Scottish Ghost Stories
by Elliott O'Donnell · English · Gutenberg #20034 · 289,169 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Scottish Ghost Stories
Author: Elliott O'Donnell
Release date: December 7, 2006 [eBook #20034]
Most recently updated: January 1, 2021
Language: English
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* * * * *
SCOTTISH
GHOST STORIES
BY
ELLIOTT O'DONNELL
AUTHOR OF
"SOME HAUNTED HOUSES OF ENGLAND AND WALES"
"HAUNTED HOUSES OF LONDON" "GHOSTLY PHENOMENA"
"TRUE GHOST STORIES" "DREAMS AND THEIR MEANINGS"
ETC. ETC.
LONDON:
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO. LTD.
1911
CONTENTS
CASE PAGE
I. THE DEATH BOGLE OF THE CROSS ROADS, AND THE
INEXTINGUISHABLE CANDLE OF THE OLD WHITE HOUSE,
PITLOCHRY 1
II. THE TOP ATTIC IN PRINGLE'S MANSION, EDINBURGH 25
III. THE BOUNDING FIGURE OF "---- HOUSE," NEAR BUCKINGHAM
TERRACE, EDINBURGH 41
IV. JANE OF GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH 55
V. THE SALLOW-FACED WOMAN OF NO. -- FORREST ROAD,
EDINBURGH 69
VI. THE PHANTOM REGIMENT OF KILLIECRANKIE 91
VII. "PEARLIN' JEAN" OF ALLANBANK 105
VIII. THE DRUMMER OF CORTACHY 117
IX. THE ROOM BEYOND. AN ACCOUNT OF THE HAUNTINGS OF
HENNERSLEY, NEAR AYR 135
X. "---- HOUSE," NEAR BLYTHSWOOD SQUARE, GLASGOW. THE
HAUNTED BATH 159
XI. THE CHOKING GHOST OF "---- HOUSE," NEAR SANDYFORD
PLACE, GLASGOW 173
XII. THE GREY PIPER AND THE HEAVY COACH OF DONALDGOWERIE
HOUSE, PERTH 189
XIII. THE FLOATING HEAD OF THE BENRACHETT INN, NEAR THE
PERTH ROAD, DUNDEE 211
XIV. THE HAUNTINGS OF "---- HOUSE," IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD
OF THE GREAT WESTERN ROAD, ABERDEEN 225
XV. THE WHITE LADY OF ROWNAM AVENUE, NEAR STIRLING 237
XVI. THE GHOST OF THE HINDOO CHILD, OR THE HAUNTINGS OF
THE WHITE DOVE HOTEL, NEAR ST. SWITHIN'S STREET,
ABERDEEN 251
XVII. GLAMIS CASTLE 263
CASE I
THE DEATH BOGLE OF THE CROSS ROADS, AND THE
INEXTINGUISHABLE CANDLE OF THE OLD WHITE
HOUSE, PITLOCHRY
Several years ago, bent on revisiting Perthshire, a locality which had
great attractions for me as a boy, I answered an advertisement in a
popular ladies' weekly. As far as I can recollect, it was somewhat to
this effect: "Comfortable home offered to a gentleman (a bachelor) at
moderate terms in an elderly Highland lady's house at Pitlochry. Must
be a strict teetotaller and non-smoker. F.M., Box so-and-so."
The naïveté and originality of the advertisement pleased me. The idea
of obtaining as a boarder a young man combining such virtues as
abstinence from alcohol and tobacco amused me vastly. And then a
bachelor, too! Did she mean to make love to him herself? The sly old
thing! She took care to insert the epithet "elderly," in order to
avoid suspicion; and there was no doubt about it--she thirsted for
matrimony. Being "tabooed" by all the men who had even as much as
caught a passing glimpse of her, this was her last resource--she would
entrap some unwary stranger, a man with money of course, and inveigle
him into marrying her. And there rose up before me visions of a tall,
angular, forty-year-old Scottish spinster, with high cheek-bones,
virulent, sandy hair, and brawny arms--the sort of woman that ought
not to have been a woman at all--the sort that sets all my teeth on
edge. Yet it was Pitlochry, heavenly Pitlochry, and there was no one
else advertising in that town. That I should suit her in every respect
but the matrimonial, I did not doubt. I can pass muster in any company
as a teetotaller; I abominate tobacco (leastways it abominates me,
which amounts to much about the same thing), and I am, or rather I can
be, tolerably amenable, if my surroundings are not positively
infernal, and there are no County Council children within shooting
distance.
But for once my instincts were all wrong. The advertiser--a Miss Flora
Macdonald of "Donald Murray House"--did _not_ resemble my
preconception of her in any respect. She was of medium height, and
dainty build--a fairy-like creature clad in rustling silks, with wavy,
white hair, bright, blue eyes, straight, delicate features, and hands,
the shape and slenderness of which at once pronounced her a psychic.
She greeted me with all the stately courtesy of the Old School; my
portmanteau was taken upstairs by a solemn-eyed lad in the Macdonald
tartan; and the tea bell rang me down to a most appetising repast of
strawberries and cream, scones, and delicious buttered toast. I fell
in love with my hostess--it would be sheer sacrilege to designate such
a divine creature by the vulgar term of "landlady"--at once. When
one's impressions of a place are at first exalted, they are often,
later on, apt to become equally abased. In this case, however, it was
otherwise. My appreciation both of Miss Flora Macdonald and of her
house daily increased. The food was all that could be desired, and my
bedroom, sweet with the perfume of jasmine and roses, presented such
a picture of dainty cleanliness, as awakened in me feelings of shame,
that it should be defiled by all my dusty, travel-worn accoutrements.
I flatter myself that Miss Macdonald liked me also. That she did not
regard me altogether as one of the common herd was doubtless, in some
degree, due to the fact that she was a Jacobite; and in a discussion
on the associations of her romantic namesake, "Flora Macdonald," with
Perthshire, it leaked out that our respective ancestors had commanded
battalions in Louis XIV.'s far-famed Scottish and Irish Brigades. That
discovery bridged gulfs. We were no longer payer and paid--we were
friends--friends for life.
A lump comes into my throat as I pen these words, for it is only a
short time since I heard of her death.
A week or so after I had settled in her home, I took, at her
suggestion, a rest (and, I quite agree with her, it was a very
necessary rest) from my writing, and spent the day on Loch Tay,
leaving again for "Donald Murray House" at seven o'clock in the
evening. It was a brilliant, moonlight night. Not a cloud in the sky,
and the landscape stood out almost as clearly as in the daytime. I
cycled, and after a hard but thoroughly enjoyable spell of pedalling,
eventually came to a standstill on the high road, a mile or two from
the first lights of Pitlochry. I halted, not through fatigue, for I
was almost as fresh as when I started, but because I was entranced
with the delightful atmosphere, and wanted to draw in a few really
deep draughts of it before turning into bed. My halting-place was on a
triangular plot of grass at the junction of four roads. I propped my
machine against a hedge, and stood with my back leaning against a
sign-post, and my face in the direction whence I had come. I remained
in this attitude for some minutes, probably ten, and was about to
remount my bicycle, when I suddenly became icy cold, and a frightful,
hideous terror seized and gripped me so hard, that the machine,
slipping from my palsied hands, fell to the ground with a crash. The
next instant something--for the life of me I knew not what, its
outline was so blurred and indefinite--alighted on the open space in
front of me with a soft thud, and remained standing as bolt upright
as a cylindrical pillar. From afar off, there then came the low rumble
of wheels, which momentarily grew in intensity, until there thundered
into view a waggon, weighed down beneath a monstrous stack of hay, on
the top of which sat a man in a wide-brimmed straw hat, engaged in a
deep confabulation with a boy in corduroys who sprawled beside him.
The horse, catching sight of the motionless "thing" opposite me, at
once stood still and snorted violently. The man cried out, "Hey! hey!
What's the matter with ye, beast?" And then in an hysterical kind of
screech, "Great God! What's yon figure that I see? What's yon figure,
Tammas?"
The boy immediately raised himself into a kneeling position, and,
clutching hold of the man's arm, screamed, "I dinna ken, I dinna ken,
Matthew; but take heed, mon, it does na touch me. It's me it's come
after, na ye."
