first
occupied.

The Davises left the house soon after I did, and who lives there now,
and whether the hauntings still continue, I cannot say. When I last
made enquiries, about two years ago, I learned that the then occupants
had never admitted experiencing anything unusual, but that they always
kept the room in which I had undergone the sensations of strangulation
carefully locked.

This adventure of mine, intensely unpleasant as it had been at the
time, profoundly interested me. Hitherto I had placidly accepted as
truth all the dogmas of religion hurled at me from the pulpit and
drilled into me at school, for the simple reason that I had always been
taught to regard as infinitely correct and absolutely above criticism
all that the clergy told me: God made the world, they said, and all
the laws and principles appertaining to it—that was sufficient—I
need not ask any questions. When I looked about me and saw men, and
women, dogs, horses, and other animals suffering indescribable agonies
from all kinds of foul and malignant diseases; when I encountered
<DW36>s, the maimed and blind, idiots and lunatics; or read in the
papers of swindles, murders and suicides; or noted how, throughout
nature, the strong animals prey upon the weak; how, for example, the
tiger, the lion and the leopard terrorize the jungle, just as the shark
and octopus terrorize the sea, and the wasp and spider, centipede and
scorpion terrorize insect life (being furnished respectively with
weapons for tearing and rending, and sucking the flesh, and entailing
the most excruciating tortures on the nerve centres); when, I say, I
noted all this, I was given to understand that I must on no account
comment upon it—to do so was impious and wicked—I must abide by the
precept of my pastor and pedagogue, namely, that “God is almighty and
merciful, loving and wise.”

But now it was different—I was no longer in the schoolroom, no longer
under the immediate influence of the Church. I met people in Dublin
imbued with the broader instincts of a big, cosmopolitan community;
I listened to their reasoning—reasoning which at first immeasurably
shocked me, and afterwards struck me as horribly sane. Then, at this
crisis, came the incident of the strangling. I tried to attribute it to
a dream, but I was prevented by the fact that I had only just got into
bed, and had not even lain down, when the figure seized me. Hence, I
could only conclude that some spirit—the nature of my suffering and
the horror it inspired leading me to suppose that it was a particularly
evil one—had been my aggressor.

But why was it not in Hell? Had it escaped in spite of the strict
supervision of the Almighty? Or could it be possible that the orthodox
Paradise and Purgatory did not exist, and that the spirits of the dead
were allowed to wander about at will? I became interested—deeply so;
all sorts of wild speculations floated through my mind; I resolved to
enquire further.

I would not be guided by any creed; I would set out on my work of
investigation wholly unbiassed; I would gain whatever knowledge there
was to be gained of another world without the aid either of priest or
occultist, medium or scientist.

Several of my friends in Dublin were greatly interested in ghosts, and
I learned from them of two houses that had long borne the reputation of
being haunted. One was close to St. Stephen’s Green, within sight of
the Queen’s Service Academy, and the other, a big, ugly edifice of a
dingy grey, was in Blackrock. I had stayed in the former when a child,
and had vivid recollections of the holes in the stone stairs, through
which boiling oil was poured on the heads of the English soldiers at
the time of the ’98.

There were many large and stately rooms in the house, oak-panelled
and beautified throughout with much carving. I remember looking with
awe and perplexity at the number of odd shadows that used to put in
an appearance on the stairs and in the passages, just when it was my
bed-time, but I did not then attribute them to ghosts. I simply did
not know what they were. I heard sounds, too—clangs and clashes, and
footsteps tramping up and down the stairs; sounds I did not attempt to
analyse, possibly because I dared not. That was in 1886; I was then
a small boy, and now—now only—after I had long left the house, and
was back in Dublin, with the experience of the strangling ghost still
fresh in my mind, I began to wonder whether these strange sounds and
shadows might not have been due to the presence of the Superphysical.
I mentioned the matter to my friends, and they expressed astonishment
that I had not heard the house was haunted. One of them, a lady, told
me that she had once stayed there and had been awakened every night by
the sounds I had described—the sounds of heavy footsteps rushing up
the stairs, of cries and groans, shrieks and oaths, coupled with the
clashing of scabbards and sword blades, and the sound as of falling
bodies.

Yet nothing was ever to be seen, saving the moonlight and
shadows—plenty of shadows—shadows strangely suggestive of grotesque
and fancifully clad people. I tried to obtain permission to sleep in
the house, and in my innocence of the ways of landlords, I stated with
the most pathetic candour my true intention—I wanted to investigate.
The reply I got was certainly not courteous, neither did it permit of
argument. Hence, feeling considerably crestfallen and humiliated, I
found myself forced to give up my first attempt at ghost-hunting.

Then I turned my attention to the house in Blackrock, and fared no
better. The landlord had been bothered to death with requests to spend
nights there, and was endeavouring to discover the originator of the
report that the place was haunted, in order that he might bring an
action for Slander of Title. Consequently I could only examine the
house from the outside, hoping that its ghostly inhabitants would one
night take pity on me and exhibit themselves at one of the windows. But
in this, too, I was disappointed; although, as the place invariably
inspired me with the greatest dread, I have no doubt whatever but that
it was genuinely and badly haunted.

There were several stories in circulation in Dublin about that time
concerning the nature of the haunting, and the following—one of the
most reliable—was told me by a Mrs. Blake. I will give it as nearly as
I can in her own words:

“When I was a child of about twelve,” she began, “which was a good
many years ago, my father, who was then stationed in Dublin, took the
house on a three years’ lease, at a very low rental, due, so the owner
stated, to the fact that there were far too many stairs, a feature to
which most people, on account of their servants, strongly objected.
Nothing was said about ghosts, and nothing was further from my parents’
minds when they took possession. We moved in towards the end of July,
but it was not until the middle of September that we first became aware
that the house was haunted. It happened in this way: My father and the
maids were out one evening, and only my mother, my small brother and I
were in the house. It was about eight o’clock. I was upstairs in the
nursery reading to Teddy, and my mother was in the drawing-room, two
storeys beneath. I was just in the middle of a sentence, when Teddy
interrupted me. ‘Did you hear that?’ he exclaimed; ‘it’s someone on
the stairs. I believe they are listening.’ I paused, and heard a loud
creak. ‘Who can it be?’ I said; ‘there’s only mother in the house!’
Much mystified, I closed the book and went out on to the landing. No
one was there; but when I got to the head of the stairs, I heard a loud
scream, and then a dull thud, just as if someone had fallen. In an
agony of mind I ran downstairs to see what had happened. As I arrived
in the hall, the door of the drawing-room was slowly opened, and I
saw, peeping cautiously out, a white face with two dark, gleaming,
obliquely-set eyes, that filled with an expression of the most
diabolical hatred as they met mine. I was so terrified that I started
back some paces, and, as I did so, the door opened a little wider, and
the figure of a short, elderly woman, clad in an old-fashioned black
dress, and white cap crumpled closely round her lean, haggard face,
glided out, and, passing by, ascended the stairs. As she came to the
first bend, she turned, and looking down at me with an evil leer,
shook her hand menacingly at me. She then passed out of sight, and I
heard her climb the stairs, step by step, till she came to the nursery
landing. A moment later, and Teddy gave a violent shriek.

“My terror was now so great that I think I should have gone mad had I
been left there any longer by myself; but, by a merciful providence, a
key turned in the lock of the front door, and my father entered. The
sight of his well-known figure on the threshold at once loosened the
spell that had bound me, and with a cry of delight I clutched him by
the arms, imploring him to see at once what had happened to mother and
Teddy.

“He ran into the drawing-room first and found my mother on the floor,
just reviving from a faint. Lighting the gas, he fetched her some
brandy, and then, bidding me stay with her, he hastened upstairs to
Teddy. The latter was very badly frightened, and it was some days
before he was well enough to give anything like a coherent account
of what had happened. Of course, mother and father told Teddy that
the queer figure they had seen was some friend of the servants, who
had called while they were out, but I suppose they deemed me old
enough to know the truth, for they discussed the incident openly in
my presence. It appears that my mother had been quietly knitting in
the drawing-room, when she suddenly felt very cold, and rising from
her chair, with the intention of closing the door, found herself
confronted by a hideous form. Subsequently, my father made a thorough
search of the house, but he found no one, and as all the windows were
fastened and the doors locked on the inside, we could only come to the
conclusion that the figure my mother and Teddy and I had all seen was a
ghost. A few days later it appeared to my father. He was coming out of
his bedroom, when he saw a woman steal stealthily out of a room on the
same landing and creep downstairs in front of him. There was something
about her so intensely sinister that he felt chilled; but, determining
to find out who she was, he followed her, and catching her up,
demanded her name. There was a chuckling answer, the figure instantly
disappeared, and a number of invisible somethings clattered down the
stairs past him.

“I think my father was very scared; at all events he came into the
breakfast-room with a very white face and ate hardly anything. Some
time after this, when the autumn was well advanced, my uncle came to
stay with us. He was a jolly, rollicking sailor, who had fought the
Turks at Navarino, and had had many exciting adventures with Chinese
pirates.

“No one told him the house was haunted; it was decided he should find
that out for himself. One afternoon, several days after his arrival,
he was taking off his boots in a room in the basement, when a current
of icy air blew in on him, and, on raising his eyes to see whence
the draught came, he perceived an extraordinarily pretty girl, clad
in a dark green riding-habit, such as he believed were worn in the
days of his great grand-parents, standing in the doorway, watching
him intently. ‘This is one of Jack’s surprises’ (Jack was my father),
he said to himself, ‘and a deuced pleasant one, too! The rogue, he
knows nothing pleases me so much as the sight of a pretty girl, and,
by Jove, she is pretty!’ Springing to his feet—for my uncle was never
bashful in the presence of the fair sex—he advanced to shake hands.
To his chagrin, however, she promptly turned round, and, walking
swiftly away, began to ascend the stairs. My uncle followed her. On and
on she led him till she came to the drawing-room; there she paused,
and with the forefinger of her left hand on her lips, glanced coyly
round at him. She then quietly turned the door handle, and signalling
to him to follow, stole into the room on tiptoe. Charmed with this
piece of acting, the naïvety of it appealing very strongly to his
susceptible nature, my uncle hastened after her. The moment he crossed
the threshold, however, he recoiled. Standing in the middle of the
room was an old woman with a hideous, white face and black, leering
eyes. There were no signs anywhere of the young and beautiful lady.
She had completely vanished. My uncle was so shocked by the spectacle
before him that he retreated on to the landing, and, as he did so, the
drawing-room door swung to with a loud crash. He called my father, and
they entered the room together; but it was quite empty, the old hag had
disappeared as inexplicably as the girl. That evening there was to be
a party, and the table in the dining-room groaned beneath the weight
of one of those inimitable ‘spreads,’ in vogue some fifty or sixty
years ago. With somewhat pardonable pride my mother took us all—my
father, uncle and myself—to have a peep at it, before the guests
arrived. As we drew near the room, we heard, to our astonishment,
the plaintive sound of a spinet. My mother instantly drew back,
trembling, whereupon my uncle, forcing a laugh, said, ‘This is one of
the occasions upon which a gentleman should go first.’ He threw open
the door as he spoke, and we all peered in. What I saw will never be
effaced from my memory. The room exhibited a complete wreckage—the
cloth was half off the table, the massive silver candlesticks were
overturned, and the floor was strewn with piles of broken glass, china
and eatables—everything was smashed and ruined. In the midst of the
debris, her face turned towards us, lay a very beautiful girl. There
were unmistakable evidences of a ghastly wound, but her eyes were
partly open, and the strange light which gleamed from their blue depths
revealed an expression which could only have been hatched in hell—a
hell, peopled not with passive torture-torn sufferers, but with wholly
abandoned beings actively engaged in licentiousness and everything that
is destructive and antagonistic to man’s moral and mental progress.
Standing over the woman, and holding a kind of stiletto in his hand,
was a tall, fair man, in whose agonised and remorseful features we
recognised at once a most startling likeness to my uncle. No detail
was wanting—there was the deep scar on the temple, the curiously deep
dimple in the chin; indeed, saving for the old-fashioned clothes, no
likeness could have been more exact. Standing by his side, her hideous,
scowling face thrust forward, her evil eyes glaring at us with the same
vindictive insolence, was the old woman I had seen that night in the
hall. Then, my father, uttering some exclamation, crossed himself, and,
as he did so, the figures abruptly vanished, whilst the whole house
echoed and re-echoed with loud peals of mocking, diabolical laughter.
That was the finale; we left immediately afterwards, and from that day
to this the house, I believe, has stood almost uninterruptedly empty.”

This is the gist of Mrs. Blake’s account of the happenings, and as I
never found her anything but strictly truthful, I believe them to have
been given me without any conscious exaggeration.




CHAPTER II

I AM PURSUED BY PHANTOM FOOTSTEPS


Before I left the west of Ireland, I set out one day to investigate a
case of haunting by fairies, which was alleged to take place nightly at
the junction of four cross roads on the southern <DW72> of the Wicklow
mountains.

I found a spot that seemed to correspond with the description of the
scene of the haunting given me by my informant, and kept a vigil
there for two consecutive nights without experiencing any of the
anticipated results. However, I intended giving the place another
trial, and accordingly set out; but when within half a mile or so of
my destination, I began to feel very tired, and having a bad cold on
me besides, I decided to put up at a cottage I espied a short distance
off, instead of pursuing my way further.

The cottage stood a little back from the main road, perhaps a hundred
yards or so, and was connected with it by a narrow lane. The situation
was one of intense loneliness; the nearest village was a good two miles
away, and few people, other than occasional cyclists, ever passed
along the high road after nightfall. At the time I am speaking of, the
cottage was tenanted by a couple named Mullins. The man was a drover,
and his wife one of the tallest women I have ever seen; she possessed,
moreover, a pair of green-grey eyes, and these were remarkable, not
only for their curious colouring, but for the impression they gave one
that they were perpetually trying not to see too much. Apart from these
peculiarities, she seemed ordinary enough, and I felt I was in the
house of very worthy and hard-working people.

I went to bed early and was given the only spare room in the cottage.
It faced the front and was immediately over the tiny parlour. As the
linen was spotless and felt thoroughly dry, I had no scruples about
getting in between the sheets, and, stretching myself out, I was soon
fast asleep.

I awoke with violent palpitations of the heart to find the room bathed
with moonlight; and, as all was absolutely silent, I concluded it must
be far on into the night. Suddenly I heard footsteps—footsteps in the
distance, running at a well-regulated pace. They rang out sharp and
clear in the still air, and gradually became more and more distinct.
I was wondering who the person could be, out at such an hour, when a
dog, apparently in the yard at the back of the house, set up the most
unearthly howling. The next moment I heard Mrs. Mullins speak, and,
inadvertently, I listened.

“John,” she said, “do you hear the dog?”

“I should be deaf and dumb if I didn’t,” Mullins replied sleepily.
“What is it?”

“What is it, indeed! Why the dog never barks like that unless there
is a spirit about. Do you remember those knocks on the door the night
Uncle Mike died, and how the dog howled then? There’s something of the
same sort about to-night. Listen!”

The steps very were near now. I listened intently. The runner, I
thought, must be wearing very extraordinary boots, for every step, so
it seemed to me, was accompanied by a peculiar and almost metallic
click.

“John,” Mrs. Mullins suddenly resumed, “do you hear those steps? What
are they? It’s the first time in my life I’ve heard anyone running
along the high road like that at this time of night. Hark! They’ve got
to the turning—they’re in the lane—they’re coming here! Get up at
once; go and bolt the front door. The thing’s evil—evil, I’m sure, and
it’s someone of us here it’s after.”

The steps grew rapidly nearer, and Mullins, stumbling hastily down the
stairs, bolted both the doors and swung to the little wooden shutters.
A moment later, and I heard the steps come right up to the door. There
was a momentary pause, then a series of terrific knocks.

“Cross yourself, John; for God’s sake cross yourself!” Mrs. Mullins
cried. “And may the Holy Virgin protect us.” She then started praying
loudly and vehemently, and, whether it was the effect of her prayers
or not, the knocking gradually diminished in violence, and then ceased
altogether.

“Come on up, John,” Mrs. Mullins called out; “the thing, whatever it
is, has ceased troubling us, and we may go to sleep in peace.”

Mullins, needing no second bidding, joined his wife, and once again the
whole place was wrapped in silence.

I must confess that, whilst the knocking continued, I had no desire
whatever to look out of the window, but the moment it was over I got up
and peered out. I could see right down the lane and for some distance
along the high road.

There was no sign of anyone or anything that could in any way account
for the disturbance—the landscape was brilliantly illuminated with
moonlight, every stick and stone being plainly visible, and all nature
seemed to be sleeping undisturbedly, as if no interruption in its
ordinary routine had occurred. I got back into bed, and, falling into
a gentle doze, slept soundly till the morning. After breakfast, Mrs.
Mullins said, “You’re not thinking of spending another night here, sir,
are you?”

“Why, no,” I replied. “I must be back in Dublin at my work by this
afternoon.”

“I’m glad of that, sir,” she went on; “because I couldn’t let you stay.
I suppose you heard the rapping, sir?”

“I did,” I replied; “and the footsteps—how do you account for them?”

“Only in one way,” she said; “they came after you. At least, that was
my impression, and my impressions are seldom wrong. I seemed to see
some terrible form—half animal and half human—something indescribably
grotesque and unnatural—something, my instinct tells me, was wanting
to get at you.”

Her description of the figure reminded me so strongly of the queer
thing that tried to strangle me in the house near the Waterloo Road,
that I narrated my experience to her.

“You may depend upon it, sir,” she said when I had finished, “that the
ghost you have just told me about and the one that came to the cottage
last night are the same. I have heard that spirits will sometimes
attach themselves to persons who have been staying in the house they
haunt, and that they will leave the house with them and follow them
wherever they go. I only hope and trust that this one will never do you
any harm, and that you will succeed in ridding yourself of it, but my
husband and I feel, asking your pardon, that we should not like to have
you sleep here again.”

I did not tell her that even had she been willing, nothing on earth
would have induced me to stay, for whether she was right in her theory
about the steps or not, the neighbourhood had lost all its charms for
me. Indeed, when next I had a ghostly visitation, I hoped I should be
quartered in a less isolated spot.

My aunt, Mrs. Meta O’Donnell, tells me that a relative of hers once had
a remarkable encounter with fairies on the road between Ballinanty and
the village of Hospital in County Limerick.

He was driving home one evening in his jaunting car, unaccompanied save
by his servant, Dunkley, who was sitting with his back to him, when a
number of little people—fairies—sprang on the car, and clambering up,
tried to pull him off.

Finding that, owing to the vigour with which they pulled, he was
actually slipping from his seat, he appealed to his servant for
assistance; and the latter, doing as he was told, held on to him with
all his strength, and thus prevented the little people from dragging
him to the ground. Mrs. Meta O’Donnell is absolutely sure that her
relative never took stimulants of any sort, and that he was in a
perfectly normal state of mind when this event happened.

Nor is this road haunted only by fairies, for Mrs. Meta O’Donnell again
tells me that this same relative of hers, when driving home on another
occasion—this time with several friends—saw a man on horseback, in
a hunting coat, suddenly leap the hedge, and, after riding for some
distance by the side of the car, abruptly vanish. Two of the men who
were with him, she believes, also witnessed this phenomenon.

It is a long step, seemingly, from the fairy to the banshee, but
these two types of spirit have at least one trait in common, namely,
exclusiveness; and the banshee, even more emphatically than the fairy,
will have nought to do with the alien. It will attach itself only to
the family of bona-fide Irish origin, only to the clan that has been
associated with Irish soil for many generations.

With the kind permission of Mr. Ralph Shirley, I will here introduce,
making only slight alterations, a few extracts from an article of mine
on the banshee, which appeared in the “Occult Review” for September,
1913:

“Contemporary with fairies and the Feni, phantoms typical of the great
lone hills of Wicklow and Connemara, and of the bare and wind-bitten
cliffs of Galway, may well have been the banshees, which, attaching
themselves for divers reasons to various chieftains and sons of
chieftains, eventually became recognised as family ghosts or familiars.

“Many people have fallen in the error of imagining all banshees are
moulded after one pattern. Nothing could be more fallacious. The
banshee of the O’Rourkes, for example, does not resemble that of the
O’Donnells; there are many forms of the banshee, each clan having a
distinct one—or more than one—of its own. Some of the banshees are
fair to look at, and some old, and foul, and terrifying; but their
mission is invariably the same, i.e., to announce a death or some great
family catastrophe.

“The banshee is never joyous; it is always either sad or malevolent.
Sometimes it wails once, sometimes three times—the wail in some
degree, but not altogether, resembling that of a woman in great trouble
or agony; sometimes, again, it groans; and sometimes it sighs, or
sings. In some clans the demonstrations are both visual and auditory,
in others only visual; and in others, again, only auditory. There is no
really old clan but has its banshee, and few members of that clan who
are not, at some time or other of their lives, made aware of it.

“How well I recollect as a child being told by those who had experienced
it, that a dreadful groaning and wailing had been heard the night prior
to the death of a very near relative of mine in Africa. I enquired what
made the wailing, and was informed ‘the banshee,’ or the ghost woman,
who never fails to announce the death of an O’Donnell.

“Years later, when in the extreme West of England, my wife and I were
awakened one night by a terrible wail, which sounded just outside our
door. Beginning in a low key, it rose and rose, until it ended in a
shrill scream, that in time died away in a horrible groan. The idea of
the banshee at once flashed through my mind, for I felt none other but
a banshee could have made such a sound.

“Still, to satisfy my wife, I jumped out of bed and went on to the
landing; all was dark and silent, and outside their bedrooms were
assembled the rest of the household, terrified, and eager to have
an explanation of what had happened. We searched the whole house
and the waste land outside, but there was nothing which could in
any way account for the noise, and in the morning I received news
of the death of someone very closely related to me.... Whilst some
writers are inclined to treat the subject jocularly, and attribute
the banshee either to obviously absurd physical causes, or to the
abnormally imaginative powers they insist are the birthright of all
Irishmen, others dive into the pseudo-profound compilations of modern
Theosophy, and reappear with the pronouncement that banshees are not
spirits at all—not entities hailing from the superphysical world—but
mere thought germs, created by some remote ancestor of a clan, and
wafted down from one generation to another of his descendants, an
idea as nonsensical as it is extravagant, and which will not for an
instant hold water when looked into by those who have had a bona-fide
experience of the banshee or any other ghostly phenomenon. Indeed,
it is only the latter who are capable of making observations of any
value on such a subject, and all effort to describe or account for the
superphysical by those who have never experienced it, no matter whether
those efforts are made by theosophical savants, professional mediums
or scientific experts, are, in my opinion, weightless, colourless and
futile.

“A geologist may describe the hydrosphere, and an astronomer the moon,
and their descriptions may be swallowed with tolerable composure and
assurance, because we know that the laws of similarity and analogy,
when applied to the physical, generally hold good; but no scientist
can teach us anything about spiritual phenomena, because such things
are actually without the realm of science, just as the game of marbles
is entirely without the province of theology. It is our sensations,
and our sensations _only_, that can guide and instruct us when dealing
with the superphysical. I have heard the dying screams of a woman
murdered beneath my window; I have heard on hill and plain the cries of
coyottes, panthers, jackals and hyenas; and I have many times listened
to the dismal hooting of night birds, when riding alone through the
seclusion of giant forests; but there is something in the banshee’s
cry that differs from all these, that fills one with a fear and awe,
far—immeasurably far—beyond that produced by a sound which is merely
physical. Imagine then what it is to be haunted all one’s life by such
a grim harbinger of woe, to have it ever trailing in one’s wake, always
ready and, maybe, eager to make itself heard the moment it detects, by
its extraordinary and unhuman powers, the advent of death. One curious
idiosyncrasy of the banshee is that it never manifests itself to the
person whose death it is prognosticating. Other people may see or hear
it, but the doomed one never, so that when every one present is aware
of it but one, the fate of that one may be regarded as pretty well
certain.

“And now once again, whence comes the banshee? From heaven or from
hell? What is it? It is impossible to say; at the most one can
only speculate. Some banshees appear to be mournful only; others
unquestionably malevolent; and whereas some very closely resemble a
woman, even though of a type long passed away, others, again, differ so
much from our conception of any human being, that we can only imagine
them to be spirits that never have been human, that belong to a genus
wholly separate and distinct from the human genus, and that have only
been brought into contact with this material plane through the medium
of certain magical or spiritual rites practised by the Milesians, but
for some unknown reason discontinued by their descendants. This appears
to me quite a possible explanation of the origin of the banshee.

“One realizes, when dabbling in spiritualism to-day, one of the
greatest dangers incurred is that of attracting to one certain
undesirable, mischievous, and malignant spirits—call them elementals
if you will—which, when so attracted, stick to one like the proverbial
leech. And what happens to-day may very well have happened thousands
of years ago; in all probability, the Unknown never changes; its ways
and habits may be as constant as those of Nature, guided by laws and
principles which may at times vary, but which, nevertheless, undergo no
material alteration. The superphysical, attracted to the ancients as it
is attracted to us to-day, would adhere to them as it now adheres to
us. I cannot surmise more.

“Supposing then that this theory accounts for the one class of banshee,
what accounts for the other—the other that so nearly tallies with the
physical? Are the latter actual phantoms of the dead; of those that
died some unnatural death, and have been earth-bound and clan-bound
ever since? Maybe they are. Maybe they are the spirits of women,
prehistoric or otherwise, who were either suicides or were murdered,
or who themselves committed some very heinous offence; and they haunt
the clan to which they owed their unhappy ending; or, in the event of
themselves being the malefactors, the clan to which they belonged. From
all this we can conclude that, whilst the origin and constitution of
banshees vary, their mission is always the same—they are solely the
prognosticators of misfortune. A sorry possession for anyone; and yet,
how truly in accord with the nature of the country—with its general
air of discontent and barrenness, with its rain-sodden soil and gloomy
atmosphere—as an unkind critic might say, could anyone imagine the
presence of cheerful spirits under such conditions?

“But the banshee has the one admirable trait which the average
Englishman obstinately refuses to recognize in the material Irish—the
trait of loyalty and constancy. It never forsakes the object of its
attachment, but clings to it in all its vicissitudes and peregrinations
with a loyalty and persistency that is unmatchable. It is thoroughly
Irish, essentially Irish; the one thing, apart from disposition and
character, that has remained exclusively Irish through long centuries
of robbery and oppression; and which, in spite of assertions to the
contrary, never has been, nor ever will be shared by other than the
genuine clansman.

“The banshee is most fastidious in its tastes—it will have none of
the pseudo-celt; none of the individual who, possessing an absolutely
English name, and coming entirely of English forefathers, terms himself
Irish merely because his ancestors happen to have settled in Ireland.
That is nothing like exact enough for the banshee. Others may talk
of it and write of it, but they can never honestly claim it; for
the banshee belongs wholly and exclusively to the bona-fide O’s and
Macs—and them, and them only, will it never cease to haunt so long as
there is one of them left.”

My last experience with a ghost in Dublin took place just after I had
been medically examined for the R.I.C., and to my intense grief had
been rejected, owing to varicose veins, which the examining doctor told
me were of a far too complicated nature to permit of an operation;
consequently, although I had been “cramming” for two years, and my
prospects of getting through the literary examination were deemed
extremely fair, it was futile to go up for it, as all chance of my ever
being in the R.I.C. was now at an end.

On the night of my failure to pass the medical I had gone to bed early,
as I had a splitting headache, and, after vain efforts, had at length
succeeded in falling asleep. I awoke just in time to hear a clock from
somewhere in the downstairs premises of the house—I was then lodging
in Lower Merrion Street—strike two, and almost immediately afterwards
there came a loud laugh, just over my face, and so near to me that I
seemed to feel the breath of the laughter fan my nostrils. Nothing I
have ever heard before, or have ever heard since, was so repulsive as
that laugh—it was the very incarnation of jeering, jibing mockery;
of undying, inveterate hate. I felt that nothing but a spirit of
unadulterated evil could have made such a noise, and that it had come
to gloat over my misfortunes—to let me know how greatly it rejoiced
at the cruel blow I had suffered. I naturally associated it with the
ghost that had tried to strangle me, and my heart turned sick within
me at the thought that such a horrible species of phantasm was still
hovering near me. Should I ever be free from it? I was not quite so
frightened, however, as I had been on the occasion of its visit to me
in the house near the Waterloo Road, and determining to prevent myself
from falling into that kind of paralytic condition again, in which all
my muscles and faculties had remained alike spell-bound and useless, I
sat up. The room was in pitch darkness, and everything was breathlessly
still. I waited in this posture for some seconds, my heart beating
like a sledge-hammer, and then, deriving assurance from the fact that
nothing happened, I got out of bed and struck a light. The door was
locked on the inside, and there was nothing in hiding that could in
any way account for the noise. I went to the window, and, lifting it
gently, peered out into the street. There was no moon, but many stars
and lamp-lights enabled me to see that the street was absolutely
empty—not even a policeman was in sight. I leaned far out, and from
immediately beneath me, although no one was visible, there suddenly
commenced the sound of running footsteps. Ringing out loud and clear,
and accompanied by a queer familiar clicking, they seemed to follow
the direction of the street towards Ely Place. I wanted to get back to
bed, for I was lightly clad, and the air was cool and penetrating, but
something compelled me to keep on listening, and so I remained with my
neck craned over the window-sill, till the steps gradually grew fainter
and fainter, and suddenly ceased altogether. And with their termination
this early period of my ghostly experiences in Dublin terminated, too.




CHAPTER III

SOME STRANGE CASES IN SCOTLAND


I returned to England in that “tub-like” old relic of mid-Victorian
steamboats, “The Argo”—long since defunct, but which for many years
sailed to and from Dublin and Bristol with as many passengers and
cattle as could be crammed, with any degree of safety, into her dingy
and clumsy-looking hulk. I remember the passage well, for two of my
fellow students were on board, and we spent nearly all the time on
deck, telling ghost tales, and earnestly discussing the possibility
of a future life. In the end we made a solemn compact, whereby it was
agreed that the one who died first would try his level best to give
some kind of spirit demonstration to the other two. Both my friends
died within a few years of that date, and within three weeks of each
other. The one, who had a commission in a cavalry regiment, was killed
at the Battle of Omdurman, and the other, who having followed in the
footsteps of his distinguished father, had become a novelist of great
promise, was kicked to death by a horse. The day after the death of
the former, as I was busily engaged writing the first chapter of my
novel, “For Satan’s Sake,” a portion of the mantel-piece in the room in
which I was working suddenly fell with a loud crash on to the grate. Of
course, the incident may not have had anything to do with the death of
my friend, but it was nevertheless remarkable, as previously nothing
in the nature of a flaw had been noticeable in the condition of the
mantel-piece. My other friend died—as I subsequently learned, i.e.,
after the incident I am about to narrate had occurred—at ten o’clock
one Friday morning, and that afternoon as I was changing for football,
the grandfather clock on the landing outside my bedroom suddenly struck
ten. I went to look, and the hands pointed to three. There had been
nothing amiss with the striking before, and there was nothing amiss
with the striking after.

These were the only phenomena I experienced at the time these two
friends of mine died.

       *       *       *       *       *

On arriving at Bristol, I spent some weeks in the West of England and
then journeyed north to Scotland. My original intention had been to
spend a few weeks with an old Clifton friend of mine, whose father
owned an estate near Inverary; but, on arriving at Glasgow, I heard of
such a promising case of haunting in that city, that, unable to resist
the temptation of investigating it, I decided to postpone my journey
west. The case, as outlined to me in the first instance, was this:—

A Glasgow solicitor, named James McKaye, desirous of taking a house
close to his office, went one morning to look at one in Duke Street.
He went there alone, and, carefully closing the front door behind him,
proceeded to wander from room to room, beginning with the basement.

As he was going upstairs to the first floor, he suddenly heard
footsteps following him. He turned sharply round; there was no one
there. Thinking this was odd, but attributing it to the acoustic
properties of the walls, he continued his ascent. Having arrived on the
first landing, he went into one of the rooms. The steps followed him.
A brilliant idea then occurred to him—he stamped his foot. There was
no echo. He turned round and went into the next room, and the steps
once again accompanied him. Then he grew frightened. It was broad
daylight, the sun was shining brilliantly and the birds were singing;
but there was something in this house that jarred on him horribly—a
something that was completely out of humour with the golden sunbeams
and the cheerful chirping of the sparrows. The day was hot, and the
sun was pouring in through the blindless windows; but in spite of this
the rooms were icy, and he was deliberating whether it was worth while
to explore the house further, when he caught sight of a shadow on the
wall. It was not his own shadow. It was that of a man with his arms
stretched out horizontally on either side of him, and whereas the right
arm was complete in every detail, the left had no hand. James McKaye
now yielded to an ungovernable terror and rushed frantically out of the
house.

One would naturally think that after all this McKaye would have vowed
never to go near the place again. Nothing of the sort. The house
fascinated him. He could not get it out of his mind; he even dreamed
of it; dreamed of it in connection with some mystery that he must
solve—that he alone could solve. Besides, there was not another house
in the town so conveniently situated, nor so cheap. Consequently, he
took it, and within a fortnight had moved in with all his family and
household goods. For the first few weeks everything went swimmingly,
and McKaye, who was shrewd, even for a Scot, congratulated himself upon
having made such an excellent bargain.

Then occurred an incident which recalled sharply the day he had first
seen the place. He was writing some letters one morning in his study,
when the nurse-maid entered, white and agitated. “Oh, do come to the
nursery, sir,” she implored; “the children are playing with something
that looks like a dog, and yet isn’t one. I don’t know what it is!” And
she burst out crying.

“You’re mad,” McKaye said sharply and, springing to his feet, he ran
upstairs.

On reaching the nursery, the blurred outline of something like a huge
dog or wolf came out of the half-open door, and raced past him, so
close that he distinctly felt it brush against his clothes.

Where it went he could not say; he was thinking of the children, and
did not stop to look. Oddly enough, the children were not a bit afraid;
on the contrary, they were pleased and curious. “What a strange doggy
it was, Daddy!” they cried; “it never wagged its tail, like other
doggies, and whenever we tried to stroke it, it slipped away from
us—we never touched it once.”

Sorely puzzled, McKaye told his wife, and the two decided that if
anything further happened, they must leave the house.

That night McKaye happened to sit up rather late; at last he got up,
and was about to turn off the gas, when he felt his upstretched hand
suddenly caught hold of by something large and soft, that did not seem
to have any fingers. He was so frightened that he screamed; whereupon
his hand was instantly released, and there was a loud crash overhead.
Thinking something had happened to his wife, he rushed upstairs,
and found her sitting up in bed and talking in her sleep. She was
apparently addressing a black, shadowy figure that was crouching on the
floor, opposite her. As McKaye approached, the thing moved towards the
wall, and vanished.

Mrs. McKaye then awoke, and begged her husband to take her out of the
house at once, as she had dreamed most vividly that an appalling murder
had been committed there, and that the murderer had come out of the
room with outstretched hands, asking her to look at them. McKaye, who
had had quite enough of it, too, promised to do as she wished, and
before another twenty-four hours had passed the house was once again
empty.

These were the bare facts of the case, and as they were given me by one
of his clients, I had no difficulty in obtaining an interview with Mr.
McKaye, who, I was told, still had the keys of the house. It was not,
however, so easy to obtain consent to spend a night on the premises,
and he would only permit me to do so on the condition that he himself
accompanied me, and that I promised to keep the visit a profound secret.

The evening chosen for our enterprise proved ever memorable.

The rain came down in torrents, and the wind—a veritable tornado—made
any attempt to hold up an umbrella utterly impossible. Indeed, it
was as much as I could do to hold up myself, whilst, to add to my
discomfort, at almost every step I plunged ankle-deep in icy cold
puddles. At length, drenched to the skin, I arrived at the house.

McKaye was standing on the doorstep, swearing furiously. He could not,
so he said, find the key. However, he produced it now, and we were soon
standing inside, shaking the water from our clothes. Those were the
days before pocket flashlights had become general, and we had to be
content with candles.

We each lighted one, and at once commenced to search the premises to
make sure no one was in hiding.

The house, as far as I can recollect, consisted of four storeys and
a basement. None of the rooms were very large; the wall-papers were
hideous, and I remember thanking my stars that I was not called upon to
live in such hopelessly inartistic quarters. McKaye asked me if I could
detect anything peculiar in the atmosphere, but I could only detect
extreme mustiness, and told him so. I fancied he seemed very fidgety
and ill at ease; however, as he was a much older man than myself, and
had some experience of the house, I felt perfectly safe with him. After
we had been in all the rooms, we descended to the ground floor, and
commenced our vigil on the staircase leading from the hall to the first
landing.

“I think we stand more chance of seeing something here than anywhere
else,” McKaye said; “and in the case of anything very alarming
happening, we are close to the front door.”

[Illustration: “We both looked in the direction he indicated”]

He spoke only half in fun and I observed that his fingers twitched a
good deal and that his eyes were never at rest.

“Oughtn’t we to put out the candles?” I said. “Ghosts surely materialise
much more readily in the dark.” But he would not hear of it. All his
experiences, he said, had taken place in the light, and he believed
only spoof ghosts at séances required the opposite conditions. Then he
regaled me once more with all that had happened during his occupation
of the house. He was still telling me, when there came a loud rat-rat
at the door.

“That’s a policeman,” he said; “he must have seen our light.” He spoke
truly, for, when we opened the door, a burly figure in helmet and cape
stood on the step and flashed his dripping bull’s-eye in our faces. On
hearing McKaye’s name the constable was instantly appeased, and, when
we mentioned ghosts, he laughed long and loud. “Well, gentlemen,” he
said, “you won’t never be alarmed by a happarition so long as you have
that dog with you. I bet he would scare away any number of ghosts, and
burglars, too. If I may be so bold as to ask, what breed do you call
him? I’ve never seen anything quite like him before,” and he waved his
lamp towards the stairs. We both looked in the direction he indicated,
and there, half way up the stairs, with its face apparently turned
towards us, was the black, shadowy outline of some shaggy creature,
which to me looked not so much like a dog as a bear. It remained
stationary for a moment or so, and then, retreating backwards, seemed
to disappear into the wall.

“Well, gentlemen, good-night,” the policeman said, lowering his lamp,
“it’s time I was going.” He turned on his heel, and was walking off,
when McKaye called him back.

“Wait a moment, constable,” he said, “and we’ll come with you.”

He cast a swiftly furtive glance around him as he spoke, then, blowing
out the lights, he caught me by the arm and dragged me away.

“But the dog, sir,” the policeman said, as the front door closed behind
us with a bang; “it ain’t come out!”

“And it never will,” McKaye responded grimly. “You have seen the ghost,
constable, or at least one of them.”

I have never had an opportunity of visiting the house again, but for
aught I know to the contrary, it still stands there, and is still
haunted.

From Glasgow I went on to Inverary, where I had the most delightful
time, fishing and shooting.

I then went to Perth, and there, quite by chance, met a Mr. and Mrs.
Rowlandson, who informed me that they were just quitting a badly
haunted house on the outskirts of the town. The name of the house
was “Bocarthe.” It was their own, and had only been built a year,
but they could not possibly remain in it, they told me, owing to the
perpetual disturbance to which they were subjected. They were just
beginning a detailed description of the manifestations, when I begged
them to desist. I would like, I explained, with their permission, to
investigate the case, and I thought it would be better to do so without
knowing the nature of the hauntings, as in these circumstances—should
my experience happen to tally with theirs—there could be no question
either of suggestion or of imagination.

I had resolved to conduct all my investigations with an absolutely
open mind, and I intended, when once I had satisfied myself that
the phenomena were objective, to try and alight upon some code
whereby I could communicate with them, and learn from them something
certain—something definite, at all events, about the other world. To
what extent I have succeeded I shall make it the purpose of this volume
to reveal.

But to continue: “What strikes us as so extraordinary about the whole
thing,” the Rowlandsons said, “is that a new house, with absolutely no
history attached to it, for we were the first people who ever inhabited
it, and we can assure you,” they added laughingly, “there were no
murders or suicides there during our occupancy, should be haunted. Our
neighbours declare that we must have brought the ghost with us.”

I told them I thought it quite possible that such might be the case,
and narrated to them my experiences in Dublin. They appeared to be
greatly interested; and were, moreover, quite willing, provided I
promised them not to discuss the matter too openly, as they wanted to
let the house, that I should spend a few nights at “Bocarthe.” They
were, in fact, rather anxious to know if anything unusual still took
place there. Thinking, perhaps, that I might not like to go alone, they
gave me an introduction to a young friend of theirs, Dr. Swinton, who,
they thought, might be prevailed upon to accompany me; and, before I
left them, all the preliminaries relating to my visit to “Bocarthe”
were satisfactorily arranged.

That same day the Rowlandsons went to Edinburgh, where they told me
they intended living, and the following day at noon I wended my way
to the house they had vacated. As there was no story connected with
“Bocarthe,” I set to work to make enquiries about the ground on which
it stood, and instead of learning too little, I learned too much. An
old minister, who looked fully eighty, was sure that the ground in
question, until it was built upon quite recently, had been grazing
land ever since he was a boy, and that it had never witnessed anything
more extraordinary than the occasional death of a sheep or a cow that
had been struck by lightning. An equally aged and equally positive
postmistress declared that the ground had never been anything better
than waste land, where, amid rubbish heaps galore, all the dogs in the
parish might have been seen scratching and fighting over bones. Another
person remembered a pond being there, and another a nursery garden;
but from no one could I extract the slightest hint as to anything that
could in any way account for the haunting.

When I entered the house, I thought I had seldom seen such a cheerful
one: the rooms were light and lofty, and about them all there was an
air of geniality, that hitherto, at all events, I had never dreamed of
associating with ghosts.

Dr. Swinton joined me in the evening, but although we sat up till long
after dawn, we neither saw nor heard anything we could not account for
by natural causes. We repeated the process for two more nights, and
then, feeling that we had given the house a fair trial, we concluded it
was either no longer haunted, or that the hauntings were periodical,
and might not occur again for years. I wrote to Mr. Rowlandson, upon
returning the keys of the house, and, in reply, received the following
letter from him:—

      No. —, C—— Crescent,
             Edinburgh.
            November 8th, 1893.

Dear Mr. O’Donnell,

  Many thanks for the keys. No wonder you did not see our ghost! It
  is here, and we are having just the same experiences in this house
  as we had in “Bocarthe.” If you would care to stay a few nights
  with us, on the chance of seeing the ghost, we shall be delighted
  to put you up.

         Yours, etc.,
      ROBERT ROWLANDSON.

I was obliged to return home very shortly, in order to decide
definitely and speedily what I intended to do for a living; but
although I knew I had little or no time to waste, I could not resist
the Rowlandsons’ kind invitation to try and see their ghost, and
accordingly accepted.

They lived in C—— Crescent. When I arrived there, I found the entire
household in a panic, the ghost having appeared to one and all during
the previous night.

“It was so terrible,” Mrs. Rowlandson said, “that I can’t bear even
to think of it, and shall certainly never forget it. One of the maids
fainted, and was so ill afterwards, we were obliged to have the doctor,
and all have given notice to leave.”

“Did nothing of the sort happen before you went to ‘Bocarthe’?” I
ventured to ask.

“No,” Mr. Rowlandson replied, “not a thing. We were then sceptics where
ghosts were concerned, but we’re certainly not sceptical now.”

“Do you think it possible,” I said, “that the ghost is attached to some
piece of old furniture? I have read of such cases.”

Mr. Rowlandson shook his head.

“No,” he said, “we have no old furniture, all our furniture is modern
and new; at least, it was new when we came to ‘Bocarthe.’”

“Then, if the ghost is neither attached to the house, nor to the
ground, nor to the furniture, it must surely be attached to some
person,” I remarked. “I have read that one of the dangers of attending
Spiritualistic Séances is that spirits occasionally attach themselves
to people, and can only be got rid of with great difficulty. I suppose
no one in the house has gone in for Spiritualism?”

“I can safely say I haven’t,” Mr. Rowlandson laughed; “and you haven’t,
either, Maud, have you?” he said, looking at his wife.

Mrs. Rowlandson flushed.

“The only Spiritualist I ever knew,” she stammered, “was—you know,
dear, whom I mean——”

Mr. Rowlandson raised his eyebrows and stared at her in astonishment.

“I don’t,” he said. “Who?”

“Ernest Dekon!”

“Dekon!” Mr. Rowlandson ejaculated. “Dekon! Why, of course, I might
have guessed Spiritualism was in his line. Some years ago, Mr.
O’Donnell,” he went on, turning to me, “my wife met this Mr. Dekon at
a ball given by a mutual friend, and from that time, up to his death,
he persecuted her with his undesirable attentions. I never knew anyone
so persistent.”

“He resented your marriage, of course,” I remarked.

“Resented it!” Mr. Rowlandson responded; “I should rather think he did,
though to everyone’s surprise he came to it. Ye Gods! I shall never
forget the expression on his face, as we caught sight of him in the
vestibule of the church. Talk about Satan! Satan never looked half as
evil.”

“And Mr. Dekon was a Spiritualist!” I said.

“He was very keen on séances,” Mrs. Rowlandson interposed. “Most keen,
and was at one time always trying to persuade me to go to one with him.”

“I never knew that,” Mr. Rowlandson exclaimed.

“Perhaps not,” his wife said demurely. “You see, you don’t know
everything. However, I never went.”

“And how did he die?” I ventured.

“Suicide,” Mr. Rowlandson said. “He shot himself, and was dastardly
enough to leave a note behind him, pinned to the toilet-cover of
his dressing-table, stating that his death was entirely due to the
heartless conduct of my wife.”

“When was that, Mr. Rowlandson?” I asked.

“Let me see,” Mr. Rowlandson soliloquised. “We have been married not
quite eighteen months. About fifteen months ago—shortly before we came
to ‘Bocarthe.’”

“I know what’s in your mind,” Mrs. Rowlandson observed. “You think that
very possibly it is the spirit of Ernest Dekon that is troubling us. Do
you really think it could be?”

“From what you have told me,” I said, “I should say that it is more
than likely. The mere fact of his having been a Spiritualist would
mean that he had, in some measure, got in touch with the Unknown; so
that on passing over with his mind solely concentrated on revenge, he
would, in all probability, speedily become closer acquainted with those
spirits whom he had known here—not a very high class, but apparently
the only class that a séance can attract—and these would undoubtedly
aid him in his attempt to come back and annoy you.”

Mrs. Rowlandson gave vent to an exclamation of dismay. “I have always
felt,” she said, “that there might be some mysterious connection
between Ernest Dekon and the dreadful thing we have seen.”

“Of course,” I added, “that is only a suggestion on my part. When does
the phenomenon usually appear?”

“At all times, and when we least expect it,” Mrs. Rowlandson said. “For
example, if I am going upstairs alone, it either springs out at me or
peers down at me from over the banisters. Or, again, it rouses us in
the middle of the night by rocking our bed! Always some alarming trick
of that kind.”

“Then you could hardly expect it to manifest itself if we all sat here
in the dark?”

“Hardly.”

“You haven’t a photograph of Mr. Dekon, I suppose?” I hazarded.

“A photograph of that scoundrel,” Mr. Rowlandson cried. “If he had
given her one, it wouldn’t have remained long in her possession, I can
assure you.”

“Well, he never did,” Mrs. Rowlandson said, forcing a smile, “but I can
describe him.”

“I don’t know whether that will do much good,” I observed. “Because
I understand that if one of the lower order of earthbounds, usually
called Elementals, wanted to ‘fool’ us, it could easily impersonate
him. Dekon’s phantom would not, of necessity, be very like his material
body; it would depend entirely on how much of the animal there was in
him; if a great deal, then one might expect to see a creature with
a pig’s, or some other kind of beast’s, head, with only a slight
facial resemblance to Dekon. Can you describe his hands? Because I
believe spirits that have lost all other resemblance with the physical
body might be identified by some peculiarity in the formation of the
fingers.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Rowlandson said; “I do remember his hands distinctly. They
were so ugly! They were long, and red, and the tips were club-shaped; I
am sure I should recognise them anywhere.”

This conversation took place in the interval between tea and dinner.
After dinner we sat in the drawing-room, discussing plans for the
night, and finally came to the conclusion that when bed-time came we
should retire to our respective rooms, and sit there in the dark,
waiting and watching for whatever might happen. It was furthermore
agreed that directly anyone saw or heard anything, they should at once
summon the others.

We sat up rather late, and it was close on midnight before Mrs.
Rowlandson rose, and we all—there were two guests besides myself,
a Colonel and Mrs. Rushworth—took our candlesticks, and followed
her upstairs. We had mounted the first flight, and had turned the
bend leading to the second—the house seemed all stairs—when Mrs.
Rowlandson halted, and, looking back at us, said, “Hush! Do you hear
anything?”

We stood still and listened. There was a thump, that apparently came
from a room just at the top of the stairs—then another—and then a
very curious sound, as if something was bounding backwards and forwards
over bare boards with its feet tied together. At a signal from Mr.
Rowlandson, we immediately blew out our lights. A church clock solemnly
struck twelve. We heard it very distinctly, as the Rowlandsons, being
enthusiasts for fresh air, kept every window in the house wide open.
The reverberation of the final stroke had hardly ceased when a loud
gasp from someone in front of me sent a chilly feeling down my spine.

At the same moment the darkness ahead of us was dissipated by a faint,
luminous glow. As I watched, the glow speedily intensified, and
suddenly took the shape of a cylindrical column of six or seven feet
in height, and this in turn developed with startling abruptness into
the form of something so shockingly grotesque and bestial that I was
rendered speechless.

It is extremely difficult to give a very accurate description of it,
because, like the generality of occult phenomena I have experienced
in haunted houses, it was a baffling mixture of the distinct and yet
vague, entirely without substance, and apparently wholly constituted
of vibrating light that varied each second in tone and intensity. I
can only say that the impression I derived was that of a very gross or
monstrous man.

The head, ill-defined on the crown and sides, appeared to be abnormally
high and long, and to be covered with a tangled mass of coarse,
tow- hair; the nose seemed hooked, the mouth cruel, the
eyes leering. The general expression on the face was one of intense
antagonism. The body of the thing was grey and nude, very like the
trunk of a silver beech, the arms long and knotted, the hands huge, the
fingers red and club-shaped. The latter corresponded exactly with Mrs.
Rowlandson’s description.

This hideous, baleful apparition was the spirit of animal man,
the symbolical representation of all carnal lusts—it was Ernest
Dekon—soulless.

But although this spirit was without substance, it was composed of
complex forces—forces both physical and mental. It could shut and
open doors, move furniture, rap and make sundry other noises, and it
could also convey the sensation of intense cold, and the feeling of the
most abject fear. I now found myself wondering if it possessed other
properties: Was it sensible? Could it communicate in any way?

I was thus deliberating, when the figure seemed to move forward; then
someone shrieked. Mr. Rowlandson struck a light, and simultaneously
the apparition vanished. The effect it had had on us all was novel
and striking—we were all more or less demoralized; and yet no two
of us had seen the ghost the same—and some, Mr. Rowlandson and Mrs.
Rushworth, had not seen it at all.

We went back again into the drawing-room and discussed it. Mrs.
Rowlandson was the first to speak. She, too, had been particularly
impressed by the hands, and she was sure they were the hands of Ernest
Dekon.

“I can say nothing about the face,” she cried, “as it did not appear to
me, but having seen the hands, I am firmly convinced that the ghost is
Ernest Dekon, and that it is Ernest Dekon who is tormenting us. Can’t
any of you think of a plan to get rid of him?”

“Cremation is the only thing I can think of!” cried Colonel Rushworth,
who had hitherto been silent. “That is the means employed, I believe,
by the hill tribes in Northern India. When a spirit—a spirit they can
identify—begins to haunt a place, they dig up the body and burn it,
and they say that as soon as the last bone is consumed the haunting
ceases. They have a theory that phantoms of dead people and animals can
materialise as long as some remnant of their physical body remains.
Where did this Ernest Dekon die?”

“In Africa,” Mr. Rowlandson said.

“That’s capital! If we can find the cemetery, there ought to be no
difficulty in getting at the body. The officials are, as a rule, open
to bribery. Anyhow, we might try it as an experiment.”

I left Edinburgh next day, but I heard some months later from Mr.
Rowlandson.

“You may recollect Colonel Rushworth’s suggestion,” he wrote. “Well,
the hauntings have ceased. We are shortly returning to ‘Bocarthe’!”

From this I gathered that an attempt to exhume and cremate Ernest
Dekon’s body had been made, and had proved successful.




CHAPTER IV

I TRAVEL ACROSS THE UNITED STATES, AND DO SOME GHOST HUNTING IN SAN
FRANCISCO


Upon leaving Scotland I seriously considered my future, and at length
decided to go to Oregon and fruit farm. Though the expedition, through
no fault of my own, proved a failure, and I had to return to England
within a comparatively short time, I managed, whilst in America, to
see and learn a good deal. Apart from visiting Crater Lake, which in
those days was one of the wildest spots imaginable, far out of the
beat of any but the most adventurous tourist, and seeing the Rogue
River Indians in their native element, I spent several weeks in the big
cities, and when in San Francisco obtained the services of a guide,
and did a nightly tour of China Town, and several of the lesser known
subterranean haunts of that city.

It was in San Francisco that I had my first experience with an American
ghost. I had been out tramping all day along the southern side of
the bay, and it was close on midnight before I got back to the city,
feeling thoroughly done up and very footsore. The last chime of twelve
o’clock sounded, as I swung wearily round 117th Street into a narrow
thoroughfare leading to the obscure quarter of the town in which my
finances forced me to live. As I came within sight of the end house
of a block of low old-fashioned buildings, I received something of a
shock. I had passed by it that morning and had noticed that it was to
let. I was quite sure of this, because there was something about the
house that had especially attracted my attention. I was struck with its
utter loneliness, its air of past grandeur—so oddly at variance with
the modern and mediocre buildings around it—and, peeping in at the
windows, I had taken stock of its big oak-panelled apartments devoid of
furniture and bestrewn with dust and cobwebs.

Now, to my astonishment, I perceived a bright glow—a kind of
phosphorescent light—emanating from one of the rooms on the ground
floor. I approached nearer, and, as I leaned against the verandah and
peered in, it suddenly seemed to me that the room was no longer empty,
but richly carpetted and full of ponderous, old-fashioned furniture.
I also seemed to see in the centre of the room a long table covered
with a snowy cloth, on which were arranged, in rich profusion, many
handsome silver dishes containing a selection of the choicest food. I
was dumbfounded. Twelve hours ago there was not a soul to be seen about
the house nor a particle of furniture in it, and now!—well, it looked
to me as if it never, never had been empty.

Whilst I was thus meditating, my face glued to the window, I thought
that a sudden blaze illuminated the room, and by degrees I became
conscious of the glare of countless candles, some of the candelabra
branching from the walls, and others—of chased silver—standing on
the table. I then saw the door at the far end of the apartment open,
and a young and charming girl, dressed à la mode de Marie Antoinette,
her gown high-waisted and her hair poudré, hurriedly enter. She gave
a quick glance at the table, and then, advancing to the fireplace,
where, for the first time, I perceived the cheery glow of a huge log of
wood, gazed at herself in a large, richly-framed mirror. The reflection
evidently pleased her, for she turned round all smiles; and then her
eyes fell on the window, and on me.

In an instance her countenance changed. Putting a finger to her lips
with a great air of mystery, she beckoned to me to come in. I started
back in confusion. Again she beckoned, and with such pretty pleading in
her eyes that, despite my travel-stained clothes, I yielded. I walked
to the front door; she opened it, and in hushed tones, in which I
detected a slight French accent, she bade me welcome.

“We are having a fancy-dress dance,” she said, “but none of the guests
have as yet arrived, and I want you to come into the ball-room while I
rehearse some of the dance music.”

She led the way across a big, deserted and strangely silent hall, up
a flight of thickly-carpeted stairs, along a dimly lighted corridor,
peopled with nothing but odd shadows, to which I could see no material
counterparts, and into a room obviously prepared for a ball.

“There is no one about but you and I,” she said laughingly. “Only we
two; but someone else will arrive soon. It’s not half-past twelve, is
it?”

“No,” I said; “twenty past.”

“Ten more minutes!” She sighed deeply, and her expression, which up
to now had been one of gay mischief, changed to one of immeasurable
sadness. Then she nodded, suddenly burst out laughing, and casting the
most bewitching look at me from out her long, thickly lashed blue-grey
eyes, sat down at the piano and began to play a Strauss waltz.

Fascinated though I was by her extreme archness and beauty, I could
not stifle the thousand and one uncomfortable thoughts that speedily
crowded into my mind.

Who was this strangely friendly and peculiarly solitary girl? Surely
someone must have helped her prepare the house and supper. Where were
they? Besides, she couldn’t possibly live in that house alone.

And yet, apart from the music—which seemed to reverberate through
every stick and stone of the building—there was no other sound. I
might have been alone with her on some desert island in the far Pacific.

A feeling of intense but wholly unaccountable fear gradually crept over
me.

“It is close on the half hour,” she suddenly whispered. “Listen!”

She paused for a moment, and I heard a door from somewhere in the
lower part of the house open and shut. Then came the sound of muffled
footsteps, stealthily feeling their way upstairs. Up and up they came,
till they arrived outside the door of the room we were in. There they
stopped, and I instinctively felt that their owner was listening.

Presently the girl recommenced playing, and I saw the door-handle
began to turn. Slowly, very slowly, the door then opened, and on the
floor of the room there appeared a black shadow—vague, indefinite and
grotesque. The girl looked over her shoulder at it, and I caught an
expression in her eyes that appalled me. Turning to the piano again,
she played frantically, and the faster her fingers flew, the nearer
crept that shadow.

Suddenly it seemed to shoot right forward, there was a wild scream of
terror, a terrific crash, and all was in absolute darkness.

I groped my way frantically towards the door. Something—I could not
define what—came into violent collision with me; I staggered back half
stunned; and, when my brain cleared, I found myself standing in the
street, weak with exhaustion, and—hatless.

I visited the house the next day, when the sun was shining brightly
and there were plenty of people about. It was as I had first seen it,
untenanted and unfurnished.

I must then have dreamed the whole thing. And what more likely! I was
excessively tired at the time, so tired that I felt I could hardly
crawl home—and without a doubt I had dropped off to sleep resting
against the verandah.

Just out of curiosity, however, I determined to find out if the
interior of the house in any way resembled the interior I had seen in
my dream, and, with that object in view, I applied to Mr. C.——, the
owner, for permission to look over it, frankly telling him why I was
doing so. As he appeared to be interested, I described my dream to him
in detail, and he afterwards told me the following story:—

“About fifty years ago, a very rich French family occupied the house;
and at the coming of age of their daughter they gave a fancy-dress
ball. Among the guests was an Italian, who, being a rejected suitor of
the daughter’s, had not been invited. He appeared in some grotesque
and alarming costume, and when the dance was at its height suddenly
overturned a large oil lamp.

“In a moment the whole floor was ablaze; and before anyone could stop
him, he had seized the daughter of the house and hurled her into the
midst of the flaming mass. Both he and the girl were burned to death,
and the house, although it was thoroughly restored, has never let
since.”

Having concluded his story, Mr. C.—— said he would like to go with me
to the house, and accordingly we set out together.

Though my experience had been only a dream, the coincidence connected
with it, which only needed my identification of the scene to be
complete, was startling enough, and I grew more and more excited as we
neared our destination. When we arrived, Mr. C.—— insisted upon my
going first; and once inside, recognising every feature in the house,
I led him first to the room in which I had seen the supper-table laid,
and then upstairs to the ball-room, where, to my unspeakable surprise,
lying in the middle of the floor, I found my hat.

       *       *       *       *       *

What a strangely fascinating city was old San Francisco—that is
to say, San Francisco before the last great fire and earthquake!
Consisting of street upon street, terrace upon terrace of quaintly
irregular buildings, to me its atmosphere—as no other atmosphere ever
has been—was impregnated with the superphysical. I stayed for a few
days in a vast hotel in 117th Street, in which I was the only visitor.
I shrewdly suspect it was haunted, although I cannot truthfully say
that I ever saw a ghost there, and when I retired to bed up flight
after flight of stairs, and past dimly-lighted passages teeming with
doors—doors with nothing, nothing material at least, behind them—the
only sounds I heard were the hollow echoes of my own footsteps as I
went on ascending higher, higher, and higher.

Hearing, however, that I was interested in ghosts, the landlord of the
hotel introduced me one day to a Mr. Sweeney, who kept a drug store in
Market Street.

“The only experience I ever had with the Supernatural,” Mr. Sweeney
began, in answer to my interrogations, “took place in this very room.
Exactly twelve years ago I engaged the services of a young man called
Edward Marsdon. He was very amiable and capable, but highly-strung and
hypernormally sensitive. He had been with me about six months, when
he came into the parlour one evening with a face like a corpse. ‘I’ve
poisoned someone,’ he gasped. ‘Poisoned someone?’ I ejaculated. ‘Good
God, what do you mean?’ ‘What I say,’ he replied. ‘A young fellow
came into the store about an hour ago and handed me a prescription.
It was signed by Dr. Knelligan, of 111th Street. I made it up, as I
thought, all right, and gave it him. A few minutes ago, I found I
had put in salts of lemon instead of paregoric.’ ‘Are you sure?’ I
asked. ‘Certain!’ he said, ‘as the bottle of salts of lemon is on the
table in the laboratory with the stopper out. I must have used it in
mistake. The young man will die, if, indeed, he is not dead already,
and I am ruined for life.’ ‘We both are,’ I said tersely. ‘Ring up
Dr. Knelligan at once, and ask him for the young man’s address. When
you get it, drive round at once and see if you are in time.’ It was
of no use scolding him for carelessness—he was upset enough already,
and a ‘blowing up’ just then might, I thought, result in another
tragedy. The only thing to be done was to hope for the best. He rang
up Knelligan, got the address, drove round to it, and discovered that
the young man had just left. The landlady had no idea where he had
gone. To Marsdon this was the last straw. He came back in a state
of utter collapse, trembling all over as if he had ague, and, after
telling me what happened, he went upstairs and slammed his door. About
a quarter of an hour later, my wife, the servant, and I all heard
Marsdon, so we thought, come downstairs and go out. The servant then
went up to his room to make the bed, and hearing her scream out, I ran
upstairs, to find her standing in the middle of the floor, wringing her
hands, whilst Marsdon was sitting in a chair—dead! He had been dead
some minutes. That, Mr. O’Donnell, was the beginning of the strange
occurrences here. If it was not Marsdon whom we all heard go out, who
could it have been? There was no one in the house but we three, and the
body in the chair upstairs, so that it must have been Marsdon’s ghost.
Well, from that day on, we had no peace.

“Footsteps, which we all recognised as Marsdon’s, for he had a most
peculiar lumping kind of walk, trod up and down the stairs all hours
of the day and night, and frequently when I was in the laboratory
mixing medicines I was strongly conscious of some presence standing
close beside me and watching everything I did. One day my wife saw
him. She was going out, and wanting some money, she called to me. As
I did not answer, she went in search of me, and finding me, as she
thought, standing on the hearthrug of the parlour with my back to her,
she touched me on the shoulder. The next moment she discovered her
mistake. The person whom she had mistaken for me turned round, and she
found herself confronted with the white, scared countenance of Edward
Marsdon. She started back with a loud shriek, and Marsdon walked
out of the room, and apparently right through the servant who came
running in to see what was the matter. My wife asked the maid if she
had seen anything, and the latter said, ‘No, only a dark shadow seemed
to fall right across me, and just for a second or so I felt miserably
depressed.’ A week or so afterwards he was again seen; this time by my
wife and the maid. They met him on the stairs. He appeared to be under
the influence of some very painful emotion, and he passed them at a
great rate, and so near that they felt his clothes—apparently quite
material—brush against them. He disappeared in the laboratory, and
on their entering it immediately afterwards, there was no one there.
Something of this nature—either auditory or visual, or both—now
happened pretty well daily, until one morning a young man came to the
store to see me. ‘I am the young man,’ he said, ‘to whom your assistant
gave that unfortunate mixture. I have just returned to San Francisco,
and have heard all about it. The medicine was perfectly all right. I
drank it directly I left here, and it did me the world of good. There
was not even the suspicion of poison in it. Marsdon was labouring under
some extraordinary delusion. If only he had told my landlady about
it when he called and found I had gone, she could have given him the
glass I had drank out of, which doubtless contained some dregs of the
stuff—at any rate, a sufficient quantity for analysis. I am told there
are rumours afloat that his apparition has been seen several times
since he died; not that I believe in such things as ghosts.’

“‘Whether you believe in them or not,’ I said quietly, ‘it is a fact
Edward Marsdon has both been seen and heard.’ ‘Then I hope,’ he said,
‘my visit here to-day will put matters all right, and that his poor,
wandering spirit, learning that I am alive and well, will find rest,
and trouble you no more.’ He then bid me good-morning and walked
towards the door. ‘My God!’ he suddenly cried, coming to an abrupt
halt, ‘there he is!’ I looked, and as sure as I am sitting here, Mr.
O’Donnell, there was Edward Marsdon, just as I had known him in life,
standing on the pavement with his face glued to the window, peering
in at us. The expression in his eyes was one of infinite joy and
astonishment.

“I took a step or two towards him with the intention of speaking, when
he immediately vanished, and from that day to this the hauntings have
entirely ceased.”




CHAPTER V

A HAUNTED OFFICE IN DENVER


After leaving San Francisco, I visited Sacramento, where I bought a
pair of braces, suspenders as they call them there, that lasted me for
years. They were the very best half-dollar’s worth I ever had, and I
still have the remains of them stowed away in a big trunk amongst other
mementos of the long past.

I can’t imagine any city in America hotter than Sacramento in the
summer, or more unpleasantly cold in the winter, apart from which there
was nothing about the place that caused it to be very deeply impressed
on my memory, saving that I met a man in one of the streets one day who
was so exactly like an old Clifton College master called Tait that I
believed it was he, and accosted him accordingly.

The man gasped at me in amazement. “Why, Jupp,” he said, “how on earth
have you managed it. It’s only ten minutes since I left you eating
your dinner in the Eagle Hotel on the other side of the town. Have you
wings?”

The moment he spoke I knew he was not Tait, but it took me some time to
convince him I was not Jupp; and when he introduced me to the latter
half an hour or so later, I was not surprised, for I do not think
there could have been a more striking likeness to myself, even in my
own portrait.

The coincidence was all the more remarkable since there was at Clifton
College, contemporary with Tait, a master named Jupp, of whose cane I
had the most striking recollection. In appearance, however, the Clifton
Jupp was not in the least bit like me.

This was the only adventure of note, if one may so designate it, I
had during this visit to Sacramento. I went on from there to Denver,
where I met one or two relatives of friends of mine in England, and
did a little work as a “Free Lance” journalist. It was summer when I
had last stayed in Denver, and then the intense heat, combined with an
injudicious consumption of fruit and iced water, had brought on a mild
attack of cholera, which left me with a none too favourable impression
of the place.

But now all was changed. The weather was much cooler; I was growing
acclimatised, and I did not feel altogether among strangers.
Consequently my apathy vanished, and, despite the fact that my
employment was anything but lucrative, I enjoyed this second stay in
Denver immensely.

The town had not been built long. Indeed, ten years previously it had
only one anything like orthodox street; so that it was the last place
in the world where one would expect to come across a haunted house. Yet
I heard of three haunted houses at least whilst I was there.

The one I think most likely to interest my readers I heard of in this
way. I had been to the Zoological Gardens, and was returning by tram,
when a journalist called Rouillac, with whom I had a very slight
acquaintance, came running up to me in a great state of excitement.
“O’Donnell,” he cried, “I have unearthed something that will interest
you—the case of a haunting in an office in Race Street.” He then
proceeded to give me an account of it.

The office was rented by a Mrs. Bell, a typist who employed two girls,
Stella Dean and Hester Holt.

One day Hester Holt failed to put in an appearance.

“If she is ill,” Mrs. Bell said to Stella Dean, “she ought to have let
me know. There was nothing wrong with her yesterday, was there?”

“Not that I am aware of,” Stella Dean replied. “When she parted from
me, just across the way, she went off in the best of spirits. I expect
she’ll turn up all right to-morrow.”

The morrow came, and Hester Holt not arriving, Stella Dean was
despatched in the dinner-hour to find out what had become of her. She
returned looking very white and scared.

“Why, Stella,” Mrs. Bell exclaimed. “What on earth’s the matter?”

“Hester’s gone away without telling anyone where she was going,” Stella
Dean answered.

“You don’t say so,” Mrs. Bell cried. “What can have happened?”

“She never went to her lodgings after leaving here; at least, that’s
what the landlady says,” Stella Dean replied. “And she hasn’t written,
either—but I think you’d better call there yourself; I don’t like the
woman.” And Stella burst out crying.

This was the beginning of the mystery. Mrs. Bell interviewed the
landlady, who stuck to her statement that she had neither seen Hester
Holt nor heard of her since she had left the house two days ago,
presumably to attend business. There had been no words between them,
she said, and Hester had seemed as usual, perfectly happy. She was a
singularly reserved girl, and never mentioned her family excepting when
she went away for her annual holiday. She then requested that all her
letters should be forwarded to the address of her married sister.

The landlady, Mrs. Britton, gave this address to Mrs. Bell, and the
latter, writing off at once, received an answer by return of post to
say that Hester was not there and no tidings of her had been received
for over a month. The married sister, however, made an important
statement. She said that one person was sure to know of Hester’s
whereabouts, and that was Pete Simpkins, the young man with whom she
kept company, and was hoping eventually to marry. Mrs. Bell, now
keenly interested, hastened off and interviewed Simpkins. To quote
her own words, he seemed “a bright, intelligent young man,” and
exhibited unfeigned astonishment and perturbation on learning of the
disappearance of his sweetheart.

“When did you last see her?” Mrs. Bell enquired.

“The day she left you,” he responded. “I had been out in the country
all day, superintending the building of a large farm some ten miles to
the east of this city, and I was cycling home along a very unfrequented
route, when I met a buggy. Two girls were in it, and to my amazement,
they were Hester and Stella Dean.”

“What!” Mrs. Bell cried. “Stella Dean? Are you sure?”

“Absolutely!” Simpkins replied. “I can swear to it. It astonished me
because I knew they had been on very bad terms. I was engaged to Stella
before I met Hester, but I could not stand her temper. One day she was
so enraged with my dog because it snarled at her, that she seized my
walking-stick and beat it on the head till it was dead. I found her
standing over it, white with fury; and feeling that after what I had
witnessed I could never like her again, I broke off our engagement
there and then. After that I met Hester Holt at the same house where I
had first seen Stella, and we at once became friends. Stella Dean did
not like it, but she took on more than was necessary; and Hester told
me there had been several very painful scenes between them. Indeed, I
understood that out of business hours they were not on speaking terms;
hence you can judge of my astonishment when I saw them driving in the
buggy side by side.”

“It’s all very mysterious,” Mrs. Bell observed. “If she does not turn
up soon, I shall have to inform the police.”

The following day, Mrs. Bell asked Stella if she had gone for a drive
with Hester Holt the evening of the latter’s disappearance, and Stella
Dean promptly replied, “No; the last time I saw Hester was when she
left here that afternoon. She said good-bye to me as usual on the other
side of the road, and I have never set eyes on her since.”

She admitted she had once been engaged to Pete Simpkins, but
emphatically denied that Hester’s keeping company with him had led to
any rupture between them. “Hester and I were always on the very best of
terms,” she said, “and it would be downright mean of anyone to allege
otherwise. Besides, I can produce proofs to the contrary.”

The next day, as Hester was still missing, Mrs. Bell told the police.
The affair was at once inquired into, and Pete Simpkins’ story about
the buggy was corroborated. Someone else had seen the two girls driving
towards the outskirts of the town that same evening; whilst a car
proprietor also came forward and declared that he recollected Miss Holt
hiring a buggy from him, but that she had driven off in it alone. When
the buggy was brought back, he being out, his wife had taken the money
for it. But as it was then dusk, she could not possibly swear to the
identity of the lady who had paid her, especially as the latter had
been so muffled up, presumably on account of the coldness of the night,
that practically nothing of her face was visible. She could only say
Miss Dean resembled her both in build and height.

[Illustration: “Who is that tall, good-looking girl, Stella, that I’ve
seen following you into the building...?”]

Stella Dean was now asked if she could produce an alibi; and,
accordingly, her mother, a very decrepit old lady, declared that Stella
had come straight home from the office, and had remained indoors all
that evening. To add to the complexity of the affair, someone else
testified to having seen Hester Holt enter Mrs. Britton’s house with a
latch key rather late on the night in question; and this of course made
some people suspect Mrs. Britton, but the police could prove nothing,
and the matter was eventually dropped.

All this happened about three months before I arrived in Denver.

A week after the disappearance of Hester Holt, Mrs. Bell had a new
assistant called Vera Cummings, a very material, practical young lady,
the daughter of a farmer somewhere near Omaha.

The day after her arrival, Miss Cummings was busy typewriting in the
office with Mrs. Bell and Stella Dean, when she suddenly exclaimed,
“How is it that I get convulsed with shivers whenever I sit next to
you, Miss Dean? I don’t when I’m sitting next to Mrs. Bell. Eugh! I
feel as if the icy east wind were blowing right through me.”

“What nonsense!” Stella Dean replied; “you imagine it.”

“No, I don’t,” Miss Cummings retorted; “I’m going to sit somewhere
else,” and she moved to the other side of the table.

Mrs. Bell made no comment. An hour or so afterwards, Vera Cummings
abruptly observed:

“My, Stella Dean, what long legs you have!”

“What in the world do you mean?” was the surprised and rather indignant
retort.

“Why, there’s no one else on your side of the table, is there?” Vera
Cummings responded; “and someone’s feet keep kicking mine.”

“You’re dreaming,” Stella Dean said, and Mrs. Bell noticed she turned
very pale.

Two days now passed uneventfully, but on the third day after the above
conversation, Mrs. Bell and the two girls were sitting talking—it was
close on the interval for tea, and work was just then very slack—when
Vera Cummings remarked, “Who is that tall, good-looking girl, Stella,
that I’ve seen following you into the building on several occasions.
I’ve watched her keeping close behind you till you get to the elevator,
and then she disappears. Where she goes I can’t imagine.”

“A tall, good-looking girl following me to the elevator,” Stella Dean
repeated, her cheeks ashy. “What do you mean? I’ve seen no one. You’ve
dreamt it.”

“What was she like?” Mrs. Bell interrupted.

Vera Cummings gave a minute description of her.

“Are you sure, Stella, we don’t know anyone like her?” Mrs. Bell said
quietly. “That description seems to tally exactly with someone we once
knew. Someone who used to frequent this place. Can she have returned,
do you think?”

“I don’t know who you mean,” Stella Dean said crossly. “I tell you,
I’ve seen no one.”

The next morning they all three arrived simultaneously, and went
up together in the elevator. On nearing the office, the sound of a
typewriter was heard. They looked at one another in open-mouthed
astonishment.

“It must be one of the other clerks in the building,” Vera Cummings
said. “She’s mistaken our room for hers. She’s an early bird, anyway,
for I reckon there’s no one else arrived yet.”

“But the door’s locked,” Mrs. Bell whispered. “See, here’s the key!”
And she took it out of her pocket as she spoke.

“Well, there’s no mistaking the sound, is there?” Vera Cummings
laughed. “Click, click, click—that’s a typewriter, sure enough.
Someone must have got in through the window. My, Stella, how white you
are!”

Mrs. Bell glanced sharply at Stella Dean—there was not an atom of
colour in her cheeks, and the pupils of her eyes were dilating with
terror.

Mrs. Bell then put the key in the lock and opened the door. The
typewriter was working away furiously, but there was no one at it, the
room was absolutely empty. It stopped the moment Mrs. Bell crossed the
threshold.

That afternoon Stella Dean complained of a headache and went home
early. She was in bed for several weeks, and during her absence from
the office the strange phenomena there entirely ceased. The morning
she returned, Pete Simpkins met her and Vera Cummings just outside the
office building. He was bubbling over with excitement.

“She’s come back!” he cried. “Come back, and never sent me a word. I
_am_ glad though.... Hoorah!”

“Come back!” Stella Dean said, drawing herself up stiffly and regarding
him with an angry stare. “Who are you talking about?”

“Hester Holt!” Pete Simpkins ejaculated. “She’s just gone into your
place. Didn’t you know?”

Miss Dean made no reply. She simply pushed past him and walked in. Vera
Cummings, however, dawdled behind.

“What’s Miss Holt like?” she asked anxiously.

Simpkins described her.

“Why that’s the girl I used constantly to see following Stella,” she
said. “Where she disappears to is a mystery, but it’s only one of the
many funny things that have happened since I’ve been here.”

She then told him about the typewriter and the feet under the table.
Pete Simpkins repeated the story to his friends. Rouillac got hold of
it, and hence, as the reader already knows, it was handed on to me.

Rouillac was most anxious that I should go with him to the haunted
office straightaway, but it so happened that I had work to finish in a
given time, and it was therefore arranged that he should call for me
one day the following week.

At the hour appointed, he came. “I fear it’s no use,” he said; “the
office is closed, and it is impossible to get permission to go there.
It’s come about like this. The day after Stella Dean returned to
work, Mrs. Bell was away—ill—and the two girls were alone. Some
time after they had started work, it might have been eleven o’clock
or thereabouts, Vera Cummings got up to get a drink of water, and in
passing chanced to look at Stella Dean. The latter was leaning forward
in her chair and staring with an expression of the utmost horror in her
eyes at a despatch case on the floor, which was oscillating violently
to and fro. Vera noticed that the despatch case was marked on one side
with the letters ‘H. H.’ ‘That’s odd,’ she cried. ‘What makes it do
like that—it can’t be due to vibration, because there’s nothing going
by outside. How do you account for it, Stella?’

“‘I don’t know,’ Stella Dean gasped, making a vigorous attempt
to appear unconcerned; ‘perhaps they’re shunting something heavy
downstairs.’

“‘But we should hear them,’ Vera Cummings replied. ‘I believe it’s
Hester Holt; she’s dead, and for some mysterious reason her spirit
haunts this room.’

“‘Nonsense,’ Stella Dean stammered. ‘How can you be so silly! There are
no such things as ghosts.’

“After a while, the case stopped shaking, and the two girls went on
with their work. Lunch time came and they both rose to get ready to go
out. Vera Cummings had put on her hat, and was walking to the door,
when she heard a sharp cry. She turned round, and there was Stella Dean
standing in front of the looking glass and gazing at the reflection of
a pale face, with two dark menacing eyes glaring fixedly at her from
over her shoulder. Vera recognised the face at once. It was that of the
girl she had so often seen following Stella, the girl Pete Simpkins had
told her was Hester Holt.

“She was so frightened, for she knew for certain now that the thing
she was looking at was nothing earthly, that she ran out of the room,
and as she crossed the threshold, the door slammed behind her with a
terrific crash. Ashamed of her cowardice, she tried the door-handle. It
turned, but though she pressed her hardest, the door would not open.
She called to Stella, there was no reply. Greatly alarmed, she ran to
the elevator and fetched the man in charge of it. They both pushed the
door, and still it would not open. They were deliberating what to do,
when they saw the handle suddenly turn and the door gently swing back
on its hinges. They peered in. Stella Dean was lying on the hearthrug
in a dead faint. She died that same night.”

“Died!”

“Yes! Some people fancy she committed suicide, but her mother declares
that her heart had long been affected and that she died from syncope.
Anyhow, she’s dead, and the office is closed, as nothing will persuade
Vera Cummings to work there till Mrs. Bell is well enough to return. I
tried to get permission to spend a night there, but Mrs. Bell dare not
give it. She says the landlord is furious with her for allowing the
report to get abroad that the building is haunted, and threatens her
with a libel action if he hears anything further.”

“That’s a great pity,” I said; “for few cases have interested me more.”

“What do you make of it?” Rouillac asked.

“Why,” I replied, “the same as you. There can only be one conclusion.
Stella Dean was madly jealous of Hester Holt, and during that drive in
the buggy she killed her. Whether the murder was premeditated or done
in a sudden fit of blind passion—you tell me her temper at times was
very uncontrollable—of course we cannot say. From your sketch of her,
however, I am inclined to think she planned the whole thing.”

“But what could she have done with the body?” Rouillac said. “The
police searched everywhere.”

“So they say,” I observed; “but the track Simpkins was on when he
passed the buggy affords countless opportunities for concealing a body.
It is full of deep ditches, creeks, and crevices, covered with a thick
and rank vegetation, and the police would take at least a century
to explore it. Besides, from what I know of the super-physical I do
not think for one moment that Stella Dean was haunted without some
poignant reason.”

“Was haunted!” Rouillac observed.

“You said she was dead, didn’t you?” I exclaimed.

“Yes,” Rouillac replied slowly, “there’s no doubt whatever on that
point. She’s dead right enough. But when Vera Cummings passed by the
office this morning, she saw Stella Dean enter it—Stella Dean just as
she looked when alive, only very white and in abject terror. She passed
right in through the half-open doorway, and, as usual, Hester Holt
followed her.”




CHAPTER VI.

CASES OF HAUNTINGS IN ST. LOUIS, NEW YORK, AND CHICAGO


One of the most extraordinary men I have ever met was Ephraim B.
Vandergooch, who, at the time of my travels in America, practised
dentistry in 6th Street, St. Louis. Dentists are not, as a rule, the
people to associate themselves with psychical research, and it is just
as well for their patients, perhaps, that they are not, for sitting up
all night in dark houses looking for ghosts has an unsteadying effect
on the nerves—it is apt to make one “jumpy”—and if a dentist’s hand
were to jump, it is more than likely that his patient would jump too.
Mr. Vandergooch, however, was an exception. He was a ghost hunter, and
his investigations had but a slight and temporary effect on his nervous
system. His hand was as steady as a rock, his wrists like steel. I went
to him to have a tooth filled, and during the operation I asked him if
he knew of any haunted houses in the town.

He was a stranger to me then, and of course I expected a superior
smile, if not an actual sneer, for, as I have said, dentists are, as a
rule, anything but psychics. To my surprise, however, he took me quite
seriously, and said he knew of several haunted places in St. Louis,
and that nothing interested him more than really first-hand ghost
stories. He told me he had had an experience himself, and narrated the
following:—

“A few years ago,” he began, “I learned of a haunting in a street of
rather older houses than these, close to here; and as the evidence in
this case was to a large extent corroborative, I decided to investigate
it. It was Christmas time, and the thought of earthbound spirits pacing
up and down cold, empty houses, when all around was warmth and jollity,
depressed me. I felt that I must, now that an opportunity had come, try
to see them, and if possible do something for them.