The moonlight was so strong that the faces of the speakers were
revealed to me with extraordinary vividness, and their horrified
expressions were even more startling than was the silent, ghastly
figure of the Unknown. The scene comes back to me, here, in my little
room in Norwood, with its every detail as clearly marked as on the
night it was first enacted. The long range of cone-shaped mountains,
darkly silhouetted against the silvery sky, and seemingly hushed in
gaping expectancy; the shining, scaly surface of some far-off tarn or
river, perceptible only at intervals, owing to the thick clusters of
gently nodding pines; the white-washed walls of cottages, glistening
amid the dark green denseness of the thickly leaved box trees, and the
light, feathery foliage of the golden laburnum; the undulating
meadows, besprinkled with gorse and grotesquely moulded crags of
granite; the white, the dazzling white roads, saturated with
moonbeams; all--all were overwhelmed with stillness--the stillness
that belongs, and belongs only, to the mountains, and trees, and
plains--the stillness of shadowland. I even counted the buttons, the
horn buttons, on the rustics' coats--one was missing from the man's,
two from the boy's; and I even noted the sweat-stains under the
armpits of Matthew's shirt, and the dents and tears in Tammas's soft
wideawake. I observed all these trivialities and more besides. I saw
the abrupt rising and falling of the man's chest as his breath came in
sharp jerks; the stream of dirty saliva that oozed from between his
blackberry-stained lips and dribbled down his chin; I saw their
hands--the man's, square-fingered, black-nailed, big-veined, shining
with perspiration and clutching grimly at the reins; the boy's,
smaller, and if anything rather more grimy--the one pressed flat down
on the hay, the other extended in front of him, the palm stretched
outwards and all the fingers widely apart.
And while these minute particulars were being driven into my soul, the
cause of it all--the indefinable, esoteric column--stood silent and
motionless over-against the hedge, a baleful glow emanating from it.
The horse suddenly broke the spell. Dashing its head forward, it broke
off at a gallop, and, tearing frantically past the phantasm, went
helter-skelter down the road to my left. I then saw Tammas turning a
somersault, miraculously saved from falling head first on to the
road, by rebounding from the pitchfork which had been wedged upright
in the hay, whilst the figure, which followed in their wake with
prodigious bounds, was apparently trying to get at him with its
spidery arms. But whether it succeeded or not I cannot say, for I was
so uncontrollably fearful lest it should return to me, that I mounted
my bicycle and rode as I had never ridden before and have never ridden
since.
I described the incident to Miss Macdonald on my return. She looked
very serious.
"It was stupid of me not to have warned you," she said. "That that
particular spot in the road has always--at least ever since I can
remember--borne the reputation of being haunted. None of the peasants
round here will venture within a mile of it after twilight, so the
carters you saw must have been strangers. No one has ever seen the
ghost except in the misty form in which it appeared to you. It does
not frequent the place every night; it only appears periodically; and
its method never varies. It leaps over a wall or hedge, remains
stationary till some one approaches, and then pursues them with
monstrous springs. The person it touches invariably dies within a
year. I well recollect when I was in my teens, on just such a night as
this, driving home with my father from Lady Colin Ferner's croquet
party at Blair Atholl. When we got to the spot you name, the horse
shied, and before I could realise what had happened, we were racing
home at a terrific pace. My father and I sat in front, and the groom,
a Highland boy from the valley of Ben-y-gloe, behind. Never having
seen my father frightened, his agitation now alarmed me horribly, and
the more so as my instinct told me it was caused by something other
than the mere bolting of the horse. I was soon enlightened. A gigantic
figure, with leaps and bounds, suddenly overtook us, and, thrusting
out its long, thin arms, touched my father lightly on the hand, and
then with a harsh cry, more like that of some strange animal than that
of a human being, disappeared. Neither of us spoke till we reached
home,--I did not live here then, but in a house on the other side of
Pitlochry,--when my father, who was still as white as a sheet, took me
aside and whispered, 'Whatever you do, Flora, don't breathe a word of
what has happened to your mother, and never let her go along that road
at night. It was the death bogle. I shall die within twelve months.'
And he did."
Miss Macdonald paused. A brief silence ensued, and she then went on
with all her customary briskness: "I cannot describe the thing any
more than you can, except that it gave me the impression it had no
eyes. But what it was, whether the ghost of a man, woman, or some
peculiar beast, I could not, for the life of me, tell. Now, Mr.
O'Donnell, have you had enough horrors for one evening, or would you
like to hear just one more?"
Knowing that sleep was utterly out of the question, and that one or
two more thrills would make very little difference to my already
shattered nerves, I replied that I would listen eagerly to anything
she could tell me, however horrible. My permission thus gained--and
gained so readily--Miss Macdonald, not without, I noticed, one or two
apprehensive glances at the slightly rustling curtains, began her
narrative, which ran, as nearly as I can remember, as follows:--
"After my father's death, I told my mother about our adventure the
night we drove home from Lady Colin Ferner's party, and asked her if
she remembered ever having heard anything that could possibly account
for the phenomenon. After a few moments' reflection, this is the story
she told me:--
THE INEXTINGUISHABLE CANDLE OF THE OLD WHITE HOUSE
There was once a house, known as "The Old White House," that used to
stand by the side of the road, close to where you say the horse first
took fright. Some people of the name of Holkitt, relations of dear old
Sir Arthur Holkitt, and great friends of ours, used to live there. The
house, it was popularly believed, had been built on the site of an
ancient burial-ground. Every one used to say it was haunted, and the
Holkitts had great trouble in getting servants. The appearance of the
haunted house did not belie its reputation, for its grey walls, sombre
garden, gloomy hall, dark passages and staircase, and sinister-looking
attics could not have been more thoroughly suggestive of all kinds of
ghostly phenomena. Moreover, the whole atmosphere of the place, no
matter how hot and bright the sun, was cold and dreary, and it was a
constant source of wonder to every one how Lady Holkitt could live
there. She was, however, always cheerful, and used to tell me that
nothing would induce her to leave a spot dear to so many generations
of her family, and associated with the happiest recollections in her
life. She was very fond of company, and there was scarcely a week in
the year in which she had not some one staying with her. I can only
remember her as widow, her husband, a major in the Gordon Highlanders,
having died in India before I was born. She had two daughters,
Margaret and Alice, both considered very handsome, but some years
older than I. This difference in age, however, did not prevent our
being on very friendly terms, and I was constantly invited to their
house--in the summer to croquet and archery, in the winter to balls.
Like most elderly ladies of that period, Lady Holkitt was very fond of
cards, and she and my mother used frequently to play bezique and
cribbage, whilst the girls and I indulged in something rather more
frivolous. On those occasions the carriage always came for us at ten,
since my mother, for some reason or other--I had a shrewd suspicion it
was on account of the alleged haunting--would never return home after
that time. When she accepted an invitation to a ball, it was always
conditionally that Lady Holkitt would put us both up for the night,
and the carriage used, then, to come for us the following day, after
one o'clock luncheon. I shall never forget the last time I went to a
dance at "The Old White House," though it is now rather more than
fifty years ago. My mother had not been very well for some weeks,
having, so she thought, taken cold internally. She had not had a
doctor, partly because she did not feel ill enough, and partly because
the only medical man near us was an apothecary, of whose skill she had
a very poor opinion. My mother had quite made up her mind to accompany
me to the ball, but at the last moment, the weather being appalling,
she yielded to advice, and my aunt Norah, who happened to be staying
with us at the time, chaperoned me instead. It was snowing when we
set out, and as it snowed all through the night and most of the next
day, the roads were completely blocked, and we had to remain at "The
Old White House" from Monday evening till the following Thursday. Aunt
Norah and I occupied separate bedrooms, and mine was at the end of a
long passage away from everybody else's. Prior to this my mother and I
had always shared a room--the only really pleasant one, so I thought,
in the house--overlooking the front lawn. But on this occasion there
being a number of visitors, belated like ourselves, we had to squeeze
in wherever we could; and as my aunt and I were to have separate rooms
(my aunt liking a room to herself), it was natural that she should be
allotted the largest and most comfortable. Consequently, she was
domiciled in the wing where all the other visitors slept, whilst I was
forced to retreat to a passage on the other side of the house, where,
with the exception of my apartment, there were none other but
lumber-rooms. All went smoothly and happily, and nothing interrupted
the harmony of our visit, till the night before we returned home. We
had had supper--our meals were differently arranged in those days--and
Margaret and I were ascending the staircase on our way to bed, when
Alice, who had run upstairs ahead of us, met us with a scared face.
"Oh, do come to my room!" she cried. "Something has happened to Mary."
(Mary was one of the housemaids.)
We both accompanied her, and, on entering her room, found Mary seated
on a chair, sobbing hysterically. One only had to glance at the girl
to see that she was suffering from some very severe shock. Though
normally red-cheeked and placid, in short, a very healthy, stolid
creature, and the last person to be easily perturbed, she was now
without a vestige of colour, whilst the pupils of her eyes were
dilated with terror, and her entire body, from the crown of her head
to the soles of her feet, shook as if with ague. I was immeasurably
shocked to see her.
"Why, Mary," Margaret exclaimed, "whatever is the matter? What has
happened?"
"It's the candle, miss," the girl gasped, "the candle in Miss Trevor's
room. I can't put it out."