“I set out on Christmas Eve, and I admit that when I left the
cheerfully lighted thoroughfare, and plunged into the dark silent
emptiness of the house, my heart almost failed me. Apart from ghosts
there were so many possibilities, and what more likely than that some
tramp or criminal had forced an entrance, and was hiding somewhere
on the premises. For a few seconds I stood and listened, and then,
feeling a trifle more assured, I closed the door gently and advanced
cautiously along the wide hall. At each step I took I became more and
more sensitive to an atmosphere of intense sadness and desolation—an
atmosphere of intense loneliness, loneliness that is without hope—that
is perpetual and absolute. It could be felt in all parts of the house,
but more particularly, perhaps, in the kitchen, which was built out at
the back on the ground floor. I had never been in such a dreary and
inhospitable kitchen. The night was bitterly cold and the bare stones
sent chilly currents up my legs and back, into my very brain.

“To remain in such a hole till morning was assuredly courting pneumonia
or rheumatic fever. I looked at the range, it was covered with rust and
verdigris. If only it could be lighted! Then I uttered an exclamation
of joy, for lying in one corner was a pile of wood—boxes, shelves,
<DW19>s, etc., intermingled with an assortment of other rubbish. In
my early days I had lived on a ranch out west, and the experience I
had had there now came in useful. In a few minutes there was a loud
crackling, and the kitchen filled with a ruddy glow. A couple of
dresser-drawers served me for a seat, and I was soon ensconced in a
tolerably snug position, from which, however, I was prepared to spring
at a moment’s notice.

“The hours sped by, and the silence deepened.

“At last, just about two o’clock, when I was beginning to think nothing
would happen, I heard a door slam somewhere upstairs. This was followed
by a series of creaks, and I heard someone cautiously descending the
stairs. A great fear now seized me, and had I been able, I should
doubtless have beaten a hasty retreat. Instead, I was possessed with
a kind of paralysis, which rendered me quite helpless and prevented
me from either moving a limb or uttering a sound. The creaks came
nearer—down, down, down, until quite suddenly they stopped, and I
heard a cough.

“It was repeated—cough, cough, cough. The cough of a delicate,
neurotic woman. At first it simply startled me—it sounded so distinct,
so reverberating, so real. Then it irritated me, and then it infuriated
me—almost drove me mad. ‘God take the woman,’ I raved. ‘Will she never
cease.’

“Cough, cough, cough. A nervous, hacking cough, a worrying, grating
cough, an intensely silly, murder-instilling cough. I could see the
owner of it—upstairs, hidden from me by impenetrable darkness, and
yet quite distinct—a slight, pale, excessively plain little woman,
with watery eyes and a quivering mouth. Heavens, how the mouth maddened
me! On she went—cough, cough, cough! She was still coughing, when I
suddenly became aware of a presence close beside me, and I saw in the
glow from the dying embers the figure of a man seated at a table in the
middle of the kitchen. He appeared to be trying to write, but to be
unable to collect his thoughts. Every now and then he paused, dashed
his pen down, and clenched his fists furiously. At first I could not
understand his behaviour, and then it all of a sudden occurred to
me—the coughing, of course. That perpetual noise, that everlasting
hacking—it distracted, demented him. I watched him with feelings of
infinite sympathy. At last, unable to stand it any longer, he sprang
from his seat and dashed upstairs.

“I heard him race up two steps at a time. No madman would have raced
faster or more nimbly. Then came a strange variety of sounds—a
gratuitous course in phonetics—an altercation, more coughing, oaths,
bumping, a scream, a thud, a little feeble cough, silence, and then
rapidly descending footsteps—a man’s footsteps. I did not wait for
them. The spell that had hitherto held me limb-tied now abruptly left
me, and I fled out of the building—home.

“The next day—Christmas Day—I made my report to the owner of the
house, and told her exactly what had happened.

“‘Good heavens!’ she exclaimed, ‘and he’s married Maisie! Swear that
you will never tell a soul, no one, not even your most intimate friend,
and I will give you an explanation of what you witnessed.’ (“All this
happened years ago,” Mr. Vandergooch remarked, “so it’s all right my
telling you now.”) I promised, and she at once began.

“‘Ten years ago the occupants of the house you’ve been in were
a well-known dramatist and his wife, whom I will call Mr. and
Mrs. Charles Turner. Mrs. Turner was exactly like the woman you
imagined—frail, small and very plain; whilst her husband would tally
with the man you saw in the kitchen—a tall, muscular, handsome man. He
obviously married her for her money, poor soul, for there was nothing
in her to attract him, and everyone could see how she irritated him,
especially when she coughed—in fact, he often said to me, ‘You don’t
know, Mrs. Wehlen, how Eva annoys me. Whenever I am in the midst of
my work, trying to concentrate my thoughts, she starts her infernal
coughing—I can hear her all over the house—hack, hack, hack.’ ‘She
can’t help it, poor thing,’ I replied. ‘You ought to feel sorry for
her.’ ‘Feel sorry for her,’ he said. ‘You’d feel sorry for her if you
were tormented as I am. I believe she does it on purpose.’

“‘Well, one evening—to be precise, it was Christmas Eve—Mrs. Turner
was found at the foot of the hall staircase with her neck broken.
There was no direct evidence as to how she came there, but as one of
the stair-rods was found loose, it was presumed that she fell over it,
and, accordingly, a verdict of accidental death was returned. Charles
Turner left the house directly afterwards, and a few months ago married
my niece, Maisie. As far as I know, what you have seen has never been
seen by anyone else, but coughing in the house has been heard, and it
is quite plain to me now that Charles Turner murdered his first wife. I
only pray to Heaven he won’t serve Maisie the same.’

“But he did,” Mr. Vandergooch added, “for she, too, was found at the
foot of the staircase with her neck broken! In all probability she had
possessed some idiosyncrasy that worried and annoyed him; or, possibly
having once taken to murder, he felt he must go on with it—the habit
of homicide being, no doubt, just as fascinating as the habit of drugs
or of drink.

“Nothing, however, was proven, and, for all I know to the contrary,
he may still be alive, still be killing people to appease his
hyper-sensitive and outraged nerves.”

This experience of Mr. Vandergooch made me think; and eventually led to
my devoting no small amount of attention to psychology and criminology.
From what a variety of influences, it seemed to me, any one act might
be induced, and to what innumerable and varied causes any one crime,
for instance murder, might be traced. A minute bone pressing on a
certain section of the brain, a stomach continually overladen with
beefsteak and other animal food, over-excited nerves, the sight of
some locality, such as a wood, an object, such as a knife, all may
lead to the same thing—the desire to kill; whilst, at the same time,
the superphysical, through the agency of some evil spirit continually
whispering to its selected victim the arrestive, the compelling
thought, almost enforces any and every sort of crime. Seeing, then,
that in every act of cruelty or violence it is more than likely that
either one or other of these factors has been at work, is it fair that
we should so readily condemn and therewith rest content?

True, it may be, and, I believe, it is expedient to punish the
criminal, but surely it is even more urgent that we should make
ourselves thoroughly acquainted with his case, so that we may if
possible discover the factor that conduces to his crime, and then
either destroy or counteract it.

From St. Louis I went to New York, where I lodged in a fifty cent.
hotel in West Quay.

It was not a particularly elevating neighbourhood, but it was one that
boasted of several haunted houses. I was taken to see one of them—a
small store that supplied seamen’s kits—by a fellow lodger, who, if I
remember rightly, bore the name of Boxer. The proprietor of the store
was a Swede; his name I cannot quite recall, it was, I believe, Jansen,
or something like Jansen. He was at first extremely reticent, but on my
assuring him that I was not in touch with any of the New York journals,
and would not connive at his story getting into print, he agreed to
tell me what had happened.

Calling his wife, a plain, stolid-looking woman, dressed in a neat
and spotlessly clean print gown, he led the way upstairs to the top
landing. There he stopped opposite a closed door, in front of which
stood a large oak chest. “That’s the room,” he said; “we’ve barricaded
it like that to prevent the children going in. When we first came here,
my wife, and I, and our youngest child, Bertha, slept there. But we
none of us liked the room, and we soon began to have very disturbed
nights. I had ghastly nightmares, and so had my wife.

“And Bertha too,” Mrs. Jansen chimed in; “she used to dread being left
alone in the room even for five minutes, and used to cry till one or
other of us went to her.”

“That’s right enough,” Mr. Jansen interrupted; “and Bertha’s never
behaved like that since we moved her into another room.”

“Well, we experienced nothing more disturbing than bad dreams for the
first fortnight or so, and nothing happened until we were both aroused
one night by hearing Bertha scream. We lit a candle and got out of bed.
‘What is the matter,’ I asked; ‘are you in pain?’ ‘No, Poppa,’ she
said. ‘Not in pain, but so frightened. I kept hearing the bed creak,
and I thought one of you was coming out of it to kill me.’

“‘Why, what nonsense,’ I said. ‘You’ve been dreaming again, child.’
Then, turning to my wife, I remarked, ‘If she has many more of these
nightmares we had better send for the doctor. Don’t you think so?’
My wife made no answer, but suddenly gave a cry and pointed at the
bed. ‘Otto!’ she cried. ‘Look at the clothes! We never left them like
that. What’s happened to them?’ I looked. The clothes were all heaped
together down the centre of the bed exactly in the shape of a human
body, with the face turned towards us.

“We all three stared at it in open-mouthed silence, and the longer we
gazed, the more pronounced grew the features, until they at last became
so lifelike, so evil, that my wife and I instinctively shrank back
against the child’s cot, and tried to hide the thing from her. My wife
declares she saw it move.”

“It did,” Mrs. Jansen said. “I saw it distinctly shift nearer to us. So
did Bertha.”

“I know you were both agreed on that point,” Mr. Jansen went on. “All I
can say is I didn’t see it do that, but I started praying, and whether
it was the effect of my prayers or not, the clothes gradually became
clothes again, and, after soothing Bertha, we scrambled back into bed,
feeling rather ashamed we had been so frightened.

“The following evening after Bertha had been put to bed, we heard
her scream again, and we ran up and found her quivering under the
bedclothes. She said our bed had begun rattling, just as if we were
moving in it. On turning to examine it, we found the clothes just as we
had seen them in the night, with one of the pillows pressed and moulded
into the speaking likeness of a face.

“As I looked at it, the features became convulsed with such an
indescribable expression of hellishness that I backed against the table
and upset the light.

“On re-lighting it, the thing on the bed had disappeared, and the
clothes were once again normal. That same night, some time after
we were in bed, I awoke to find myself being roughly shaken by the
shoulders. It was my wife, but, perhaps I had better let her go on with
the story.”

“I shook him,” Mrs. Jansen explained, “because a feeling had suddenly
come over me that I must kill Bertha. The very first night we slept in
the room I became obsessed with a passionate desire to see someone die,
a desire that I can assure you was absolutely novel to me, because I
flatter myself I am naturally kind-hearted and extremely sensitive to
seeing other people suffer.”

“She’s kindness itself,” Mr. Jansen observed.

“Well,” Mrs. Jansen went on, “the feeling became so unbearable, that
fearing I should actually be compelled to kill someone, I awoke my
husband and begged him to tie my hands together; which, after some
hesitation, he did. Bertha was crying bitterly, and told us she had
again heard creaks in the room, just as if someone was getting out
of bed to murder her. That was the last time we slept in the room. I
felt it was a positive danger to spend another night in it, and so we
removed into the one we are sleeping in now.”

“And has it never been occupied since?” I asked.

“Yes, for one night,” Mrs. Jansen replied. “A niece of mine, Charlotte,
came to stay with us, and as we had nowhere else to put her, she had
to sleep there. We went to bed rather late that night, and I dreamed
three times in succession that Charlotte was creeping down the stairs
with some strange weapon in her hand, with which she intended killing
Bertha. Bertha was then sleeping alone in the room facing ours.

“The third dream was so vivid that I awoke from it bathed with
perspiration. I told my husband, and he said, ‘Well, that’s curious,
for I thought I heard someone moving about overhead. I’ll go and
see if anything is amiss.’ He opened the door, and, going on to the
landing, discovered Charlotte tiptoeing cautiously down the stairs,
holding a long, glittering pair of scissors in her hand, and with an
expression on her face similar to that on the face in the bedclothes.
‘What are you doing here?’ my husband demanded, and Charlotte at once
dropped the scissors and began crying. She told us that no sooner
had she got into bed, than she felt like another person. It was
just as if someone else’s soul had crept into her body. All her old
sentiments and ideals vanished, and the maddest and most unholy ideas
presented themselves in rapid succession to her mind. A blind hatred of
everyone in the house possessed her, and she was seized with the most
ungovernable craving to kill. For a long time she fought against this
mania, until at last, unable to restrain it any longer, she got out of
bed and sought some weapon. Cold hands, she declared, seemed to guide
her to the scissors, and armed with them, she crept downstairs, just
as I had seen her in my sleep, determined to butcher Bertha first, and
then, if possible, my husband and myself.

“She pleaded our forgiveness and begged to be allowed to go home
first thing in the morning. ‘I do not feel I am responsible for my
behaviour,’ she said. ‘I never had the slightest inclination to do
anything of the sort before. I am sure it’s that room. There’s some
sinister influence in it, and if I go back to it, I’m certain I shall
do something dreadful.’

“She spent the rest of the night on the sofa in the parlour, and
shortly before noon returned to her parents.

“After that we locked up the room and had this chest placed against the
door, as you now see it.”

“Do you know the history of the house?” I asked.

“Only that before we came here,” Mrs. Jansen said, “there were several
sudden deaths. I do not think any of them were actually attributed to
murder, though they were all due to rather extraordinary accidents.
Originally, I believe, the house was an inn, kept by a woman who bore a
very evil reputation, and we have always wondered if the hauntings had
anything to do with her.”

“I suppose you couldn’t tell whether the face formed by the bedclothes
was a man or a woman’s?” I remarked.

“Not, perhaps, by the actual features,” she responded, “only by the
expression. I can’t explain how, but it was an expression which at once
explained to me its sex, and that sex was not masculine.”

       *       *       *       *       *

As I have said, this was not the only case of haunting in West Quay
that I heard of during this visit of mine to New York, but it is the
only one of sufficient interest to note here. Two equally interesting
cases, perhaps, came my way when I was travelling West. The one was in
Boston, the other in Chicago. I will deal with the Chicago one first:—

A banker in Chicago, to whom I had a letter of introduction, hearing
that I was interested in ghosts, showed me a house close to Michigan
Avenue where he had had a somewhat novel experience.

“Some years ago,” he said, “that house had the reputation for being
very badly haunted, and not by one ghost, but by dozens. It was
then occupied by an eccentric old millionaire, whom I will call Mr.
Hoonigan. Mr. Hoonigan had a very curious hobby. In a room, which he
named Duckdom, he had a collection of the most exquisitely wrought
models of women, clad in costumes which must surely have cost thousands
of pounds. They were all made in Paris, and many of them had once stood
in windows in the Rue de Rivoli. I have never seen anything to equal
them; their eyes, hair, and finger nails were not only beautifully
 and moulded, they were most natural and life-like. Mr.
Hoonigan worshipped them. He used to spend hours a day sitting before
each of them in turn, fondling their hands and making love to them in
the most exaggerated fashion. Mad! Yes, of course, he was mad; but his
madness did not always take such a harmless form. In a room opposite
Duckdom, which he named Devildom, he had collected the models—some
fifty or more—of murderers, and other criminals of the lowest type,
besides a heterogeneous assortment of the most revolting objects.
Amongst these objects were images of the South Sea Islands and Mexican
gods; figures in wood and stone, representing ghosts and demons;
cases full of mummies and skeletons; weapons that had once belonged
to murderers and still bore traces of their victims’ blood; scalping
and flaying knives; and a variety of ancient instruments of torture;
whilst to accentuate the horror of the room as a whole, paintings such
as only a brain in the most advanced stage of morbid disease could have
conceived covered the walls. Mr. Hoonigan did not make a practice of
showing his collections promiscuously, he was far too jealous of them,
and I do not suppose there were ten people in Chicago who knew of their
existence. Indeed, it was only with the very greatest difficulty that
I got his permission to view them. He allowed no servants to sleep in
the house, and when I went there one evening to see his treasures, he
opened the door to me himself. ‘Do you see this?’ he cackled, pointing
to the brown muzzle of a revolver, which showed itself from under
his coat. ‘Well, I have two more of them, and the house is full of
pitfalls, all admirable inventions of my own, and warranted to upset
the calculations of even the most experienced cracksman.’ ‘Have you
ever been troubled by burglars?’ I asked, glancing over the shoulders
of the queer old figure before me, and letting my eyes wander round
the great hall, dimly lighted and full of many suggestive nooks. ‘Yes,
several times,’ he said, ‘and once, one actually got in. He is here
now.’ ‘Here now!’ I cried. ‘Why, you surely don’t mean to say that
you’ve reformed him and kept him as your servant?’

“Mr. Hoonigan chuckled, and his yellow fangs reminded me unpleasantly
of the blunt and rusty teeth of a saw. ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘He fell
into one of my traps. You will see him later in my little chamber of
horrors. He’s been there ever since.’ (This seemed a trifle indiscreet;
but Mr. Hoonigan knew he could trust me. You see, I was his banker, and
business means business in Chicago.)

“‘But come,’ he continued, ‘I will show you Duckdom first, because you
will then the better appreciate its opposite. There is nothing like
contrasts to teach you true enjoyment.’ He stepped into an elevator,
and we went up, passing storey after storey, all dark, silent and
deserted. At last we stopped, and getting out, entered a brilliantly
illuminated room. ‘Here they are!’ Mr. Hoonigan exclaimed. ‘Let me
introduce you to my fair women friends.’ I looked round, and there
before me was a vast assemblage of women, all of them richly dressed
in the very latest fashion. All beautiful, however, and all most
artistically posed; some sitting, some standing, some lying at full
length on rugs and sofas. They were so absolutely natural that it took
me some seconds to realise they were only models—models in wax. Mr.
Hoonigan approached one, and taking its hand, pressed it reverently.
‘When I die,’ he said, ‘I shall be placed here, and the room shall be
hermetically sealed. I want no other heaven.’ He then took me across
the landing to another room. I had been prepared for a shock, but not
for the kind of shock I got when the door opened, and a hell, seething
with devilry—ten thousand times more devilish than the devilry of
Dante’s Hell—was suddenly thrust under my very nose. I recoiled, and
Mr. Hoonigan, perceiving my fright, playfully pushed me in. When we
were well in the midst of them, he pointed with great glee to several
of the most notorious murderers, and insisted upon my picking up and
examining their weapons. He then made me sit on a garotting chair,
which he had quite recently purchased in Cuba, and when I was thus
seated, he thrust a skull on my knee, which he said was that of a Red
Indian Chief, who had for certain skinned alive with his own hands a
whole family of whites.

“By this time, as you may think, I had had enough of it, but, as Mr.
Hoonigan truly remarked, there was so much to be seen; besides, he
must, he said, whilst I was there, show me a stock of engravings which
he had just bought in Madrid. They dated from the reign of Philip
II., and represented, in grim detail, all the horrors of the Spanish
Inquisition. But this was not all. Their chief interest, according
to Mr. Hoonigan, lay in the fact that the inquisitors—to quote Mr.
Hoonigan’s own words—‘just as an appetiser—an hors d’œuvre, don’t
you know,’ used to give them to their victims to examine before they
commenced to torture them.

“At the conclusion of this exhibition I managed somehow to get away,
and was walking to the elevator, when I saw something slink past us. I
turned round, and in the gloom could only see, indistinctly, the form
of a man of medium height, with a thick-set, brutal figure, and ambling
gait. I could not see his face. He seemed to walk right through the
door, which was shut, into the room we had just vacated. ‘What is it?’
Mr. Hoonigan asked. Somewhat nervously, I told him. ‘Ah,’ he said,
‘that’s only one of them, and one of the least terrifying. You didn’t
know, I suppose, that the house is haunted. From your description I
should say that what you have just seen is the ghost of the burglar I
told you about. But there are other ghosts—if you like to term them
so—that are most troublesome. I have had to give up sleeping on this
landing. I sleep on the ground floor now, with the electric light full
on, all night.’”

The case of the Boston ghost came to my notice in a very direct
fashion. I only stayed in the town two nights, and chance led me to
put up in an hotel which I learned bore an undeniable reputation for
being haunted. It was in rather a poor neighbourhood—at least poor
for Boston—and there were few visitors; indeed, on the landing where
I slept, no one. I spent all my first day in the town sight-seeing and
visiting relatives whom I had never met before, and I did not get back
to the hotel till very late. The place was dimly lit and oppressively
silent.

“Am I the last in?” I asked the night porter, who rubbed his eyes
wearily and yawned.

“Yes, sir,” he said; “the other guests have been gone to bed two hours
or more. It’s close on one.”

“What part of Ireland do you come from?” I enquired.

“County Limerick, to be sure,” he said; “but you couldn’t tell I was
Irish!”

“At once,” I said. “What were you over there?”

“I was working on the roads,” he said, “and before that I was in the
Army—in the Inniskillings.”

“What date?” I enquired.

He told me, and it then transpired that he had enlisted in that
regiment when one of my uncles was a major in it, and he remembered
him well. We were thus talking away and recalling episodes of the long
past, when I heard a familiar sliding kind of noise, and broke off in
the middle of a sentence.

“Surely, that’s the elevator,” I exclaimed. “I hope our talking has not
disturbed anyone.”

[Illustration: “But there are other ghosts—if you like to term them
so—that are more troublesome”]

“I don’t think so, sir,” he said. “At any rate, I shouldn’t trouble
myself about it.” His voice sounded so strange, I thought, and there
was such an odd, furtive look in his eyes, that I became curious, and
walking across the hall, arrived on the other side, just in time to see
the elevator come slowly and softly down.

To my astonishment there was no one in it.

“How’s that happened?” I remarked. “No one called it, and had they done
so we must have seen them.”

“I can’t say, sir,” the porter replied, looking very uneasy.

“Well, it’s certainly rather odd,” I ejaculated. “Anyhow, it’s chosen
to come down at a very convenient moment.” And, getting in, I went up.

The following night I returned late, and entered the vestibule of the
hotel just as the elevator stopped.

“Does it come down at the same time every night?” I asked the porter.

“Yes, sir,” he muttered, “every night.”

“And the reason?—there must, of course, be some reason. An elevator
can’t start off unless someone or something starts it.” He was silent.
“I see there’s some mystery attached to it,” I persisted. “What is
it? Tell me.” He remained obdurate for some seconds, but eventually
succumbed.

“For goodness sake, don’t let on, sir,” he said, “because the boss has
forbidden any of the staff to mention it, and if he found out I’d told
you, he’d sack me at once. This hotel is haunted. Several years ago,
before my time, a visitor arrived here late one night and was found by
the day porter dead in the lift. How he died was never exactly known;
it was rumoured he had either committed suicide or been murdered. It
was never found out who he was or where he came from, and, as he had no
money on him, he was buried like a pauper. Well, sir, ever since then
that elevator has taken it into its head to set itself in motion at the
same time every night. Sometimes the gates clang just as if someone
were getting in and out. At first I usedn’t to like it at all. You can
imagine, perhaps, what it’s like to know that you are the only person
about in a place of this sort—and then to hear the elevator suddenly
beginning to descend. However, by degrees, I got accustomed to it, and
if that was all that happened, I shouldn’t mind.”

“What else does happen?” I asked.

“I can’t tell you, sir. Would you like a bit of exercise?”

“I don’t mind,” I said. “Why?”

“Will you try the staircase, then, instead of the elevator? Count the
stairs and note carefully when you come to the forty-first.”

I agreed. The stairs were narrow and tortuous, the light meagre, and
soon I began to feel very, very far from my friend the porter, and
very much alone in the building. This feeling increased the further I
proceeded, until, at last, it became so unbearable that I involuntarily
halted. I had conscientiously counted the steps. I was at the
thirty-ninth. I looked around me. High over head was a kind of funnel
formed of black, funereal, and apparently never-ending banisters; below
me was a similarly constructed pit. The flickering gas-light brought
into play innumerable shadows. I tried to look away from them, for
their gambols were unpleasantly emphasized by the ominously oppressive
silence, but they fascinated me to such an extent that I was forced
to watch them, and, whilst I was thus engaged, I became suddenly
aware of a presence. Something I could not see was standing on the
staircase, a few steps ahead, barring my way. I advanced one step, and
with a tremendous effort I struggled on to the next one. Then the most
frightful, the most overwhelming, diabolical terror seized me, and
turning round, I tore downstairs.

“Well,” the door porter said, “you’ve come back. Couldn’t pass it. No
one who tries to do so at this time of night ever can.”

“What is it?” I gasped. “What is the beastly thing?”

“I don’t know,” he replied; “no one knows. This place was once a
madhouse, I believe, and perhaps——”

“Ah, well,” I said, “I can understand it now. Thank goodness I’m
leaving to-morrow, and as it’s a choice of two evils, I’ll go up in the
lift.”




CHAPTER VII

A HAUNTED WOOD AND A HAUNTED QUARRY IN CANADA


All my ghostly experiences in the United States were of indoor
hauntings, consisting mostly of the visitation of phantasms of the
dead, who in earthly form had either suffered or committed some deed of
violence. I never met with a psychic experience out-of-doors, though I
only too well realised the possibilities of such when I was sleeping
by myself on the ranche in Oregon, or riding alone through the giant
forests of the Cascades mountains.

I believe all the loneliest parts of America, the great, bold Rockies,
the vast Californian and Oregon forests are periodically visited by
ghosts—ghosts of murdered soldiers, of scalp-raising Indians, of tramp
suicides—of all manner of evilly-disposed white and red people, and
of neutrarians, spirits that have never inhabited earthly bodies, and
which are as grotesque and awe-inspiring as the fantastically carved
boulders and queerly shaped tree trunks with which those parts are so
lavishly bestrewn.

America, indeed, affords one of the wildest fields in the world for
the genuine ghost hunter. I use the word genuine advisedly, for I
would differentiate between the ghost hunter who is genuine, and the
professor of physics, who expects the Unknown to be subservient to
his beck and call. I say, then, for the ghost hunter with a kindly,
sympathetic nature, the ghost hunter whose thoughts are more often on
the spiritual than the material plane, and who would earnestly seek the
chance to succour and comfort a lost soul, the United States of America
gives the greatest scope.

From what I have heard, for I have never been there, Canada also is a
much haunted country. An account of a haunting there was given me by a
French Canadian, Bertram Armand, whom I met with his wife one day at an
hotel in New York. Though born and educated in Canada, he had served in
the French Army, and had spent a considerable portion of his life in
France and Algiers. He had now retired, and it was on the occasion of
his quittal of the Army and return to Canada that the event I am about
to narrate, and which I give as nearly as possible in his own words,
occurred:—

“My home,” he began, “was in a small town called Garvois,[2] to the
South-West of Winnipeg, which, at the time of my adventure, some ten or
twelve years ago, was nothing like the size it is now.

      [2] I am not sure of the proper spelling of the word, as the
            writing in my original notes has become so very illegible
            in places.

“I had got out of the train at Winnipeg, and dined at an hotel, and the
evening was well set in before I rose from my comfortable seat before
the fire and prepared for my long tramp.

“‘If you take my advice, sir,’ the landlord said, ‘you will avoid the
wood of Garvois after dark.’ ‘And why, pray?’ I asked. ‘Because, sir,’
he responded, ‘because it bears an evil reputation.’

“‘An evil reputation!’ I laughed. ‘Ma foi! it must bear a very evil
reputation, a positively devilish reputation, to frighten an old
soldier like me. Why, man alive, I have served in the French Army
in the wildest regions of Algiers for years. A wood with an evil
reputation, mille tonnerres,—that’s a joke I shan’t forget in a
hurry.’ Then seeing him look glum, I remarked, for I had no wish to
hurt his feelings, ‘I can appreciate your intended kindness, but you
see I have been away from home for ten years—ten whole years, and I
am dying to see my father. He is the only relative I have—therefore
you can gather that I want to go by the quickest route, and the road
through the wood, if I remember rightly, is twice as short as that by
the plain. Is it not so?’

“The landlord shrugged his shoulders. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the road over
the plain is longer—certainly it is longer—and if you go by it you
won’t arrive at your father’s house till morning, but, monsieur, if you
go by the wood you may never reach home at all.’

“‘I will risk it,’ I laughed; ‘there can only be robbers or wolves,
and I am prepared for either. I have these!’ And I tapped the ends of
two six-shooters. ‘At all events, if anything happens, I will haunt
the wood, and you may come and see me. Au revoir!’ I waved my hand as
I spoke, and putting my pack in the proper place on my back, I stepped
airily on to the broad, brown track leading to Garvois.

“Within an hour of my departure, the weather, which had been abominably
cloudy for the time of the year, took a sudden turn for the worse, and
the rain descended in torrents. I chuckled grimly, Mr. O’Donnell, for
what after all are the discomforts of sodden clothes and squishy boots
compared with what a soldier has to undergo in Africa—in the Sahara,
where the sun is hell and the insects—devils. Rain, Mon Dieu! What’s
rain! On and on I tramped, whistling gaily and running my hand over my
pack now and again to see that everything was safe. I had a present
there for my father, whom I loved more than anyone else in the world.
‘You see,’ he added with a smile, ‘I hadn’t met Jacqueline then.’

“Well, so long as I kept to the main track there was not much to
complain about—it had recently been attended to, but the moment I
turned off it, and on to the side one leading to the wood, my troubles
began. Deep ruts, big holes, huge earth mounds, and sharp-edged stones
made it bad enough in dry weather; it was now a quagmire—a quagmire
that afforded every possibility of soon becoming dangerous.

“I had seen nothing like it since I was in Algiers, but, bah! a soldier
can get used to anything. ‘It is a mere nothing,’ I said to myself. ‘I
can dive, I can swim; it will take more than cold water to kill me;
and if it were twenty times as bad I would face it.’ Ten years is a
long time to be away from one’s home, Mr. O’Donnell. I trudged on, and
was soon ankle-deep in black mud. At eight o’clock I was confronted
by a long line of huge, black trees, that bent their dripping tops
as if they had orders to salute me. Coming to a halt, and leaning
against a slender, isolated pine, that creaked and groaned in the rough
night air, I ruefully surveyed the prospect in front of me. The track
through the wood was twelve miles—nothing of a walk if I had been
fresh and the weather dry, but in my present condition a seemingly
impossible one. For the last hour or so I had experienced nothing but
a recurrence of slips and falls, I had done nothing but plunge in and
out of abysses, and I had been completely battered to pieces by the
wind. And the rain! I can stand any amount of heat, Mr. O’Donnell, but
wet, no, it gets into every pore of my skin and completely demoralises
me. I was exhausted, almost at the end of my tether, and I felt a
very little more would see me on the ground, absolutely done. Now, of
course, I am used to sleeping out of doors all night; but, then, Canada
is not France, neither is it Africa, and the warmth and dryness of the
Sahara had made me terribly susceptible to chills. A night in this
wood would mean for certain either pneumonia or rheumatic fever—and I
might never get home to see my father. So what alternative was there?
Only to tramp back again over that dreadful track, and take the long
route over the plains. I couldn’t do it; I hadn’t the strength. I
would struggle on. I did so—I took the plunge. The desert, with the
lights twinkling far away on its extremities, was speedily hidden
from view; trees shut me in on all sides; I was at last in the forest.
I had never known what it was to be nervous, but the silence I now
experienced disquieted me. I had never felt anything like it. It struck
me as an assumed silence—assumed purposely to cloak a deep-rooted and
universal resentment. Moreover, I had an uncomfortable suspicion that
it was the prelude to something hostile—to some peculiar antagonistic
demonstration, the very nature of which was at present enigmatical.
It was a silence savouring of a world other than ours—of a world
I knew nothing about—indeed, at that period of my life I was an
atheist, and neither believed in a God or a future existence. The
rain pattered heavily on the foliage overhead, and the wind groaned,
but the voices—the voices of the beings in this Unknown World—were
still, absolutely still. In the gloom the trees assumed strange shapes;
their motions, too, were strange—so strange that I did not think
they could possibly have been caused by the wind. You may think I am
hyper-imaginative, Mr. O’Donnell, but I do not think I am; my wife
would tell me if I were, for she has never been slow in pointing out my
faults, have you, Jacqueline?”

Mrs. Armand smiled. “No, Mr. O’Donnell,” she said, “he has many faults,
but exaggeration is not one of them; indeed, he is so precise as to be
sometimes dull.”

Mr. Armand continued: “I saw lights, too, Mr. O’Donnell,” he said;
“all kinds of  lights, which I did not then attribute to
possible spirit agency. I simply did not know what they were. I was not
afraid, but I became wary, and moved furtively forward, as if I had
been scouting in some enemy’s country. Every now and then I fancied I
heard soft steps that I could associate with nothing human, stealing
surreptitiously behind me. I paused and looked carefully over my
shoulder, but there was nothing visible—only the gloom. At length the
darkness became so intense that I could no longer see the track. I
continued to advance, however, and after plunging through a succession
of bogs and briars was finally brought to a peremptory halt by a stone
wall. This wall was four feet or so in height, but what lay on the
other side of it, or where indeed it began or ended, it was impossible
to decide, and I was wondering what on earth I had better do next—for
my energy was nearly spent—when a voice suddenly called out, ‘Keep
along by the wall and I will meet you at the wicket gate!’ Overjoyed,
I obeyed. The wall swerved sharply round, and a few yards beyond,
with one hand on the gate and in the other a dark lantern, stood the
slight, muffled-up figure of a woman. In a few words I explained the
situation—how in the blinding rain and darkness of the forest I had
lost my way, and was too exhausted to go any further. ‘I don’t mind
sleeping anywhere,’ I pleaded, ‘so long as I can lie where it is dry
and rest till morning. An attic, barn, anything will do.’

“‘I think I can offer you something better than that,’ the woman
responded, as she led me through the gate and along a narrow winding
path to a large, low, rakish-looking house, whose black walls, rising
suddenly out of the ground before me, seemed startlingly familiar.
My guide halted—a key turned, a door flew open—there was a rush of
strange, musty air, and almost before I had time to realise it, I was
inside the building. ‘I must apologise for the absence of light,’ the
woman said, ‘but under the circumstances the omission is unavoidable.
If we had been expecting you, it would, of course, have been different.
If you will follow me, I will take you to your room.’ I tried to see
her face, to make out what she was like, but I was frustrated in my
desire by the way in which she held the lantern. Nor was I any more
fortunate in the discernment of my surroundings; I could see the
ground at my feet, but no more; all—everything—was shrouded in an
impenetrable, sable mantle. The curious feeling that I had been there
before, that I knew the house well, again came over me, although prior
to now I had never seen any habitation in the wood, nor even known
that one existed. I argued it was probably a scent—some peculiar
odour in the atmosphere that had conjured back memories of some other
and quite distinct place; but I had not much time for speculation, as
the woman’s movements were very quick, and I had barely scraped the
thickest of the mud from off my feet before she had begun to ascend
a luxuriously-carpetted staircase. We crossed what I took to be a
landing, and stepped some score or so paces down a corridor, finally
halting before a half-open doorway.

“‘There is your room,’ she said. ‘You need have no fear—the linen is
well aired, and of course,’ she added, slightly sniffing, ‘you may, if
you like, open the windows. We have been obliged to keep them closed,
owing to the damp. Good-night!’

“She turned to go, and just for the fraction of a second I saw her
face. It was exquisite. My wife will pardon me for saying my wildest
dreams of woman’s beauty were not merely rivalled, they were surpassed.
I doubt even if so great a painter of feminine charms as Richter could
have done her credit. Who was she? I kept asking myself that question
long after she had left me, and the echoes of her high-heeled shoes
along the passage and down the stairs had ceased. Who was she? Ma foi!
The vision of such loveliness would never leave me. I would enjoy them
over and over again in my sleep. Indeed, I was so obsessed with her
face that I paid little or no heed to the novelty of the situation. At
other times I might have queried the desirability of being in a strange
bedroom in a strange house—in the dark. But the knowledge she was near
at hand was quite enough for me. I was already in love with her—and
the queerest, the most perplexing of predicaments were as nothing to
me. I soared above—God alone knew how high above—dilemmas. Still,
when I came to argue it out with myself, it was a bit of a nuisance my
matches were sodden and I could not use them. I would have preferred
seeing the bed upon which I was to lie, and a spot where I could lay
my clothes. I was so afraid of soiling the upholstery that I undressed
where I stood, and then, making a guess at the direction of the bed,
walked cautiously forward. By a piece of luck, which struck me as
somewhat extraordinary, I collided with the bedstead—a large brass
one—almost immediately.

“It was the work of a second to throw back the sheets and scramble in
between them, and then, with my mind full to overflowing with visions
of my newly-found goddess, I entrusted both her and my father to the
safe keeping of the Virgin and the Saints—this though I had no faith
in a future for myself—and sank into a deep refreshing sleep.

“How long I remained in that condition I never knew. I woke with a
start to find the room no longer dark, but partially illuminated with
a fitful red glow which proceeded from the stove, now full of lurid
logs. Thinking I must be dreaming, I rubbed my eyes. But no; the fire
was still there, and even as I gazed at it I caught the sound of
approaching footsteps—the sharp rat-tat of high-heeled shoes. Nearer
and nearer they came, right up to the entrance of my room, when, to
my astonishment and no little embarrassment, the door gently opened,
and in tip-toed the object of my admiration. In one hand she carried a
long-handled iron spoon, and in the other a candle. I was entranced.
Now that she had taken off her hood and cloak, beauties hitherto
concealed stood out in dazzling fulness and bewitched me. Never had I
seen such a wealth of rich golden hair, such a perfect nose and chin,
such tiny ears, carmine lips, white teeth, black-lashed, china-blue
eyes, white tapering fingers, rosy, almond-shaped nails, and such a
heavenly figure. My wife, Mr. O’Donnell, bears me no animosity. You
don’t, do you, Jacqueline?”

“No, no,” Mrs. Armand laughed. “I understand you. All men are the same.
Go on and tell Mr. O’Donnell more about your goddess.”

“You are right,” Bertram Armand exclaimed. “She was a goddess—at least
my idea of one, then. What did she want? I sat up in bed, and was about
to speak to her, when she laid a finger on her lips and smilingly
bade me be silent. She then glided to the grate, and taking from her
pocket a small lump of lead, carefully put it into the spoon, which
she balanced with the utmost care on the brightest of the <DW19>s.
That done, she again smiled meaningly at me, and walking to the dainty
dressing-table, strewn profusely with rings and bracelets, looked long
and critically at herself in the mirror. It was while she was thus
occupied that I suddenly became conscious of something or someone close
to me. In a moment my heart ceased to beat; in deadly fear I glanced
round, and perceived, lying by my side, an old man with long, grizzled
hair and beard, whose features were somehow vaguely familiar to me.
He was sound asleep—a fact betrayed by his breathing, which was loud
and stertorious. A slight movement from the other part of the room
attracting my attention, I looked up, just in time to see the girl
flash me a look of subtle warning.

“‘Don’t wake him, whatever you do,’ her eyes said; ‘he _must_ sleep on.’

“‘Don’t wake him,’ I repeated to myself; ‘why, of course I won’t. I
wouldn’t do anything—no matter what—if you told me not to; I would
obey you even at the risk of life and soul!’ Dieu en ciel! How lovely!

“Cautiously—first one daintily clad foot and then the other—the girl
approached the stove. She lifted the spoon carefully from the fire,
bore it steadily before her to the bed, and gaily motioning to me to
keep quiet, she gently turned the sleeper’s head over on the pillow,
and with a dexterous movement of her clever, supple fingers, poured
the seething, hissing lead into his ear. There was an agonising
scream—the eyes of the old man opened convulsively, and in the brief
glimpse I caught of them, I recognised my father.

[Illustration: “I looked up, just in time to see the girl flash me a
look of subtle warning”]

“Almost simultaneously came a loud crash, blinding darkness, and I was
once again in the forest—God knows how—pursuing my way laboriously
along the mud-laden track.

“At early dawn I arrived within sight of Garvois—Garvois bathed in a
cold grey mist, and a little later I dragged myself with difficulty
towards the wicket gate leading to my father’s house. To my intense
surprise it was padlocked, but the mystery explained itself at
once—standing upright in the garden was a notice-board, bearing the
inscription, ‘To be Let or Sold.’ I swayed on my feet as I looked at
it, and with a bursting heart reeled away to the nearest house—the
house of my old friend, Henry Crozier.

“Henry had just awakened—he invariably got up at five—and shuffling
downstairs, he opened the door.

“‘Le diable!’ he exclaimed, ‘if it isn’t Bertram! Ma foi! I was
dreaming of you last night. So you’ve come back!’

“‘Come back to find the place empty!’ I murmured. ‘But, tell me, my
friend, where’s my father?’

“Henry’s eyes grew round with astonishment. ‘What!’ he said. ‘What!
you don’t know?’ Then, seeing my look of utter stupefaction, he added:
‘My poor Bertram! Your father is dead! He died a fortnight ago, the
very day after his marriage with Mademoiselle Marie Dernille, the niece
of his last housekeeper. What killed him? Apoplexy. It does not do to
dispute the doctor.’

“‘But the woman—the woman? What was she like?’ I stuttered.

“‘Why,’ Harry enunciated slowly, ‘she was what some people would call
beautiful, though, as God is my judge, I did not admire her. Fair, very
fair, a mass of washed-out yellow hair, painted lips—oh, yes, anyone
could see they were painted—and big, very big eyes—china-blue and
smiling—name of a name—eternally smiling.’”

       *       *       *       *       *

This was Bertram Armand’s account of his experience. In answer to my
questions he told me that he had searched the wood thoroughly, but
there was no house of any sort in it, and afterwards, having had his
father’s body secretly exhumed, and finding lead in the ear, he had
obtained an order for the arrest of his step-mother. She was, however,
nowhere to be found, and he supposed that, having got wind of the
affair, she had escaped out of the country.