"You can't put it out, why, what nonsense!" Margaret said. "Are you
mad?"
"It is as true as I sit here, miss," Mary panted. "I put the candle on
the mantelpiece while I set the room to rights, and when I had
finished and came to blow it out, I couldn't. I blew, and blew, and
blew, but it hadn't any effect, and then I grew afraid, miss, horribly
afraid," and here she buried her face in her hands, and shuddered.
"I've never been frightened like this before, miss," she returned
slowly, "and I've come away and left the candle burning."
"How absurd of you," Margaret scolded. "We must go and put it out at
once. I have a good mind to make you come with us, Mary--but there!
Stay where you are, and for goodness' sake stop crying, or every one
in the house will hear you."
So saying, Margaret hurried off,--Alice and I accompanying her,--and
on arriving outside my room, the door of which was wide open, we
perceived the lighted candle standing in the position Mary had
described. I looked at the girls, and perceived, in spite of my
endeavours not to perceive it, the unmistakable signs of a great
fear--fear of something they suspected but dared not name--lurking in
the corners of their eyes.
"Who will go first?" Margaret demanded. No one spoke.
"Well then," she continued, "I will," and, suiting the action to the
word, she stepped over the threshold. The moment she did so, the door
began to close. "This is curious!" she cried. "Push!"
We did; we all three pushed; but, despite our efforts, the door came
resolutely to, and we were shut out. Then before we had time to
recover from our astonishment, it flew open; but before we could cross
the threshold, it came violently to in the same manner as before. Some
unseen force held it against us.
"Let us make one more effort," Margaret said, "and if we don't
succeed, we will call for help."
Obeying her instructions, we once again pushed. I was nearest the
handle, and in some manner,--how, none of us could ever explain,--just
as the door opened of its own accord, I slipped and fell inside. The
door then closed immediately with a bang, and, to my unmitigated
horror, I found myself alone in the room. For some seconds I was
spellbound, and could not even collect my thoughts sufficiently to
frame a reply to the piteous entreaties of the Holkitts, who kept
banging on the door, and imploring me to tell them what was happening.
Never in the hideous excitement of nightmare had I experienced such a
terror as the terror that room conveyed to my mind. Though nothing was
to be seen, nothing but the candle, the light of which was peculiarly
white and vibrating, I felt the presence of something inexpressibly
menacing and horrible. It was in the light, the atmosphere, the
furniture, everywhere. On all sides it surrounded me, on all sides I
was threatened--threatened in a manner that was strange and deadly.
Something suggesting to me that the source of evil originated in the
candle, and that if I could succeed in extinguishing the light I
should free myself from the ghostly presence, I advanced towards the
mantelpiece, and, drawing in a deep breath, blew--blew with the
energy born of desperation. It had no effect. I repeated my efforts; I
blew frantically, madly, but all to no purpose; the candle still
burned--burned softly and mockingly. Then a fearful terror seized me,
and, flying to the opposite side of the room, I buried my face against
the wall, and waited for what the sickly beatings of my heart warned
me was coming. Constrained to look, I slightly, only very, very
slightly, moved round, and there, there, floating stealthily towards
me through the air, came the candle, the vibrating, glowing, baleful
candle. I hid my face again, and prayed God to let me faint. Nearer
and nearer drew the light; wilder and wilder the wrenches at the door.
Closer and closer I pressed myself to the wall. And then, then when
the final throes of agony were more than human heart and brain could
stand, there came the suspicion, the suggestion of a touch--of a touch
so horrid that my prayers were at last answered, and I fainted. When I
recovered, I was in Margaret's room, and half a dozen well-known forms
were gathered round me. It appears that with the collapse of my body
on the floor, the door, that had so effectually resisted every effort
to turn the handle, immediately flew open, and I was discovered lying
on the ground with the candle--still alight--on the ground beside me.
My aunt experienced no difficulty in blowing out the refractory
candle, and I was carried with the greatest tenderness into the other
wing of the house, where I slept that night. Little was said about the
incident next day, but all who knew of it expressed in their faces the
utmost anxiety--an anxiety which, now that I had recovered, greatly
puzzled me. On our return home, another shock awaited me; we found to
our dismay that my mother was seriously ill, and that the doctor, who
had been sent for from Perth the previous evening, just about the time
of my adventure with the candle, had stated that she might not survive
the day. His warning was fulfilled--she died at sunset. Her death, of
course, may have had nothing at all to do with the candle episode, yet
it struck me then as an odd coincidence, and seems all the more
strange to me after hearing your account of the bogle that touched
your dear father in the road, so near the spot where the Holkitts'
house once stood. I could never discover whether Lady Holkitt or her
daughters ever saw anything of a superphysical nature in their house;
after my experience they were always very reticent on that subject,
and naturally I did not like to press it. On Lady Holkitt's death,
Margaret and Alice sold the house, which was eventually pulled down,
as no one would live in it, and I believe the ground on which it stood
is now a turnip field. That, my dear, is all I can tell you.
* * * * *
"Now, Mr. O'Donnell," Miss Macdonald added, "having heard our
experiences, my mother's and mine, what is your opinion? Do you think
the phenomenon of the candle was in any way connected with the bogle
both you and I have seen, or are the hauntings of 'The Old White
House' entirely separate from those of the road?"
CASE II
THE TOP ATTIC IN PRINGLE'S MANSION, EDINBURGH
A charming lady, Miss South, informs me that no house interested her
more, as a child, than Pringle's Mansion, Edinburgh. Pringle's
Mansion, by the bye, is not the real name of the house, nor is the
original building still standing--the fact is, my friend has been
obliged to disguise the locality for fear of an action for slander of
title, such as happened in the Egham Case of 1904-7.
Miss South never saw--save in a picture--the house that so fascinated
her; but through repeatedly hearing about it from her old nurse, she
felt that she knew it by heart, and used to amuse herself hour after
hour in the nursery, drawing diagrams of the rooms and passages,
which, to make quite realistic, she named and numbered.
There was the Admiral's room, Madame's room, Miss Ophelia's room,
Master Gregory's room, Letty's (the nurse's) room, the cook's room,
the butler's room, the housemaid's room--and--the Haunted Room.
The house was very old--probably the sixteenth century--and was
concealed from the thoroughfare by a high wall that enclosed it on all
sides. It had no garden, only a large yard, covered with faded yellow
paving-stones, and containing a well with an old-fashioned roller and
bucket.
When the well was cleaned out, an event which took place periodically
on a certain date, every utensil in the house was called into
requisition for ladling out the water, and the Admiral, himself
supervising, made every servant in the establishment take an active
part in the proceedings. On one of these occasions, the Admiral
announced his intention of going down the well in the bucket. That was
a rare moment in Letty's life, for when the Admiral had been let down
in the bucket, the rope broke!
Indeed, the thought of what the Laird would say when he came up,
almost resulted in his not coming up at all. However, some one,
rather bolder than the rest, retained sufficient presence of mind to
effect a rescue, and the timid ones, thankful enough to survive the
explosion, had to be content on "half-rations till further orders."
But in spite of its association with such a martinet, and in spite of
her ghostly experiences in it, Letty loved the house, and was never
tired of singing its praises.
It was a two-storeyed mansion, with roomy cellars but no basement.
There were four reception-rooms--all oak-panelled--on the ground
floor; numerous kitchen offices, including a cosy housekeeper's room;
and a capacious entrance hall, in the centre of which stood a broad
oak staircase. The cellars, three in number, and chiefly used as
lumber-rooms, were deep down and dank and horrid.
On the first floor eight bedrooms opened on to a gallery overlooking
the hall, and the top storey, where the servants slept, consisted
solely of attics connected with one another by dark, narrow passages.
It was one of these attics that was haunted, although, as a matter of
fact, the ghost had been seen in all parts of the house.
When Letty entered the Admiral's service she was but a bairn, and had
never even heard of ghosts; nor did the other servants apprise her of
the hauntings, having received strict injunctions not to do so from
the Laird.
But Letty's home, humble though it was, had been very bright and
cheerful, and the dark precincts of the mansion filled her with
dismay. Without exactly knowing why she was afraid, she shrank in
terror from descending into the cellars, and felt anything but pleased
at the prospect of sleeping alone in an attic. Still nothing occurred
to really alarm her till about a month after her arrival. It was early
in the evening, soon after twilight, and she had gone down into one of
the cellars to look for a boot-jack, which the Admiral swore by all
that was holy must be found before supper. Placing the light she had
brought with her on a packing-case, she was groping about among the
boxes, when she perceived, to her astonishment, that the flame of the
candle had suddenly turned blue. She then felt icy cold, and was much
startled on hearing a loud clatter as of some metal instrument on the
stone floor in the far-off corner of the cellar. Glancing in the
direction of the noise, she saw, looking at her, two eyes--two
obliquely set, lurid, light eyes, full of the utmost devilry. Sick
with terror and utterly unable to account for what she beheld, she
stood stock-still, her limbs refusing to move, her throat parched, her
tongue tied. The clanging was repeated, and a shadowy form began
slowly to crawl towards her. She dared not afterwards surmise what
would have happened to her, had not the Laird himself come down at
this moment. At the sound of his stentorian voice the phantasm
vanished. But the shock had been too much for Letty; she fainted, and
the Admiral, carrying her upstairs as carefully as if she had been his
own daughter, gave peremptory orders that she should never again be
allowed to go into the cellar alone.
But now that Letty herself had witnessed a manifestation, the other
servants no longer felt bound to secrecy, and soon poured into her
ears endless accounts of the hauntings.
Every one, they informed her, except Master Gregory and Perkins (the
butler) had seen one or other of the ghosts, and the cellar
apparition was quite familiar to them all. They also declared that
there were other parts of the house quite as badly haunted as the
cellar, and it might have been partly owing to these gruesome stories
that poor Letty always felt scared, when crossing the passages leading
to the attics. As she was hastening down one of them, early one
morning, she heard some one running after her. Thinking it was one of
the other servants, she turned round, pleased to think that some one
else was up early too, and saw to her horror a dreadful-looking
object, that seemed to be partly human and partly animal. The body was
quite small, and its face bloated, and covered with yellow spots. It
had an enormous animal mouth, the lips of which, moving furiously
without emitting any sound, showed that the creature was endeavouring
to speak but could not. The moment Letty screamed for help the
phantasm vanished.
But her worst experience was yet to come. The spare attic which she
was told was so badly haunted that no one would sleep in it, was the
room next to hers. It was a room Letty could well believe was
haunted, for she had never seen another equally gloomy. The ceiling
was low and sloping, the window tiny, and the walls exhibited all
sorts of odd nooks and crannies. A bed, antique and worm-eaten, stood
in one recess, a black oak chest in another, and at right angles with
the door, in another recess, stood a wardrobe that used to creak and
groan alarmingly every time Letty walked a long the passage. Once she
heard a chuckle, a low, diabolical chuckle, which she fancied came
from the chest; and once, when the door of the room was open, she
caught the glitter of a pair of eyes--the same pale, malevolent eyes
that had so frightened her in the cellar. From her earliest childhood
Letty had been periodically given to somnambulism, and one night, just
about a year after she went into service, she got out of bed, and
walked, in her sleep, into the Haunted Room. She awoke to find herself
standing, cold and shivering, in the middle of the floor, and it was
some seconds before she realised where she was. Her horror, when she
did discover where she was, is not easily described. The room was
bathed in moonlight, and the beams, falling with noticeable
brilliancy on each piece of furniture the room contained, at once
riveted Letty's attention, and so fascinated her that she found
herself utterly unable to move. A terrible and most unusual silence
predominated everywhere, and although Letty's senses were wonderfully
and painfully on the alert, she could not catch the slightest sound
from any of the rooms on the landing.
The night was absolutely still, no breath of wind, no rustle of
leaves, no flapping of ivy against the window; yet the door suddenly
swung back on its hinges and slammed furiously. Letty felt that this
was the work of some supernatural agency, and, fully expecting that
the noise had awakened the cook, who was a light sleeper (or pretended
she was), listened in a fever of excitement to hear her get out of bed
and call out. The slightest noise and the spell that held her prisoner
would, Letty felt sure, be broken. But the same unbroken silence
prevailed. A sudden rustling made Letty glance fearfully at the bed;
and she perceived, to her terror, the valance swaying violently, to
and fro. Sick with fear, she was now constrained to stare in abject
helplessness. Presently there was a slight, very slight movement on
the mattress, the white dust cover rose, and, under it, Letty saw the
outlines of what she took to be a human figure, gradually take shape.
Hoping, praying, that she was mistaken, and that what appeared to be
on the bed was but a trick of her imagination, she continued staring
in an agony of anticipation. But the figure remained--extended at full
length like a corpse. The minutes slowly passed, a church clock boomed
two, and the body moved. Letty's jaw fell, her eyes almost bulged from
her head, whilst her fingers closed convulsively on the folds of her
night-dress. The unmistakable sound of breathing now issued from the
region of the bed, and the dust-cover commenced slowly to slip aside.
Inch by inch it moved, until first of all Letty saw a few wisps of
dark hair, then a few more, then a thick cluster; then something white
and shining--a protruding forehead; then dark, very dark brows; then
two eyelids, yellow, swollen, and fortunately tightly closed; then--a
purple conglomeration of Letty knew not what--of anything but what
was human. The sight was so monstrous it appalled her; and she was
overcome with a species of awe and repulsion, for which the language
of mortality has no sufficiently energetic expression. She momentarily
forgot that what she looked on was merely superphysical, but regarded
it as something alive, something that ought to have been a child,
comely and healthy as herself--and she hated it. It was an outrage on
maternity, a blot on nature, a filthy discredit to the house, a
blight, a sore, a gangrene. It turned over in its sleep, the cover was
hurled aside, and a grotesque object, round, pulpy, webbed, and of
leprous whiteness--an object which Letty could hardly associate with a
hand--came grovelling out. Letty's stomach heaved; the thing was
beastly, indecent, vile, it ought not to live! And the idea of killing
flashed through her mind. Boiling over with indignation and absurdly
forgetful of her surroundings, she turned round and groped for a stone
to smash it. The moonlight on her naked toes brought her to her
senses--the thing in the bed was a devil! Though brought up a member
of the Free Church, with an abhorrence of anything that could in any
way be contorted into Papist practices, Letty crossed herself. As she
did so, a noise in the passage outside augmented her terror. She
strained her ears painfully, and the sound developed into a footstep,
soft, light, and surreptitious. It came gently towards the door; it
paused outside, and Letty intuitively felt that it was listening. Her
suspense was now so intolerable, that it was almost with a feeling of
relief that she beheld the door slowly--very slowly--begin to open. A
little wider--a little wider--and yet a little wider; but still
nothing came. Ah! Letty's heart turned to ice. Another inch, and a
shadowy something slipped through and began to wriggle itself
stealthily over the floor. Letty tried to divert her gaze, but could
not--an irresistible, magnetic attraction kept her eyes glued to the
gradually approaching horror. When within a few feet of her it halted;
and again Letty felt it was listening--listening to the breathing on
the bed, which was heavy and bestial. Then it twisted round, and Letty
watched it crawl into the wardrobe. After this there was a long and
anxious wait. Then Letty saw the wardrobe door slyly open, and the
eyes of the cellar--inexpressibly baleful, and glittering like
burnished steel in the strong phosphorescent glow of the moon, peep
out,--not at her but _through_ her,--at the object lying on the bed.
There were not only eyes, this time, but a form,--vague, misty, and
irregular, but still with sufficient shape to enable Letty to identify
it as that of a woman, tall and thin, and with a total absence of
hair, which was emphasised in the most lurid and ghastly fashion. With
a snakelike movement, the evil thing slithered out of the wardrobe,
and, gliding past Letty, approached the bed. Letty was obliged to
follow every proceeding. She saw the thing deftly snatch the bolster
from under the sleeping head; noted the gleam of hellish satisfaction
in its eyes as it pressed the bolster down; and watched the murdered
creature's contortions grow fainter, and fainter, until they finally
ceased. The eyes then left the room; and from afar off, away below, in
the abysmal cellars of the house, came the sound of digging--faint,
very faint, but unquestionably digging. This terminated the grim,
phantasmal drama for that night at least, and Letty, chilled to the
bone, but thoroughly alert, escaped to her room. She spent her few
remaining hours of rest wide-awake, determining never to go to bed
again without fastening one of her arms to the iron staples.
With regard the history of the house, Letty never learned anything
more remarkable than that, long ago, an idiot child was supposed to
have been murdered in the haunted attic--by whom, tradition did not
say. The Admiral and his family left Pringle's Mansion the year Letty
became Miss South's nurse, and as no one would stay in the house,
presumably on account of the hauntings, it was pulled down, and an
inexcusably inartistic edifice was erected in its place.
CASE III
THE BOUNDING FIGURE OF "---- HOUSE," NEAR
BUCKINGHAM TERRACE, EDINBURGH
No one is more interested in Psychical Investigation Work than Miss
Torfrida Vincent, one of the three beautiful daughters of Mrs. H. de
B. Vincent, who is, herself, still in the heyday of life, and one of
the loveliest of the society women I have met. Though I have known her
sisters several years, I only met Torfrida for the first time a few
months ago, when she was superintending the nursing of her mother, who
had just undergone an operation for appendicitis. One day, when I was
visiting my convalescent friend, Torfrida informed me that she knew of
a haunted house in Edinburgh, a case which she felt sure would arouse
my interest and enthusiasm. "It is unfortunate," she added somewhat
regretfully, "that I cannot tell you the number of the house, but as
I have given my word of honour to disclose it to no one, I feel sure
you will excuse me. Indeed, my friends the Gordons, who extracted the
promise from me, have got into sad trouble with their landlord for
leaving the house under the pretext that it was haunted, and he has
threatened to prosecute them for slander of title."