Armand told his story with every appearance of sincerity, and as I
could see that his wife believed it, I have no doubt at all that it was
true.

       *       *       *       *       *

The case of another haunting in Canada was told me on my way out to the
States, on board one of the White Star Liners.

My place at table was next to a Doctor and Mrs. Fanshawe, both
Canadians, who, hearing that I was interested in everything connected
with the superphysical, told me that they had had several rather
curious experiences. The doctor took from his breast-pocket a small
leather purse, and, opening it, showed me a dull, blue stone.

“Are you a geologist?” he asked.

“No,” I replied. “I know nothing whatever about stones. What is it?”

“No one has ever been able to tell me,” he said. “I have shown it to
several Professors at the English Universities and they have each
classified it differently. Not one of them, I believe, had ever seen or
even heard of a stone like it. And for a very simple reason. In Canada
there is much soil that has never been disturbed, and many tracts of
land no white man has ever trod.

“But let me explain how the stone came into my possession. Five years
ago we took a house situated about four or five miles from Montreal.
It was a long, low, two storey house, standing a little back from the
road, and connected with it by a semi-circular sweep of gravel road.
Opposite the house was a large pit, where quarrying had recently been
begun, but had been discontinued, owing to the calcinous nature of the
rock, which rendered it of little use for building purposes. Incessant
rains had formed a deep pool in the bottom of the pit, and the water
possessed this idiosyncrasy—the weather made no difference to its
temperature—it was icy cold in summer and winter alike.

“Viewed in the day-time, the quarry struck one as ordinary enough. It
was at dusk, when the shadows from the trees and bushes swept across
the road and dimmed the mouth of the great pit, that it impressed one
as unsavoury. I remember marvelling at this metamorphosis the first day
of our arrival. It was July, and the landscape was vividly aglow with
brilliant, scintillating sunbeams. A more radiant scene you could not
imagine. ‘One might make a capital swimming bath of this,’ I remarked
to my wife, as we wandered to the edge of the pit and peered down into
the silent, sparkling water.

“‘Yes,’ she laughed. ‘Supposing we start right away. I never appreciate
a bath more than after a journey.’

“That was in the morning. In the evening the place produced a very
different impression. We had dinner—the sort of scratch meal one must
expect when one is ‘moving in,’ and I had strolled out alone. I first
of all explored the premises. There was a big garden with an orchard
alongside, and a small field beyond; and I pictured to myself how nice
it would all look when the grass was properly cut and the flower-beds
planted by my wife, who, by the way, thoroughly understands landscape
gardening. You do, don’t you, Mabel?”

Mrs. Fanshawe nodded, and her husband resumed his story.

“I lit another cigar and walked out into the road to have a look at
the quarry. I hardly recognised it. It seemed, since the morning, to
have undergone a complete change. The banks appeared higher and more
precipitous, the water blacker and infinitely deeper, and there was a
cold dreariness about the place that made me shiver. I thought I had
never viewed anything so utterly forlorn and murderous. On the opposite
bank were a few rank sedges and several white trunks of decayed trees.
I had not noticed them before, but now, as I gazed down at the pool,
I saw their re-modelled and inverted images outlined with a clearness
that more than rivalled that of their material counterparts.

“I was pondering over this phenomenon, when I suddenly felt I was
being watched, and, raising my eyes, I perceived on the bank facing
me, just out of reach of the water, a boulder of ebony-black and
grotesquely-wrought rock. I could not see anything behind it, but I was
convinced that something was there, something that was crouching on its
haunches and glaring savagely at me. I also felt convinced that this
thing, which I could not actually see—though I knew for certain it was
there—was some strange hybrid of a man and animal; a thing with limbs
like ours, but the face of some fantastic, mocking, malevolent beast.

“Filled with a great uneasiness and all manner of vague fears, I
hurried back to the house, where all was bright and cheerful, but I
could not rid my mind of the impression it had taken from the pool, and
that night my dreams were troubled and alarming.

“I said nothing about it to my wife, but two days later, when I was
mending my fishing-rod in the study, she came to me in a great state
of agitation. ‘Why, what’s the matter, Mabel?’ I asked anxiously;
‘you look very white! Are you ill?’ ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve only had a
shock.’”

At the doctor’s request, Mrs. Fanshawe then took up the thread.

“I was walking down one of the side-paths of the garden,” she said,
“looking for Ephraim (Ephraim was our gardener), when I heard a great
rustling of leaves. I turned round and saw a violent agitation going
on in the branches of an apple-tree. Much mystified, as I could see no
cause for it, I approached nearer, and as I did so I distinctly heard
some heavy body drop to the earth with a thud; I then felt something
brush past me. I can’t exactly describe the sensation it caused,
because it is beyond words. I can only say I felt I was being touched
by something immeasurably foul and antagonistic. I reeled right back,
and that moment someone spoke. It was the gardener who came running
towards me to ask if he could go home, as his wife had suddenly been
taken ill.”

“That was all that happened, then?”

“No,” Mrs. Fanshawe replied. “That night, after we had been in bed some
time, we were awakened by hearing our Newfoundland dog, Pat, bark. I
went downstairs to see what was the matter with him—he slept in the
house—and found him standing in the hall with his hair all erect,
looking at the window by the front door.

“I called to my husband, and he came down with his revolver. We then
both went to the window and looked out, but could see no one. ‘I’m sure
Pat sees something,’ I observed; ‘he is beside himself with terror.’
‘What is it, Pat?’ Dick said, and was about to stroke him, when there
came a violent hammering at the door. We looked at one another in
dismay. ‘Who’s there?’ Dick cried, and, there being no reply, he
fired—the bullet going right through the door. We threw it open—there
was no one there. We then searched the garden (nothing would persuade
Pat to accompany us), but we found no one.

“For a week after this incident we were undisturbed; then all sorts
of noises were heard in the house—soft footsteps, heavy breathing,
the rattling of door handles, and—most alarming of all—loud crashes
on the door panels. The servants were terrified. One of them roused
us one night by loud shrieks, and going to her room, we found her in
hysterics. All the clothes had been stripped off her bed and thrown
in a promiscuous heap on the floor. When she recovered sufficiently
to speak, she told us something had come into her room and tried to
suffocate her—she felt just as if all the breath in her body was being
forcibly sucked out of her. She had seen nothing. We told her it was a
nightmare, and tried to soothe her, but our endeavours met with little
success, and in the morning she was seriously ill. She died within a
fortnight, and on the same day as the gardener’s wife.”

“Did the gardener’s wife live on the premises, too?” I asked.

“Practically,” Mrs. Fanshawe replied. “She and her husband occupied a
cottage close to.”

“Did both women usually have good health?”

“Rather,” Dr. Fanshawe laughed; “they were as tough as
horses—rosy-cheeked, strong-limbed, typical young Canadians. Heart and
lungs absolutely sound. I diagnosed their cases and was much puzzled.
On the top of violent shocks, which had apparently upset their whole
constitution, they had developed acute anæmia. Why do you ask?”

“Merely because of an idea,” I replied; “but pray let Mrs. Fanshawe
finish her story, and then, if you like, I will tell you what my idea
is.”

“Well,” Mrs. Fanshawe continued, “I haven’t much more to relate. On
the night after our maid’s funeral, we were again disturbed by Pat
barking. I got up and went to the bedroom window. The weather was very
unsettled. Clouds scurried across the moon, that hung like a great
silver ball over the St. Lawrence River, which I could see winding its
mighty course in the distance; spots of heavy rain were falling, and
the wind whistled dolefully through the leaves of the maples.

[Illustration: “The Thing came right up to the window, and then raised
its face”]

“Suddenly I heard the sound of heavy footsteps crunching their way
along the gravel drive. ‘It will be nothing visible,’ I said to myself,
and then I got a pretty acute shock. Coming towards the house with
short, quick steps was a tall figure, with its head bowed low. Its arms
and legs were very long and bony, the feet and hands enormous. It was
quite nude, and from all over its body, which was of an exaggerated
whiteness, there emanated a strange, phosphorescent glow. I called to
Dick, and he at once joined me. The Thing came right up to the window,
and then raised its face. If I live to be a thousand years old I shall
never forget what I saw. The proportion of the face was not human, and
it was partially covered with hair, but the eyes were the same shape as
ours, only very much bigger. They were pale, almost white, I thought,
and their expression——”

“Don’t talk of it,” Dr. Fanshawe interrupted. “One can only say it was
too damnable, too utterly vicious and loathsome for words.”

“We were so overcome,” his wife went on, “that for some seconds neither
of us could articulate a syllable. We both stared at it in hideous
fascination. At last it made some slight movement, and Dick, released
from the spell that held him, fired at it. The bullet must have gone
right through it, for we saw the gravel on the path immediately behind
it spurt up and scatter. However, the figure was unharmed, and it moved
on towards the front door. Dick fired again, but with no better result.
A fearful horror now seized us, lest it should get into the house. I am
not a religious woman, but I prayed, and as I did so I saw Dick throw
something. What he threw seemed to strike the thing full in the face,
and it vanished. As we got back into bed, I said to Dick, ‘That was
very odd! What did you throw?’”

“‘A stone I picked up near the quarry this morning,’ he replied. ‘I
don’t know why I threw it, but directly you started praying, a feeling
came over me that I must.’

“We were not disturbed again that night, but slept better than we had
done for some time, and in the morning Dick found and showed me the
stone—the stone you are looking at now. We had it fixed to the front
door, and after that we were not troubled again.”

“There was no history attached to the place,” Dr. Fanshawe added, “and
no one we spoke to had ever heard of its being haunted. Now, what do
you make of it?”

“A fairly satisfactory case,” I replied, “because I think this stone
affords a clue to part of the mystery at least. When I was out in the
West, I was told by some Indians of the Rogue River tribe, whom I was
delighted to fall in with, that when a place of theirs was haunted,
they kept the ghost quiet by burying a piece of blue rock, which is
to be found in the lava beds of that district, but is very rare. Now
in all probability this custom is not confined to the Indians of
one tribe, but is more or less universal; therefore we need not be
surprised to find a piece of this blue rock buried elsewhere.”

“But there are no Indians in this neighbourhood,” Mrs. Fanshawe
remarked.

“Not now,” I said, “but undoubtedly there were once. My supposition is
that this place has a history. It was once badly haunted by spirits of
the most dangerous type, which, for want of a better name, I will style
neutrarians.

“These neutrarians are spirits that have never inhabited material
bodies, and are only to be found in very remote and isolated districts,
where the soil has rarely if ever been disturbed. They are invariably
antagonistic to all forms of animal life, probably, because, if they
were created first, which is quite feasible, they regard man as an
interloper, and, probably, also because they covet man’s body and are
jealous of him. Many of the Indians believe that man is descended
from the gods, and neutrarians from devils, and that the latter
feel the distinction and hate man accordingly. Neutrarians vary
considerably both in appearance, habits and constitution. Whilst some
can apparently reveal themselves at will, others can only do so by
stealing vitality from human beings or animals. Let us now see how all
of this applies to the present case. When you came to your house you
did not get the impression it was haunted; it was only when you looked
at the quarry—it was there you received your first impressions—and
they were, in all probability, correct. I believe a great deal in
first impressions, particularly with regard to the superphysical. This
theory, too, namely, that the hauntings originated in the quarry, finds
support in the fact that you found the blue stone close to the quarry,
and that the figure you both saw coming along the carriage drive was
coming from that direction. The blue stone, I believe, had been buried
there and was dug up when the quarry was made; thus the stopper, so
to speak, which kept the ghost in check being removed, the hauntings
of course recommenced. Belonging to the species that cannot manifest
itself without drawing vitality from some form or other of animal life,
this neutrarian first attacked the gardener’s wife, and then the maid,
selecting these two on account of their unusual robustness. Had you not
thrown the blue stone at it, and afterwards fixed the stone to your
door, it is more than likely that you would both have succumbed.”

“Then many diseases that have defied diagnosis, and there are
countless such,” Dr. Fanshawe exclaimed, “may very probably be due to
neutrarians.”

“I think it is very likely,” I said. “I have noticed, for example,
houses, where several people have been medically stated to have died of
cancer, have been haunted by disturbances of a parallel nature to those
you experienced.”

“But are such hauntings to go on for ever?” Mrs. Fanshawe asked. “Is
there no means of putting an end to them, saving by blue stones? How
about exorcism?”

“I am not sure on that point,” I said. “I certainly do not think
that neutrarians or the spirits of imbeciles can be exorcised
satisfactorily, as I have known several cases of hauntings by these
spirits in which exorcism has been practised, and in no instance has it
had any effect whatsoever. I should say hauntings by neutrarians might
last indefinitely; I see no reason why they should not. Have you made
any enquiries lately about the house?”

“No,” Mrs. Fanshawe replied, “not for some time. When we get back to
Montreal, we will do so, and let you know.” The conversation ended here.

A year later I received a letter from her husband. “I have been to
the house,” he wrote, “and the present occupants are leaving almost
immediately. There have been three deaths there during their tenancy,
and they complain of exactly the same disturbances that alarmed us. I
have lent them the blue stone.”




CHAPTER VIII

HAUNTINGS IN THE EAST END


Having come to the conclusion that it was quite impossible to earn a
living in America, I returned to England as a steerage passenger on the
German liner “Elbe.”

It was the last homeward journey she was destined to go, for she was
run into on her next outward voyage by the “Crathie,” several hundred
miles off the East Coast of England, and sunk with an appalling loss of
life. The weather being particularly rough, we were about nine days at
sea; and the fact that our quarters were extremely close, consisting
of little more than a square foot to each person, coupled with food
that I could not eat, made me sincerely thankful when the time came to
go ashore. Apart from these details I had nothing to complain of in
the way I was treated, for the crew—though barely concealing their
hearty contempt for all but the first-class passengers—were to me
civil enough. At the same time the experience—an experience I had not
bargained for—was one I certainly do not desire to go through again.

I shall never forget how glad I was to find myself once more in an
English restaurant, sitting down to a good, square English meal. I
spent two nights in Southampton, travelling thence to London.

On arriving at Waterloo, I found myself almost as embarrassed as I had
been in New York, for my knowledge of London was extremely limited.
I had only been there—excepting when I was up for my Sandhurst
Exam.—for an odd day occasionally, and then I had always stayed at a
private hotel in Cambridge Street, Hyde Park. Now, however, my funds
being no longer equal to the West End, I was forced to look elsewhere
for a lodging. After a wearisome search, I at last found a room in
Tennyson Street, S.E. That room will take a lot of forgetting. It was
very small, very dark, and very beetly. I could hear whole armies of
blackbeetles parading the floor and scaling the walls. Occasionally,
one dropped with a thud seemingly close to me, and I sprang out of bed
in terror, lest it had landed on the counterpane. I honestly believe I
am as much afraid of cockroaches as I am of ghosts.

I only stayed in that house three days, and then moved into the attic
of a coffee tavern in York Road. That was midway in the ‘nineties, and
York Road then was very different from what it is now. In the day-time
it was full of frowsily dressed men and women and the fœtid steam from
the cheaper kinds of restaurants.

I well remember one shop that boasted of hot rabbit dinners for
fourpence; and big pork pies, that had a peculiar fascination for
blue-bottles, were sold there, all the year round, for threepence. I
often wondered how many people those pies killed, and how any man could
be such a villain as to sell them.

But if York Road was mean and squalid in the day-time, it was
infinitely worse at night. I have never in any other street in London
seen such an endless procession of women of the unfortunate class. They
were nearly all German, and their hard, cruel faces should have been
a sufficient warning to anyone to give them a wide berth. I haven’t
the slightest doubt that many of the young men who were foolish enough
to be enticed by them were ruthlessly robbed, and not infrequently
murdered.

One very nasty incident took place just under my window. It was in the
depths of December, and the snow lay thick on the ground. Will anyone
who experienced it ever forget that Christmas of 1894. I was laid up
with influenza, and was lying awake coughing, when I heard a loud
shriek, followed by an oath, and a series of groans and gurgles. Then
someone whistled, and a cab came up, after which all was quiet for a
few minutes, when a crowd collected and a babel of voices arose.

In the morning my landlady, with a very white face, told me she had
seen it all through her window; she slept in the basement, and had been
too horrified to move. It appears that, shortly before midnight, a man
had hidden in the doorway of the house, as if waiting for someone,
and about ten minutes later a woman had come along, whom he hurled
to the ground, and stabbed. When the woman had ceased groaning, the
man whistled, and a cab came up. The driver, getting down from his
seat, helped lift the woman into the vehicle; he and the murderer then
climbed into the box, there was the crack of a whip, and the cab was
gone. A few minutes afterwards a couple of policemen appeared on the
scene, talked for some time, and then walked away, after which the
street remained silent till dawn.

I went out and looked at the scene of the incident. There was abundant
evidence on the doorstep and window-sill as to what had taken place,
and seeing the people next door looking at it, I asked them if they
had heard anything in the night. They shrugged their shoulders. “It’s
quite a common occurrence in this neighbourhood,” they said, “and it
would never do for us to take any notice of it. If we did, we should
certainly, sooner or later, share the same fate as that woman.” Thus,
no attempt was made to bring the miscreant to justice, and the matter
ended.

During the time I was with her, my landlady was robbed twice. On the
first occasion two boys came into the front part of the shop and asked
for some sandwiches. Whilst the landlady’s daughter, who was alone
behind the counter, was serving them, one of the boys snatched up a
ham, the other threw down a chair, and both flew out of the shop.
The girl rushed after them, but of course fell over the chair. Her
cries brought her brother Bert and me to the rescue, and we set off
in pursuit of the thieves. Although they had got some distance, Bert,
being an astonishingly fast sprinter, had nearly caught them up, when
the foremost of the boys abruptly halted, and, whirling round, flung
the ham right at him. He ducked, and the ham landed with a splash in a
puddle of rain water. Picking it up, we bore it triumphantly home, and
it was soon resting on the counter, I hope—since it was to be sold as
usual—none the worse for its adventure.

Episode number two did not end quite so happily. A young man with a
clean-shaven face, and innocent, big blue eyes came to look for rooms.
He spoke with a strong American accent, and said he was travelling for
a well-known firm of jewellers in Boston. Whether it was the eyes, or
thoughts of gold bracelets and pearl pendants, I cannot say—perhaps
it was both; anyhow, the landlady’s daughter beamed on him, and from
that day forth I became a person of second importance, if, indeed, of
any importance at all. Whatever he said was law, and whatever he chose
to wear was “most elegant.” Then something happened, for which I was
not altogether unprepared. He came down one morning carrying a somewhat
bulky parcel, which he told the landlady’s daughter was his dress suit.
“It’s too small for me,” he said. “This bracing climate of yours has
given me such an appetite, I’ve grown fat. I’m going to take it to the
tailor down the street to see if he can enlarge it for me. By the way,
can you change me this sovereign?” He handed her a coin, and I saw him
smile tenderly. Then he went out of the shop with a pile of silver in
his hand—and never came back. The sovereign was of course a bad one,
and, worse still, the dress clothes were a new suit of Bert’s, one for
which he must have given at least three pounds.

I was not idle all the time I stayed in York Road. I was thrown on
my own resources and had to find some means of making a livelihood.
Expensive though my education had been, it was of little practical use
to me now. The only subjects I knew anything about were those required
for the Sandhurst and R.I.C. Examinations, and they in no way fitted
me for business. A board-school youth with a knowledge of book-keeping
and shorthand stood a much better chance of obtaining a clerkship than
I did. It was a bitter revelation to me. I had always been brought up
with the idea that breed and manners were a valuable asset.

I now discovered that without money and influence they were a handicap
rather than otherwise. The majority of employers I interviewed
were certainly not gentlemen, nor apparently did they care to have
anything to do with such; all they wanted was smartness in figures and
the capacity of standing prodigiously long hours and any amount of
bullying. I worked for a week in an office in Lewisham. My employer
was a kind of jobbing stockbroker with a florid face and yards of gold
watch-chain. My hours, as far as I can remember, were from nine to six,
with twenty minutes interval for luncheon. The second day I was there
I was kept at work till after seven, and the following day, by way of
retaliation, I took a good hour over my lunch. When I got back to the
office, I thought my employer would have died of apoplexy. I have never
seen a man in such a fury.

“What do you think I pay you for?” he shrieked; “to eat?”

“You haven’t paid me yet,” I responded; “it will be time enough to give
way to your emotions when you have. You kept me here last night an
hour longer than the time agreed. Very good! You get an hour less work
out of me to-day. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”

He raised his thick, podgy hand, and I thought he was going to strike
me, which I hoped he would do, for I have always been very fond of
boxing, and a scrap with him just then would have been as nectar to me.
To my astonishment, however, he suddenly subsided, and, walking out of
the room, left me to go on with my work undisturbed. I left the office
punctually at six that evening, and for the few remaining days I was
with him, the prearranged hours were rigidly adhered to. That was my
one and only experience in business. I tried to get on the staff of a
newspaper, but although I wrote to almost every editor in London, I did
not succeed. I am convinced that no post, outside that of a reporter,
for which I had neither the training nor the inclination, can be
obtained without the investment of money or colossal influence.

I managed, however, to do some free lance work, and I derived no little
interest and amusement, though not much remuneration, interviewing for
a weekly journal called “Theatricals.” The first man of any note I
met was the late Sir Augustus Harris, to whom I introduced myself on
the stage of Drury Lane. It was during a rehearsal of the pantomime,
at which, if I remember rightly, Harry Nicholls, Herbert Campbell,
Dan Leno, and many other favourites of those times were present. Sir
Augustus listened to what I had to say with great courtesy, and told
me to go to Mr. Neil Forsyth. I did so, with the result that I was
offered a small post on the staff of the theatre. I was grateful to Mr.
Forsyth, who was one of the very kindest men that ever breathed, but
apart from the smallness of the salary, there were obstacles in the
way, and so I had to refuse.

About this time I met a girl with whom I became madly infatuated, and
when she refused to marry me, I seriously contemplated suicide. It was
this episode that gave me the central idea for my first novel, “For
Satan’s Sake,” in which I introduced the girl, and which is written
very much round my own life.

I am only too thankful now that she did not accept me, for I do not
know how I should have kept her, and that, apparently, as far as she
was concerned, was the only thing that mattered.

I fought a desperate battle with myself for some time, and in the
end came to the grim resolution to go on living. It was when I was
recovering from this state of excessive mental dejection that I came
in contact with an old acquaintance, a public schoolman, at whose
suggestion I decided to try schoolmastering, and consequently obtained
a post at Daventry Grammar School.

But I must now return to the principal subject of this narrative,
namely, ghosts.

During the year I was in York Road I thoroughly explored the East
End, and in the coffee houses and restaurants of Poplar, Deptford,
Tilbury and Whitechapel I heard many first-hand accounts of hauntings.
Though it is not generally known, the East End of London is far more
haunted than the West. On one of my nocturnal rambles, I made the
acquaintance of a Russian Jew, who had an extraordinary mania for
spiders, which he kept in specially designed boxes with glass lids.
On their half-holidays he used to set his children to work collecting
flies and other insects, and the whole family used to revel in watching
the spiders gorge themselves on their victims. You could see he was
innately cruel by the hard twinkling of his little black eyes, and the
spasmodic twitching of his flat, greasy, white fingers, but he was
something of a scholar and he had a devout dread of ghosts. “There is a
haunted house close to here,” he said to me one evening; “if you like
to come with me I will introduce you to the owner. He is a Chinaman,
called King Ho, or some such outlandish name, and he keeps an opium
den.”

King Ho did not require much of an introduction, for, as soon as we
entered, he fixed his little slit-like eyes on me and said:

“Well, what do you want? A smoke?”

“No,” I said. “I’ve come to hear about your ghosts. I’m interested in
them.”

“There are plenty of them here,” he murmured; “the house is full of
them. Sit down!”

I obeyed, and the Russian Jew went back to his spiders and left me
alone with the Chinaman.

It was a dirty, sordid, ill-ventilated place, reeking with a dozen
different odours, and suggestive of vermin _ad libitum_, and diseases
of an Oriental origin and unspeakable nature. A curtain was drawn
across one end of the room, and noticing that my eyes wandered off in
that direction, King Ho got up and pulled aside the drapery. Two wooden
berths, one above the other, were discovered; the top one was empty,
and the lower occupied by a corpse-like Chinaman, who was lying on his
side, facing us, with absolutely no expression in his eyes or mouth. He
might have been dead the best part of a week.

“He’s away in the rice fields of his native home,” King Ho said,
“talking to his wife and playing with his children. He goes there every
night at this time”—and he glanced at the big, round, wooden clock
hanging on the wall.

“You mean he is dreaming,” I said.

“No, I don’t,” King Ho retorted. “I mean he’s there—his spirit, his
intelligence is there. That thing you are looking at is only his
material body. He, and I, and others we know, don’t set much value
on that, we can get out of it so easily. It’s the immaterial self we
esteem.”

Then, seeing I was interested, he resumed his chair, and stretching
out his long, thin, yellow hand, he touched me on the arm.

“Listen,” he said, “we, Chinamen, who come from the fields and
mountains, and grow up in close touch with Nature, can concentrate.
From our infancy upwards we think deeply. We think of the sky, the
stars, the sun, the moon, the mighty Hoang Ho River and the vast range
of the Pelings. We think of them in a sense quite different from the
sense in which you Londoners would think of them. You would regard
them as so many objects only—sky and land-marks. We think of them
as spirits that can act as magnets to our spirits—as intelligences
akin to ourselves, that can, when once we become thoroughly acquainted
with them, draw us to them. The Pelings live just as much as you and I
live—you might pull down their body, that great, elevated frame you
style the mountains, just as you might overturn that bench; but the
real, the spiritual Pelings would still remain. When once you grasp
the idea that all Nature lives—that everything, even to the chairs
and tables, have immaterial representatives, then you will begin to
understand the principle of the concentration we practise. You must see
the Pelings, the Hoang-Ho, the rice fields, not as they would appear
to the man in the street here, here in London, Piccadilly, but as we,
who live near them and know them, see them—as figures that can see
and hear, figures with intelligence, expression—intense expression in
their eyes. When you see them like that, you will get to love them,
and, when you love them, you will unconsciously concentrate on them, as
you do on all things that you love. Your love will not be in vain, it
will be reciprocated, and the love that reciprocates yours will, as a
magnet, draw you—you—your immaterial ego—your true self—towards it.
Now you begin to understand, I can tell by your face. The Chinaman—the
Chinaman of the plains and hills—like myself, _thinks_—he knows
Nature, and when he leaves China and comes over here, he concentrates
until he hears the voice of that Nature calling to him; and when he
hears it, his spirit is gently freed from his material body, and borne
silently and instantaneously to his home.

“Now, he can think best when he can get some at least of the conditions
of his native surroundings—and the most important of them is silence.
Not silence such as you may understand it, but the silence of the
conscious, inanimate hills, and rivers, and plains—and the only way to
procure it is through opium—the opium I supply. Hence he comes here,
takes it, and lies over yonder, and thinks, till he hears the call and
his spirit is released.”

“But the ghosts,” I interrupted, “the ghosts you spoke about.”

“Wait,” he said. “Listen! Sometimes men have come here who have lost
the love of the spirit of the mountain and river. They have lost it
because they have liked too much this London of yours, and have imbibed
too deeply of that detestable immorality, which so weakens the spirit
that it cannot, even if it heard the call, get away from the flesh. I
tell those men that my opium will do them no good, but they take it;
they take it, and dream as Englishmen would dream—with their spirits
chained to their material bodies. When these depraved Chinamen awake
and realise that they can never, never again, be drawn by the mighty,
majestic love of the Spirit of the Mountain and River, and that they
can never again revisit the home of their childhood, so bitter is
their disappointment that they kill themselves—not always here, but
anywhere—in their lodgings, in the river, or in the docks. Their
spirits then invariably come here, where, undoubtedly, they renew their
vain efforts to get back to China—to the mighty, majestic Spirit of
the Mountain and River, whose love they have lost. Look in that top
berth and tell me what you see there?”

“It’s empty,” I said.

“Look again,” he replied.

I did so, but still there was nothing there, only just the bare, dingy
panelling.

“Well,” he asked, “what now?”

“Nothing,” I said; “absolutely nothing.”

“Go up to it and put one hand inside,” he remarked.

I did so, and sprang back with a loud cry. I had touched a face!

“Yes,” he said, as I stepped out into the semi-darkness of the
causeway, “it frightens some people, but it never frightens me, because
I know that the only consolation possible for these unhappy spirits is
to lie next to, or to come in contact with, the bodies of those whose
spirits are walking and talking with their fond ones in distant China.”

Whilst I was at York Road I became acquainted with an Irish doctor,
whom I will call Flynn. He ran a surgery not far from King Ho’s house.
Flynn belonged to a famous secret society, whose fundamental object
was to carry on a doctrine of surreptitious hatred to England and all
things English. Though I had no sympathy with such a society—for I
have always held the opinion that, however badly England behaved to
Ireland in the past, the majority of the English people of to-day are
only too anxious to act fairly to her, and therefore it is better to
let bygones be bygones—I found Flynn a very original and entertaining
character. All his patients were either Irish or of foreign extraction,
and whenever any English person came to the surgery, he flatly refused
to attend them.

One evening, when I was sitting chatting with him in front of a blazing
peat fire—Flynn would never burn English coal—two Swedish engineers
came into the surgery, and Flynn, who, for some peculiar reason, was
particularly partial to the Swedes, asked them to join us at supper.
The meal certainly was not in the approved style of the West End,
nor, perhaps, would it have appealed to the nouveau riche; for there
was no snowy tablecloth, no serviettes, no champagne, no liqueurs; it
consisted of boiled beef, suet dumplings, potatoes—boiled in their
skins, of course—and plenty, yes, plenty, of stout and whiskey; and it
was very welcome to the four hungry, healthy men, who did ample justice
to it. After we had finished, and pipes were produced, I brought up the
subject of ghosts—never very far from my mind—and one of the Swedes
laughed.

“Ghosts,” he said, “there are no such things. Neither ghosts nor
fairies. I believe in nothing. There is no God, no devil, no heaven, no
hell. When we die, we die—there is no future life whatever.”

“Let’s have a séance,” Flynn said, “and see if we can’t convince him. I
have the skeleton of a murderer in the room overhead. I will fetch it
down, and it shall sit round the table with us.”

“All right!” the sceptical Swede, whose name was Nielssen, said. “Fetch
it down; fetch twenty skeletons you like, the more the merrier. Nothing
will convince me.”

Flynn ran upstairs, and presently reappeared with a tall skeleton in
his arms. The table was cleared, and we all sat round it with our
hands spread out after the usual manner of table turners, the skeleton
being placed between the two Swedes, each of whom had hold of one of
its hands. Flynn then turned down the lights, and we started asking
the table questions, many of which, I fear, were of a very ribald and
frivolous nature. Every now and then it gave a big tilt, and Nielssen
shouted, “That’s for me! It’s my mother-in-law—she’s found out I’ve
been making love to my landlady’s daughter.” Once there was a rap, and
for the moment I was taken in. Then the other Swede, Heilborn, cried
out, “It’s only Nielssen. He did it with his foot; he’s incorrigible!”
This sort of thing went on for some time, Flynn and Nielssen constantly
playing some prank, and Heilborn and myself not always too serious.

Suddenly the atmosphere of the room seemed to undergo a change, and, as
if by common consent, we were all silent. Then Nielssen uttered a sharp
cry of pain.

“Strike a light quickly,” he cried; “my hand is being hurt frightfully!”

We did so, and Nielssen gave vent to an expression of relief.

“How did it happen?” Heilborn asked.

“I don’t know,” Nielssen said faintly. He was evidently much shaken,
and spoke with the emotion of a man who has undergone some violent
shock. “I was only holding the skeleton the same as you, when I
suddenly felt its fingers close like a vice on mine. It was a grip of
iron. See, my hand is crushed almost out of shape!” He held it out, and
we all bent over it curiously. Compared with the other hand, it looked
singularly white and limp, and when Flynn touched it, Nielssen very
perceptibly winced.

Flynn gave him some brandy, and after a little while he seemed himself
again; but he would not continue the séance. “There’s something very
odd about the skeleton,” he said. “I don’t believe in spirits, as you
know, but there must be something closely akin to one attached to this
thing,” and he gave it a vicious kick with his foot.

A week later, when I called at Flynn’s house, he told me that Nielssen
was in bed. He had fallen downstairs and badly bruised his spine,
besides breaking a leg. “He’ll get over it all right,” Flynn said,
“but it will be some time before he can do anything. His account of
the accident is most remarkable; in fact, he declares that it wasn’t
an accident, that he was deliberately thrown. He swears that he
distinctly saw a skeleton hand suddenly catch hold of him round the
ankle, and that the next moment he felt himself whirling through the
air. He is most emphatic in his declaration that he will never again
scoff at ghosts or play with the invisible. And now,” Flynn added,
“the wretched thing has begun to plague me. I can’t get a decent
night’s sleep. As soon as I begin to doze I am visited by the most
disturbing dreams. I invariably hear knocking at the door, and when I
open it, something rushes in and strangles me. But the worst of it is,
I hear the knocking when I’m awake, too. Sometimes it begins directly
I get into bed, before my head has touched the pillow. Knock, knock,
knock!—the hard, sharp knock of bony knuckles on door, walls and
furniture. I am not actually frightened, but I don’t like it. What do
you make of it?”

“If it’s not the skeleton, the spirit of some depraved human,” I
replied, “it’s some other equally low and vicious earth-bound, one
of the class that visit séances and attach themselves to the unlucky
sitter. You might try getting rid of the skeleton—have it cremated and
see what effect that has.”

Flynn took my advice; the skeleton was reduced to ashes, and the ashes
buried many miles away from Limehouse Causeway, after which, the
disturbances, as far as Flynn was concerned, at any rate, entirely
ceased. Whether Nielssen was victimised again I cannot say. He rejoined
his ship as soon as he had recovered, and since then he has completely
passed out of my existence.

There was a house I used occasionally to go to in Whitechapel, a
rendezvous of itinerant free lance writers like myself, where,
although I never actually saw any ghostly phenomena, I always had
very extraordinary impressions. The moment I crossed the threshold, I
fancied I was in a big funeral procession following a hearse. It was
a dull, winter’s day, I thought; there were inches of slush on the
ground, and the cold was intense. I could not see the faces of the
people walking beside me, but I instinctively knew that they wore an
expression of extreme relief, and that some even of them should-be
mourners laughed. We tramped on till we came to a steep hill, then
there was a loud report, and at once everything became chaotic. After
this my mind gradually cleared and the impressions abruptly ceased.
There was no variation in these impressions, they always began and
ended in precisely the same way; moreover, I invariably received
them whenever I entered the house. I mentioned my experience one day
to an habitué of the place, and he quite casually informed me that
several men who went there had had similar experiences, and he thought
the landlord, if approached tactfully, might offer some sort of
explanation. Acting upon this suggestion, I spoke to the landlord, and
learned from him that half a century or more ago the house was owned by
a wealthy tradesman, who, it was generally supposed, had made his money
by sweating his employés. When he died, all the hands had to attend his
funeral, but far from looking sad, as they followed the coffin, they
had exhibited every manifestation of joy. Just as the procession had
reached the summit of a steep hill, a half-witted man fired a gun from
a cottage window, and the horses drawing the hearse, taking fright,
dashed down the incline and into a wall at the foot of it. Strange to
say, no one was injured, but the coffin was thrown out and broken to
pieces. The event made a great impression upon the minds of all who
witnessed it, and the landlord informed me that I was by no means the
only person who, upon entering the house, had received a vivid mental
picture of the scene.

I am often asked if I am a consistent medium. No, I am not. It is only
at times I see ghosts, only at times I receive vivid impressions, and
I do not believe that any person, however mediumistic, can depend upon
his or her psychic faculty for consistency. I have been to several
public séances, where professional mediums have had the audacity to say
they see spirits standing beside practically everyone in the assembly.
They rattle off the description of an alleged spirit, as if it were a
part in a well-rehearsed play—and play it undoubtedly is to anyone
who pauses to reflect. Genuine phantasms do not come to order quite so
readily.

In olden times, when people were really psychic, those versed in the
art from their childhood upwards could only raise a ghost with great
difficulty, and often, only by resorting to spells, many of which were
of a very subtle and complex nature. And when, in the end, they did
succeed, such manifestations invariably had a very alarming effect on
the medium as well as the spectator. How is it, then, that so many of
the professional mediums of to-day can not only see visitants from
the other world, whenever they like, all around them, but can view
these ghostly visitants without being in the least disconcerted,
without—as the saying is—turning a hair? Have they really stronger
nerves than had Saul, and a closer, far closer intimacy with the
Unknown than had the Witch of Endor, or can it be that the Spirit
World has so participated in our age of quickness—our rapid forms
of locomotion—that a medium has only to raise his or her eyebrows
and a host of spirits at once whiz into the room? I do not think so.
I believe that such mediums—the mediums whose psychic vision is
apparently inexhaustible, and can be turned on and off to order—are
either unmitigated humbugs or hysterical dupes, who mistake the baldest
impressions for actual spiritual phenomena.

The unmitigated humbug has only to describe the alleged presence with a
little elasticity, and the description will surely fit—albeit somewhat
loosely—one or another of our departed friends. Who amongst us does
not know someone on the other side passably good-looking, rather tall,
of medium colouring, and somewhat stout? And if we plead that we do
not, it is of no consequence—the medium glibly asserts that the spirit
he or she describes has got behind our chair by mistake, and is really
searching for someone else. But apart from this obvious fraud, can we
believe that any one of those whom we have loved and lost would so
degrade themselves and us as to appear at a public séance before a
company of strangers. Surely we would rather not see them at all, than
see them in such circumstances. At any rate, we would rather—much
rather—possess our souls in patience, until our departed loved ones
can appear to us in private—as they sometimes can—without the
intervention of any medium whatsoever.

With regard to automatic or spirit writing, there is, I believe, just
as much fraud practised. The mere fact that Sir somebody or other
has a touching belief in one or two of these automatic scribes is
quite enough for most people, and, consequently, they never dream of
questioning the integrity of any medium who professes to convey to them
messages from the dead. It is sufficient that the man with the title,
the great man of science, believes. But they forget, often wilfully
forget, that the cleverest man is often the most simple; that a great
judge has not unfrequently had his pockets picked; and that eminence in
one direction by no means denotes ability in another.

Snobbishness is responsible for much. The big man is credulous, and
because he is credulous the little man is credulous too. Hence,
consistency in the spirit world, in clairvoyance, in automatic
writing, is, for the moment, almost universally accepted, and direct
communication with the spirit world erroneously looked upon as an
every-day occurrence. It will be otherwise when the man in the street
wakes up and discovers the occult for himself. Experience will, I
think, teach him, as it has taught me, that although ghosts may on very
rare occasions come to order—and when they do, their coming is, I
believe, quite as surprising to the medium as it is to the audience—by
far the greater number of superphysical phenomena appear spontaneously;
and it is through such spontaneous appearances only that we can hope to
make any progress in our communication with the other world.




CHAPTER IX

NIGHT RAMBLINGS ON WIMBLEDON COMMON AND HOUNSLOW HEATH


If there are any places in London that should be more haunted than
others, assuredly those places are the parks and commons. When I was
living on the south side of the river, I spent many nights tramping
about Wimbledon, Clapham, Wandsworth, Tooting and Streatham Commons.
Since then I have lived at Blackheath, Hampstead, Hounslow and Dulwich,
so that I may say I know pretty nearly every inch of these places. I
can see myself now standing on Wimbledon Common close to a pool, in the
dead of night. No one about, and the reflection of the moon staring
at me from the unruffled surface of the water. I am trying to get
impressions of any event that may have taken place there. I got none.
Suddenly a hand falls on my shoulder; I swing round, and peering into
my face is the white, haggard face of a tramp.

“You ain’t going to drown yourself, are you?” he said.

“Why?” I asked, anticipating a severe rebuke from this withered and
worn scarecrow of humanity.

“Why,” he said, “because don’t do it here! I can show you a much better
spot, where the water is deep, and where, when once you get in, you
can’t very easily get out.”

“But how will that benefit you?” I enquired, wondering why he was so
eager.

“You can let me have your clothes, can’t you?” he explained; “you won’t
want to take them with you into the next world. From what I hears
about it, sperrits don’t need neither coats nor trousers, and the few
shillings I shall get for them will do me a bit of good, and won’t hurt
you.”

“But I wasn’t contemplating suicide,” I remarked. “I’m not tired of
life yet.”

“Ain’t you,” he said, in extremely disappointed tones. “Then why are
you out here at this time of night?”

“If it comes to that,” I observed, “why are you?”

“I ain’t got nowhere else to go,” he said; “and there are no police out
here to disturb anyone.”

“Nor ghosts?” I remarked.

“Ghosts!” he chuckled. “I’m not afraid of ghosts. I shall soon be one
myself, I expect; but there is one spot here I don’t go near after
dark.”

“Why?”

“Why,” he said. “Come along with me, and maybe you’ll guess.”

Had he been anything like my size I should not have gone, for his
appearance was very far from assuring, but, as he was a small man,
I felt comparatively safe. We walked side by side over the grass,
crossed a gleaming, white path, and steering in a slightly northerly
direction—I could tell that much by the stars—abruptly halted in
front of a shallow pit, on the other side of which was a big bush.