The house in question has no claim to antiquity. It may be eighty years
old--perhaps a little older--and was, at the time of which I speak, let
out in flats. The Gordons occupied the second storey; the one above
them was untenanted, and used as a storage place for furniture; the
first floor and ground floor were divided into chambers and offices.
They had not been in their new quarters more than a week, when Mrs.
Gordon asked the night porter who it was that made such a noise, racing
up their stairs between two and three in the morning. It had awakened
her every night, she told him, and she would be glad if the disturbance
were discontinued. "I am sorry, Madam, but I cannot imagine who it can
be," the man replied. "Of course, it may be some one next door, sounds
are so often deceptive; no one inhabits the rooms above you." But Mrs.
Gordon was not at all convinced, and made up her mind to complain to
the landlord should it occur again. That night nothing happened, but
the night after she was roused from her sleep at two o'clock, by a
feeling that something dreadful, some dire catastrophe, was about to
take place. The house was very still, and beyond the far-away echoes of
a policeman's patrol on the hard pavement outside, nothing, absolutely
nothing, broke the universal, and as it seemed to her, unnatural
silence. Generally at night-time there are sounds one likes to assure
oneself are too trivial to be heard during the day--the creaking of
boards, stairs (nearly always stairs), and the tapping of some leaf (of
course some leaf) at the windows. Who has not heard such sounds, and
who in his heart of hearts has not been only too well aware that they
are nocturnal, exclusively nocturnal. The shadows of evening bring with
them visitors; prying, curious visitors; grim and ghastly visitors;
grey, esoteric visitors; visitors from a world seemingly inconsequent,
wholly incomprehensible. Mrs. Gordon did not believe in ghosts. She
scoffed at the idea of ghosts, and, like so many would-be wits,
unreasonably brave by day, and the reverse by night, had hitherto
attributed banshees and the like to cats and other animals. But
now,--now when all was dark,--pitch dark and hushed, and she, for aught
she knew to the contrary, the only one, in that great rambling
building, awake, she reviewed again and again, in her mind, that
rushing up the stairs. The wind! It could not have been the wind. The
wind shuts doors, and rattles windows, and moans, and sighs, and howls
and screeches, but it does not walk the house in boots. Neither do
rats! And if she had imagined the noises, why did she not imagine other
things; why, for example, did she not see tables dance, and tea-urns
walk? All that would be fancy, unblushing, genuine fancy, and if she
conjured up one absurdity, why not another! That was a conundrum for
any sceptic. Thus did she argue, naturally and logically, in the quite
sensible fashion of a lawyer, or a scientist; yet, all the while, her
senses told her that the atmosphere of the house had undergone some
profoundly subtle and unaccountable change,--a change that brought with
it a presence, at once sinister and hostile. She longed to strike a
light and awake one of her daughters--Diana, by preference; since Diana
was the least likely to mind being disturbed, and had the strongest
nerves. She made a start, and, loosening the bedclothes that she always
liked tightly tucked round her, thrust out a quivering toe. The next
instant she drew it back with a tiny gasp of terror. The cold darkness
without had suggested to her mind a great, horny hand, mal-shaped and
murderous, that was lying in wait to seize her. A deadly sickness
overcame her, and she lay back on the pillow, her heart beating with
outrageous irregularity and loudness. Very slowly she recovered, and,
holding her breath, sidled to the far edge of the bed, and with a
dexterous movement, engendered by the desperation of fear, made a
lightning-like dab in the direction of the electric bell. Her soft,
pink finger missed the mark, and coming in violent contact with the
wall, bent the carefully polished nail. She bit her lips to stop a cry
of pain, and shrinking back within the folds of her dainty lace
embroidered nightdress, abandoned herself to despair. Her consciousness
of the Unknown Presence increased, and she instinctively felt the thing
pass through the closed door, down on to the landing outside, when it
dashed upstairs with a loud clatter, and, entering the lumber-room
immediately overhead, began bounding as if its feet were tied together,
backwards and forwards across the floor. After continuing for fully
half an hour, the noises abruptly ceased and the house resumed its
accustomed quiet. At breakfast, Mrs. Gordon asked her daughters if they
had heard anything in the night, and they laughingly said "No, not even
a mouse!"
There was now an intermission of the disturbances, and no further
demonstration occurred for about a month. Diana was then sleeping in
her mother's room, Mrs. Gordon being away on a visit to Lady Voss, who
was entertaining a party of friends at her shooting-box in Argyle. One
evening, as Diana was going into her bedroom to prepare for dinner,
she saw the door suddenly swing open, and something, she could not
tell what--it was so blurred and indistinct--come out with a bound.
Tearing past her on to the landing, it rushed up the stairs with so
much clatter that Diana imagined, though she could see nothing, that
it must have on its feet, heavy lumbering boots. Filled with an
irresistible curiosity, in spite of her alarm, Diana ran after it,
and, on reaching the upper storey, heard it making a terrific racket
in the room above the one in which she now slept. Nothing daunted,
however, she boldly approached, and, flinging open the door, perceived
its filmy outline standing before a shadowy and very antique eight-day
clock, which apparently it was in the habit of winding. A great fear
now fell on Diana. What was the thing? And supposing it should turn
round and face her, what should she see? She was entirely isolated
from her sisters, and the servants--alone--the light fading--in a big,
gloomy room full of strange old furniture which suggested
hiding-places for all sorts of grim possibilities. She was assured now
that the thing she had followed was nothing human, neither was it a
delusion, for when she shut her eyes and opened them, it was still
there--and, oddly enough, it was now more distinct than it was when
she had seen it downstairs. A curious feeling of helplessness stole
over Diana; the power of speech forsook her; and her limbs grew rigid.
She was so fearful, too, of attracting the notice of the mysterious
thing that she hardly dare breathe, and each pulsation of her heart
sent cold chills of apprehension down her spine. Once she endured
agonies through a mad desire to sneeze, and once her lips opened to
scream as something suspiciously like the antennæ of a huge beetle,
and which she subsequently discovered was a "devil's coach-horse,"
tickled the calf of her leg. She fancied, too, that all sorts of queer
shapes lurked in the passage behind her, and that innumerable unseen
eyes were malignantly rejoicing in her terror. At last, the climax to
her suspense seemed at hand. The unknown thing, until now too busy
with the clock to take heed of her, paused for a moment or so, as if
undecided what to do next, and then slowly began to veer round. But
the faint echo of a voice below, calling her by name, broke the
hypnotic spell that bound Diana to the floor, and with a frantic
spring she cleared the threshold of the room. She then tore madly
downstairs, never halting till she reached the dining-room, where she
sank on a sofa, and, more dead than alive, panted out to her amazed
sisters a full account of all that had transpired.
That night she shared her sister's bedroom, but neither she nor her
sister slept.
From this time till the return of Mrs. Gordon, nothing happened. It
was one evening after she came back, when she was preparing to get
into bed, that the door of her own room unexpectedly opened, and she
saw standing, on the threshold, the unmistakable figure of a man,
short and broad, with a great width of shoulders, and very long arms.
He was clad in a peajacket, blue serge trousers, and jack-boots. He
had a big, round, brutal head, covered with a tangled mass of yellow
hair, but where his face ought to have been there was only a blotch,
underlying which Mrs. Gordon detected the semblance to something
fiendishly vindictive and immeasurably nasty. But, in spite of the
horror his appearance produced, her curiosity was aroused with regard
to the two objects he carried in his hands, one of which looked like
a very bizarre bundle of red and white rags, and the other a small
bladder of lard. Whilst she was staring at them in dumb awe, he swung
round, and, hitching them savagely under his armpits, rushed across
the landing, and, with a series of apish bounds, sprang up the
staircase and disappeared in the gloom.
This was the climax; Mrs. Gordon felt another such encounter would
kill her. So, in spite of the fact that she had taken the flat for a
year, and had only just commenced her tenancy, she packed up her goods
and left the very next day. The report that the building was haunted
spread rapidly, and Mrs. Gordon had many indignant letters from the
landlord. She naturally made inquiries as to the early history of the
house, but of the many tales she listened to, only one, the
authenticity of which she could not guarantee, seemed to suggest any
clue to the haunting.
It was said that a retired Captain in the Merchant Service, many years
previously, had rented the rooms she had occupied.
He was an extraordinary individual, and, despite the fact that he had
lived so far inland, would never wear any but nautical clothes--blue
jersey and trousers, reefer coat and jack-boots. But this was not his
only peculiarity. His love of grog eventually brought on delirium
tremens, and his excessive irritability in the interval between each
attack was a source of anxiety to all who came in contact with him. At
that time there happened to be a baby in the rooms overhead, whose
crying so annoyed the Captain that he savagely informed its mother
that if she did not keep it quiet, he would not be answerable for the
consequences. His warnings having no effect, he flew upstairs one day,
when she was temporarily absent, and, snatching up the bread knife
from the table, decapitated the infant. He then stuffed both its head
and body into a grandfather's clock which stood in one corner of the
room, and, retiring to his own quarters, drank till he was insensible.
He was, of course, arrested on a charge of murder, but being found
"insane" he was committed during His Majesty's pleasure to a lunatic
asylum.
He eventually committed suicide by opening an artery in his leg with
one of his finger-nails.
As the details of this tragedy filled in so well with the phenomena
they had witnessed, the Gordons could not help regarding the story as
a very probable explanation of the hauntings. But, remember, its
authenticity is dubious.
CASE IV
JANE OF GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH
"The news that, for several years at any rate, George Street,
Edinburgh, was haunted," wrote a correspondent of mine some short time
ago, "might cause no little surprise to many of its inhabitants." And
my friend proceeded to relate his experience of the haunting, which I
will reproduce as nearly as possible in his own words. I quote from
memory, having foolishly destroyed the letter.
* * * * *
I was walking in a leisurely way along George Street the other day,
towards Strunalls, where I get my cigars, and had arrived opposite No.
--, when I suddenly noticed, just ahead of me, a tall lady of
remarkably graceful figure, clad in a costume which, even to an
ignoramus in fashions like myself, seemed extraordinarily out of date.
In my untechnical language it consisted of a dark blue coat and
skirt, trimmed with black braid. The coat had a very high collar,
turned over to show a facing of blue velvet, its sleeves were very
full at the shoulders, and a band of blue velvet drew it tightly in at
the waist. Moreover, unlike every other lady I saw, she wore a small
hat, which I subsequently learned was a toque, with one white and one
blue plume placed moderately high at the side. The only other
conspicuous items of her dress, the effect of which was, on the whole,
quiet, were white glacé gloves,--over which dangled gold curb
bracelets with innumerable pendants,--shoes, which were of patent
leather with silver buckles and rather high Louis heels, and fine,
blue silk openwork stockings. So much for her dress. Now for her
herself. She was a strikingly fair woman with very pale yellow hair
and a startlingly white complexion; and this latter peculiarity so
impressed me that I hastened my steps, determining to get a full view
of her. Passing her with rapid strides, I looked back, and as I did so
a cold chill ran through me,--what I looked at was--the face of the
dead. I slowed down and allowed her to take the lead.
I now observed that, startling as she was, no one else seemed to
notice her. One or two people obviously, though probably
unconsciously, possessing the germs of psychism, shivered when they
passed her, but as they neither slackened their pace nor turned to
steal a second look, I concluded they had not seen her. Without
glancing either to the right or left, she moved steadily on, past
Molton's the confectioner's, past Perrin's the hatter's. Once, I
thought she was coming to a halt, and that she intended crossing the
road, but no--on, on, on, till we came to D---- Street. There we were
preparing to cross over, when an elderly gentleman walked deliberately
into her. I half expected to hear him apologise, but naturally nothing
of the sort happened; she was only too obviously a phantom, and, in
accordance with the nature of a phantom, she passed right through him.
A few yards farther on, she came to an abrupt pause, and then, with a
slight inclination of her head as if meaning me to follow, she glided
into a chemist's shop. She was certainly not more than six feet ahead
of me when she passed through the door, and I was even nearer than
that to her when she suddenly disappeared as she stood before the
counter. I asked the chemist if he could tell me anything about the
lady who had just entered his shop, but he merely turned away and
laughed.
"Lady!" he said; "what are you talking about? You're a bit out of your
reckoning. This isn't the first of April. Come, what do you want?"
I bought a bottle of formamints, and reluctantly and regretfully
turned away. That night I dreamed I again saw the ghost. I followed
her up George Street just as I had done in reality; but when she came
to the chemist's shop, she turned swiftly round. "I'm Jane!" she said
in a hollow voice. "Jane! Only Jane!" and with that name ringing in my
ears I awoke.
Some days elapsed before I was in George Street again. The weather had
in the meanwhile undergone one of those sudden and violent changes, so
characteristic of the Scottish climate. The lock-gates of heaven had
been opened and the rain was descending in cataracts. The few
pedestrians I encountered were enveloped in mackintoshes, and carried
huge umbrellas, through which the rain was soaking, and pouring off
from every point. Everything was wet--everywhere was mud. The water,
splashing upwards, saturated the tops of my boots and converted my
trousers into sodden sacks. Some weather isn't fit for dogs, but this
weather wasn't good enough for tadpoles--even fish would have kicked
at it and kept in their holes. Imagine, then, the anomaly! Amidst all
this aqueous inferno, this slippery-sloppery, filth-bespattering
inferno, a spotlessly clean apparition in blue without either
waterproof or umbrella. I refer to Jane. She suddenly appeared, as I
was passing The Ladies' Tea Association Rooms, walking in front of me.
She looked just the same as when I last saw her--spick and span,
and--dry. I repeat the word--dry--for that is what attracted my
attention most. Despite the deluge, not a single raindrop touched
her--the plumes on her toque were splendidly erect and curly, her
shoe-buckles sparkled, her patent leathers were spotless, whilst the
cloth of her coat and skirt looked as sheeny as if they had but just
come from Keeley's.
Anxious to get another look at her face, I quickened my pace, and,
darting past her, gazed straight into her countenance. The result was
a severe shock. The terror of what I saw--the ghastly horror of her
dead white face--sent me reeling across the pavement. I let her pass
me, and, impelled by a sickly fascination, followed in her wake.
Outside a jeweller's stood a hansom--quite a curiosity in these days
of motors--and, as Jane glided past, the horse shied. I have never
seen an animal so terrified. We went on, and at the next crossing
halted. A policeman had his hand up checking the traffic. His glance
fell on Jane--the effect was electrical. His eyes bulged, his cheeks
whitened, his chest heaved, his hand dropped, and he would undoubtedly
have fallen had not a good Samaritan, in the guise of a non-psychical
public-house loafer, held him up. Jane was now close to the chemist's,
and it was with a sigh of relief that I saw her glide in and
disappear.
Had there been any doubt at all, after my first encounter with Jane,
as to her being superphysical, there was certainly none now. The
policeman's paroxysm of fear and the horse's fit of shying were facts.
What had produced them? I alone knew--and I knew for certain--it was
Jane. Both man and animal saw what I saw. Hence the phantom was not
subjective; it was not illusionary; it was a _bona fide_ spirit
manifestation--a visitant from the other world--the world of
earthbound souls. Jane fascinated me. I made endless researches in
connection with her, and, in answer to one of my inquiries, I was
informed that eighteen years ago--that is to say, about the time
Jane's dress was in fashion--the chemist's shop had been occupied by a
dressmaker of the name of Bosworth. I hunted up Miss Bosworth's
address and called on her. She had retired from business and was
living in St. Michael's Road, Bournemouth. I came to the point
straight.
"Can you give me any information," I asked, "about a lady whose
Christian name was Jane?"
"That sounds vague!" Miss Bosworth said. "I've met a good many Janes
in my time."
"But not Janes with pale yellow hair, and white eyebrows and
eyelashes!" And I described her in detail.
"How do you come to know about her?" Miss Bosworth said, after a long
pause.
"Because," I replied with a certain slowness and deliberation
characteristic of me, "because I've seen her ghost!"
Of course I knew Miss Bosworth was no sceptic--the moment my eyes
rested on her I saw she was psychic, and that the superphysical was
often at her elbow. Accordingly, I was not in the least surprised at
her look of horror.
"What!" she exclaimed, "is she still there? I thought she would surely
be at rest now!"
"Who was she?" I inquired. "Come--you need not be afraid of me. I have
come here solely because the occult has always interested me. Who was
Jane, and why should her ghost haunt George Street?"
"It happened a good many years ago," Miss Bosworth replied, "in 1892.
In answer to an advertisement I saw in one of the daily papers, I
called on a Miss Jane Vernelt--Mademoiselle Vernelt she called
herself--who ran a costumier's business in George Street, in the very
building, in fact now occupied by the chemist you have mentioned. The
business was for sale, and Miss Vernelt wanted a big sum for it.