“It’s there,” he said, pointing at the pit. “I’ve tried to sleep there
twice, and each time I’ve been woken up by hearing something heavy
fall close to my head. It seems to come from the bush. It’s the bush
that skeers me,” he added, “and though I don’t mind passing it in the
day-time, nothing on earth will persuade me to look behind it after
dark.”

“Not even sixpence,” I said, fingering that coin in my waistcoat pocket.

“Go on,” he said, “you haven’t sixpence, otherwise you’d not be here.
You’re joking. If anyone really did offer me sixpence now to do it,
well, I don’t say but what I mightn’t try.”

He spoke so hungrily and looked so famished that I decided to part with
it, though sixpence to me just then had a particularly real value. I
showed it him. “Look behind that tree,” I said, “and I’ll give it you.”

He set off at once. “No,” I called out, “that won’t do; you must go
through the pit.” He proceeded to obey, and was in the middle of the
hollow, when I distinctly heard something very heavy strike the ground
apparently close to him. I ran round the bush, just in time to see what
I thought was a black shadow shoot across the ground and disappear in a
neighbouring cluster of trees. When I returned, the tramp was still in
the pit, but I could see nothing there to account for the noise.

“Well,” he said. “Did you hear it?”

“I heard something,” I replied, “and there’s your sixpence.”

I often went to Wimbledon Common afterwards, but never again saw the
tramp, nor found the hollow.

My Blackheath and Greenwich Park experiences, or at least most of them,
are narrated fully in my “Haunted Houses of London,” so that I can only
refer briefly to them here.

From the impressions I got, when walking on the Common at Blackheath,
I shall always believe that the superphysical influences there are
particularly demoralising. It always seemed to me that Blackheath—by
the way a curiously appropriate name—might be the rendezvous of the
very worst type of earth-bound phantasms of the dead, and of the most
vicious neutrarians.

After leaving London and entering on my scholastic career, I was
first of all a master at Daventry, then tutor in an Irish family at
Aldershot, and then, in succession, a master in preparatory schools at
Wandsworth, Hereford and Blackheath. Of these various posts, I liked
that at Blackheath the least, partly because the headmaster there was
the most unmitigated snob, and my pupils hopelessly spoilt, and partly
because I had such a detestation of the heath after dark.

My only consolation in those days was cricket and writing. Every
evening, after my work with the boys was done, I repaired to a room
over a library in Blackheath village, and it was there that I completed
my first novel, “For Satan’s Sake.”

The book deals with the soul of a suicide, and was based, as I have
already stated, on my experiences in America and York Road, Lambeth.
I tried it with various publishers, but without success, and it was
not until six years later, when I was living in a small fishing town
in Cornwall, that I eventually got it taken. It so happened that a
well-known novelist came to see me one day, and when I told him that I
had attempted a book, he said he would like to see it. I fished it out
of the box, where it had lain undisturbed for years, and he went off
with it, subsequently showing it to a reader of a publishing firm—also
a well-known novelist—who was staying in the town at the time, and who
was so impressed with it, that he advised his firm to accept it. It did
not even then come out for over a year, and the anxiety of awaiting my
début as an author can better be imagined than described. The success I
prayed for was not showered upon me, but the book was well received on
the whole, and paved the way for other works to follow.

And now, let me hie back to London and its commons. Though Hampstead
has, in all probability, its share of phantasms, my impressions there
have been of a more agreeable nature than at Blackheath. I spent the
greater part of several consecutive nights one summer sitting on a
bench in a very rustic glade on the heath, waiting for anything that
might happen. Once or twice between one and two something seemed to be
making a violent effort to materialise, and I fully expected to see a
figure suddenly appear before me. My impressions were that it would be
the figure of a woman, and that she would be carrying a white bundle
in her arms. I felt that she was in great trouble and wanted to ask
me for advice. I associated her worries with a big house that used to
stand somewhere near the summit of Hampstead Hill. I felt all this very
acutely, and I used to repeat aloud my willingness to do anything I
could to assist her.

Strange to say, a few years later, I met a lady who told me that she
had had a curious experience in the same spot. She was walking through
it rather late one autumn evening, accompanied by her dog, a big black
retriever. When she came to the seat where I used to sit, the dog
started barking and showed signs of great terror. Somewhat alarmed,
she was about to hurry on, when a voice close to her said, “It’s only
me, Winifred; don’t be frightened. The boat I sailed in to America was
wrecked, and only the child was saved.”

The lady looked round, but there was no one in sight. On reaching
home, she mentioned the incident to her mother, who exclaimed in
astonishment, “Well, that is odd! I was sitting on a seat, I should
think in that very spot, about forty years ago—we were living in D——
House, on Haverstock Hill, at the time—when a letter was brought me
announcing the loss of a big sailing vessel in the Atlantic, on which
my maid, Winnie, as we used to call her, had sailed with her husband
to America. Only a very few of the passengers and crew survived, and
Winnie and her husband were both drowned. But I never knew they had a
child.”

Hounslow Heath should teem with ghosts, for it once swarmed with
foot-pads, who, after committing every conceivable act of violence on
and around the heath, usually ended their career there on gibbets. I
once had rooms near the Bath Road, and spent many nights rambling
about the Heath in quest of ghostly adventure. One evening I kept
fancying I was followed everywhere by a tall, muffled figure, and when,
in alarm, I hastened over the grass on to the roadway, I heard a low,
cynical laugh. All the way home the steps seemed to pursue me, and when
I got into bed and prepared to blow out the light, I saw the curtains
by the window rustle and swell out, as if someone was behind them. It
was a long time before I ventured to blow out the light, and, when I
slept, I dreamed a dark, hooded figure was bending over me.

On another occasion, as I perambulated the heath, where the trees were
thickly clustered and the undergrowth had become the densest tangle, I
caught a glimpse of two men playing dice. I heard their laughter and
the rattling of the box, as they shook it in the air and threw out
the dice. Then suddenly their gaiety was turned to wrath—there were
oaths and blows, cries and groans, and all became silent, save for the
soughing and moaning of the wind through the lofty tree-tops. But as I
came away from the heath, there was again that cynical laugh, and again
footsteps seemed to follow me home, and again the curtain by the window
of my room shook and swelled.

I did not go to the heath one night; I lay awake in bed instead, and
about the hour I had usually returned I heard steps, long, swinging
steps coming down the little side road towards the house. My memory
at once went back to that night in Dublin, and I strained my ears to
catch the accompanying sound. I had not long to wait—it soon came, the
same old familiar click, click, click! In an agony of fear, lest the
steps should stop at the house and there should be a repetition of the
terrible knocking at the door, I lighted a candle and sat up. Nearer
and nearer they came, and then, when I felt certain they would stop, to
my infinite relief they went on. On past the house, the echoes ringing
out loud and clear in the keen, frosty air, until they reached the Bath
Road.

I fully expected some misfortune would happen to me after this
occurrence, as the last time I had heard the steps had been at the time
of my failure to pass the medical for the R.I.C., and shortly before
my disastrous trip to America. Yet nothing of a specially untoward
nature happened. Apparently, the steps on this occasion merely heralded
another change in my vocation, for I shortly afterwards became imbued
with the desire to be an actor, and commenced what was destined to be
a lively, though very brief theatrical career, as a pupil in the Henry
Neville Studio, Oxford Street.

Before, however, passing on to subsequent events, I must relate one
other—the only other—ghostly happening I experienced at Hounslow. In
a remote corner of the heath there was one spot that had a peculiar
fascination for me, and, whenever I returned from it, I dreamed the
same dream—that a beautiful girl in an old-world costume, with fair
hair, large, blue eyes and daintily-moulded lips, approached my bed and
leaned over me. She had the most appealing expression in her face, and
seemed to be anxious to make me her confidant. I was always about to
address her, when some extraordinary metamorphosis took place, and I
awoke, palpitating with terror.

The dream greatly impressed me, and I tried my best to discover a
reason for it. I did eventually, but not until the year I published
“Some Haunted Houses of England and Wales,” when I got into
correspondence with a very old lady, whom I will call Miss Carmichael.
Miss Carmichael lived at Ealing, close to the Parish Church, and wrote
to me to the effect that, if I liked to call on her, she could tell me
a curious tale about an old house that used to stand on the outskirts
of Hounslow Heath. Of course I accepted this invitation.

I found Miss Carmichael, when I called, lying on a sofa, crippled with
rheumatism, but otherwise in the full possession of all her senses, and
wonderfully vivacious, despite the fact that she was well over ninety.

“The house I want to tell you about,” she said, “was called ‘The
Gables.’ It was a large, old-fashioned manor house with very extensive
grounds, and at the beginning of the last century it belonged to my
aged relative, Miss Denning. She never lived in it herself, but she
kept it in excellent repair, and at her death, in or about 1820, her
nephew inherited an apparently valuable property. Now, Tom Denning had
a great friend, Dick Mayhew, and it was from Dick Mayhew, who was also
a great friend of mine, that I heard the most detailed account of the
hauntings. I will try and tell you the story just as my friend told it
to me.”[3]

      [3] I have reproduced the gist of this narrative in my own
            language.

       *       *       *       *       *

“I was sitting in my stuffy office in Jermyn Street one spring morning,
when, who should suddenly walk in but Tom Denning, whom I had not seen
for some time. ‘Why, Dick,’ he said, ‘how fagged and run down you look.
A spell in the country is what you need, it would do you all the good
in the world. Supposing you come down to my place at Hounslow, and have
a blow on the Heath. I keep a couple of horses, and you can ride all
day if you like.’

“What surprises you spring on one,” I ejaculated. “I didn’t know you
were living so near London—and at Hounslow, too! Aren’t you afraid of
highwaymen. I hear they still visit the place occasionally. How long
have you been there?”

“I haven’t been there yet,” Dick replied with a laugh; “at least, not
to stay. The property has just been left me by my aunt. It’s a queer
old house, just the kind of place a romantic beggar like you would
like, and if any house ought to be haunted, it ought. They say a murder
was once committed there by an ancestress of mine, a girl whose face
was as beautiful as she herself was evil, and that her spirit still
roams the house and grounds.”

“I should certainly like to see her,” I said, “and so, I am sure, would
Greg.” (Greg was Dick’s bloodhound).

“Well, I’ll give you both an opportunity,” Tom laughed. “Take Greg with
you, and a friend too, if you like, for I may not be able to join you
at once.”

“I accepted, and in due course arrived at ‘The Gables,’ accompanied by
my cousin Ralph, who was then a Lieutenant in the Buffs, and Greg.

“The grounds surrounding ‘The Gables,’ which stood near the edge of the
heath, were encompassed by a very high, red-brick wall, and consisted
of a broad, well-kept lawn in front, a small spinney on one side, an
extensive shrubbery on the other, and big kitchen gardens at the back.
The house itself, seventeenth century and covered with ivy from tip to
toe, was picturesque in the extreme. There were no servants, only the
caretakers, a middle-aged man and his wife, who occupied rooms in the
east wing. The west wing was reserved for us.

“After dinner, in a hall so enormous that it made us feel positively
lilliputian, we wandered out into the garden. It was a glorious night,
the sky one mass of silver, scintillating stars, the air redolent with
the odour of spring flowers. ‘By Jove,’ Ralph remarked to me, as we
strolled across the lawn, ‘By Jove! No one would think we were so close
to that God-forsaken heath; why, it was only a few years ago that a
fellow in my regiment was set on there, and, after being robbed of all
he had on him, half beaten to death with bludgeons. It’s one of the
worst cut-throat spots round London.’ Then he uttered an exclamation of
surprise and jogged my elbow.

“Coming towards us from the house was the figure of a young girl. She
wore a white dress with a dark cloak flung loosely over her shoulders,
and the moonlight playing over her face revealed a countenance of
extraordinary delicacy and beauty. Her eyes were large and childlike in
their expression, her lips daintily modelled, her teeth wonderfully
white and even, her hair golden. Whether it was the effect of the
moonlight on them or not, I cannot say, but her cheeks were absolutely
devoid of colour, almost strikingly pale, whilst I fancied I detected
in the slightly open mouth an expression of pain. I saw every detail
most distinctly, even to the shape of her fingers, which were very
pointed. She came on without apparently noticing us, and we watched her
trip past us and disappear in the spinney.

“‘What a stunner!’ Ralph exclaimed. ‘I don’t know when I’ve seen a
prettier face! Sly fellow, Denning! I wonder who she can be!’ He had
hardly finished speaking when we heard the most awful scream, a shriek
of terror and despair, such as sent all the blood in my body to my
heart, and left the rest of me like ice.

“‘My God! What’s happened to her?’ Ralph gasped. ‘She’s being murdered.
Quick!’ We dashed into the spinney, but despite the fact that we
searched everywhere, no girl was to be found.

“Returning to the house, we made enquiries of the caretakers, who were
vehement in their denial of knowing the girl or of having heard her
cries. Much puzzled, we then retired to our night quarters. The room
that had been assigned to us, for we preferred to share one between us,
was situated about midway down a long, narrow corridor, lighted at the
further end by a casement window, across which sprays of ivy blew to
and fro in the cool breeze.

“For a long time we sat in front of the fire chatting, but at one
o’clock Ralph got up, and exclaimed that it was high time we turned
into bed.

“‘Hullo, look at Greg!’ he said, pointing to the dog, who was crouching
on the floor in front of the door showing its teeth in a series of
savage growls. ‘What’s the matter with him?’

“Before I had time to reply, we suddenly heard a regular, measured tap,
tap, tap, as of high-heeled shoes, coming along the corridor towards
our door.

“‘That can’t be either the caretaker or his wife,’ Ralph whispered.
‘I wonder if it’s the young lady! Perhaps she’s going to pay us a
surreptitious visit. I only wish she would—the little darling!’

“Nearer and nearer came the steps, until they seemed to stop just
outside our door. Greg’s hair bristled, he gave a deep growl, and
retreated half way across the room. Then there came a loud knock on the
door, followed by the sound of a violent scuffle. Springing forward,
Ralph threw the door wide open. There was nothing there, only the cold
light of the moon, and the white, motionless faces of the Dennings’
ancestors hanging on the walls.

“‘It’s deuced odd,’ Ralph said. ‘I swear I heard steps and a knock, and
yet there’s nothing to account for it. Could it have been rats?’

“‘I don’t think so,’ I said; ‘rats wouldn’t have frightened Greg. Look
at him now; he has quite recovered.’ Greg had come to my side and was
licking my hand and wagging his tail.

“In the morning I asked the caretaker’s wife if the place was haunted.

“‘Haunted,’ she stammered. ‘No. Whatever made you think of such a
thing, sir! There ain’t no such things as ghosts. It’s them howls you
’eard.’

“Seeing there was nothing to be got out of her, Ralph and I did not
refer to the subject again, but spent our time reading in the library,
and wandering about the heath.

“In the evening we sauntered out into the garden and tried to coax Greg
to come with us, but he resolutely refused, and so we had to leave him
behind. Just about the same time as on the previous evening, and in
identically the same place, we again saw the girl.

“‘I’ll speak to her, hanged if I don’t,’ Ralph muttered, and taking
off his hat, he stepped forward and accosted her. Without apparently
perceiving us, she passed resolutely on, and, entering the spinney, was
speedily lost to sight. Almost directly afterwards, the same awful,
wailing scream rose shrill and high on the still night air. This time
we did not rush after her, but, walking hurriedly back to the house, we
sought the companionship of the bright and cheery fireside.

“At one o’clock we were again seated in our bedroom, and the events of
the preceding night were repeated in every detail.

“On the morrow Tom joined us. When we told him of the ghost, he became
intensely interested.

“‘It must be my ancestress,’ he said. ‘The girl who was supposed to
have murdered somebody. I’ll sit up with you two fellows to-night and
we’ll have the door open.’

“After dinner we all three went into the garden.

“‘It’s here we first caught sight of her,’ Ralph exclaimed, as we
halted on the lawn, ‘here, and precisely at this hour. Yes—by
Jove!—and there she is!’

“I looked, and there was the figure I knew so well, tripping daintily
towards us, her yellow hair and silver shoe buckles gleaming furiously
in the moonlight.

“‘She wears a hood,’ Tom cried, ‘and it completely hides her face.’

“‘What!’ Ralph retorted; ‘she has no hood, you must be dreaming.’

“As before, the girl passed us and we lost sight of her amongst the
trees. The next moment, and we again heard her scream. Then we searched
everywhere, but with no result. She was certainly not on the premises,
and as there was no avenue of escape save by scaling a ten foot
wall, we could only conclude she had melted into fine air, in other
words—vanished.

“‘I’ll get to the bottom of this mystery,’ Tom growled between his
teeth, ‘if I root up every tree in the garden.’

“‘What you’ve seen so far,’ Ralph observed, ‘is only the prelude.
There’s more to come, and I’m not sure if Act II. is not the most
exciting. What do you think, Dick?’

“‘Ask Greg,’ I replied. ‘I believe he knows more about it than we do.’

“On arriving indoors, we all three retired to the bedroom we had agreed
to share. The night was so exquisite that I sat by the open window.
Directly beneath me was the gravel drive, which lay like a broad,
white belt encircling the house, and beyond it, on the level sweep of
lawn, danced the shadows from the larch and fir trees in the paddock;
the only sign of life came from the bats and night birds that wheeled
and skimmed in silent flight in and out the bushes. There was very
little breeze, sufficient only to make the ivy rustle and the window
in the corridor outside give the faintest perceptible jar. I gazed at
my companions. Ralph lay on the sofa, sound asleep, a half-serious,
half-amused look on his handsome features, while Tom sat in an armchair
directly in front of the fire, his head buried in the palms of his
hands, as if wrapt in profound thought. A distant church clock boomed
one. Greg growled, and Tom, at once springing up, flung the door widely
back on its hinges. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Come what may, we’re ready for
it.’ As he concluded, there came a tapping.

“Tap, tap, tap; someone in high-heeled shoes was walking over the
polished oak boards of the corridor in our direction. To me there was a
world of stealth and cautiousness in the sounds, that suggested a host
of conflicting motives. As the steps drew nearer, the door suddenly
swung to with a loud crash, and before we had time to recover from our
astonishment, someone rapped. With a shout of baffled rage, Tom leaped
to his feet and tore at the handle. The massive door at once flew open.
The corridor was empty—only moonbeams and pictures—nothing more.

“The following day was wet, and we stayed indoors, all the morning and
afternoon, reading. As it cleared up a little towards supper-time, Tom
proposed going for a short walk. We slipped on our overcoats, and were
crossing the big entrance hall to the front door, when Tom suddenly
exclaimed, ‘Hang it! I’ve left my pipe upstairs. I say, wait a minute,
you fellows, till I get it.’ He started running, and then stopped
short, giving vent to a loud exclamation. Ascending the broad staircase
in front of us was a form, whose back view exactly resembled that of
the golden-haired beauty we had seen in the garden. Where she had
sprung from we could not say. We only knew she was there.

“‘By Jove! I’ll see her face this time,’ Tom said. ‘I’ll see it, even
if I have to force her to turn round.’ He ran after her, and, mounting
the stairs two at a time, stretched out his hand to pluck at her
sleeve. She turned, and her face was to us a blank. What Tom saw we
never knew. Shouting, ‘Take the damned thing away from me!’ he stepped
back and fell; and when we ran forward, we found him lying at the foot
of the stairs—dead.”

The property, Miss Carmichael informed me, passed to a distant
relative, who, after trying in vain to let it, pulled it down. The
ghost, it was rumoured, was that of a very beautiful ancestress of
the Dennings, who, after leading a life, evil even for those times,
disappeared. What happened to her material body no one ever knew, but
her spirit was supposed to haunt the house and grounds in dual form.
To the stranger, that is to say, to those outside her own family,
she appeared in all the radiant beauty of her earthly body, but to
the Dennings she seldom revealed her face. When she did, they beheld
something too terrible for the mind to conceive—and live.

“I have heard,” Miss Carmichael added, “that the ghost has been seen
quite recently haunting the site once occupied by the house and
grounds, and also the borders of the heath.”

And as Miss Carmichael was very emphatic on this last point, I may not
unreasonably conclude that the girl of my dreams was the actual ghost
of “The Gables.”




CHAPTER X

MY VIEWS ON A FUTURE LIFE FOR THE ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE WORLDS


I mentioned in one of my former works that I believe many of the
figures we pass by in the streets are not men and women like ourselves,
but phantasms—phantasms of the living, that is to say, spirit
projections of people consciously or unconsciously thinking of being
where we see them—phantasms of the dead, and impersonating neutrarians.

Mingling with the crowds in the parks and gliding in and out the trees,
I have often seen people with the pallor of corpses; I have followed
them, and they have unaccountably vanished. I believe Hyde Park,
particularly the northern side, to be as full of ghosts as any spot
in London, and I have heard many strange tales from the outcasts, the
tattered and torn brigade, who have slept all night under its trees and
bushes. The police are, I believe, expected to clear the Park before
locking-up time, and I’ve no doubt they try to do so, but they cannot
possibly look into every nook and cranny in that vast expanse, and
there are many in which one could easily hide and defy detection. I
have tried the experiment once, and I am not anxious to try it again;
there is no place so terribly depressing, so strangely suggestive of
suicide, and hauntings by the most grotesque type of neutrarians, as
London’s premier park by night.

Some twelve or fifteen years ago, in my nightly rambles there, I
noticed that the seat beneath a certain tree, mid-way between the
Marble Arch and Lancaster Gate, was rarely occupied, whereas all the
other seats in that vicinity were invaded by couples. One evening,
the weather being warm and sultry, I went and sat there. I dozed off,
and eventually fell into a deep sleep. I dreamed that an old man and
a young girl stood under the tree, whispering, and that as I watched
them they raised their eyes, and looked in a horribly guilty manner,
not at me, but at the space next me, which I perceived, for the first
time, was occupied by a tiny child. Moving stealthily forward and
holding in their hands an outspread cloth, they crept up behind the
child, the cloth descended, and all three vanished. Then something made
me gaze up into the branches of the tree, and I saw a large, light,
colourless, heavily-lidded eye peering down at me with an expression
of the utmost malevolence. It was altogether so baneful, so symbolic
of cruelty, malice, and hate that I could only stare back at it in
mute astonishment. The whole shape of the tree then seemed to alter,
and to become like an enormous dark hand, which, swaying violently
to and fro, suddenly dived down and closed over me. I awoke at once,
but was so afraid of seeing the eye, that for some minutes I kept my
own eyes tightly shut. When I opened them, I saw, bending over me, a
very white face, and to my intense relief a voice, unmistakably human,
croaked, “No wonder you’re scared, sitting here at this time of night
by yourself.”

The speaker was merely one of the many hundreds of tramps for whom the
Park was reception and bedroom combined. His hat was little more than
a rim, and his trousers cried shame on the ladies I saw every day with
their skirts plastered all over with buttons. His cheeks were hollow,
his eyes preternaturally bright, and his breath full of hunger. Still,
he was alive, and anything alive just then was very welcome.

“I never sleep here,” he said; “none of us do.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it’s haunted,” he said. “You may laugh—so did I years ago,
afore I took to this sort of thing. But sleeping out-of-doors all night
has taught me more than any politicians, bishops, or schoolmasters
know; or any of those fine ladies that swell about in their carriages
know; I’ve seen sights that would make an hangel afraid; I’ve seen
ghosts of all sorts. They’re not all like us, neither. Some of them
ain’t human at all, they’re devils. You may laugh when you read about
them in them library books, but it’s no laughing matter when you see
them, as I’ve seen them, all alone and cold, in some wayside ditch.
This tree, I tell yer, is ’aunted—and it’s a devil that ’aunts it. Ask
my mates, any of them that you’ll find sleeping in the parks. There’s
many of them that ’ave experienced it. They’ve seen something hiding in
the branches, and when they’ve seen it, they’ve felt they must either
kill themselves or someone else. There’s a devil in the tree that
tempts one to do all kind of wicked things, and if you take my advice,
young man, you’ll sit somewhere else.”

“I think I will,” I said; “and here’s something for your warning.”
I gave him threepence, the only coins I had on me just then, and,
overwhelming me with thanks, he shuffled away.

Since that night I have often thought that the poor—the very
poor—know far more of the other world or worlds than do the rich,
and that they know more—far more—on other points than the rich.
The statesman talks of the people and the people’s needs, but what
does he know of the people and their needs? He rarely, if ever, goes
amongst them. Except in electioneering times, I doubt if any Member of
Parliament ever goes into the more squalid of our London districts. I
have seen one Member of the House of Lords eating whelks in a tavern
in the Limehouse Causeway, but he is an exception. Journalists go
there—but the leisured folk—never.

It bores them; and yet how much they might learn, how much not only
of urgent human needs, but of coming storms. They might learn that
the East End brews whilst the West End sleeps, and that as surely as
the long-talked-of German war cloud—that war cloud they affected to
ridicule—has at last burst, so undoubtedly will the war cloud of
revolution; revolution hatched by malcontents of all nationalities in
East End doss houses and crowded coffee taverns.

This is no empty prophecy. The cinders of the volcano have been hot for
some time—they are now burning hot—and the hour is fast approaching
when they will arise mightily in a red conflagration. Are we prepared
for it? It takes a very sound constitution to face a revolution with
perfect confidence. Are we sound? Can any constitution be sound when
the rich daily grow richer, and the poor, poorer. Where Art—all that
cries out for beauty, real beauty, beauty as it is seen and worshipped
by souls uninspired by lucre—is starved to death and crushed, limp and
lifeless, by the thumbscrews of a vain, shallow, mercenary mushroom
aristocracy on the one hand, and an equally selfish, crude, ignorant,
money-grabbing working class on the other. But let me say again it is
the East End, the ever watchful, never slumbering East End, that is
the thermometer of future events. And why? Because it is here that the
lean, hungry men of letters, who seldom, if ever, get their thoughts
transferred to print, are even now threshing out the nation’s destiny.
Threshing it out, consolidating it, whilst the monied men and women,
the present all-powerful nouveau riche—the beer, whiskey and tobacco,
peers and peeresses—the lords of the Stock Exchange, Banks and Divorce
Courts—those who have made their money out of the sins and follies
of the world, or by sweating and usury, are lolling in their soft,
upholstered chairs, smoking luxurious cigars and quaffing liqueurs.

The war has done much: it has aroused patriotism, it has given rise to
self-sacrifice, but it has not touched the root of the gangrene, it
has not lessened our worship of the dollar. Individualism, as we know
it to-day, must collapse, and some better and purer system—a system
that does not encourage selfishness—must prevail. The people are dying
for change—for some great change that will give them fair play. This
is the people’s need—the need that you may hear voiced throughout
the length and breadth of the squalid East End. “We want a Government
that remembers its primary duties,” they cry. “A Government that is
father to its children, that loves, fosters and protects them. We have
never had one yet, but the hour may not be far distant when we shall
demand one.” This is what the people of leisure might learn, if they
visited the haunts I visit; and they might learn more beside. They
might learn of another world, a spirit world, such as is never alluded
to in the pulpits, with which people in the poorest parts—people who
are too poor to pay for beds—are forced to live in contact. Nights
in the parks and commons have taught these vagrants more, a thousand
times more, than they ever learned in Sunday or County Council Schools.
They have seen sights—spirits in the form of man and of beast, of
both and of neither—that have revealed to them how closely the other
world borders on this, and to what close supervision the inhabitants
of the other world subject some of us. They have learned, I say, what
no priest or preacher would, or could, teach them, namely, that the
hell of spirit-land lies on this earth, and that the worst of all
punishments is that of the poor phantasms of the dead, that glides in
and out the trees nocturnally, never meeting those it knew and loved,
but ever encountering the most terrifying of the spirits that are
hostile to man.

[Illustration: “What gives me the worst fright is a tree....”]

Our vagrants know, too, the power of these neutrarians, they know they
can adopt any shape, and tempt and goad man on to the committal of
any crime, however heinous. They have, moreover, acquired a further
knowledge—a knowledge denied and scoffed at by the ministry of all
Christian denominations—namely that all forms of animal and vegetable
life, all forms of flora and fauna, pass into the superphysical, and
live again.

I myself first learned of a tree ghost from an old tramp, who came and
sat by my side on a seat on Clapham Common.

“Do I ever see anything strange here at night?” he repeated in answer
to my question. “Yes, I do, at times, but what gives me the worst
fright is a tree that I sometimes see close to the spot where that man
was murdered some ten or twelve years ago. I never saw it before the
murder, but a few nights afterwards, as I was passing the spot, I saw
a peculiar glimmer of white, and, on getting a bit closer, I found, to
my astonishment, that it was a tall, slender white thing with branches
just like a tree, only it was not behaving like a tree. Although there
was not a breath of wind, it kept lurching with a strange, creaking
noise, and I felt it was watching me, watching me furtively, just as if
it had eyes, and was bent on doing me all the harm it possibly could.
I was so scared, I turned tail, and never ceased running till I had
reached home.”

“Home!” I said.

“Yes, a clump of bushes near the ditch, where I always turn in of
nights. It ain’t much of a home, to be sure, but it’s the only one I’ve
got, and I can generally count on lying there undisturbed till the
morning.”

I gave him a few coppers, and he blessed me as if I had given him a
fortune.

On Tooting Common I met a Northumberland miner, who had come to London
for the first time on a holiday, and, having had his pocket picked,
was obliged to spend the night out-of-doors. “Ghosts,” he said, when
I asked him if he had any experiences with the supernatural whilst
engaged in his underground work. “Ghosts! Yes, but of a nature you
don’t read about in books. Me and my mates, when working in a drift
at night, have heard the blowing of the wind and a mighty rustling of
leaves, and have found ourselves surrounded on all sides by numerous
trees and ferns that have suddenly risen from the ground and formed a
regular forest. They have not resembled any trees you see now-a-days,
but what you might fancy existed many thousands of years ago. There
has been no colour in them, only a uniform whiteness, and they have
shone like phosphorous. We have heard, too, all the noises, such as go
on daily in forests above-ground—the humming and buzzing of insects,
and the chirping of birds; and shafts and galleries have echoed and
re-echoed with the sounds, till you would have thought that those away
above us must have heard them, too.”

I do not think the miner romanced, for what he said was only a
corroboration of what other miners have often told me.

Of course, it is not every mine that is haunted in this way, or
every miner that sees such sights, for the Unknown confines its
manifestations to the few, but I firmly believe such phenomena do
happen, because as I state in my “Byways of Ghostland” (W. Rider &
Sons), I have seen several tree ghosts myself. If one form of life
possesses a spirit, why should we not assume that other forms of
life possess a spirit, too? Why should man have the monopoly of an
immaterial self, and alone of all creation continue his identity
after physical dissolution? On moral grounds? No! For man, generally
speaking, is in no sense superior morally to the so-called beasts
around him. He is often the reverse. Oddly enough, we have so long
accustomed ourselves to using the term immorality exclusively in
reference to our illegal relations with the other sex, that we have
come to regard these illegal relations as the only immorality existing.
It is a curious error. Immorality comprises theft, and theft not only
comprehends depriving people of their material goods, it comprehends
slander and gossip—_i.e._, depriving people of their character;
sweating—_i.e._, depriving people of the just rewards of their mental
and manual labour; and bread-snatching,—_i.e._, depriving people of
their only means of existence; beside many other acts of an equally
odious nature. The average drawing-room is invariably the rendezvous
of immoral people; nine out of every ten of the ladies one meets there
are robbers—they steal, almost at very breath, someone’s good name and
reputation, a far worse crime than the purloining of a loaf, for which
act of desperation a poor man would be sent to prison, and a hungry dog
beaten. In the drawing-room, too, one meets the girl with a few hundred
a year, who announces her intention of taking some post—maybe on the
stage, or on the staff of some paper, or in a business house, “just to
make a little money.” A little money at the expense of someone else’s
life! For that is what the want of occupation to the person with no
private income literally means. We see none of this mean immorality in
the animal world. Dogs steal bones from one another, it is true, but
they do not lie, and cheat, and intrigue; nor do they, when they have a
sufficiency themselves, snatch away the little that constitutes another
person’s all.

Animals are accused of being cruel—of barbarously murdering one
another, as in the cases of the cat and mouse, the lion and deer,
etc. But they rarely kill, saving when they are hungry, and for
food man kills, too, in a fashion and with a method which is truly
disgusting. By studiously looking after the daily wants of certain
animals, such as cows and sheep, and by caring for them when they are
ill, man leads them to suppose he is their friend, and they learn to
trust him. Vain faith. He is kind to them only to suit his own ends.
He out-Judas’s Judas, and after nonchalantly accepting their most
lavish tributes of affection, he takes them unawares and kills them,
either with a poleaxe, or some other weapon entailing an equally
painful and lingering death. Do any animals behave quite so basely?
Besides, there is no cruelty in the animal world—not even the most
excruciating suction of the octopus, nor the sharp, agonising bite of
the flesh-eating parrot of New Zealand—that can for one moment compare
with the coolly planned and leisurely executed horrors of the Spanish
Inquisition; and the tiger, at its worst, is but a tyro in savagery
compared with the creature God is said to have made in His own image.

From vices turn to virtues, and pause for a moment in reflection on
the many lovable qualities of the dog. Where in man do we find such
affection, forgiveness, general amiability, constancy and patience;
and in the case of the horse, such a willingness to labour without
any thought of recompense. It makes me positively ill, when I hear
hopelessly immoral men and women—gossips, slanderers, breadsnatchers,
usurers, sweaters—speak condescendingly of animals—of dogs and horses
that are on an infinitely higher moral plane than ever they have been,
or ever will be. But moral superiority is not the only superiority that
man fallaciously assumes. He lays claim to an intellectual superiority,
which is equally fallacious, equally a myth. No one who has ever
studied animal and insect life can but have been impressed with the
marvels of ingenuity and skill displayed therein. The web of the common
garden spider and the nest of the wren, for example, are every whit as
wonderful in their way as the architectural works of Inigo Jones or
Christopher Wren. On the grounds of a moral and mental inferiority,
therefore, the argument of a future life for the human species only,
fails. Another argument, an argument advanced by the most bigotted of
the religious denominationalists, is “that man only has a conscience,
and that conscience which he alone possesses is the only passport to
another world. Without conscience there can be no soul, and without
soul there can be no hope of a continuation of life after death.”
This, of course, is merely assumption, as is nearly all the teaching of
the Churches. Conscience, like religion, depends to a very large extent
on climate. A man born in the centre of Africa might not think it wrong
to do things that would appear appalling to a Plymouth Brother, and
vice versa. There is at present no fixed and universal standard of
right and wrong, any more than there is a fixed and universal standard
of beauty—for as each eye forms its own idea of feminine loveliness,
so each heart forms its own conception of honour and dishonour, virtue
and vice. We know that this is the case as far as mankind is concerned,
and we have nothing beyond assumption to assure us that it is not
so throughout the animal and insect world. If the animals have no
conception of a moral standard, how is it that they do not destroy one
another? That the instinct to injure people is innate in us is readily
proved by the joy nearly all of us take in saying disparaging things
of our neighbours. We go so far, and we would undoubtedly go the whole
hog and kill those we hate, if something more, perhaps, than the mere
fear of hanging did not hold us back. That restraining something is
unquestionably the fear of the Future, and it is that fear which I
am inclined to think is the origin of what we term our consciences.
Were we sure there was no future existence, there would be no moral
restraint (it would only be the prospect of legal punishment that would
deter us from injuring other people to our heart’s content), we should
have no consciences; and if this is applicable to mankind, why is it
not applicable to other forms of animal life?

Is it not feasible to suppose that it is this same fear of the
future that acts as a preventive to animals killing one another
indiscriminately? That they do at times rob and kill for other
motives than to satisfy their hunger is indisputable, but these
exceptional cases prove what I am trying to maintain—that there is
some restraining influence that keeps the vast majority highly moral;
and I see no feasible arguments for not supposing this influence to
be a conscience begat by a deep-rooted fear of what may await them on
physical dissolution.

And if this applies to the mammals, why not to the whole animal,
insect, and vegetable worlds—to everything that has life, for
Science has yet to prove that where there is life, there is not also
intelligence.

The superior morality of animals to man, then, may be considered as
due to their more powerful consciences, and to their stronger fear
of the possibility of the superphysical. And why should they have a
much stronger fear? Because, unquestionably, they have a more intimate
knowledge of the Unknown than has man. No one who has had much to
do with dogs and horses can doubt this. Who that has ridden through
woods and jungles, or lonely country roads at night, has not seen
their horse suddenly stop and evince every evidence of fear. Though
the human eye has seen nothing to account for it, the horse obviously
has seen something, and it has only been by dint of the utmost coaxing
and petting that the sagacious animal has been persuaded to continue
its course. It is the same with dogs. Over and over again I have had
dogs with me in houses alleged to be haunted, and they have suddenly
manifested symptoms of the greatest, the most uncontrollable fear. I
have endeavoured to pacify them, to urge them to follow me, but it
has been in vain; though obedient and fearless as a rule, they have
suddenly become the most disobedient and incorrigible of cowards. Why?
Because I am certain they have seen and heard things which, for some
unaccountable reason, have been held back from me.

If knowledge, then, of another life is any plea for the bestowal of an
unperishable spirit, animals should live again even more surely than
man. And so also should the vegetable world, for I have myself seen
trees violently agitated, as if with paroxysms of the most sublime
terror, before the advent of superphysical phenomena.

And stronger than any of these arguments is that of the ghosts
themselves. There are innumerable and well-authenticated cases of
hauntings by the phantasms of dogs, horses, birds, insects, and trees,
and it is, perhaps, chiefly through these hauntings that we can
disprove the theory that man possesses a monopoly of the immaterial
planes; a theory which, were it not for his insufferable egotism and
conceit, he would never have advanced.




CHAPTER XI

A HAUNTING IN REGENT’S PARK, AND MY FURTHER VIEWS WITH REGARD TO
SPIRITUALISM


Before concluding my experiences in the parks and commons of London, I
will cite one other case, a case which serves to illustrate the theme I
have just been discussing.

I was visiting the Zoological Gardens in Regent’s Park, one day in the
summer of 1898, and was so struck with the look of yearning in the eyes
of one of the lions, the desperate look of yearning to have just five
minutes’ gambol on the sunny lawn outside, five minutes in which to
stretch its poor, cramped-up limbs, and sniff, perhaps for the first
time, the fine fresh air of freedom, that I could not refrain from
mentioning what was passing in my mind to a white-haired old man and a
plainly dressed young woman, who were standing near.

“Yes, sir,” the old man said. “It does seem hard on these huge animals
to be confined within the limits of such a very small space and to have
to pace up and down these little boxes, tantalised by the sight of
other creatures enjoying the privileges that are denied to them. It is
worse treatment than any meted out to criminals; in fact, the biggest
ruffian in jail does not suffer in anything like the same degree as
these animals. They have one thing to be thankful for, however—life
cannot last for ever. Death will be their kindest friend. It is the
rich man’s purgatory, but it is Paradise for all these creatures as
well as for the poor man.”

“You believe in another world, then?” I remarked.

“Believe in another world?” he answered sharply, “why, of course I do.
I have seen far too much of it to do otherwise, haven’t I, Minnie?”

“Yes, Grandad,” the girl said simply.

“We both have, Minnie and I,” the old man went on.

“Spirits?” I enquired.

“Yes, spirits. Ghosts, if you like,” he said.

“Tell me. I’m not one of the scoffers,” I pleaded.

He looked at me searchingly, and then said: “I used to be a keeper
here many years ago. I was devoted to the animals, and when they died,
I invariably saw their ghosts. So did some of the other keepers. Now
don’t run away with the idea that the Gardens are haunted, sir. As far
as I know, they are not. It was only to us who had so much to do with
them when they were alive that the spirits of these animals appeared.
I remember one instance in particular, about twelve years ago, just
before I left the Zoo. A young lion came here from East Africa. It
wouldn’t let any of the keepers go near it excepting myself, and it
was generally regarded as having a very uncertain temper. But I never
found it so. I knew that the reason of its restlessness was its hatred
of confinement. I knew it hated its cage, and I used to do all I could
to comfort it. There was a sort of mutual understanding between us.
When it saw me looking a bit anxious and worried, for my wife was
often ill, it used to come and rub its great head against me, as if
to cheer me up, and when I saw it looking more than usually dejected,
I used to stop and talk to it for a longer time than I talked to any
one of the other animals. Well, one day it fell ill, caught a chill,
so we thought, and evinced a strong dislike to its food. I discussed
its case with the other keepers, and they agreed there was nothing to
be alarmed about, as it was young and to all appearances healthy. We
all thought it would be well again in a few days. I had gone home as
usual one night, and was sitting in the kitchen reading the evening
paper, when something came over me that I must go for a walk. I told
Minnie, who was a little girl then, not more than nine or ten years
of age, and she begged her mother to let her go with me. We started
off with the intention of going to the Caledonian Road, as Minnie
liked looking at the shops there, but we hadn’t gone far before Minnie
suddenly exclaimed, ‘Grandad, let’s go to Regent’s Park.’ ‘Regent’s
Park,’ I ejaculated; ‘whatever do you want to go there for at this time
of night!’ ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but I feel I must.’ ‘Well now,’ I
replied, ‘that’s odd, because the very same feeling has come over me.’