However, as her books showed a very satisfactory annual increase in
receipts and her clientele included a duchess and other society
leaders, I considered the bargain a tolerably safe one, and we came to
terms. Within a week I was running the business, and, exactly a month
after I had taken it over, I was greatly astonished to receive a visit
from Miss Vernelt. She came into the shop quite beside herself with
agitation. 'It's all a mistake!' she screamed. 'I didn't want to sell
it. I can't do anything with my capital. Let me buy it back.' I
listened to her politely, and then informed her that as I had gone to
all the trouble of taking over the business and had already succeeded
in extending it, I most certainly had no intention of selling it--at
least not for some time. Well, she behaved like a lunatic, and in the
end created such a disturbance that I had to summon my assistants and
actually turn her out. After that I had no peace for six weeks. She
came every day, at any and all times, and I was at last obliged to
take legal proceedings. I then discovered that her mind was really
unhinged, and that she had been suffering from softening of the brain
for many months. Her medical advisers had, it appeared, warned her to
give up business and place herself in the hands of trustworthy friends
or relations, who would see that her money was properly invested, but
she had delayed doing so; and when, at last, she did make up her mind
to retire, the excitement, resulting from so great a change in her
mode of living, accelerated the disease, and, exactly three weeks
after the sale of her business, she became a victim to the delusion
that she was ruined. This delusion grew more and more pronounced as
her malady increased, and amidst her wildest ravings she clamoured to
be taken back to George Street. The hauntings, indeed, began before
she died; and I frequently saw her--when I knew her material body to
be under restraint--just as you describe, gliding in and out the
show-rooms.
"For several weeks after her death, the manifestations continued--they
then ceased, and I have never heard of her again until now."
If I remember rightly the account of the George Street ghost here
terminated; but my friend referred to it again at the close of his
letter.
"Since my return to Scotland," he wrote, "I have frequently visited
George Street, almost daily, but I have not seen 'Jane.' I only hope
that her poor distracted spirit has at last found rest." And with this
kindly sentiment my correspondent concluded.
CASE V
THE SALLOW-FACED WOMAN OF NO. -- FORREST
ROAD, EDINBURGH
The Public unfortunately includes a certain set of people, of the
middle class very "middlish," who are ever on the look-out for some
opportunity, however slight and seemingly remote, of bettering
themselves socially; and, learning that those in a higher strata of
society are interested in the supernatural, they think that they may
possibly get in touch with them by working up a little local
reputation for psychical research. I have often had letters from this
type of "pusher" (letters from genuine believers in the Occult I
always welcome) stating that they have been greatly interested in my
books--would I be so very kind as to grant them a brief interview, or
permit them to accompany me to a haunted house, or give them certain
information with regard to Lady So-and-so, whom they have long wanted
to know? Occasionally, I have been so taken in as to give permission
to the writer to call on me, and almost always I have bitterly
repented. The wily one--no matter how wily--cannot conceal the cloven
hoof for long, and he has either tried to thrust himself into the
bosom of my family, or has written to my neighbours declaring himself
to be my dearest friend; and when, in desperation, I have shown him
the cold shoulder, he has attacked me virulently in some "rag" of a
local paper, the proprietor, editor, or office-boy of which happens to
be one of his own clique. I have even known an instance where this
type of person has, through trickery, actually gained access to some
notoriously haunted house, and from its owners--the family he has long
had his eyes on, from a motive anything but psychic--has ferreted out
the secret and private history of the haunting. Then, when he has been
"found out" and forced to see that his friendship is not wanted, he
has, in revenge for the slight, unblushingly revealed the facts that
were only entrusted to him in the strictest confidence; and, through
influence with the lower stratum of the Press, caused a most glaring
and sensational account of the ghost to be published.
With such a case in view, I cannot be surprised that possessors of
family ghosts and haunted houses should show the greatest reluctance
to be approached on the subject, save by those they feel assured will
treat it with the utmost delicacy.
But I have quoted the above breach of confidence merely to give
another reason for my constant use of fictitious names with regard to
people and places, and having done so (I hope to some purpose), I will
proceed with the following story:--
Miss Dulcie Vincent, some of whose reminiscences appeared in my book
of _Ghostly Phenomena_ last year, is nearly connected with Lady Adela
Minkon, who owns a considerable amount of house property, including
No. -- Forrest Road, in Edinburgh, and whose yacht at Cowes is the
envy of all who have cruised in her. Three years ago, Lady Adela
stayed at No. -- Forrest Road. She had heard that the house was
haunted, and was anxious to put it to the test. Lady Adela was
perfectly open-minded. She had never experienced any occult phenomena
herself, but, very rationally, she did not consider that her
non-acquaintance with the superphysical in any way negatived the
evidence of those who declare that they have witnessed manifestations;
their statements, she reasoned, were just as worthy of credence as
hers. She thus commenced her occupation of the house with a perfectly
unbiased mind, resolved to stay there for at least a year, so as to
give it a fair trial. The hauntings, she was told, were at their
height in the late summer and early autumn. It is, I think,
unnecessary to enter into any detailed description of her house. In
appearance, it differed very little, if at all, from those adjoining
it; in construction, it was if anything a trifle larger. The basement,
which included the usual kitchen offices and cellars, was very dark,
and the atmosphere--after sunset on Fridays, only on Fridays--was
tainted with a smell of damp earth, shockingly damp earth, and of a
sweet and nauseating something that greatly puzzled Lady Adela. All
the rooms in the house were of fair dimensions, and cheerful,
excepting on this particular evening of the week; a distinct gloom
settled on them then, and the strangest of shadows were seen playing
about the passages and on the landings.
"It may be fancy," Lady Adela said to herself, "merely fancy! And,
after all, if I encounter nothing worse than a weekly menu of aromatic
smells and easily digested shadows, I shall not suffer any harm"; but
it was early summer then--the psychic season had yet to come. As the
weeks went by, the shadows and the smell grew more and more
pronounced, and by the arrival of August had become so emphatic that
Lady Adela could not help thinking that they were both hostile and
aggressive.
About eight o'clock on the evening of the second Friday in the month,
Lady Adela was purposely alone in the basement of the house. The
servants especially irritated her; like the majority of present-day
domestics, products of the County Council schools, they were so
intensely supercilious and silly, and Lady Adela felt that their
presence in the house minimised her chances of seeing the ghost. No
apparition with the smallest amount of self-respect could risk coming
in contact with such inane creatures, so she sent them all out for a
motor drive, and, for once, rejoiced in the house to herself. A
curious proceeding for a lady! True! but then, Lady Adela was a lady,
and, being a lady, was not afraid of being thought anything else; and
so acted just as unconventionally as she chose. But stay a moment; she
was not alone in the house, for she had three of her dogs with
her--three beautiful boarhounds, trophies of her last trip to the
Baltic. With such colossal and perfectly trained companions Lady Adela
felt absolutely safe, and ready--as she acknowledged afterwards--to
face a whole army of spooks. She did not even shiver when the front
door of the basement closed, and she heard the sonorous birring of the
motor, drowning the giddy voices of the servants, grow fainter and
fainter until it finally ceased altogether.
When the last echoes of the vehicle had died away in the distance,
Lady Adela made a tour of the premises. The housekeeper's room pleased
her immensely--at least she persuaded herself it did. "Why, it is
quite as nice as any of the rooms upstairs," she said aloud, as she
stood with her face to the failing sunbeams and rested her strong
white hand on the edge of the table. "Quite as nice. Karl and Max,
come here!"
But the boarhounds for once in their lives did not obey her with a
good grace. There was something in the room they did not like, and
they showed how strong was their resentment by slinking unwillingly
through the doorway.
"I wonder why that is?" Lady Adela mused; "I have never known them do
it before." Then her eyes wandered round the walls, and struggled in
vain to reach the remoter angles of the room, which had suddenly grown
dark. She tried to assure herself that this was but the natural effect
of the departing daylight, and that, had she watched in other houses
at this particular time, she would have noticed the same thing. To
show how little she minded the gloom, she went up to the darkest
corner and prodded the walls with her riding-whip. She laughed--there
was nothing there, nothing whatsoever to be afraid of, only shadows.
With a careless shrug of her shoulders, she strutted into the
passage, and, whistling to Karl and Max who, contrary to their custom,
would not keep to heel, made another inspection of the kitchens. At
the top of the cellar steps she halted. The darkness had now set in
everywhere, and she argued that it would be foolish to venture into
such dungeon-like places without a light. She soon found one, and,
armed with candle and matches, began her descent. There were several
cellars, and they presented such a dismal, dark appearance, that she
instinctively drew her skirts tightly round her, and exchanged the
slender riding-whip for a poker. She whistled again to her dogs. They
did not answer, so she called them both by name angrily. But for some
reason (some quite unaccountable reason, she told herself) they would
not come.