“We struck off down Crowndale Road—I was living in the neighbourhood
of the St. Pancras Road then—and got to Gloucester Gate just about
dusk. We had passed through, and were walking along the Broad Walk by
the side of the Zoo, when Minnie suddenly caught hold of my arm, and
said, ‘Look, Grandad!’ I followed the direction of her gaze, and there
coming straight towards us from the Zoo walls was a lion. I can tell
you it gave me a jump, as I naturally thought one of the animals had
escaped. It aimed straight for us, and upon its getting close to I
recognised it at once—it was the young lion that had been taken ill.
To my astonishment, however, there was nothing of the invalid about
it now. The expression in its eyes was one of infinite happiness. It
seemed to say, ‘I have attained my ideal; I am out in the open, in
the sweet, fresh air, and the wide darkness of the fast approaching
night.’ It came right up to us, and I stretched out my hand to touch
it, wondering what the passers-by would do when they saw it, and how
on earth we should get it back into the gardens. It bitterly grieved
me to think it would have to lose its freedom. I stretched out my
hand, I say, to touch it, and to my surprise my fingers encountered
nothing—the lion had vanished. I then realised what Minnie had known
all along—that what we had seen was a ghost. A ghost, and yet it had
appeared to me so absolutely real and life-like.”

“How did you know it was a ghost?” I enquired of the young woman.

“By the curious kind of light that seemed to emanate from all over
its body,” she replied. “I can only describe it as a kind of glow,
something like that of a glow-worm. It was not a bit natural.”

“But you saw the figure distinctly?”

“Yes,” she responded, “very distinctly, and I wasn’t the least bit
afraid.”

“Let me tell you the sequel, sir,” the old man interrupted. “On my
arrival at the Zoo in the morning, one of the men came running up to
me. ‘It’s dead!’ he said. ‘Dead!’ I cried. ‘Who’s dead?’ ‘Why, that
young lion of yours,’ was the reply; ‘it died at eight o’clock last
night.’

“And, sure enough, when I went into the lion-house, there was the
animal lying stretched out at full length in its cage—dead. It had
died at eight o’clock, which was the exact time we had seen it in the
park.”

       *       *       *       *       *

And now to pursue the thread of my own life, which must of necessity
run through this volume. While I was teaching at Blackheath, I not only
completed my first novel, “For Satan’s Sake,” but studied for the stage
at the Henry Neville Studio in Oxford Street. I shall never forget with
what joy, when my duties with the spoilt and tiresome boys were over,
I exchanged the terrible monotony of the schoolroom for the delightful
and interesting atmosphere of the Studio. Henry Neville did not teach
there himself, but periodically came to watch and help us with his
criticisms, which were always as kindly and instructive as they were
utterly free from pomposity and egotism. Easy and natural himself, he
tried to infuse something of his spirit into us, and with many of us,
I believe, he succeeded; for even those who did not believe that acting
could be taught, were bound to admit that the pupils of Henry Neville
were singularly free from the staginess almost always seen in amateurs,
and sometimes in professionals as well.

Henry Neville’s brother, Fred Gartside, who gave me my first lesson in
elocution—an abler or more persevering instructor could not have been
found—left off teaching at the Studio soon after I joined. Mr. G. R.
Foss took his place, and is, I believe, still at the head of it.

I have always looked upon G. R. Foss as one of the greatest stage
geniuses I have ever met. He is that rarest of all individuals—the
born actor—the man who can perform almost any _rôle_ with equal
success. He is the ideal stage manager, a past master in the knowledge
of all the technicalities adhering to the theatre, and the possessor of
a never-ceasing flow of wit and good humour.

Among the pupils who were at the Studio with me, several have performed
in London. I toured with George Desmond, who was quite recently playing
in the West End, and I met Miss Yvonne Orchardson again, some two or
more years ago, when she was also acting in a London theatre, whilst I
constantly see that charming and talented old Nevillite, Miss Lilian
North, who delights London audiences with her sweetly told stories and
good recitations. Apart from many other personal attractions, Miss
North has the most beautiful hands; the fingers are long and tapering
and the nails exquisitely shaped. It is the rarest combination of the
psychic and dramatic hand, and such as I have very seldom seen saving
among Orientals.

If I have spoken somewhat extravagantly of the Neville Studio, its
instructors and pupils, it is only what I genuinely feel, and I repeat,
again, that the hours there were some of the most delightful I have
ever experienced. When I had completed my course of instruction, I
went on tour in “A Night Out.” I then came back to London and remained
nearly a year in Town, writing in the day-time and playing in one or
other of the suburbs in the evening. I lived, for the most part, in St.
James’ Road, Brixton, where I wrote my second and third books, both
novels, and entitled respectively “The Unknown Depths” and “Dinevah the
Beautiful.”

“The Unknown Depths,” founded to a large extent upon my own life,
introduces the subject of Spiritualism, or, as it is now more often
termed, Spiritism, and, whilst I was engaged on it, I attended many
séances.

I am often asked to express an opinion on Spiritualism.

I am very averse from any attempt to invoke spirits, either through the
aid of spells or mediums, by table-turning, or by automatic writing.
As I have already said, I believe that genuine spirits do occasionally
manifest themselves at séances, but that, when they do, the medium
is quite as surprised at the manifestation as the sitters, and in no
greater a degree, perhaps, responsible for it. I believe the spirit I
have named neutrarian is the only type of spirit that takes advantage
of a séance, that is to say, takes advantage of the peculiar magnetic
atmosphere created at a séance. It adopts the form, or attributes, of
some relative or friend of one of the sitters, and, thus disguised,
manifests itself merely for the sake of deceiving and misleading
over-credulous men and women. But unfortunately these spirits do not
stop at mere mischief. Having once gained a footing, so to speak,
they can attach themselves to certain people, and by tormenting them
continually, drive them in the end to madness and suicide.

In addition to the danger of attracting undesirable neutrarians at
séances, there is the risk of being duped by mediums. I have met a
good many professional mediums—so-called clairvoyants, aura tellers,
psychometrists, materialising mediums, and the like, and none of
them have convinced me that they can do all that they profess to do.
Besides, even if they could, the mere suggestion that one’s spirit
friend or relative is tapping on a wall or blowing through a trumpet,
presumably to satisfy the curiosity of a number of strangers, and
incidentally to fill the coffers of an illiterate man or woman, only
fills one with disgust. If any departed friends of mine wish to visit
me, I am sure they could do so without the assistance of a so-called
medium and all their paltry paraphernalia. The usual argument in
defence of these mediums is that some well-known scientific man
believes in them. “If Sir somebody or other says I am genuine,” the
clairvoyant exclaims, “then I am genuine, and you’ve no right in the
world to doubt me.”

The medium is wrong. I have every right. Scientists may be very shrewd,
perhaps infallible in their own legitimate calling, but, outside it,
their opinion need carry no more weight than mine, or yours, or anyone
else’s.

It by no means follows that because a man is a Professor of Physics
he is also a great student of character. Poring over chemicals or
figures all day is a very poor training for reading the human mind.
An actor is a far more able exponent of psychology than any chemist
or mathematician, and this being so, it is the actor who should play
a prominent part in psychical research and not the scientist. If a
veteran actor were to say to me, “Look here, I have watched that woman
very carefully when she was supposed to go into a trance, and to speak
in an entirely different voice from her own, and I am convinced she
is merely acting,” I should be inclined to believe him. In his wide
experience of facial expression, posing, and assumed voices, it would
be comparatively easy for him to tell whether the medium was shamming
or not. A clever actress can disguise her voice effectually, and no one
would know it. She can speak with a French accent one moment and broad
cockney the next, and so naturally that few people would know she was
the same person. That is why, when I have listened to a clairvoyant,
in an alleged trance, speaking in the voice of Tommy Jones or some
other presumed obsessing spirit, I have been unmoved. There are a
dozen actresses of my acquaintance who could easily do the same. But
someone exclaims, “She actually spoke in Russian, a language she knows
nothing about.” “How do you know she is unacquainted with Russian?”
is my answer; no one can possibly tell that but herself. She has most
likely acquired a smattering of it, simply for this purpose. What
could be easier? I have a smattering of a good many languages, but I
could easily stimulate complete ignorance of any one or all of them;
I repeat, no one knows but ourselves how much we have seen, and read,
and heard, where we have been, and what we have studied, and, if we
are sufficiently clever, we can let the outside world know just as
much as we want it to know and no more. Some mediums are said to act
in one manner when they are obsessed, and in an entirely different
manner when in their normal condition. What futile rubbish! Who knows
when they are in their normal condition, or what their normal condition
really is? Most of us are complex. I myself have several distinct
personalities—and I defy anyone to enumerate them—any one of which
might be equally my true, my normal self. Moreover, I might go into
a trance, speak with the voice of a Spaniard, and behave like a Red
Indian, and those who saw me would think me obsessed. Yet they might
easily be mistaken. I might have secretly acquired a smattering of
Spanish, and one of my hobbies might be that of imitating, in private,
the ways and habits of a Sioux or Crow Foot.

I know a clergyman who attracts large congregations by reason of his
eloquence and apparent piety, and who is believed in his parish to be
most moral and sincere. I also know him to spend several evenings a
week in an East End tavern, singing ribald songs and playing poker.
Which is his true self, which his normal condition? His congregation
believe him to be one thing, his East End cronies another, and he is
apparently quite as much at home in the church as he is in the tavern.

Then, apart from the question of personalities, I believe another
evidence of trickery lies in the non-usefulness of any of the
communications alleged to be made by the spirits. If professional
mediums could receive bona fide communications from the other world,
I am quite sure that they would acquire some knowledge of a practical
nature, and that we should, in consequence, soon see them all
multi-millionaires. That they are not all Vanderbilts and Rothschilds
is, I think, a very strong argument that their alleged spirit friends
have told them nothing.

And that is what it all amounts to—nothing. Automatic writing,
table-turning, and trances have taught us absolutely nothing concerning
either this or the other world, and the messages purporting to
come from the spirits have hitherto, at all events, consisted of
trivialities and commonplaces of such an unedifying nature that we
cannot dissociate them from factory girls and nursemaids.

Our friends on the other side, who have passed through the valley of
the shadow of death, might reasonably be expected to know something
that we do not; and yet not even the smallest fragment of their
knowledge has so far been transmitted to us through any of the channels
resorted to by Spiritualists. Neither, as far as I know, have the
police benefited by any information imparted to them by mediums or
automatic writers. On the other hand, although the Unknown has refused
to confide to those claiming to be its chosen few any messages that
would right the wrong, bona fide phantasms of the dead have certainly
been known to appear spontaneously, to other than professional mediums,
with this intent.

       *       *       *       *       *

I am acquainted with an old lady, who tells me that she often talks
with Charles Dickens, Napoleon Bonaparte, Cardinal Newman and other
eminents. I have enquired how, and she has reluctantly admitted that
the spirits of these eminents come to her at a séance conducted by a
professional medium, who, of course, is paid very liberally for her
services. The medium, I gather, sits behind a screen, where she is
supposed to wait, until she is obsessed. When everything is ready,
she glides out, and in a voice purporting to be that of Napoleon, or
of someone equally distinguished, she converses with this foolish and
conceited old lady. It seems incredible that anyone outside a lunatic
asylum could believe that the spirits of such great men as Napoleon,
Newman and Dickens should take the trouble to obsess a medium, in order
to chat with some nonentity, who is neither extraordinarily clever nor
particularly interesting. And yet there are dozens of people, apart
from the old lady I have mentioned, who know so little of genius and
eminence, and even ordinary talent, as to believe this incongruous
happening to be possible. I, myself, have heard a Spiritualist, who
lays down the laws respecting the Unknown, as if he were actually
the Creator, declare that, whenever he lectures, the hall is full to
overflowing with spirits. Amongst them, he says, are the shades of
Charles Dickens—there must be at least a hundred shades of Dickens,
for there is hardly a spiritualistic meeting or séance that I hear
of at which Dickens is not alleged to be present—Sir Isaac Newton
and Napoleon. (Soon, perhaps, there will be the Kaiser and the Crown
Prince. I hope so.)

Family séances are, of course, quite another matter. I have not the
least doubt that when the friends and relatives of some departed person
meet together, and, concentrating very earnestly on that dead one being
present, create the right magnetic atmosphere, that sometimes a real
spirit manifestation does take place, and the phantasm of the deceased,
or what at any rate purports to be the phantasm of the deceased, does
actually appear.

The phenomenon may possibly be a neutrarian—for, of course, there
is always that risk—or it may really be the soul, spirit, or
whatever else we like to call it, of the dead person. And here let
me urge again, the utter absurdity of attempting to dogmatise on the
Unknown. At one time it was the parson, who unfolded to us, with all
the sageness of one who had been there, the mysteries of the other
world. He not only told us what we must do and not do in order to
ascend to Heaven, but he went a step further: he told us what Heaven
was like, and what actually was taking place there. The parson of
to-day, however, does not seem quite so sure of his knowledge on
these points as he was formerly, and his statements have become far
less assertive; indeed, they have become somewhat tentative. It is
the Occultist now who dictates. He talks with an air of absolute
authority of Astral Planes, Elementaries, Elementals, vitalised shells,
Karmas, and goodness knows what besides, and uses such a variety of
high-falutin’ terms, that our brains at last become bewildered, and
we begin to wonder with Goldsmith how it is possible that one small
head can carry all he knows. But when we have boiled it all down,
when we have analysed his dissertation, we find that it is, in the
last resort, merely a repetition of all the old doctrines with which
we have been familiar from our earliest youth. The only difference is
that our Occultist, chiefly by discarding the old names of dogmas, and
adopting a superfluity of new ones, has made of these same doctrines a
hotch-potch of such rare quality, that few—if indeed any—of us can
digest it.




CHAPTER XII

A HAUNTED MINE IN WALES


While I was at Brixton, paying daily visits to various well-known
theatrical agencies in search of work, I ran across the manager of a
fit-up company, who wanted a man of about my age and build to play
second lead in a melodrama. I closed with his offer, and for the next
four weeks, which was as long as his funds held out, I paid three night
visits to various towns in Wales, winding up at Llandudno, no better
off financially than when I commenced, and having to pay my own fare
back to London.

If, however, my excursion into Wales was unprofitable from the monetary
standpoint, it was by no means lacking in other respects, for, apart
from the experience I gained from playing four entirely different parts
a night, with two electric changes, I came across several interesting
cases of hauntings.

One of my landladies, a kindly old soul to whom I had chatted about
ghosts, introduced me to an old man, Clem Morgan, whom she said had had
a curious experience in one of the neighbouring mines. The incident had
taken place some fifty years ago, shortly after a dreadful explosion,
whereby many scores of the miners had been killed and injured. I will
narrate the experience—merely altering the wording of it here and
there—just as Clem Morgan narrated it to me:—

“A thousand feet down, close to the site of a great tragedy that
had thrilled the whole country to the very core, my mate and I were
at work. Pick, pick, pick; shovel, shovel, shovel; the sound of our
instruments must have been heard hundreds of yards away.

“‘George,’ I said suddenly, leaving off work, ‘was it like this afore
the accident?’

“‘Like what?’ George grunted. He was a middle-aged man with a black,
stubby beard, and arms like the gnarled and knotted branches of an oak.
‘Like what?’

“‘Why, as lonely as this? Were you working with just one other man, or
were you with the rest of the gang?’

“‘With one other,’ George responded, ‘and just as soft as you. Why
can’t you let the matter drop? I’m sick to death of hearing about it.’

“‘It’s a marvel to me how you escaped,’ I went on; ‘whereabouts were
you?’

“‘Just where we are now,’ George growled, ‘and that’s all I’ll tell
you, so you’d best shut up!’

“‘And you went up them steps with all the hell of the explosion ringing
around you?’ I observed, advancing to the edge of the black shaft close
to where we were working, and looking at the slender wooden ladder
leading up to the dark vault above. ‘It’s a wonder to me you didn’t
miss your footing in your hurry, and fall. I should have done.’

“‘I’ve no doubt you would,’ George sneered, ‘but I’m no tenderfoot; I
was at this game when you were in your cradle, which you never ought to
have left.’

“‘How many feet down is it?’ I went on, peering below me, much
fascinated.

“‘Fourteen fathoms. We don’t reckon by feet here. Done with that way of
doing things in the schoolroom.’

“‘So that you would be killed outright, if you fell?’

“‘Try and see,’ George jeered.

“‘It’s my brother I was thinking of, not myself,’ I observed. ‘Where
was he exactly, when the explosion took place?’

“‘How can I say, boy,’ George replied, irritably. ‘I don’t know where
half the folk are.’

“‘They told me he was in an adit leading into the main shaft.’

“‘He may have been, for all I know—and for all I care,’ George
answered gruffly.

“‘Do you suppose it was here he was working?’ I said, after a moment or
two’s pause, during which I again went to the shaft and peered down.

“‘This is not the only adit on the main,’ George growled. ‘He wasn’t
here—leastways not when I was.’

“‘I heard he was with a man he unintentionally injured, and who ever
after bore him a grudge.’

“‘Oh, oh!’ George exclaimed; ‘so you know as much as that, do you? And
what, pray, was this man like?’

“‘I couldn’t say,’ I replied, ‘excepting that he was much older than
Dick, and very ugly.’

“‘A description that would fit in with dozens down here. If he was
working with your brother, and your brother was killed, the odds are he
was killed too.’

“‘You think so?’

“‘It seems reasonable enough, don’t it?’ George said.

“‘He might have escaped like you did.’

“‘He might,’ George laughed, ‘just in the same way as pigs might fly.
Supposing you get on with your work and let me do the same.’

“‘I had a queer dream about that man,’ I went on.

“‘Dreams! Pooh! Who believes in dreams!’ George said. ‘What was it?’

“‘Why, I dreamed he had something to do with Dick’s death and with the
accident.’

“‘You had better tell the Inspector,’ George sneered. ‘And maybe he’ll
alter his verdict. You seem to have been very fond of this brother of
yours. You’ve done nothing but carp about him all the morning.’

“‘I was,’ I replied. ‘So were we all. He kept the home going for the
last six years.’

“‘Kept the home going! Why, where was you?’

“‘At College, studying for a teacher. I gave it up after his death.’

“‘A schoolmaster! Well, I’m blowed. Then you didn’t see much of Dick?’

“‘Only in the holidays.’

“‘And who told you about this fellow who was supposed to have had a
spite against him?’

“‘Mother.’

“‘It was your mother, was it? Only hearsay evidence after all. Well,
they’re both dead, anyhow—good and bad, and bad and good—all went
together—in a moment, boy! What do they call you?’

“‘Clem.’

“‘Well, Clem, get on with your shovelling for mercy’s sake. I’ve had
enough of talking to last me to the end of the week.’

“I took up my spade, and for the next hour there were no other sounds
but the steady, mechanical pick, pick, pick, and scrape, scrape,
scrape. Every now and then George sprang aside, there was a crash, and
a huge block of coal fell on the rocky floor, mid a blinding shower of
dust. A fraction of a second later, and George would have been under
it—his head a jelly. Yet the narrowness of his escape did not seem to
affect him; he treated it with the utmost indifference, and, wiping
away the smuts from his eyes, took up his pick and resumed his hitting.
I regarded him in silent wonder. When the dinner-hour arrived, I groped
my way to one of the big galleries—the idea of eating alone with
George did not appeal to me—and, an hour later, I set out on my way
back.

“A terrible sense of isolation hung over that part of the mine
whither I bent my steps. It was so far away from the other adits—so
tremendously deep down—so alarmingly dark, so sepulchrally silent. Up
above, in the fields, woods, valleys, even far away in the primitive
parts of the world, one is never quite alone, for the voice of Nature
makes itself heard in the birds and insects. One knows one is in the
midst of life. But here!—here in the bowels of the earth, encased in
the dead vegetation of a long-forgotten world, there is absolute, all
paramount stillness—a thousand times stiller than the stillness of
a closed sepulchre. As I pressed on, the crunching of my feet on the
scattered fragments of coal awoke the echoes of the galleries, and I
paused every now and then to listen in awe to the long reverberating
echoes as they rolled round and round me. Once, I nearly slipped;
another foot, and I would have plunged into a sable labyrinth, the cold
draught from which wound itself round me and choked the air in my lungs.

“I drew back in horror, and clinging to the knobbly surface of the
black wall by my side, pressed frantically forward. God, supposing I
should ever lose my way down here—be left behind when all the men went
home—what would become of me? The perspiration rose on my forehead at
the bare idea of it. Presently, to my relief, the sound of picking fell
on my ears, and an abrupt turn of the passage brought me within sight
of George, who had already recommenced work. I hastened to his side,
and, picking up my shovel, began to make a neat stack of the rapidly
accumulating chunks.

“‘George,’ I said, after an emphatic silence, ‘why didn’t you tell me
it was you who was working along with Dick?’

“‘So you’ve been asking questions, have you?’ George growled, without,
however, showing the slightest inclination to leave off working. ‘Who
told you?’

“‘Jim and Harry Peters.’

“‘Well, and what of it?’

“‘But why didn’t you say so, when I asked you?’

“‘What odds if I had, it wouldn’t have done you any good.’

“‘Did you have a quarrel with him?’

“‘Did the boys tell you I had? Because if so, it’s no use my saying
anything.’

“‘But what do you say?’

“‘No! Dick and me never had no quarrel.’

“‘Is that true?’

“‘Gospel.’

“After this there was another silence unbroken save by the monotonous
handling of the implements. Then I suddenly uttered an ejaculation and
pointed at my cap. It was lying on the ground, some few feet from where
we were working, close beneath a projecting block of coal, and it was
moving—moving as if it were being violently agitated by something
inside it.

“‘What is it?’ I demanded.

“‘What is what?’ George growled, resting for a moment on the handle of
his pick.

“‘Why, that!’ I said, pointing to my cap. ‘What makes it move like
that?’

“‘The wind, of course,’ George said.

“‘There’s not enough draught for that. See!’ I placed a piece of
paper on the ground within an inch or two of the cap, and it remained
perfectly still. ‘Something must be underneath it.’ I picked the cap
up, there was nothing there. ‘What do you think of it now?’ I asked.

“George made no reply. He turned round, so that I could not see his
face, and plied his pick vigorously. After a few minutes I stopped work
again.

“‘George,’ I cried, ‘what’s the matter with your coat? Look! It’s doing
just as your cap did.’

“George threw down his pick with an oath.

“‘What do you want to keep worrying me for?’ he said. ‘What’s wrong
now?’

“‘Why, your coat! Look! it’s moving—rising up and down as if the wind
were blowing it—and there’s not an atom of draught.’

“‘It’s your fancy,’ George said hoarsely. ‘The coat’s not moving.’

“‘What,’ I cried, ‘do you mean to say you can’t see it moving?’

“‘No,’ George replied. ‘It’s not, I tell you.’ And picking up his tool
he set to work again, even more vigorously than before.

“Some minutes later I again stopped. ‘Heavens!’ I exclaimed. ‘Look at
my lamp! It’s burning blue! What makes it do that?’

“George paused—his pick shoulder high—and looked round. ‘Nonsense,’
he said savagely. ‘You are——’ Then he left off and his jaws dropped.
‘It must be some chemical in it,’ he stammered. ‘Let the damned thing
be; it’ll soon right itself.’

“‘This is a strange place, George!’ I said slowly.

“‘Why strange?’ George snapped.

“‘Well, first of all there was my cap, then your coat, and now the
lantern—all doing something queer. Have you ever known the likes of it
before?’

“‘Often,’ George muttered. ‘Scores of times. Funny things is always
happening below ground; you’ll get used to them in time.’

“‘And yet you look a bit scared.’

“‘Do I?’ George grunted. ‘Well, I’m not. By ——, I’m not. You can’t
always judge by looks, you know.’ And, raising his pick, he attacked
the coal furiously.

“The afternoon was now waning. Outside, away on the top, where the only
roof was the heavens, the sun had sunk to the level of the pine-trees,
from whose straight and gently-swaying bodies the grotesque shadows of
the night were beginning to steal. It is a peculiarity of the mines
that, however deep down they may be, they yet feel the influence of
time, and the departure of the sunlight from above creates an immediate
increase in the gloom below.

“On this afternoon in particular I felt the change acutely. A darkness,
that did not seem to be merely the darkness due to time, stole down
the pit’s mouth and permeated adits, shafts, galleries—everywhere and
everything.

“My light was still burning blue, but beyond it, down in the great,
gaping chasm, not ten feet from him, and away along the narrow, winding
passage separating me from the rest of the gang, all was black—a
denser black than I had conceived possible. I was staring around, too
fascinated to go on with my work, when something icy cold gripped my
fingers, and, looking down, I saw a big, white hand lying on the top of
mine. I gave a yell and dropped my shovel—whereupon the hand vanished.

“‘What’s the matter now, curse you!’ George said angrily. ‘If you keep
on hindering me like this, I’ll tell the overseer. See if I don’t.’

“‘The place is haunted,’ I gasped. ‘A hand caught hold of mine just
now.’

“‘A hand! Rot. What next?’ And George forced a laugh.

“‘I’m certain it was a hand,’ I said, ‘and it had a ring on like my
brother Dick’s.’

“‘You’ve got Dick on the brain, which is only natural, seeing that you
was fond of him, and he only just dead. In a few days’ time you will
get over it and laugh at your present fears. There’s no hands here but
yours and mine, lad!’

“‘Aren’t there?’ I said quietly. ‘Then what is that just below yours on
the pick.’

“George looked down. Instead of two hands—his own two hands—on the
pick, there were three, and the third was white and luminous. With a
shriek, George dropped the pick, and sprang away from it, as if it had
been a serpent.

[Illustration: “My God! There’s Dick! He’s just behind you”]

“‘Do you believe me now?’ I remarked. ‘If that wasn’t Dick’s hand, I’ve
never seen it. Besides, I could swear to his ring among a thousand.
Have you noticed how dark it has been getting?’

“‘I’ve noticed nothing,’ George muttered, picking up his tool. ‘It’s
all your talk that has done it—you’ve upset my nerves.’ He raised his
pick and began to work again, but his hands shook so much he struck his
leg and dropped the implement with a cry of pain.

“‘It’s nothing,’ he growled, as I sprang to his side; ‘only the skin
grazed. But I reckon I’ll sit down a bit—I’m all of a tremble.’

“He had moved nearer to the edge of the pit, and was about to sit
down with his back towards it, when I cried, ‘My God! There’s Dick!
He’s just behind you. He’s pointing at you, George. I see it all now!
George, you devil—you murdered him!’

“George looked round—and there, bending over him, was a tall figure,
with a strangely white face. He threw out his hands to keep the figure
off, and, as he did so, he slipped, and fell, with one loud yell of
terror, into the pit. I heard him strike the side of the great abyss
once—then thud—that was all!

“Sick at heart, I reeled back to the safety of the niche where we had
been working, and, as I did so, my eyes fell on the lamp—the flame was
now white and normal.

“A rescue party that went in search of George found him in a dying
condition at the bottom of the shaft. The fact that he was not killed
outright was due to his having fallen in a foot or two of mud and
water, which had somewhat broken the force of the concussion. He was
fatally injured, but he lingered just long enough to confess that he,
and he only, was to blame for the recent disaster. He had had a violent
quarrel with Dick, whom he had hated, and, when Dick’s back was turned,
he had struck him over the head with his pick and killed him. Seized
with horror, he then dragged Dick’s body into the passage, and, in
order to minimise the risk of discovery, had saturated it with paraffin
and set fire to it. He had had just time enough to reach the ladder
leading up from the shaft, and climb up it, before the explosion had
taken place.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The Welsh miners are at times magnanimous, and on this occasion they
agreed to keep George’s crime a secret. To give publicity to the
affair, they argued, would not give them back the relatives they had
lost, and would only do harm to the dead man’s widow and family, who
were left almost penniless. Thus the matter ended, and to the outside
world the cause of the explosion remained, as before, a mystery.

Of course, it may be said of this case that it has no great value
from the evidental point of view, no one having witnessed the ghostly
happening but Morgan and the man who was subsequently killed. This may
be. At the same time much depends upon the character of a witness, and
the evidence of one man, who is reliable, is surely worth more than the
evidence of several men who are not reliable.

Morgan told his story in a simple, straightforward manner, and I
believed him.




CHAPTER XIII

THE POOL IN WALES THAT LURES PEOPLE TO DEATH


I think there is very little doubt that two of the mediums through
which the occult forces “get at” humanity are colour and locality.
Red, for example, being the colour of blood, is made the medium for
instilling thoughts of murder; green, in a similar manner, is used to
suggest suicide by drowning; yellow suggests madness; pink—vice of the
most alluring and attractive nature; and so on, until, by a careful
study of human crimes in their relation to colour, one might tabulate a
complete list.

And so with localities. Certain spots attract certain types of spirits,
and these, in turn, suggest certain thoughts, some beautiful and some
the reverse.

I was still in North Wales, when, a week or so before the expiration
of the tour, I did a day’s tramping on the hills, and, being caught in
a heavy rain-storm, I had to take shelter under one of those low stone
walls with which the whole country-side is intersected. The afternoon
was drawing to a close, and the fading light made me a bit anxious as
to how I should find my way back to my lodgings. As I was crouching
there, praying to heaven that the storm would soon cease, so that I
could continue my way, I suddenly heard a loud cry, as of someone in
distress, and, on its being repeated, I scrambled up and hastened in
the direction of the sounds. About a hundred yards further on there
was a break in the wall, and I caught the glimmer of water. It was one
of those roadside pools, not uncommon in Wales, and usually of great
depth. As I drew nearer, I saw it was fringed on the far side by a
cluster of tall pines, that creaked and groaned dismally as the strong
west wind drove volumes of water through their bowed branches.

I was noticing all this, when the form of a man in a mackintosh rose
from the gorze close by my side, and, thrusting his head forward so
that I could not see his face, walked with great swinging strides
towards the pool. I thought this rather queer, but I thought it
still queerer when the cries I had heard before broke out again with
increased violence, unmistakably this time from the trees, and the man,
breaking into a run, rushed up to the margin of the pool, where he
abruptly disappeared.

I was close behind him at the time, and am positive he did not enter
the water. His whole body seemed to melt away as he stood on the bank.
What became of him I could not say, I only know he vanished. The
incident so unnerved me that it was only with a considerable effort
of mind I went on. I threaded my way through the trees, and looked
everywhere, but there was no one about and nothing whatever, as far as
I could see, to account for the sounds. I looked at the water: it was
inky black, and there was something sinister about it, something that
strangely suggested to me, that away down in its cold, still depths
was life—some peculiar, venomous, repellant living thing that was
watching me, and longing to entwine its arms round me, and drag me
ruthlessly down. I was appalled. The apparent loneliness of the spot
was frightful, and, as I tore myself away and renewed my journey home,
I fancied I heard laughter—laughter in which all the trees seemed to
join in chorus. On arriving at my rooms, I enquired about the pool, and
my landlady informed me it bore a very evil reputation. Several people
had been found drowned there, and no one would go near it after dark.
This stimulated me to make further enquiries. I came across one or two
men who testified to having heard cries there, and one old woman, who
declared she had seen a curious figure, half human and half animal,
vanish in the pine trees; but I could get nothing in the way of details
for some months, not until I had returned to London, when, quite by
chance and under rather extraordinary circumstances, I was introduced
to a man, long since dead, who many years before had had a somewhat
harrowing experience there. The gist of what he narrated to me was as
follows:—

“Philip Delaney was a member of the London Stock Exchange, and at
nine-thirty one August evening was sitting before the empty grate in
his study, smoking. Though not naturally a pessimist, his thoughts
were at that moment excessively gloomy; business during the past few
years had been steadily getting worse and worse, and it now seemed as
if the day of general stagnation must be very near at hand. From an
average of fifteen hundred a year his income had fallen to less than
eight hundred. Consequently, he could not as usual take his holiday
abroad; he could only just afford to send his wife and children to
Hastings, where he might possibly be able to join them for week-ends.
As a fitting accompaniment to his thoughts, the weather was vile, cold
and wet—eternally wet. He could hear the raindrops beating against
the glass, and falling on the window-sill with an incessant, wearying
and worrying patter. He was too depressed to read, it was too early
to sleep, he could only sit and think, everlastingly think. Indeed,
he was deeply engaged in thought—thought in which two, and two and a
half percentages were paramount—when, hearing someone cough, he turned
sharply round. No one was there.

“This was odd. He could have sworn the sound came from just behind
him. With his eyes focussed on the door, he listened. The cough
was repeated, footsteps accompanied it, and from out of the wall
stepped the figure of a man. Philip Delaney gasped in astonishment.
He recognised the figure at once. It was Markham Davidson, a very old
friend of his, the author of several well-known works on Metaphysics
and Psychology. There was nothing peculiar about him—features,
complexion, expression, clothes, and walk were all perfectly natural.
They belonged to the Markham Davidson he knew, but whom he had not
seen for ages. And yet, how, if he were flesh and blood, had he passed
through several inches of solid brick and mortar? How? Unquestionably
he could not have done so, unless—well, unless he had suddenly
acquired superphysical properties, and projected his immaterial body
after the manner of one of the phantasms about which he was so fond
of writing. Walking across the room with a quick tread, the figure
displayed certain mannerisms—a forward poke of the head, a prematurely
old stoop of the shoulders, and a bend of the arms—unmistakably
those of Davidson. Delaney noted, too, that Markham looked remarkably
well—his cheeks were ruddy and full, his eyes were bright, his
movements full of energy. In one hand he carried a stamped envelope,
and in the other an umbrella, with which he tapped the ground
vigorously as he walked. He moved in a straight line without looking
to the right or left, and, stepping into the wall a few feet from the
window, disappeared before Delaney could utter a sound.

“As the whole occurrence had occupied so short a space of time—three
or four seconds at the most—Delaney tried hard to persuade himself
that the phenomena was an hallucination, but, try as he would, he
could not bring himself to believe that what he had seen was entirely
subjective. There on the wall was the very spot where the figure had
emerged, and there, exactly opposite, the very spot through which it
had vanished. No hallucination, he argued, could have been so vivid,
nor could it have embraced so many graphic and minute details. Details!
Yes, crowds of details. He remembered them all distinctly, especially
the tie. There was a redness about it—a very peculiar redness he did
not recollect seeing in any other tie. It impressed him greatly, and he
could not eradicate it from his mind.

“He noticed the envelope, too, not so much because it was addressed to
P. Delaney, Esq., as because it was white, startlingly white, whilst
the stamp was the same very pronounced red as the tie. Long after the
figure had gone, Philip pondered over these idiosyncrasies, and the
more he thought of them, the more perplexed he grew. What he had seen
was, without doubt, the phantasm of Markham Davidson—of the living
Markham Davidson, identical with his old friend, Markham Davidson, in
all but the colour of the tie. Red, blood-red! What one earth could
have possessed Davidson to wear such a colour! He pondered over this as
deeply as though it had been one of the most weighty problems of the
Stock Exchange, and when he went to bed that night and looked in his
mirror, he saw, instead of his own tie, a blood-red one.

“His dreams took disturbing forms. Three times following he saw Markham
Davidson struggling for dear life in a dreary looking pool, situated
by the side of a very lonely mountain road, and overshadowed by tall
pines, that creaked and groaned like lost souls every time the wind
smote them. With such perspicuity were the details in these dreams
stamped on his mind, that each time he awoke he saw them again; there
they were, everywhere he turned—the glimmering white road with the
wide expanse of snow on one side and on the other the long line of low
stone wall, beyond which lay darkness and the pool. Heavens! what a
pool it was—inky black, unfathomably deep, and hideously suggestive of
an antagonistic, insatiable something that lay crouching in its bosom,
ever on the look-out for prey.

“Delaney was fascinated. Although he realised that the very atmosphere
of the place was intensely evil, that it had a wholly demoralising
effect and contaminated everybody and everything that came near it,
although absolutely he understood all this, yet he allowed himself to
be drawn unresistingly towards it.

“When he awoke from one vision of it, he craved heaven and hell to
permit him to see another. And in this manner he passed the whole night.

“On coming down to breakfast, the first thing that arrested his
attention was an envelope—an envelope addressed to him in the
well-known writing of Markham Davidson. He tore it open, and with
breathless excitement read as follows:—‘Dear Phil,—It is a very
long time since I heard from you.... An irresistible craze has just
come over me to go to North Wales. Strange, because, as I daresay you
remember, I have always detested Wales. Now, however, I am eaten up
with a mad desire to go to Llanginney, an out-of-the-way spot somewhere
near Cader Idris. I never heard of it till yesterday, when it suddenly
attracted my attention as I was gazing at an atlas. Will you join me
there for a day or two? I go to-morrow (Wednesday), and intend staying
a week. It would be very pleasant once again to tramp the country-side
with you....’

“Delaney looked at the postmark; it was stamped 11.30 p.m. Could
Davidson have been on the way to the pillar-box, when he (Delaney) had
seen his phantasm? If that were so, then, undoubtedly, it was a case
of unconscious projection. Markham, whilst thinking of him (Delaney)
in connection with the invitation to Llanginney, had unconsciously
separated his immaterial from his material body and projected it.
Delaney had read one or two works on psychic phenomena, and understood
from them that spirit projection was not only quite feasible but far
from uncommon. However, he could not accept Davidson’s invitation. He
had not the money. Go to Llanginney, indeed! Why, Davidson might as
well have asked him to travel to Petrograd. And yet—the pool, that
white road, those shaking pine-trees, that lurking invisible something.
Could he resist? For a solid hour he battled with himself, battled till
the sweat rose to his brow and poured down his throat and chest. Then
he decided. To join Davidson was utterly out of the question. He had
neither the time, money, nor inclination. Like the majority of writers,
Davidson was a creature of impulse—erratic and irresponsible. He,
Philip Delaney, was different. He was a materialist, wholly practical
and level-headed. He never acted on the spur of the moment, never
chased wild geese. In a very superior frame of mind he sat down and
wrote to Davidson, expressing his extreme regret at not being able to
accept his invitation. Then he got up, breathed a sigh of relief, and,
clapping on his hat, went off to business.

“All that day, however, whilst he was brooding over figures in his
office, and listening to the ceaseless babble at the ‘Change, his mind
reverted to the pool. It was that black piece of water, always that
water, and Davidson in his red tie, always that particular red tie,
struggling in it. At last he could stand it no longer. He felt that
even if he had to sell his wife, and house, and children, he must yield
to this attraction—this damnable attraction—and go!

“Darting out of his office, shortly after luncheon, he hurried to the
railway station and took the first train home. In less than half an
hour he had made all the necessary arrangements for a brief absence,
packed his valise and secured a hansom. (All this happened long before
the advent of taxis.)

“The train was an express to Chester, but the rest of the journey was
slow, and it was nine o’clock before he found himself on the single
platform of Llangelly, the nearest station to Llanginney.

“Delaney enquired as to how he was to reach his destination, and was
informed by the solitary porter that, if he wished to get there, he
must walk.

“‘There ain’t no vehicles for hire in this part of the country,’ the
porter said. ‘Everyone that comes here has to use their feet. You can’t
mistake the road. You’ve only to keep straight on—and you are bound to
arrive there.’

“Delaney smiled grimly. He felt as little like walking as he had ever
done in his life, and, besides his gladstone, he had a raincoat and
umbrella.

“Fortunately the night was fine, and ere he had covered his first
half-mile, the moon broke out from behind a cloud and illuminated the
entire landscape. For the next mile or two the road was fairly flat,
and then it gradually began to rise, the scenery becoming wilder
and wilder. Every now and then he paused, and, throwing back his
head, drank in deep breaths of the heather-scented air. Delicious!
What a change from London! He calculated he must have done about
three-quarters of the distance, when he arrived at a turning—the
entrance to a lane—a lane that at once made him shudder. He paused
opposite the turning, and tried to find some explanation for his fear.

“It was certainly very lonely, and the white patches of moonlight on
the footpath and hedgerows suggested much; but, after all, it was only
suggestion—suggestion which a few sunbeams would at once dissipate. He
was standing within the shadow of a clump of firs facing the lane, and
looking intently ahead of him, when, at a distance of some fifty or so
yards, the figure of a man in a mackintosh slowly emerged from a gap in
the hedge.

“The man merely glanced in Delaney’s direction, and then, turning
round, moved on down the lane. But the glimpse, momentary though it had
been, was sufficient to enable Delaney to identify the person. It was
Davidson; he knew him at once by his mannerisms, and he instinctively
felt he had on that tie—that flagrantly vulgar, blood-red tie. In an
instant he formed a resolution. He would give his friend a surprise.
With this intention in view he dropped his valise, and, stepping
noiselessly forward, he followed Davidson. On and on they went, the one
keeping fifty or so yards behind the other, till there came a sudden
bend in the lane, and then Delaney received a shock. Spread out before
him, exactly as he had seen it in his dreams, was the panorama of the
white glimmering road with the wide, wild expanse of moorland on one
side, and on the other the long line of wall, and—the pool. Nothing
could have been more like, and it was intensified by the brilliancy
of the moonbeams. Crouching in the heather, Delaney watched Davidson
slowly walk up to the edge of the water, fold his arms, and gaze in a
reflective manner into the shadowy depths. The moments flew by, and
still he gazed. Then there came a brief, distracting interval, during
which the moon disappeared behind a bank of black, funereal clouds.
When it emerged, the figure of Davidson had vanished, and Delaney
occupied the spot where he had stood.

“‘The pool, the greedy, insatiable pool!’ he muttered. ‘Dark, deep and
devilish. The three D’s. I might even add a fourth—damnable!’ And
turning round with a chuckle, he was preparing to go, when someone
vaulted the stone wall to his left and rapidly approached him.

“‘You don’t mean to say you are still pottering about here,’ the
stranger, a man about Delaney’s own height and build, panted. ‘I
thought you had returned to the inn long ago.’ Then, perceiving his
mistake, he said in amazement, ‘Why, it’s someone else! I beg your
pardon, sir; I quite thought you were an acquaintance of mine.’

“‘Davidson, by any chance?’ Delaney asked pleasantly.

“‘Yes, Markham Davidson,’ the stranger said in astonishment. ‘Do you
know him, too?’

“‘I am his old friend,’ Delaney laughed, ‘and I am on my way to join
him at Llanginney. I merely stopped here to look at the pool.’

“‘The pool,’ the stranger ejaculated, eyeing him curiously. ‘It is not
the pleasantest place in the world, is it?’

“‘No,’ Delaney replied, ‘but it has its fascination. Where did you
leave Davidson?’

“‘At the entrance to this lane half an hour ago,’ the stranger
answered, scanning the dark surface of the water anxiously. ‘I wanted
to get as far as the brow of the hill over yonder, but, as Davidson
complained of feeling tired, I set out alone. He said he would follow
me slowly and wait for me somewhere about here. Did you by any chance
hear a cry?’

“‘A cry!’ Delaney exclaimed. ‘A cry? No. Did you?’

“‘I thought I did,’ the stranger said, moving away from the edge of
the water; ‘that is why I hurried here. Perhaps he is somewhere about.
Supposing we call.’

“They shouted till they were hoarse, and the great hills opposite
hurled back the echoes of their voices, but there was no other reply.
Not a sign of Davidson. At last the stranger touched Delaney on the arm.

“‘Come,’ he said with a shiver, ‘the night air is cold. Davidson must
have gone back to the inn, and unless we make haste we shall be locked
out. They go to bed at eleven.’

“Very reluctantly Delaney gave up the search, and the men were soon
tramping along the road in silence—each apparently too pre-occupied
with their own thoughts to speak. Occasionally Delaney glanced covertly
at his companion, and whenever he did so, he surprised the latter
in the act of peeping cautiously at him. Eventually the lights of
Llanginney hove in view, and several of the other visitors at the inn
strolled out to meet them.

“‘No, Davidson has not returned,’ was the reply to their enquiries. ‘We
have seen nothing of him since you left. It’s not eleven yet, however;
he has still half an hour, and on such a night as this it would be
practically impossible to lose one’s way.’

“Delaney engaged his bed, and half an hour later, as Davidson had not
yet come back, he made his way to the landlord’s private parlour. On
the threshold he met his recent companion.

“‘Who is he?’ he enquired of the landlord, directly the door was
closed, and he heard the stranger’s footsteps echoing softly down the
passage.

“‘Who is he?’ the landlord sleepily exclaimed. ‘Why, Mr. Hartney, a
London lawyer. Quite a well-known man in town, so I’m told. No, he has
never been here before, and as far as I’m aware he had never met Mr.
Davidson till to-day. Will I send someone to look for Mr. Davidson?
Why, that is what Mr. Hartney has just asked me! No, sir, I have no
one to send,’ and he spoke somewhat testily. ‘Some of my men have
gone—those who sleep out, and the rest are in bed. I shall leave the
door open. We aren’t afraid of burglars in this part of the country.
No, as I told Mr. Hartney, there is no fear of the gentleman being
lost—he has gone a little further than he intended, that is all.’ And
the landlord yawned so emphatically that Delaney beat a hasty retreat.

“‘I’m going to bed,’ he said, as he passed Hartney in the hall. ‘The
landlord assures me there is no fear of any harm having befallen
Davidson, and that he is sure to turn up all right.’

“‘Do you think so?’ the lawyer queried.

“Delaney nodded.

“‘I know Davidson,’ he said; ‘I have known him since boyhood. He is the
least likely person in the world to meet with mishap.’

“‘I am glad to hear you say so,’ Mr. Hartney responded. ‘Very glad.
I fancied somehow—but there, it must have only been fancy. Being
intimately acquainted with Mr. Davidson, you would of course know his
voice, and had he really called out, you would certainly have heard
him. It is doubtless a mere fancy on my part. Good-night!’

“As Delaney wearily climbed the staircase and peeped through the
bannister, his eyes encountered those of the lawyer steadily following
him. Dog-tired, he lost no time in undressing, but when he got into
bed he found sleep would not come to him. He lay first on one side and
then on the other, he tried not to think, he resorted to every possible
device, but it was all of no avail. It was the pool, always the pool,
the pool and the blood-red tie. He kept seeing them before him, and
they continually bade him get out of bed and come to them. At last,
unable to resist them any longer, he got up, and after slipping on his
clothes, stole noiselessly out into the still and narrow country road.

“When he had gone a few yards, he thought he heard a door shut behind
him, but, on turning round and perceiving no one, he attributed it
to fancy and went ahead at a brisk pace. At last, to his relief, the
pool came in view. There it was, just as he had seen it, moon-kissed
and silent, with the huge firs shaking their heads ominously on the
far side of it, and the long line of glittering white wall casting
its black shadow on the grass and gorse, running away from it, in an
apparently interminable line, on the side nearest him. It was a sight
he knew he would never forget as long as he lived.

“Approaching the brink of the pool, he walked slowly round it, peering
anxiously into the water. Suddenly he gave a start. Something white
abruptly bobbed to the surface. He looked closely at it, and fancied he
discerned a face. He was about to attach a name to it, when he heard
something behind him. Swinging sharply round, he confronted Hartney.

“‘Good heavens! You here!’ he exclaimed. ‘Whatever brought you out at
this time of night?’

“‘I might say the same to you,’ the lawyer replied. ‘What brought you
here?’

“‘Davidson,’ Delaney said. ‘Do you know, I can’t help associating him
with this pool. It is damnably fascinating.’

“‘I can’t help associating him with that cry,’ Hartney remarked. ‘I
am certain it was his voice! Good God! what’s that?’ And he pointed
frantically at the white thing bobbing up and down in the water, just
where the moonbeams fell thickest, and not half a dozen yards from
where they stood.

“‘Where?’ Delaney said, pressing close to him in a great state of
excitement. ‘Where? Ah! I see it now. It’s looking towards us.
That—well, if you wish to know what it is——’ He left off abruptly.
There was a wild scream, a heavy splash, and he continued his sentence.
‘That, Mr. Hartney, is the solution you seek to the mystery.’ And he
went back to the inn alone, chuckling.

“The sequel to this narrative comes as a surprise. Hartney was not
drowned. Being a very powerful swimmer, and lightly clad, he got to
the other side of the pool, and, clambering up the bank, he wrung the
water from his clothes and ran all the way to the inn. On arriving
there, to his intense astonishment, he found Davidson, safe and sound,
and dressed in clothes two or three sizes too small for him. Davidson’s
experience had been very similar to his own. Delaney had suddenly
seized him round the waist and hurled him into the middle of the
pool. There, he declared, he felt something like very big and icy cold
hands trying to pull him down. He cried for help and prayed, and, as
he prayed, the hands relaxed their grasp, and he managed to struggle
safely to shore. The shock of what he had gone through, however, was so
great that he felt too ill to get back to the inn, and he was compelled
to rest awhile at a farm, where he obtained a hot bath and a suit of
clothes. As Davidson knew Delaney’s wife and family, he begged Hartney,
for their sake, to keep the affair as secret as possible.

“The doctor, who was called in to examine Delaney, could not certify
him as being actually insane. However, he strongly recommended him
to go into a private home for a time, where he would be kept under
constant supervision, and Delaney did as the doctor advised. But after
being in the home about a month he escaped, and was eventually found
drowned in the lonely pool near Llanginney.

“From the description given me of Delaney, I am under the impression
that the figure I saw in the mackintosh was his ghost. But what about
the figure Hartney was positive he saw floating in the water? Was it
the phantom of someone who had perished there, or had Davidson again
unconsciously projected himself? I incline to the latter. This is
the case in toto, and it was told to me by Hartney, who got all the
details, apart from those he had himself experienced, direct from
Davidson and Delaney.”




CHAPTER XIV

I GO ON WITH THE HISTORY OF MY LIFE, AND NARRATE A GHOSTLY HAPPENING IN
LIVERPOOL


I gave up acting directly I became engaged to be married. I had no
alternative, as my fiancée’s parents strongly disapproved of the Stage,
and so long as I was on it, they would, I knew, never consent to my
union with their daughter. But it was rather a wrench, for I really
liked acting, and, with the exception of the Sunday travelling, the
life suited me well. What other occupation to choose was a poser. All
the difficulties that had faced me on my return from the States once
again presented themselves, and were aggravated by the fact that I was
many years older. I was racking my brain to know what to do for the
best, when I received a letter from an old friend in Cornwall, who
suggested that I should go down there and open up a small Preparatory
Boys’ School. It was Hobson’s choice, and in due course of time I found
myself once again engaged in the profession I loathed. I started with
four or five pupils, and had worked up my connection till I had nearly
thirty, when someone, with more money than I, set up on a much bigger
scale, and my numbers gradually decreased.

I was never an orthodox pedagogue; very much the reverse. I aimed
rather at making my pupils manly than at cramming their heads with
book work, and, I think, I succeeded. There were exceptions, of course,
but my pupils as a whole developed a fondness for games, both cricket
and football, that bore subsequent fruit when they left me and went
on the public schools. The out-of-door occupation that formed part
of my life now was delightful, but the dry and dull monotony of the
schoolroom, and the eternal interference of certain of the parents
of my pupils, who wanted everything for nothing, for my fees were
ridiculously small, took it out of me so much, that I simply longed to
throw up the whole thing and get back to my dearly-beloved stage or
writing.

It was while I was in Cornwall that I got my first book, “For Satan’s
Sake,” taken. Mr. Ranger Gull, who was at that time reader for Mr.
Arthur Greening’s publishing house, read the MS., and was so pleased
with it, that he recommended it strongly for publication. It was
accepted, but did not appear in print for fully a year.

“The Unknown Depths,” which I had written in St. James’ Road, Brixton,
followed; then “Jennie Barlowe,” which I wrote between school hours in
Cornwall in the Spring of 1906; then “Dinevah the Beautiful,” the last
of my efforts in Brixton. The latter appeared in 1907.

In the winter of 1908 my wife was ill, and in the evenings, when my
harassing duties in the schoolroom were over, I used to sit by her
bedside evolving fresh plots. It was then that I first conceived the
idea of writing a ghost book.

In my holidays, which I usually spent in London or the Midlands, never
in Cornwall—I always flew away from the precincts of the schoolroom
the moment we broke up—I had often gone ghost-hunting, and I now
determined to make use of my experiences. Consequently, I mapped out
a synopsis of a work on haunted houses, which was at once accepted
by Mr. Eveleigh Nash, who commissioned me to write a book on those
lines. I did this in the Summer of 1908, and the book, which appeared
in the Autumn of that year and was entitled “Some Haunted Houses of
England and Wales,” created something of a sensation. It was not only
extensively reviewed by the London papers, but by many of the American
and Colonial ones as well. From that time onward my pen has rarely
been idle, and, apart from compiling some dozen or so works on the
Superphysical, I have written innumerable short stories and articles.
Indeed, so associated has my name become with everything appertaining
to the psychic, that publishers are inclined to the idea that I cannot
write upon any other subject. In this, however, I venture to think they
are mistaken; for my two works, “The Reminiscences of Mrs. E. M. Ward”
and “The Irish Abroad,” both published by Sir Isaac Pitman & Co., have
been very favourably received by both the Press and public.

It was, however, the success of this first work of mine on ghostly
phenomena that made me realise that what I had long hoped for had at
last come within measurable distance of attainment. I could give up
teaching and devote my time once again, wholly and solely to writing.
Never shall I forget with what joy—with what unbounded and infinite
joy—I hailed the prospect of leaving for ever behind me all those
weary, dreary hours in the schoolroom, where I had been forced to
display a patience I never had, and where I had been forced to assume a
virtue I never really possessed, namely, a love of teaching.

I made public my intention of giving up the school in the summer of
1908, and the following winter saw me snugly ensconced in a little
house in Upper Norwood, where I have been ever since.

Several writers, one of whom I had the pleasure of meeting in London
quite recently (his brilliant character studies of young and charming
girls figure monthly in certain of the popular magazines), have been
credited with introducing to the public, none too favourably, this
Cornish Colony amongst whom I lived. If they have done so, I can
certainly endorse their sentiments. In no other town that I have been
in have I ever met people who laid themselves open to such unfavourable
criticism. I lived there nearly eight years, and during that time I
received the bare minimum of hospitality. I found the greater number
of the inhabitants bigoted and pharisaical and the townfolk and
labouring people not only extremely ignorant, but very unforgiving and
vindictive. That they were still—that is to say, at the time I am
writing of—in a tribal state was proved by their puerile attitude of
hostility to strangers, whom they used frequently to insult and annoy.
I signed two petitions relative to the throwing of stones at visitors,
which petitions were forwarded to the Home Secretary. The result was
nil. The local authorities, in dealing with such cases, displayed
the most woeful apathy, and apparently this state of affairs was
irremediable, since the magistrates, with few exceptions, were related
to half the people in the town.

With the Art Colony I had very little to do. The few artists I knew
at all intimately I liked. I found them congenial and generally
sympathetic, though displaying an avidity in criticising authors,
which, considering their touchiness with regard to any criticism of
their own work, was distinctly amusing; all the same, apart from
this and one other harmless peculiarity, namely, an exaggerated and
unblushing deference to titles, I found them very good fellows, and
nearly all the hospitality I received in the town I received from them.

I think I am right in saying there was never a very friendly feeling
between the townspeople and the artists. The townspeople looked upon
the artists as intruders, “foreigners,” whose ways and habits were
diametrically opposite to theirs, especially with regard to the
treatment of the Sabbath; whilst the artists showed a none too well
concealed contempt for the townspeople, whom they seemed to regard not
only as hopelessly inartistic, but of an utterly inferior breed.

In most small towns there is a good deal of unkind gossip and scandal,
but I really think that in this respect the town I refer to was
unrivalled. It seemed to me that the people were never so happy as when
saying malicious things about each other, and they meanly victimised
those whose limited means would not permit of their taking legal action
against them.

I have often wondered what made these people so peculiarly unkind.

As soon as I had settled down in Norwood, I wrote “Ghostly Phenomena,”
which was reviewed at length by Andrew Lang in the “Morning Post.”
About that time I had the great pleasure of meeting Mrs. E. M. Ward.
The rencontre happened thus. The Misses Enid and Beatrice Ward, Mrs.
Ward’s youngest daughters, were getting up some theatricals, and, being
short of a man, asked a lady, with whom I was acquainted, if she knew
of anyone who would help them out of the difficulty. She wrote to me,
with the result that I took part in the play, and thus had the good
fortune to meet the Wards, with whom, I am happy to say, I have kept in
touch ever since.

A year or so afterwards I edited Mrs. Ward’s reminiscences, which was,
almost without exception, well received by the Press. Some papers,
“Vanity Fair” and the “Weekly Graphic,” for instance—the “Graphic”
has always been very kind and fair to me,—giving the book several
lengthy and highly eulogistic notices. Mrs. Ward is a believer in
ghosts, and in her reminiscences there is a very interesting first-hand
experience of hers with the Superphysical. Mrs. Ward’s children, apart
from the fact that they inherit talent from their mother and father,
and grandfather, their great-grandfather, James Ward, R.A., and their
great-great-uncle, George Morland, R.A., are very interesting in
themselves and possess exceptional personal attractions.

A year after I first visited their house, I was commissioned by
the Editor of “The Weekly Despatch,” Mr. Beuley, to write a series
of ghostly experiences for that paper. In order to do this I made
pilgrimages to all parts of the country, and in my zeal to find ghosts
occasionally encountered objects of a very different nature. On one
occasion, in Brighton, I had taken advantage of a slightly open window
to enter a tiny house I had been told was very badly haunted. It was a
very dark night, and being unable to find my matches, I had to grope
my way about. I was in a room with apparently never ending walls—they
seemed to go round and round without any outlet at all. At last,
however, I managed to discover a doorway, and, passing through it, I
felt my way to a staircase, which I climbed up, till I came to what I
judged to be a landing. There all further speculations were brought to
an abrupt end by my suddenly falling over some large, soft object on
the floor. In an instant, there was a loud yell, and I found myself
rolling over and over clawing and clutching at some foul and unsavoury
mass, that seemed to have fastened itself on to me with the intention
of first probing out my eyes, and then throttling me. The small flask
of whiskey that I happened to have on me undoubtedly saved me from
total annihilation. The moment the claw-like hands touched the flask, I
was free.

I staggered to my feet, searched again, and, this time, fortunately
found the match-box and struck a light.

Crouching on the floor in front of me was a long, thin, scraggy
creature with an absolutely bloodless face and two big, round,
protruding black eyes. Its hair was matted like a mop and tossed about
anywhere; its clothes, or rather rags, were buttonless, and only
held together, here and there, by pieces of filthy string. A more
disgusting, and at the same time pitiable, spectacle could not be
imagined.

It was fortunate for me that I had had previous experience of such
sights in the parks and commons of London, otherwise I should have been
terrified out of my wits. As it was, I only just managed to pull myself
together, and realising that what I saw before me was not a ghost, but
a material and now, as far as I was concerned, harmless being, I spoke
to it.

“Well,” I said, “at any rate you seem to like my whiskey. How long have
you been here?”

The flask was gradually lowered, and a voice, which I decided was that
of a woman—for up to the present I hadn’t been able to decipher its
sex—gurgled, “I sleep here every night. This is my house.”

“Then the enigma is solved,” I said. “You are the ghost!”

“I soon shall be,” the creature replied, “for I’ve eaten nothing for
more than two days.”

“Well, I’m afraid I cannot give you any more than this,” I said, “for
it’s all I have with me.” And I handed her some biscuits and bread and
cheese.

Never shall I forget the savage joy with which she snatched the food
from my hand and crammed it into her big, gaping, fleshless jaws. No
animal in the Zoo was half so voracious. When she had finished it all,
and drained the last drop of whiskey, she drew her lean and dirty,
albeit well-shaped, fingers across her mouth, and cursed me.

“Get you gone,” she snarled, “and leave me here. I tell you this is my
house. I’ve as much right to it as you or anyone else. Get you gone,
or I’ll spit at you.” And not wishing to be spat upon, I picked up my
flask and departed.

I encountered another ghost of this order three nights later in a house
in Manchester. The house was furnished, but was untenanted, as the
owner, a rich and eccentric old lady, believed it to be haunted. She
wrote to me, _àpropos_ of my book, “Ghostly Phenomena,” and suggested
I should try and exorcise the ghost. Now I do not altogether believe
in exorcism. There are occasions upon which it has been practised with
success, mostly in cases of haunting by phantasms of the sane dead, but
there are also many cases, within my own experience, in which it has
been practised with no result whatever.

At all events, with my elastic views regarding denominational religion,
I did not feel disposed to try it, and so I wrote and told her. She
replied, “Come in any case, and give me your opinion as to the nature
and cause of the phenomena.”

I went. The house was in a quiet, sleepy thoroughfare, not three
minutes walk from the Whalley Road. It was big and roomy, and would
have been attractive but for the walls, the papers of which had
obviously been chosen by someone who did not possess even the most
elementary conception of what is pleasing in colour and design. As it
was, my artistic susceptibilities were so grossly outraged, that I
could well have imagined, the place haunted by neutrarians of the most
undesirable order.

I visited the house in the early evening, and the subdued light from
the fast-fading sunshine, filtering through the drawn Venetian blinds,
produced a singularly sad, and, at the same time, ghostly effect. I had
come unaccompanied, for nothing on earth would persuade the old lady
or any of her domestics to set a foot in the house, and as I wandered
through room after room, the intense hush began at length to tell on
my nerves. When I was on the staircase leading to the top storey, I
fancied I heard a slight noise, and a sudden faintness coming over me,
I had to clutch hold of the banisters to prevent myself falling. I went
on, however, and opening a door at the top of the stairs, found myself
in a large room communicating with two other rooms by means of doors,
both of which stood slightly ajar. I had passed through the first,
and was half across the floor of the second, when I suddenly felt one
of my ankles caught hold of. The shock was so great that all the blood
in my body seemed suddenly to dry up, and again I all but fainted.
Forcing myself to look down, however, I perceived a skinny hand and arm
protruding from under the dressing-table, and assured by the appearance
of it that it belonged to nothing ghostly, I struck at it with my
stick, kicking out vigorously at the same time.

With terrible howlings there now crawled from under the table a long
and lanky idiot boy. It transpired that he was the son of one of the
old lady’s servants, and that he was enjoying a nice, comfortable home
at her expense. His mother used to visit him every evening, and this
evening he had hidden under the table with the intention of frightening
her. Unfortunately for them both, however, he had frightened me
instead. The servant, of course, lost her post, and the old lady,
assured that there was no longer any fear of ghosts, came back to the
house, and, at my suggestion, had all the walls re-papered.

The following week I had another rather strange experience in
Liverpool. I was getting dozens of letters weekly at that time, as
the first of my series of ghost stories had appeared in the “Weekly
Despatch,” and my fame as a spook hunter had spread far and wide in
consequence. A lady in Liverpool wrote to me, saying that her daughter,
Emily, was tormented by a man coming into her bedroom every night at
the same time and walking off with her bedclothes. He said nothing,
merely opened her door, and, approaching the bed on tip-toe, caught
hold of the clothes and hurriedly retreated with them. Spirit lights,
my correspondent added, were constantly seen in the room, and at times
figures like angels, and she would be glad if I would visit the house,
and discover for her, if possible, some explanation of the occurrences.
The nature of the manifestations being somewhat extraordinary, I
thought it discreet to take a friend. The house was in a crescent,
close to Clayton Square. We were shown into the drawing-room, where
all the family were assembled, and we were at once regaled with
detailed accounts of all that was alleged to happen. Then we were
taken to the bedroom that was haunted, and the young lady whose bed
the ghost stripped, at our request, sat there with us. As soon as the
electric light was switched off, she began to see spirit lights. We
saw nothing. No man appeared, and, on taking our departure, we both
agreed that the phenomena were subjective, and that it was simply a
case of hallucination. Accordingly, I advised her mother to consult a
good general practitioner, as, in all probability, her daughter needed
a tonic and change of air. I strongly warned her against consulting any
professional Spiritualist.

Well, I returned to London, and thought no more of the matter till
the following Christmas, when, quite by chance, I ran against a young
doctor, to whom I had mentioned the incident. Evidently eager to
communicate something, he remarked, “You remember that Liverpool case
you told me about—the case of the young lady whose bedclothes used
to disappear, and which you thought was hallucination? Well, you were
mistaken. Since I saw you, I have become acquainted with the doctor
who attends her, and he told me that, whilst he was there one day,
the bedroom door opened and in walked a young man. He says the girl
immediately exclaimed, ‘Here is the man who haunts my room at night.
For goodness sake, Doctor, do something!’ Whereupon, the man, muttering
some words in German, abruptly left the room. My doctor friend
immediately ran after him, but he was nowhere to be seen, and although
the house was at once searched, no traces of him could be found. Now,
what do you think of the case?”

“It is certainly a very unusual one,” I replied, “and, as you say,
this sequel quite upsets my theory of hallucination. It may be a case
of projection. Someone who knows the girl and wishes to torment her is
experimenting in visiting her in his immaterial ego. I have heard of
similar cases.”

“But she knows no one like him,” my friend responded.

“Probably not,” I said. “The image she sees may be, and very likely is,
merely an assumed one. Does she know any Indians, or anyone who is an
earnest student of the occult? Find out if you can.”

I have not yet heard from my friend, but I still incline to the idea
that the ghost in this case was a phantasm of the living, rather than a
phantasm of the dead.




CHAPTER XV

SOME STRANGE CASES IN BIRMINGHAM, HARROGATE, SUSSEX AND NEWCASTLE


Whilst I was still writing for “The Weekly Despatch,” I happened to
visit an old friend of mine, a Captain Rupert Tennison, who was staying
with an aged relative in the Hagley Road, Birmingham.

“This is hardly the house you would expect to see a ghost in, is it?”
he remarked to me after luncheon. “And yet I can assure you I had a
very remarkable psychic experience here, in this very room. I’ve often
wanted to tell you about it. It happened one New Year’s Eve three
and a half years ago. My aunt had a nephew, on her husband’s side,
called Jack Wilmot, and he and I used to meet here regularly at the
commencement of every New Year. On this occasion, however, my aunt
informed me that Wilmot was unable to be present, as he was detained in
Mexico, where he had a very good post as a mining engineer.

“I was much disappointed, for Wilmot and I were great pals, and the
prospect of staying here alone with the old lady struck me as perfectly
appalling. I resolved to make the best of it, however, for I was
genuinely sorry for my aunt, whom I could see was quite as disappointed
as I was. I arrived late in the afternoon of December 31st. We dined at
seven, and at nine my aunt went off to bed and left me in this room by
myself.

“For some time I read—no, not one of your books, O’Donnell—a Guy
Maupassant; but the light being rather bad, and my eyes tired, for I
had been travelling all the previous night, I was at last obliged to
desist and devote myself entirely to a pipe.

“The servants went to bed at about ten. I heard them tap respectfully
at my aunt’s door on their way, and wish her good-night. After that the
house was absolutely silent, so silent, indeed, that the hush began to
get on my nerves, and I was contemplating retiring also, when heavy
footsteps suddenly crossed the hall and the door of this room was flung
wide open. I looked round in amazement. Standing on the threshold was
Wilmot.

“‘Why, Jack!’ I cried. ‘I am glad to see you, old fellow. Your aunt
told me you could not come. How did you manage it?’

“‘Quite easily,’ he said in the light, careless manner which was one of
his characteristics. ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way, you know.
I’ve taken French leave.’

“‘Taken French leave!’ I ejaculated. ‘Then there’ll be the deuce to pay
when you get back. Anyhow, that’s your affair, not mine. You’ll have
some supper?’

“‘No,’ he said; ‘I had a very good meal a short time ago, and I’m not
the least bit hungry. We will chat instead.’

“He pulled his chair up to the table, and, leaning his elbows on it,
stared right into my face.

“‘You don’t look very well, Jack,’ I said. ‘Maybe this strong light
has something to do with it, but you are as pale as a sheet. Is it the
voyage?’

“‘Not altogether,’ he replied. ‘I’ve had a lot of trouble lately.’

“‘Tell me,’ I said.

“‘Won’t it bore you?’ he replied. ‘After all, why should I bother other
people with my woes. Oh, all right, I will if you like.

“‘Some months ago there came to the town where I am working a wealthy
Spaniard and his wife. Their name was Hervada. He was a tall, lean,
sour-faced old curmudgeon, and she one of the most beautiful young
creatures you can imagine. You can guess what happened?’

“‘You fell in love with her, of course,’ I cried.

“‘From the moment I saw her,’ Jack replied.

“‘You got introduced,’ I said.

“‘Trust me,’ he laughed. ‘I found out where she lived, and the rest was
so easy that before the end of the week I had dined with them, and also
had had one clandestine meeting in the Park. At first her old villain
of a husband suspected nothing. But it is infernally hard to keep up
a pretence for long, when one is really madly consumed with passion.
Eyes are sure indicators of what the heart feels, at least mine are,
and when Hervada suddenly looked up and caught me gazing at his wife as
if I could devour her, the cat was completely out of the bag. I give
him credit for one thing, however: he took it very calmly. Despite his
unprepossessing exterior he could at times be extremely courteous and
dignified.

“‘You will oblige me by settling this matter in the way customary to
gentlemen in this country,’ he said. ‘You must remember you are not in
England now; you are in Mexico. Have you a revolver?’

“‘I am never without one,’ I replied.

“‘Then,’ he observed, ignoring the intervention of his wife, whose
apprehensions were only too plainly more on my account than on his, ‘we
will step on to the verandah.’

“‘What!’ I said. ‘You don’t mean to say you actually fought a duel?’

“Jack nodded. ‘Yes!’ he said. ‘We measured off twenty paces, and then,
turning round, fired.’

“‘And you killed him?’

“‘That would be your natural surmise,’ was the reply. ‘But you are
mistaken. It was I who was killed.’

“The moment he had said these words, he seemed to fade away, and before
I could recover from my astonishment, he had completely disappeared,
and I found myself staring not at him but the blank wall. And now comes
the oddest part of it. I naturally expected to hear Jack was dead. I
said nothing to my aunt, but I wrote off to his address at once.

“Judge, then, of my relief when I received a letter from him by
return of post to say he was absolutely fit and well, and getting on
splendidly. That was in February. In the following August my aunt
wrote to me saying a very tragic occurrence had taken place. Jack was
dead. He had been found on the verandah of an hotel in Mexico shot
through the heart. Though the identity of his murderer was generally
suspected, there was no actual proof, and as the man was very rich and
influential, it was thought quite useless to take up the case. Now what
kind of superphysical phenomenon do you call that?” Captain Tennison
concluded.

“I can’t exactly say,” I replied. “It is one of those strange
prognostications of the future that happen more often on New Year’s Eve
than on any other day of the year.

“I don’t think the phantasm you saw was actually Wilmot’s spirit. I
don’t see how it could have been. I think it was an impersonating
neutrarian, one of that order of phantasms that have never inhabited
any kind of material body, and whose special function is apparently to
foretell the end of certain people, and certain people only.”

       *       *       *       *       *

When I had finished my articles for “The Weekly Despatch,” which I
was writing in alternation with “The Reminiscences of Mrs. E. M.
Ward,” I took a brief holiday, visiting for the first time Matlock and
Harrogate.

Learning that there was an alleged haunted house in the latter town, I
sought, and managed to obtain, permission to spend a night in it. It
was a modern edifice of a great height, situated about ten minutes walk
from St. James’ Hall.

I went there alone, and, on entering the premises, encountered an
almost death-like air of stillness, which contrasted oddly with the
world outside, where all was life and gaiety. But a moment before I had
mixed with the streams of ultra-fashionable people heading for the Spa
Concert, the Theatre, and the Valley Park, and, so free had they seemed
from all trouble and responsibility—so full of sparkling, spontaneous
fun and flippancy—and above all, so full of the flamboyant spirit of
sheer life, that one could not help feeling, as one looked at them,
that after all there could be no such thing as death for them—that
such pronounced vitality must go on for ever.

But this house—this forsaken house, void of furniture, of everything,
save the soft summer evening sunlight, the shadows, and my presence—how
different! Wandering from room to room, and floor to floor, I at length
completed my preliminary search, and being somewhat tired, I sat down
on the floor of the hall, and, taking a newspaper from my pocket,
started reading. As the hours passed by and darkness came on, I began
to be afraid. No amount of experience in ghost hunting will ever enable
me to overcome that awful, hideous fear that seizes me when I see the
last glimmer of daylight fade, and I realise I am about to be brought
into contact with the superphysical, and that I must face it—alone.

Noises in empty houses I have noticed usually commence in the basement,
and I was not at all surprised when presently I heard a faint tapping
proceeding from one of the kitchens. This was followed by a long spell
of silence, and then one of the stairs creaked. My heart gave a big
thump, and I gazed expectantly into the darkness before me, but there
was nothing to be seen. Silence again, and then more tapping, and more
creaking. Something then tickled my hand, and a moment later my fingers
touched a blackbeetle. In an instant I was on my feet, for I dread
beetles more than I dread ghosts, and, on my striking a light, I found
the whole floor swarming. I wondered very much at this, because beetles
do not as a rule frequent houses that have been empty for any length
of time, especially in a climate like that of Harrogate. I have since,
however, arrived at the conclusion that where there are hauntings,
there are, more often than not, plagues of beetles, but whether
attracted by the ghost, or not, I cannot say.

As I could no longer tolerate the idea of remaining in the hall in the
dark, I lighted four candles, and, placing them on the floor, sat in
the midst of them.

It was only eleven o’clock by my watch, and the idea of keeping up my
vigil till the morning did not strike me as particularly pleasant. I
took up my paper and again began to read. Half an hour or so passed,
and then I received a start. A door opened and shut downstairs, and
bare footsteps pattered their way along the stone passage and up the
wooden stairs.

The nearer they drew, the more intolerable became my suspense. What
should I see? A white-faced, glassy-eyed phantasm of the dead, or
some blood-curdling, semi-human, semi-animal neutrarian. Which would
it be? I confess I would have given all I possessed to be out in the
road, but, as is usually the case with me when in the presence of the
superphysical, I was quite powerless to speak or move. Then, to my
unfeigned astonishment, instead of anything grotesque and awful, there
appeared before me a little fair-haired girl, clad in a much-soiled
pinafore and without either shoes or stockings.

Though not actually crying, she appeared in great distress, and feeling
around on all sides, as if anxiously searching for someone, she ran
past me, and commenced to ascend the stairs. Picking up a candle, I
followed her, and, as the patterings of her poor, chilled feet spread
their echoes far and wide through the vast deserted house, I thought
I had never experienced anything half so pathetic. On and on we went,
the little thin legs leading the way, till we reached the top storey,
when she ran into a room facing me, and slammed the door. I immediately
followed, but the room was quite empty. There were no signs of the
child; there was only a particularly vivid beam of moonlight, and a
virile and overwhelming atmosphere of sadness.

During the next few days I was told a story that fully accounted for
the hauntings.

It appears that about thirty years before my visit to the house a
little girl had lived there with her father and step-mother. Her nurse,
to whom she was very much attached, being summarily dismissed by her
step-mother, she became ill, and very soon died, so it was rumoured, of
a broken heart.

Shortly after her death the house was to let, and no tenant, I found
out, has ever occupied it since for very long.

I have often wished that I had spoken to the sad little spirit, but I
was too fascinated by it, and too much engaged watching its movements,
to think of anything else. And I have found that this same fascination
and preoccupation have prevented me from trying to communicate with
the ghost in nearly all the cases of haunting that I have ever
investigated. On the few occasions that I have spoken to a phantasm, I
have received no reply, no indication even that it has heard me.

In a very famous haunted house in the West of England, during
my investigations which were spread over a period of nine, not
uninterruptedly consecutive, nights, manifestations took place twice,
and on both occasions I stood up and spoke, but in neither case was
there any response whatever. This same ghost had been subjected to
exorcism by a well-known ecclesiast, but, far from being exorcised,
the ghost so scared his exorciser that he all but fainted. These
demonstrations were visual. In a haunted house that I was asked to
visit in Sussex I saw nothing, but heard knockings, and by means of
them tried, though without success, to establish a code. I heard of the
case in this way.

A young lady, whom I will call Miss Hemming, wrote to me. She and her
mother occupied a modern and picturesquely situated house at the foot
of the Downs, and were very frequently disturbed, she said, between
nine and ten in the evening, by sounds, such as might be made with a
muffled hammer, on the wall of her mother’s room. Simultaneously the
figure of a young man moved noiselessly across the lawn, from the
direction of a swing. He usually approached her window and came to
a halt immediately beneath it. He had never replied when spoken to.
She had fired at him several times, but the bullets had had no effect
whatever. It seemed as if they had passed right through him, because
he still stood there, whilst the gravel was splattered up immediately
behind him. On one or two occasions he shone a bicycle lamp on his
face, so that she could distinctly see his features. It was the face
of no one she knew, though she fancied it bore a close resemblance
to a notorious murderer, whose photos had been in the papers, and
who had expiated his crime on the gallows. These were not the only
manifestations. Stones had been repeatedly thrown at Mrs. Hemming,
and, although the house was being closely watched by the police, the
stone-throwing still went on, and so far the culprit had not even been
seen, let alone caught.

I visited the house once by myself, and once with a party of men. On
the former occasion I hid in a little copse at the furthest extremity
of the lawn, and watched the house and swing closely, but I neither
heard nor saw anything. Returning to the house, I was told by Miss
Hemming that both she and her mother had heard the knockings, and that
she herself had, at the same time, seen the figure on the lawn.

On the occasion of my second visit, we all heard the knockings on the
wall of Mrs. Hemming’s room, and one of us, who was looking out of
her daughter’s window, saw what he fancied were two shadows of human
beings cross the moonlit lawn and vanish in the direction of a hedge.
Trickery was practically impossible, as the garden was protected on all
sides by barbed wire, and there were on the premises four or five dogs,
including a young bloodhound. We had of course made a thorough search
of the house and grounds previously.

One or two other incidents happened during the night. When I was in
the hall alone, a light, as from a bicycle lamp, was suddenly shone
in my face, apparently from a blank wall, and when we were all seated
in front of the dining-room fire, we heard heavy footsteps cross the
hall, and although we ran out at once we could see no one. We were
shown the stones that were alleged to have been thrown, but none were
thrown whilst we were there. They were a peculiar kind of flint, which
certainly did not belong to the neighbourhood. Mrs. Hemming had several
times narrowly escaped being hit by them, and one had crashed through
the bedroom window as she was looking out of it.

I did not continue my investigation of the case, because there were
certain features in connection with it of a private and family nature,
which greatly added to its complexity, and which would, of necessity,
have rendered any attempt at solution incomplete and unsatisfactory.

Cases of complex haunting, although, for obvious reasons, seldom
admitting of any satisfactory explanation, always interest me the most.
Here is one I chanced to hit upon in Newcastle.

A house in —— Street had stood empty for seven or eight years, and
on my making enquiries about it, I was told to apply to a Mr. Black,
the last tenant. I did so, and Mr. Black very kindly gave me a detailed
account of what had taken place there during his tenancy. It was as
follows:—

“A day or two after our arrival I happened to be going upstairs, and,
as I passed by one of the bedrooms, the door of which was slightly
open, I glanced in, and saw the figure of a lady, whom I had never
seen before. She was dressed in green, and standing in front of the
looking-glass, engaged apparently in putting on her hat. Wondering who
on earth she could be, for I knew the room had not been slept in, I
spoke to her, and receiving no reply, I was advancing towards her, when
she suddenly disappeared. I did not know what to make of the affair,
but, thinking that possibly it was an hallucination, I resolved to
think no more of it, and to say nothing about it to any of my family or
household.

“Some days later, however, when out walking with my wife, I met a
friend who asked me where I was living. I told him, and he exclaimed
excitedly:

“‘Good gracious, not in that house! Why, my dear fellow——’ At a sign
from me he stopped. I had guessed what was coming, and as my wife is
extremely nervous I thought it best she should not hear what I knew he
was going to say, namely, that the house was haunted.

“That night I went round to see my friend. He made no bones about it;
he told me that the house I had taken was haunted—that he knew it for
a fact.

“‘Some months ago,’ he said, ‘I was thinking of taking it myself, and,
obtaining the key from the agent, went to look over it. It was quite
light, not more than five o’clock in the afternoon, and the house
seemed bright and cheerful. Closing the front door carefully behind
me, I commenced a tour of the premises. I had reached the top floor,
and was standing in the centre of one of the rooms, when I heard a
slight noise. I started, and, turning round in the direction from
which the sound came, perceived a lady and a little girl standing in
the doorway watching me. There was nothing at all remarkable about
them. The lady was dressed in green, the child in white, both modern,
or at least comparatively modern, costumes. I was so surprised at
their being there, however, as I knew I had shut the hall door, that I
simply stood and stared at them. Then something much more extraordinary
happened—they vanished. It was not an hallucination—that I can swear
to—and thoroughly scared, I tore downstairs and out of the house.
After this I gave up all idea of taking the place, and I can’t help
feeling sorry, old fellow, that you’ve taken it.’

“In spite of this warning,” Mr. Black continued, “I did not give
up the house immediately. After we had been there a week or so, a
cousin of mine came to stay with us; and one evening he and one of my
children, who were in the drawing-room, together heard a soft, cautious
whistle—as if someone were giving a signal, coming, they thought, from
just behind them. The whistle was repeated, and a few minutes later
they heard a loud cry, half human, half animal, and wholly ominous.
My cousin pretended it was one of the servants, but my child would
not be convinced, and begged to be taken to bed at once, as she dared
not remain in the room any longer. After this, phenomena of all kinds
happened; steps used to be heard bounding up and down the stairs at all
hours of the night; one of the maids declared she saw something that
was a man and yet not a man come out of the drawing-room with a run,
and race up the staircase two or three steps at a time; heavy pantings
and sighs were heard, and several of the household were awakened by a
cold hand being laid upon their face. But I think the most remarkable
thing that happened is this:—I was sitting in my study one evening,
when the maid rapped at my door and said that a clergyman (whom she
had shown into the drawing-room) wished to see me on some very urgent
matter. I at once put down the book I was reading, and, hastening to
the drawing-room, found it empty. Wondering what had become of the
clergyman, I was about to ring the bell to enquire, when I suddenly
caught sight of a large eye, human in shape and horribly sinister,
glaring at me from behind an arm-chair. I was so frightened that I
could do nothing but stare back at it, and then, to my intense relief,
my wife entered the room with a friend, and the phenomenon disappeared.”

[Illustration: “I suddenly caught sight of a large eye”]

“And the parson?” I observed.

“I never heard anything more of him,” Mr. Black remarked. “The maid
assured me on her honour that she had shown him into the room, but no
one saw him leave the house, so he, too, might have been a ghost; but
supposing him to have been a living person, his disappearance would not
be unnatural. He had doubtless seen the eye and precipitated himself
into the street through the open window.

“The following day, my children being badly frightened by something
in one of the passages, I decided to leave the house; and, although I
afterwards made every possible enquiry, I could never hear of anything
particularly tragic that had ever happened there. We were the first
tenants, so I was told, that had ever complained of disturbances, and
it was suggested that we might have brought the ghosts with us, but as
none of us had ever seen a ghost before we entered that house, and we
had no old furniture, at least none that we had not always had, and
not one of us had ever attended a séance or in any way dabbled with
Spiritualism, I do not think that theory at all possible. How do you
account for the hauntings?”

“I cannot,” I replied, “nor can anyone else. The sheer complexity
of such a case renders any definite conclusion with regard to it
extremely difficult, and any positive solution of it utterly out of the
question.”




CHAPTER XVI

WAR GHOSTS


Of late years the increase of interest taken in things psychical,
particularly among the more educated classes, the classes that were
at one time incorrigibly sceptical, has been enormous. I believe this
to be mainly due to the fact that people are no longer satisfied
with the scriptural declaration of another world. They want proof of
it—that is to say, absolutely authentic and corroborative evidence
that it exists—and they feel that they can only obtain such evidence
by witnessing superphysical manifestations themselves. Psychical
Research Societies, perhaps, convince them even less than the Bible.
And naturally, for the scientist, even though he be titled, can hardly
hope to accomplish in one generation what theologians, of an equal if
not superior intelligence, have attempted and failed to accomplish
throughout the ages. Hence, I am of the opinion that one can learn more
from one spontaneous ghostly manifestation in a haunted house than
from a thousand lectures, or a thousand books. Experience is the only
medium of conviction, and so long as people are without a personal
experience relating to another world, they can never really believe.
The boy in rags and tatters may be far more conversant with—may
know far more about—a future life than the more learned Professor
at the University. But no one can logically claim to be an absolute
authority on the Unknown; the most any of us can do—even those of us
who have actually seen and heard spirit manifestations—the rest do not
count—is to speculate. When we attempt to do more, we label ourselves
fools.

Of all the professions, none, I believe, is more interested in this
question of another world than the theatrical. I have a great many
friends amongst actors and actresses, and I find them not only keenly
interested in my work, but always ready—even when working hard
themselves—to share my vigils in a haunted house.

Only the other day, at a concert given by the Irish Literary Society in
Hanover Square, I was introduced to Miss Odette Goimbault, who recently
delighted London audiences by her impersonation of the child “Doris”
in “On Trial” at the Lyric Theatre. Odette Goimbault is unquestionably
pretty—but there is much in her looks besides mere prettiness. She has
eyes that are extraordinarily spiritual, eyes that seem to look right
into the soul of things and see things that are not generally seen by
ordinary mortals.

When a very small child, Odette Goimbault lived with her mother in
a house at Thornton Heath. A lady died of consumption in the flat
immediately beneath Mrs. Goimbault’s, and after the burial, Odette,
though previously very fond of staying up late, used, every night,
precisely at seven o’clock, to beg her mother to take her upstairs to
bed, declaring, in a great state of terror and with tears in her eyes,
that she saw an old man with only one leg standing in a corner of the
room shaking his stick at her. When once she was taken out of the room
her fears subsided.

In my opinion she is an ideal young actress for the pourtrayal of soul,
for the transmittal of a sense of soul to the audience, and I think
there is no one, either on the stage or off it, who looks more in touch
with the spiritual world than Odette Goimbault.

But stronger even than its hold upon the theatrical profession is the
stand that psychism has taken with regard to the present war.

Ever since the fighting began I have heard speculations raised as
to whether our soldiers at the Front have been witnessing ghostly
manifestations or not. So far, I must own that I have elicited very
little reliable evidence on this point, but the circumstances have
established at least one interesting fact, and that is, that to the man
in the street the question of another world has at last become a matter
of some importance.

The wife of a very eminent official at the War Office told me a few
weeks ago that officers who took part in the Dardanelles Expedition
assured her that figures believed to be ghosts were on several
occasions seen gliding over the ground after an engagement, especially
where the dead bodies of the Turks lay thickest. The same lady also
told me that when a certain regiment formed up after a brilliant
charge, in which it had suffered very severe casualties, some of the
gaps in the ranks were observed to be filled by shadowy forms—forms
which disappeared the moment anyone attempted to touch them.

Neither my informant nor any of the soldiers from the Front that I
have met have been able to give me any information as to the alleged
superphysical demonstrations in the sky during the retreat from Mons.
But I should like to record here, in connection with the war, a case
I heard in Paris. I published an account of it in the November, 1915,
number of “The Occult Review,” and now reproduce it through the
courtesy of Mr. Ralph Shirley:

“The mention of Ferdinand of Bulgaria brings vividly back to my memory
two stories I heard about him, when I was dining one evening in June,
1914, at the renowned Henriette’s Restaurant in Montparnasse. Two men
were seated at a table close beside me, and I eventually got into
conversation with them. They informed me they were journalists, and
that their names were Guilgaut and Bonivon respectively.

“‘You would laugh, if you knew where I spent last night,’ I observed.
‘I was in an alleged haunted flat in Montrouge. I don’t suppose either
of you believes in ghosts?’

“‘I do,’ Guilgaut said. ‘I have had more than one experience with an
apparition in my life, and so has my friend.’

“‘Yes,’ chimed in Bonivon, ‘we have good cause to remember ghosts,
since we stayed six weeks in a haunted hotel in Bucharest, and never
had such an infernally uncomfortable time either before or since. We
never saw the ghost ourselves, but one of the other lodgers declared he
did, and used to wake us every other night by the most unholy screams.’

“They then talked a lot about their adventures in the Balkans, and
finally alluded to Ferdinand of Bulgaria. ‘If ever a man is haunted, he
is,’ Guilgaut remarked. ‘I believe he never leaves his room at night
without the shadow of Stambuloff, whose death he brought about in 1895.
It simply steps out from the wall and follows him.’

“‘That is a lot of exaggeration,’ Bonivon said with a laugh. ‘But,
quite seriously, we heard on very excellent authority that on more than
one occasion a figure has been seen accompanying Ferdinand sometimes
when dining and sometimes when walking, and that it has been recognised
by the spectators as Stambuloff, the dead Minister. Once, we were told,
Ferdinand visited a certain Princess, and it was remarked that Her
Royal Highness appeared strangely embarrassed and perturbed. At last
someone ventured to enquire of the lady-in-waiting, who also appeared
to be greatly perturbed, what was the matter. “It’s that man,” was
the whispered reply, “that man who persists in standing beside His
Majesty. He never takes his eyes from our faces, and he looks just like
a corpse.” Her interrogator asked her to describe the figure, which he
said was quite invisible to him.

“‘She did so, and the description tallied exactly with that of
Stambuloff.’

“‘Tell him about Ferdinand and the fortune-teller,’ Guilgaut said.

“‘Yes, that happened when we were staying close to his Kohary estates,’
Bonivon responded. ‘Ferdinand is notoriously sly and mean, and one
day, as he was passing through the village where we were staying, he
chanced to encounter a charming Hungarian maiden, who eked out a very
precarious livelihood hawking ribbons and telling fortunes. Ferdinand
had his hand read, and, thinking to trap the girl, disguised himself
and went to her again the following evening. To his astonishment,
although the make-up was skilful, for Ferdinand is a born actor in
more senses than one, the girl recognised him at once as the gentleman
who had been to her the previous evening. “I was expecting you,” she
said. “Expecting me?” Ferdinand stammered. “How is that? I’ve told no
one.” “Oh, fie!” the girl remonstrated, shaking her finger at him.
“The gentleman who accompanied you last night came here himself an
hour ago and told me you were coming.” “What was he like?” Ferdinand
asked, shaking all over. “Like,” the girl retorted pertly. “Why,
you know as well as I do,” and she rattled off a description of the
man, which tallied exactly with that of the dead Stambuloff, whom,
by-the-way, Guilgaut and I had seen many scores of times in the early
eighties. “Your friend,” the girl continued, “left a message for you.
He said—tell him when he comes that he will perish in very much the
same manner as I have done; and he showed me his hand.” “And what did
you see?” Ferdinand asked. “I saw the same ending to the life line in
his hand as I see in yours,” the girl replied. “Why, there is your
friend! He is beckoning to you. You had better go to him.” And, to her
astonishment, Ferdinand walked off in the opposite direction.

“‘We had the story first hand. She told it us two or three days
afterwards, and expressed great anxiety as to the identity of the two
men who had behaved so strangely to her.’”

Only one case of haunting at the actual Front has been related to me. I
will state it in my own words.

It happened during the retreat from N——.

The O——’s had suffered heavily, and, in the scramble to get out of
the deadly fire zone, small parties of them, owing to the nature of
the country, had got isolated from the main body and left behind. This
was the case with a dozen or so men of B Company, who, after racing
across a field amid a hail of shrapnel, had clambered over a formidable
barrier of barbed wire into a dense wood.

Under cover of a thick cluster of trees they sat down and doctored
their wounds. There was not a sound man amongst them. Sergeant Mackay
had been struck in three places in his right leg; Corporal MacIntyre
had had a good square inch of flesh taken off his thigh; Private
Findlay had lost three of his fingers; and Bugler Scott—an ear; while,
in addition to these slight inconveniences, they were all ravenously
hungry and parched with thirst.

“I suggest,” said Sergeant Mackay, after a brief lull in their
conversation, “that we push on again and see if we can find some sort
of habitation where we can get a mouthful.”

“Aye, mon!” Corporal MacIntyre replied, for during such “sauve qui
peuts” all formality of rank is dropped, “It’s the wee drappie I’m
thinking after, and unless we get some of it pretty soon there’ll not
be any of us left to need it. I’m bleeding like a pig, and so are a
good many more of us.”

“Very well, then,” Sergeant Mackay observed, rising with difficulty,
and wincing in spite of his efforts to appear comfortable. “Let us
press on.”

The men were all absolutely ignorant of their surroundings. They
had seen nothing of the country save from the train, and during a
few hours’ tramp from the railway depot to the lines they had just
evacuated. Consequently, for all they knew to the contrary, the
wood that lay in front of them might stretch for miles, or might be
inhabited by anything from grizly bears to hyænas—for the knowledge of
the British “Tommy” with regard to the fauna and flora of Belgium is
extremely limited.

Threading their way through the thick undergrowth, they stole
stealthily forward, the roar of artillery still sounding faintly in
their ears, till at length they emerged into a wide clearing, at the
far extremity of which stood a neatly thatched white cottage. It was
so home-like with its small plot of flower-bedecked garden, its walls
covered with clematis and honeysuckle, and its tiny spiral column of
smoke curling heavenwards, that the bleeding and exhausted men gave
deep sighs of relief.

“Reminds me of Scotland,” Private Findlay whispered.

“It’s as like my mother’s cottage as two peas,” Private Callum retorted.

They halted, and were looking at Sergeant Mackay to see what he would
do—for bold as the O——’s are in battle, they are often among the
most bashful of His Majesty’s troops in time of peace—when suddenly
the door of the cottage opened and an old woman appeared on the
threshold, armed with a blunderbuss. Glaring fiercely and shouting, she
put the weapon to her hip and fired. There was a loud bang, and one or
two of the men uttered ejaculations of pain.

“God save us!” Sergeant Mackay cried. “The gude wife takes us for
Germans.” Then addressing the woman, who was pouring another handful of
shot into the muzzle of her infernal piece of antiquity, he called out,
“Are ye daft or glaikit? Dinna ken that we are Scots. Anglais.”

It was the only word of French the Highlander knew, and, on shouting it
three times in rapid succession, and with increased emphasis, it had
effect. The old woman lowered her weapon, and shading her eyes with a
lean, brown, and knotted hand, exclaimed. “Ah, moi dieu, les Anglais!
On me dit que les Anglais sont les amis des Belgiques. Et je vous aurai
tué! Pardonnez-moi messieurs.”

This speech was of course lost upon the Highlanders, who would have
laughed—so comic was the picture of this old woman with the ancient
gun—had they not been faint from exhaustion.

Now, as she beckoned to them to approach, they doffed their caps and
filed in at her gate, Sergeant Mackay leading the way.

The interior of the house was as they had expected—scrupulously neat
and clean.

“Wipe your boots, boys,” Sergeant Mackay whispered. “We mustn’t put the
old lady out more than we can help.”

They all trooped in. As soon as they were seated the old woman vanished
through a low doorway, reappearing a few seconds later laden with bread
and cheese and wine, which she watched them eat and drink with perfect
satisfaction, and when they had finished, conducted them to a loft at
the back of the cottage, where she made them understand by signs they
could lie as long as they pleased.

“I kinna think,” Sergeant Mackay said, as soon as their hostess had
retired, “where the Germans are. It’s passing strange they have not put
in an appearance here.”

“Maybe they’ve gone by and missed this spot. It’s nae sae handy,”
Private Findlay said. “Anyhow, I’m for sleeping—for it’s ten days
since I shut my eyes.”

“It’s the same with me,” ejaculated Private McCallum. “I hae not slept
a wink since we left Plymouth.”

Apparently they were all of the same opinion—namely, that they needed
rest; and, without further ado, every man selected a place in the hay,
stretched himself out at full length, and was soon fast asleep. The
afternoon wore away, the sun set, and one by one the stars made their
appearance, but still the men slept.

The gloom of the forest thickened, and with the long and waving shadows
of the elms and beeches crept forth forms of a more tangible and
sinister nature. Sergeant Mackay awoke with a start, and, springing to
his feet, strained his ears and listened.

“Nightmare!” he said. “I made certain the Germans had got hold of me.
Weel, weel, it’s nowt but a dream. I will go and see what the gude
wife is about, and, perhaps, if she hae not gone to bed, she will gie
us some hot tea or milk—that red wine of hers hae made me uncommon
thirsty.” He scrambled down on to the ground, and, leaving the rest of
the men still asleep, crossed the yard and pushed open the door leading
to the kitchen. He was about to enter, when there came a half-choking
cry and the front of the house filled with soldiers. Sergeant Mackay
knew them at once—they were Germans! Shrinking back into the shadow
of the doorway he stood and listened. Though he could not understand
their jargon, he soon formed an idea of what was taking place. They had
caught the old woman by surprise and were discussing what they should
do with her. Had the O——s been armed, Sergeant Mackay would not have
hesitated—he would have staked anything on a win against odds at six
to one, but in their hasty flight the men had left their rifles behind
them, and it would be sheer suicide for them to attack the Germans with
their bare fists. Therefore it at once entered his mind to slip out
quietly and warn his comrades, so that they could escape without their
presence being detected. A cry of pain, however, made him hesitate.

Two Germans had hold of the old woman’s arms and were twisting them
round.

The difficulty of his position was not lost on Sergeant Mackay. If he
played the knight errant and helped the old woman, he would not be
able to give his comrades the necessary warning, and they would all
be taken prisoners—perhaps shot. On the other hand this gude wife had
been extremely kind to them, and was proving her loyalty by maintaining
an absolute silence as to their presence in the cottage. Could he stand
by and see her abused? He could not. There was too much of the Gael in
him for that, and as the old woman gave another gurgle, he stepped out
from his hiding place, and picking up a kitchen chair, rushed at her
captors, both of whom he stunned. He was, of course, eventually borne
down by numbers, and dragged to the ground.

“What shall we do with him?” one of the men who were holding him asked.
“The dog! He has broken Fritz’s head, and more than half killed Hans.
He has arms like a bullock.”

“Hang him,” the sergeant in charge of the men replied. “Tie him and the
old woman together and hang them from this beam.” And he pointed to a
great, white rafter running across the ceiling.

Sergeant Mackay’s uniform should, of course, have protected him, but,
then, as the German sergeant put it, this cottage was well hidden in
the woods, the English were evacuating the country, and no one was
likely to come across the bodies, saving Belgian peasants who dare
not say anything, and German soldiers who would not say anything. So
Sergeant Mackay was dragged up from the floor, beaten and bruised till
there was very little of him left, bound tightly to the old gude wife,
and hanged with her. The Germans then ransacked the house, and were
preparing to explore the outer premises, when a bugle rang out, and
they hurriedly left the cottage. Ten minutes later, when all was quiet,
into the house, on tip-toe, stole the rest of the O——s.

“God save us!” ejaculated Private Findlay, starting back and pointing
to the grim figures swaying gently from the ceiling. “God save us! Sae
what the deils hae done!”

       *       *       *       *       *

“Halt!” The word of the Colonel, transmitted by his adjutant to the
head of the column, brought the O——s to a dead stop.

For this they were not altogether sorry, as they had been footing it
for eight or nine hours on end—and every little respite was welcome.
But the Colonel in this instance, at least, was not intentionally a
good Samaritan. He had halted, not for the purpose of resting his men,
but because he was fogged as to his whereabouts. The night was inky
black, the country difficult—all hills, deep depressions and thick
woods—and the Colonel, relying implicitly on the guidance of his
intelligence officer, whom he supposed had made himself thoroughly
familiar with the locality, found himself obviously going astray. He
should now be at a railway bridge, which was six miles from the village
of Etigny, the last landmark. But no such bridge, as far as he could
judge, was anywhere near, and Lambert, the intelligence officer, on
being questioned, admitted he did not exactly know where they were.
That is why the Colonel had halted. His object was to make a flank
attack on the German outposts, who were supposed to be in hiding in a
wood, some three miles to the south of T——, where the extreme right
of their main army lay, and obviously it was of no use advancing any
further until he had ascertained the direction in which he must steer.

In this wood was a cottage, that had been enlarged and fortified,
and hitherto used as a place of internment and hospital for English
prisoners, until they could be transported to Potsdam. Reports had
reached the English C.O. that the Germans intended killing all their
prisoners, if compelled to evacuate T——, and so the O——s were
to endeavour to rescue these prisoners, whilst at the same time
outflanking and cutting off the German outposts. The movement had, of
course, to be in the nature of an entire surprise, and the hospital
to be rushed, if possible, without any firing. According to Lambert,
the wood was about one mile due east of the railway bridge, and there
was a tiny path near a mill, on the outskirts of it, that led to the
rear of the cottage. To miss this path would be dangerous, as the wood
elsewhere was covered with morass and full of quarries.

“Well, Lambert,” the Colonel said, “you have led us into a deuced
rotten hole, and you must get us out of it somehow. Surely you have
some idea of our whereabouts.”

Lambert peered again into the darkness and shook his head. “On a night
like this,” he argued, “it is easy to make mistakes. We must have come
much further to the west than I intended.”

“Well, then, we had better veer round and make for the extreme east,”
the Colonel said tartly.

“Would it not be as well to return to Etigny, sir,” the Adjutant
suggested.

“What, six miles—lose all that time—and with our men already pretty
well exhausted!” the Colonel retorted angrily. “No, that is utterly out
of the question. Lambert has brought us here, and, egad, he must take
us on to our destination.”

Lambert took a few paces into the darkness, and was again peering
round, when a young lieutenant approached the Colonel and saluted.

“If you please, sir,” he said, “a man has just arrived who says he will
act as our guide.”

“A man! A German, I suppose you mean? What language does he speak?”

“English. At least in part. He is a Scot. Shall I bring him to you?”

The Colonel gave a gruff assent, and in a few minutes the subaltern
returned, followed by a tall figure enveloped in a long black cloak.
With one accord the Colonel, the Adjutant and Lambert all swung round
and eyed him curiously.

“Who and what are you?” demanded the Colonel.

“I’m an inhabitant of these parts,” the stranger answered, “and I have
come to offer you my services as guide.”

“You’re in the pay of the Germans, of course,” the Colonel retorted
sharply. “How did you know we wanted a guide?”

“I overheard your conversation.”

“What!” the Colonel cried furiously. “You have been listening to what
we were saying. Take him away, Anderson, and have him shot at once.”

No one moved. A sort of spell stole over Lambert, the Adjutant, and
Anderson, and held them rooted to the ground. The Colonel repeated his
order, and was about to lay hands on the stranger himself, when the
latter waved him back.

“In an emergency like this, Colonel R——,” he said, “you must take
what Providence sends you. I am no more a German spy than is your
son, Alec, who is, probably, at the present moment returning from an
afternoon’s march out with the O.T.C. at Cheltenham.”

“Great Heavens,” the Colonel gasped, “how do you know I have a son
Alec, and that he is at Cheltenham. Who are you, sir? A renegade?”

“No, Colonel, I’m not,” came the reply. “I’m someone in whom you can
place perfect confidence. Trust yourself to me and I will conduct you
at once to the cottage in the wood.”

“It’s very extraordinary. I don’t for the life of me know what to make
of it,” the Colonel muttered, turning to the group of officers by his
side. “What do you advise, Lambert?”

“Under the circumstances, sir,” Lambert replied slowly, “I should trust
him. You can have him shot if he leads us wrong.”

“That’s true,” the Colonel murmured, and turning to the stranger, “Did
you hear what Major Lambert said? I can have you shot, if you lead
us astray. And, by Jove, I will. Take your position at the head of
the column. If we are successful, I will see that you are adequately
rewarded; if you betray us—you die. Do you understand?”

“I do, Colonel,” the stranger replied, “and I accept your conditions
willingly.”

He stepped back, and, at a signal from the Colonel, followed Lieutenant
Anderson to the head of the column. A sergeant and a corporal—two
old and tried veterans—took up their positions a pace or two behind
him, and, at a word from the Colonel, the whole battalion was once
more on the move. On and on they went. A dull tramp, tramp, tramp, but
in a completely different direction from the one in which they had
previously been going. It was all so pitch dark that the corporal and
the sergeant had to keep very close to the stranger to see him.

“He marches just like one of us,” the Sergeant whispered, “and yet I
kenna hear the sound of his feet. What do you make of him?”

“I don’t know,” the Corporal replied. “I seem to know him, and yet I
haven’t seen a feature of his face. Something about him reminds me
of the night I escaped from N——. It strikes me, Sergeant, that the
cottage the Colonel is after is the very one in which we took shelter.”

“Then you know the way?”

“Nae,” Corporal Findlay replied. “I was too rushed and scared that
night to remember much. The only thing I can remember seeing plainly
is those two corpses swinging from the beam—Sergeant Mackay’s and the
gude wife’s—and the scene comes back to me vividly now as I look at
this guide of ours. Why, I dinna ken.”

“Be ready to shoot him, mon, the instant there’s treachery,” the
Sergeant whispered.

“Aye, Aye!” Corporal Findlay replied, tapping the barrel of his rifle
knowingly. “He’ll nae want a second dose.”

On and on they tramped, till presently they forsook the highway for a
field, and then, plunging down and down, eventually found themselves
upon level ground facing some trees. “This is the wood,” the guide
observed, “and here is the path. After we have travelled along it in
Indian file, and on tiptoe, for two miles, we shall emerge into a
small clearing, where a low mud wall, overtopped by a machine gun,
will confront us. The soldiers supposed to be on duty there have been
drinking red wine all day, and are now sleeping. If you approach
noiselessly you will be able to climb the wall and take them by
surprise. The cottage is then yours.”

“But there are sentries in the wood.”

“One! He will be leaning on his rifle dozing. You must creep up to him
and settle him before he has time to make a sound. I will tell you when
we approach him.”

The guide advanced, and the whole battalion of O——s stalked along
behind him.

“I shall be gay glad when this job is over,” Corporal Findlay murmured.
“I would as soon spend the night in a kirkyard.”

However, although every now and then a rustling of leaves that heralded
a rabbit made them start, and the ominous screech of an owl caused
the hair on the scalp of more than one superstitious Celt to bristle,
so far there was no real cause for alarm, and on and on the battalion
stole. At last their guide halted, and every man behind him instantly
followed suit. He whispered to Corporal Findlay and the Sergeant, and,
making way to let them pass, kept close to their heels, guiding them by
what appeared to be a minute bull’s-eye lantern.

On turning a sharp bend in the path, Corporal Findlay and the Sergeant
saw the sentry, as their guide had described him, asleep, and, before
he had time to awake, Corporal Findlay had dashed him to the ground
with a swinging blow from the butt-end of his rifle. Three minutes
later, and the head of the column found itself facing the mud wall and
the machine-gun. This was the critical moment. If their guide meant
mischief, now was his opportunity. Following closely at his heels,
their rifle and revolver at his head, the Sergeant and Corporal crept
up to the wall, and, one by one, the rest of the O——s filed into
the open space after them. Holding their breath the Highlanders laid
hold of the top of the wall, then with a sudden stoop, they swung
themselves upwards. The sleeping sentinels awoke, but only to feel one
short, sharp thrust—and the pangs of death. The outer position won,
the Highlanders next turned their attention to the cottage and the
enclosed space in front of it. There, a strong body of German infantry
were stationed, and, as they came rushing out to meet the intruders,
they shared the same fate as their companions. In ten minutes there
was not a German left alive, and the O——s, their bayonets dripping
with blood, were busy liberating the English prisoners. When it was
all over, and the Colonel and his staff were sitting down in the
front parlour of the cottage enjoying some refreshment, Colonel R——
suddenly remembered the guide. “Anderson,” he said, “fetch that
fellow—our guide—in here. It’s not very gracious behaviour on our
part to leave him outside, for, egad, if it had not been for him we
should not be where we are. Moreover, I want to see him—I’ve an idea
he’s someone I know.”

The subaltern departed, and after an interval of some minutes returned,
followed only by Corporal Findlay.

“Hulloa!” exclaimed the Colonel, looking up sharply from his meal.
“This is not the man I wanted. Where is he?”

“If you please, sir,” the subaltern said, in a voice full of suppressed
excitement, “Corporal Findlay can tell you all about it—he was the
last to see him.”

“The last to see him,” growled the Colonel. “Why, what the deuce do you
mean. Where is he?”

“I can’t say, sir,” Corporal Findlay began. “After the fight was
over I followed him into this cottage, right into this room. And he
halted just where you are sitting, under that beam,” and he pointed
to the great, white rafter immediately over the Colonel’s head. “He
then turned round, sir, and drawing aside the cloak, that had hitherto
hidden his face, showed himself to me!”

“Good God, man, you needn’t look so frightened!” the Colonel cried. “He
wasn’t the devil, was he?”

“No, sir, he wasn’t the devil,” Corporal Findlay responded. “He was
Sergeant Mackay of the first battalion—and the last time I had set
eyes on him was in this room on the night of the retreat from N——,
when I and several others of the O——s found him hanging from that
rafter—dead.”

“And then,” said the Colonel, after a long pause, “and then what
happened?”

“Why, sir,” Corporal Findlay replied, “he smiled, as if something had
pleased him mightily, and waving his hand—disappeared.”

“And you expect me to believe such a cock and bull story as that,” the
Colonel said slowly.

“It’s the truth, sir,” Corporal Findlay said slowly. “Sergeant Scott
can corroborate it, for he was with me all the time.”

“There’s no need to do that,” the Colonel answered, “for I know you
have spoken the truth. This is by no means my first experience with
ghosts—only—for goodness sake do you and Sergeant Scott say nothing
about it to the other men. If you do there won’t be an ounce of nerves
left among them by the morning. Germans are one thing, but ghosts
another! It was a splendid revenge for Sergeant Mackay!”

       *       *       *       *       *

The stories I have just narrated must be taken for what they are worth.
Though I believe they were told me in good faith, I cannot vouch for
them.




CHAPTER XVII

A CASE FROM JAPAN


Since Japan is a country in which I believe many people are intensely
interested, I do not think I need apologise for introducing here the
following account of a Japanese haunting.

Never having been to Japan, I cannot lay claim to having had any
ghostly adventures there myself; but as this is copied, word for word,
from the MSS. of Mr. G. Salis, which was very kindly lent me for the
purpose by Mrs. Salis (Mr. Salis’s mother), I can most certainly answer
for its authenticity.

       *       *       *       *       *

“In the spring of 1913, I settled in the village of Akaji, in the
southern Island of Japan, in order to work a colliery. The country in
this part is mountainous and quite off the track of any tourists, and
the inhabitants remain in a very primitive condition. All the people
are either farmers, miners, or the keepers of very small shops, and
there is not a single hotel nor even an inn. I stayed at first in one
of the rooms of a farm house, and, after a little while, was able to
lease an old thatched farm house, standing in a small orange orchard,
quite close to the colliery.

“Its owner lived in a little house at the back. My house was
one-storied, but very high, the pitch of the thick thatch being
very steep. On entering, one found a kitchen with various cooking
places, but no chimneys: the smoke curling and losing itself among
the huge rafters that supported the roof. The rest of the house was
raised, and consisted of four rooms divided from each other by sliding
paper-covered screens or fusuma, and with thick padded straw mats or
tatami on the floor. I got a table and chair, and put up some book
shelves, and made the best room as habitable as possible. This room had
a tokonoma, or recess, painted a dark grey; and a scroll, a crystal
and a vase of flowers put in it gave the necessary decoration to the
severely bare interior. For the first few months I slept in one of the
back rooms, but later, when it got very hot, I only used the one room.
I had one servant, and as we got up at dawn, we also went to sleep
very early, and usually by nine o’clock the house was in darkness and
silence. One night I was awakened, and heard talking and laughing in
the next room, only separated from me by a thin screen. Someone was
telling a story in an animated voice, and his auditor every now and
then ejaculated ‘naruhode’ (to be sure) and ‘sodesuka’ (is that so),
but the voices were kept low and the laughs were subdued. Just then the
kitchen clock struck two. I was annoyed at my servant having friends
in at that hour, and in the room next mine, and determining to have it
out with him in the morning, I fell asleep. Next morning he absolutely
denied that anyone had been in the house, and became very indignant
when I insisted on what I had heard.

“Two nights later, I again heard a conversation going on, and
reluctantly got out of bed and from under the mosquito curtains to
investigate. A low chuckling laugh and then a snatch of song—and I
pushed back the sliding fusuma. The room was in darkness, but I had
a little electric torch which I used in the colliery, and, pressing
its button, the room was brightly lit. Inside the mosquito curtain,
Tanaka lay soundly sleeping—no one else was in the room; indeed,
but for the futon or mattress covered by the net it was completely
bare, and the talking still went on, seeming now to come from the room
behind me. I awoke Tanaka, and we went out into the garden. No one was
stirring, and the sounds came from inside the house. Away, down the
road, three miners were returning from a night shift, and my servant
wanted to run and fetch them, but I did not see the object of doing
so. The mosquitoes were very bad, and I wanted to get back under the
nets, conversations or no conversations, and so we re-entered the
house. Silence reigned, and I went back to bed—but not to sleep—for
the remainder of that night. Tanaka took the opportunity, while I
was at the colliery the next morning, to pack up his few belongings
and decamp, leaving a letter saying he could not stay in a house
frequented by demons. I got a girl in from the village as a makeshift,
and afterwards another servant, but no one would stay in the house
after nightfall. I moved my bed into a room at the back, but still
used the other room as a living room, and soon became used to the fact
that it was haunted. Often, during the day, there were noises coming
from near the tokonoma or recess—as though someone was cracking his
finger joints, a habit the Japanese have; on several occasions, flowers
put in the vase below the hanging scroll were taken out of their vase
and arranged lying on a tray. One afternoon I brought my bed into the
room, as the autumn was now getting cold, and I had been unwell for
some days and wanted the benefit of the afternoon sun. I sent the
servant to buy some stamps at the Post Office, a mile away, and stepped
into the garden to gather some late dahlias. Looking up I distinctly
saw a movement in the room I had left, through the pane of glass let
into the paper-covered shoji. Dropping my flowers, I pressed my face
against the pane, and saw the bedclothes, which the servant and myself
had arranged, only five minutes previously, had been whisked off and
were lying on the floor. Twice after this, coats hung on a peg near
the tokonoma were found almost immediately lying on the floor at some
distance, one having been pulled from its peg with such force as partly
to tear it.

“On many nights, when I woke up, I heard talking in the next room, and
gradually came to distinguish a man’s voice, sometimes I thought two
men’s, and certainly that of a woman and a baby. All the village were
now talking of the haunted house, and, now and then, neighbours came in
to listen to the mysterious sounds that came, from time to time, from
the tokonoma, but they took good care to be gone before sunset.

“Winter had now come, and I fell ill, and as the only really pleasant
room in the house was made impossible during the long sleepless nights,
I redoubled my endeavour to find another house. A baby’s wailings
were very distinct, then it was hushed by its mother, and then long
conversations ensued between her and one or two men—sometimes there
were little taps, as though a tobacco pipe were being emptied of its
ashes, but more often a curious noise was heard which sounded like
‘putter putter.’ About this time, an account appeared in all the
Japanese newspapers of a bridge in Tokejo, which was haunted by a
woman, and how this spirit had been laid by priestly intervention,
and it was suggested that the same might be tried in the present
case. I thought it rather a good plan, but, seeing that it was rather
expensive, said that the landlord and not his foreign tenant should
defray the cost and arrange the matter. But my landlord, who was very
unpopular in the village, and with whom I was not on very good terms,
would do nothing; and as, just then, another house near the colliery
became vacant, I was able to move, and so at last be free of my ghostly
visitants. Everyone knew of the reason for my leaving, and the landlord
felt sure he would never find another tenant. After the house had been
empty for some time, the landlord himself determined to live in it
for some months, in order to demonstrate that things were not so bad
after all. He, and his wife, and their two grandchildren accordingly
moved their things across from their other house, but did not at first
occupy the room with the tokonoma. Seeing, however, that their object
in being in the house at all would be defeated unless this room was
used, they hung some pictures in the recess, placed a bronze flower
vase on a carved stand below them, and also moved in a gilt shrine
containing an image of Buddha. A few friends were asked in, but all
left at sunset. Next morning I heard that there had been considerable
disturbance at the house, and that the younger grandson had been taken
with convulsions.

“The same day a move was made again to their former abode, the house
was closed, and still remains empty. A temple on a hill near by was
being repaired, and, on the completion of the work, a priest came to
hold a service. The head man of the village took the opportunity of
consulting with him, and together they went to see my late landlord.
The facts brought to light, many of which were vaguely known in the
district, are as follows:—The house had been built about one hundred
and fifty years previously by the head of the family, which was
then of more consequence than at present, although it still owned
considerable property in pine forests and rice fields. A younger
brother of the original builder had conspired against his feudal lord
and had committed suicide—hara-kiri. It was not known in which room,
but probably it was in the principal one. The next tragedy, that was
known of, had happened some fifteen years before, when the son-in-law,
the father of the two boys already mentioned, was found hanging from a
hook near the wooden ceiling of the room with the tokonoma. He had been
away for some time in Tokejo, had spent a great deal of money, and, on
his return, had quarrelled violently with his wife. She had run out of
the house with her children, and had stayed on the hillside all night.
Next morning her husband was found as above stated. Some months later,
again in the same room, on the eve of the birth of her posthumous
child, this woman killed herself by drinking poison, made from the
leaves of a shrub still growing in the garden. During the convulsions
which preceded her death, the child was born, but dead.

“The priest said there was no doubt that the spirits of these various
people, related by family ties, and lives, passed among the same
surroundings, and who had all come to a dreadful violent end in the
same house, and, probably, the same room, were earthbound, and were in
the habit of assembling and conversing in the room where their lives
had come to an end. Each addition would strengthen and intensify their
bondage, and the priest expressed his surprise that the spirits were
not actually visible. There was a good deal of discussion as to the
terms for a service and ceremony to free the house from these ghostly
tenants and to give them rest, I offered a small sum, but as they were,
after all, the relations of the landlord, it was upon him that the bulk
of the expense fell, and he refused to provide the necessary funds.
His argument was that, even were the spirits ‘laid,’ no one now would
rent the house, and so he would not spend any money on it. Whether he
also thought that the spirits were as happy holding their ghost-parties
round the tokonoma as they would be if they were at rest, he did not
say, as such thoughts would be contrary to all Japanese ideas on the
subject. Anyway, the house is now closed, the heavy wooden shutters are
rolled across the verandahs and bolted, the garden is overgrown and
choked with weeds, and the only time when there is human activity about
it, is when the orange trees, burdened with fruit, yield their golden
harvest.

      “G. SALIS.”

       *       *       *       *       *

To revert again to my own experiences. I am often sorry, extremely
sorry, I was ever brought into contact with the Unknown. As I said in
one of the early chapters of this book, I did not go out of my way to
seek the superphysical—it came to me. And it has never given me any
peace. I feel its presence beside me at all times. In the evening, when
I am writing, the curtains that are tightly drawn across the closed
windows slowly bulge, the candlestick on the mantel-shelf rattles, a
picture on the wall swings out suddenly at me, and, when I go to bed
and try to sleep, I frequently hear breathings and far-away whispers.
Some of these “presences” no doubt have been with me always—most
probably they were with my ancestors—whilst others have attached
themselves to me in my nocturnal ramblings.

My wife, who was a confirmed disbeliever before our marriage, has
long since thrown aside her scepticism, and for a good reason. She
has had many startling proofs of the power the spirit has of making
itself manifest. The night a near relative of mine died both she and I
heard a loud crash on the panel of our bedroom door, and I, though I
only, saw a hooded figure standing there. Also, besides having heard
the banshee, my wife has seen objects moved by superphysical agency,
seen them fanned by a wind that is apparently non-existing, had small
stones and other articles thrown at her, and heard all sorts of queer,
unaccountable sounds—laughs, sighs, and moans.

Three ghostly incidents have happened to me within the past twelve
months. The first was in Red Lion Square. It was twilight; I was alone
on the top floor of the house, and no one else was in the building,
saving the daughter of the caretaker, who was in the basement.
Suddenly footsteps, slow, ponderous footsteps, began to ascend the
stairs—which, being uncarpetted and of oak, carried the sound—from
the hall. Wondering who it could be, I called out. There was no reply,
and the steps drew nearer. On the landing immediately beneath me they
halted. I went out and looked down. No one was to be seen, and the
steps immediately began to descend. I followed them right down—a few
stairs behind—till they reached the hall, when they abruptly ceased. I
learned afterwards that these footsteps were quite a common phenomenon
in the house, which had long been haunted by them.

My second experience occurred in the Moscow Road, Bayswater. Feeling a
heavy weight on my bed one night and wishing to remove it, I put out my
hand. It was immediately seized and held in a warm grip. I sat up in
bed, but could see no one. The hand that clasped mine was very soft and
small—unmistakably that of a woman. I felt the wrist and forearm, but
beyond the elbow there was nothing.

I was rather alarmed at this occurrence at the time, as I have a friend
who died shortly after experiencing a similar phenomenon. In my case,
however, the lady, whose hand I immediately identified as the hand
that had clasped mine, and this lady solemnly declared that upon the
same night—we compared dates—she had dreamed of a hand which was the
exact counterpart of mine, and that, upon shaking hands with me that
afternoon, she had been instantly reminded of her dream.

That there was nothing in common between us, her tastes and outlook on
life being absolutely at variance with mine, makes the occurrence, in
my opinion, none the less interesting, though somewhat difficult to
account for.

My last experience occurred only a few days ago, as I was sitting
on the stairs of a haunted house near Ealing. I had applied to the
landlord for permission to spend the night there, and, pending his
reply, had obtained the keys from the agent, in order to see what the
house was like by daylight. Having just finished jotting down some
notes—a memorandum of something I had suddenly thought of—I paused,
still holding the pencil in my hand, whilst my note-book lay open on my
knee. I had not sat thus for more than a minute, when, with a thrill of
surprise, I felt the pencil suddenly taken from my hand, and, looking
down, I distinctly saw it, of its own accord, scrawl right across my
book. Whether what I afterwards found written in my note-book was
written by the spirit that haunted the house, or by a projection of
one of my own personalities, I cannot say; neither can I, myself, nor
anyone to whom I have shown the symbolic writing, tell what it means.
The appended is a facsimile.

[Illustration]

I might add that this is my one and only experience of spirit-writing,
and also that it was my one and only experience in the haunted house
near Ealing, as I did not succeed in getting leave to spend a night
there.

Although I must confess I have made little progress so far in my
investigations, for my failure to decipher spirit-writing is not the
only set-back that I have encountered, I still have hopes. I hope
that some day, when I am brought face to face with the Unknown, in a
haunted house or elsewhere, I may be able to hit upon some mode of
communication with it, and discover something that may be of real
service both to myself and to the rest of humanity.

If only I could overcome fear!

It is March 28th, midnight, and as I pen these concluding words, my
mind reverts to the symbols and the date—March 28th, twelve o’clock.

Suddenly I hear footsteps—distant footsteps on the road
outside—coming in the direction of the house.

I glance at my wife, wondering whether she hears them too. She is
asleep, however, and, as I covertly watch her, I see a look of terror
gradually steal into her face. Clicking steps. They come nearer and
nearer. They stop for a moment at our door, and then—thank God—pass
slowly on.

I look out of the window—the road is absolutely deserted, but from
close at hand the sounds are wafted to me—click, click, click,
fainter, fainter, fainter—until they abruptly cease.


THE END.


_Printed by W. Mate & Sons, Ltd., Bournemouth._




Transcriber’s note

Words in italics have been surrounded with _underscores_ and small
capitals have been replaced with all capitals.

Small errors in punctuation were corrected without note, also the
following changes were made, on page

   11 “ancester” changed to “ancestor” (Niall Garbh, the ancestor
      of Red Hugh)
   16 “ill” changed to “will” (to wander about at will?)
   27 “generation” changed to “generations” (with Irish soil for many
      generations.)
   28 “i.” added “i.e.” (_i.e._, to announce a death)
   33 “remanied” changed to “remained” (and so I remained with my neck
      craned over)
   42 “genialty” changed to “geniality” (about them all there was an air
      of geniality)
   44 “wiife” changed to “wife” (my wife met this Mr. Dekon at a ball)
   49 “financies” changed to “finances” (in which my finances forced
      me to)
   59 “lift” changed to “left” (which left me with)
   62 “Be” changed to “Bell” (Mrs. Bell asked Stella if she had)
   69 “physical” changed to “psychical” (the people to associate
      themselves with psychical research)
   77 “overheard” changed to “overhead” (I heard someone moving about
      overhead)
   86 “fo” changed to “of” (of tramp suicides)
   99 “happned” changed to “happened” (That was all that happened)
  103 “parellel” changed to “parallel” (disturbances of a parallel
      nature)
  118 “dose” changed to “doze” (As soon as I begin to doze)
  164 “his” changed to “my” (pointing to my cap).

Otherwise the original was preserved, including inconsistencies
in spelling, hyphenation, etc. Additional: “the ’98” on page 17
probably refers to the Irish rebellion in 1798.





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Twenty Years' Experience as a Ghost
Hunter, by Elliott O'Donnell

*** 