She ransacked her mind to recall some popular operatic air, and
although she knew scores she could not remember one. Indeed, the only
air that filtered back to her was one she detested--a Vaudeville tune
she had heard three nights in succession, when she was staying with a
student friend in the Latin Quarter in Paris. She hummed it loudly,
however, and, holding the lighted candle high above her head, walked
down the steps. At the bottom she stood still and listened. From high
above her came noises which sounded like the rumbling of distant
thunder, but which, on analysis, proved to be the rattling of
window-frames. Reassured that she had no cause for alarm, Lady Adela
advanced. Something black scudded across the red-tiled floor, and she
made a dash at it with her poker. The concussion awoke countless
echoes in the cellars, and called into existence legions of other
black things that darted hither and thither in all directions. She
burst out laughing--they were only beetles! Facing her she now
perceived an inner cellar, which was far gloomier than the one in
which she stood. The ceiling was very low, and appeared to be crushed
down beneath the burden of a stupendous weight; and as she advanced
beneath it she half expected that it would "cave in" and bury her.
A few feet from the centre of this cellar she stopped; and, bending
down, examined the floor carefully. The tiles were unmistakably newer
here than elsewhere, and presented the appearance of having been put
in at no very distant date. The dampness of the atmosphere was
intense; a fact which struck Lady Adela as somewhat odd, since the
floor and walls looked singularly dry. To find out if this were the
case, she ran her fingers over the walls, and, on removing them, found
they showed no signs of moisture. Then she rapped the floor and walls,
and could discover no indications of hollowness. She sniffed the air,
and a great wave of something sweet and sickly half choked her. She
drew out her handkerchief and beat the air vigorously with it; but the
smell remained, and she could not in any way account for it. She
turned to leave the cellar, and the flame of her candle burned blue.
Then for the first time that evening--almost, indeed, for the first
time in her life--she felt afraid, so afraid that she made no attempt
to diagnose her fear; she understood the dogs' feelings now, and
caught herself wondering how much they knew.
She whistled to them again, not because she thought they would
respond,--she knew only too well they would not,--but because she
wanted company, even the company of her own voice; and she had some
faint hope, too, that whatever might be with her in the cellar, would
not so readily disclose itself if she made a noise. The one cellar was
passed, and she was nearly across the floor of the other when she
heard a crash. The candle dropped from her hand, and all the blood in
her body rushed to her heart. She could never have imagined it was so
terrible to be frightened. She tried to pull herself together and be
calm, but she was no longer mistress of her limbs. Her knees knocked
together and her hands shook. "It was only the dogs," she feebly told
herself, "I will call them"; but when she opened her mouth, she found
her throat was paralysed--not a syllable would come. She knew, too,
that she had lied, and that the hounds could not have been responsible
for the noise. It was like nothing she had ever heard, nothing she
could imagine; and although she struggled hard against the idea, she
could not help associating the sound with the cause of the candle
burning blue, and the sweet, sickly smell. Incapable of moving a
step, she was forced to listen in breathless expectancy for a
recurrence of the crash. Her thoughts become ghastly. The inky sea of
darkness that hemmed her in on every side suggested every sort of
ghoulish possibility, and with each pulsation of her overstrained
heart her flesh crawled. Another sound--this time not a crash, nothing
half so loud or definite--drew her eyes in the direction of the steps.
An object was now standing at the top of them, and something lurid,
like the faint, phosphorescent glow of decay, emanated from all over
it; but _what_ it was, she could not for the life of her tell. It
might have been the figure of a man, or a woman, or a beast, or of
anything that was inexpressibly antagonistic and nasty. She would have
given her soul to have looked elsewhere, but her eyes were fixed--she
could neither turn nor shut them. For some seconds the shape remained
motionless, and then with a sly, subtle motion it lowered its head,
and came stealing stealthily down the stairs towards her. She followed
its approach like one in a hideous dream--her heart ready to burst,
her brain on the verge of madness. Another step, another, yet
another; till there were only three left between her and it; and she
was at length enabled to form some idea of what the thing was like.
It was short and squat, and appeared to be partly clad in a loose,
flowing garment, that was not long enough to conceal the glistening
extremities of its limbs. From its general contour and the tangled
mass of hair that fell about its neck and shoulders, Lady Adela
concluded it was the phantasm of a woman. Its head being kept bent,
she was unable to see the face in full, but every instant she expected
the revelation would take place, and with each separate movement of
the phantasm her suspense became more and more intolerable. At last it
stood on the floor of the cellar, a broad, ungainly, horribly ungainly
figure, that glided up to and past her into the far cellar. There it
halted, as nearly as she could judge on the new tiles, and remained
standing. As she gazed at it, too fascinated to remove her eyes, there
was a loud, reverberating crash, a hideous sound of wrenching and
tearing, and the whole of the ceiling of the inner chamber came down
with an appalling roar. Lady Adela thinks that she must then have
fainted, for she distinctly remembers falling--falling into what
seemed to her a black, interminable abyss. When she recovered
consciousness, she was lying on the tiles, and all around was still
and normal. She got up, found and lighted her candle, and spent the
rest of the evening, without further adventure, in the drawing-room.
All the week Lady Adela struggled hard to master a disinclination to
spend another evening alone in the house, and when Friday came she
succumbed to her fears. The servants were poor, foolish things, but it
was nice to feel that there was something in the house besides ghosts.
She sat reading in the drawing-room till late that night, and when she
lolled out of the window to take a farewell look at the sky and stars
before retiring to rest, the sounds of traffic had completely ceased
and the whole city lay bathed in a refreshing silence. It was very
heavenly to stand there and feel the cool, soft air--unaccompanied,
for the first time during the day, by the rattling rumbling sounds of
locomotion and the jarring discordant murmurs of unmusical
voices--fanning her neck and face.
Lady Adela, used as she was to the privacy of her yacht, and the
freedom of her big country mansion, where all sounds were regulated at
her will, chafed at the near proximity of her present habitation to
the noisy thoroughfare, and vaguely looked forward to the hours when
shops and theatres were closed, and all screeching, harsh-voiced
products of the gutter were in bed. To her the nights in Waterloo
Place were all too short; the days too long, too long for anything.
The heavy, lumbering steps of a policeman at last broke her reverie.
She had no desire to arouse his curiosity; besides, her costume had
become somewhat disordered, and she had the strictest sense of
propriety, at least in the presence of the lower orders. Retiring,
therefore, with a sigh of vexation, she sought her bedroom, and, after
the most scrupulous attention to her toilet, put out the lights and
got into bed. It was just one when she fell asleep, and three when she
awoke with a violent start. Why she started puzzled her. She did not
recollect experiencing any very dreadful dream, in fact no dream at
all, and there seemed nothing in the hush--the apparently unbroken
hush--that could in any way account for her action. Why, then, had she
started? She lay still and wondered. Surely everything was just as it
was when she went to sleep! And yet! When she ventured on a diagnosis,
there was something different, something new; she did not think it was
actually in the atmosphere, nor in the silence; she did not know where
it was until she opened her eyes--and then she _knew_. Bending over
her, within a few inches of her face, was another face, the ghastly
caricature of a human face. It was on a larger scale than that of any
mortal Lady Adela had ever seen; it was long in proportion to its
width--indeed, she could not make out where the cranium terminated at
the back, as the hinder portion of it was lost in a mist. The
forehead, which was very receding, was partly covered with a mass of
lank, black hair, that fell straight down into space; there were no
neck nor shoulders, at least none had materialised; the skin was
leaden-hued, and the emaciation so extreme that the raw cheek-bones
had burst through in places; the size of the eye sockets which
appeared monstrous, was emphasised by the fact that the eyes were
considerably sunken; the lips were curled downwards and tightly shut,
and the whole expression of the withered mouth, as indeed that of the
entire face, was one of bestial, diabolical malignity. Lady Adela's
heart momentarily stopped, her blood ran cold, she was petrified; and
as she stared helplessly at the dark eyes pressed close to hers, she
saw them suddenly suffuse with fiendish glee. The most frightful
change then took place: the upper lip writhed away from a few greenish
yellow stumps; the lower jaw fell with a metallic click, leaving the
mouth widely open, and disclosing to Lady Adela's shocked vision a
black and bloated tongue; the eyeballs rolled up and entirely
disappeared, whilst their places were immediately filled with the
foulest and most loathsome indications of advanced decay. A strong,
vibratory movement suddenly made all the bones in the head rattle and
the tongue wag, whilst from the jaws, as if belched up from some
deep-down well, came a gust of wind, putrescent with the ravages of
the tomb, and yet, at the same time, tainted with the same sweet,
sickly odour with which Lady Adela had latterly become so familiar.
This was the culminating act; the head then receded, and, growing
fainter and fainter, gradually disappeared altogether. Lady Adela was
now more than satisfied,--there was not a house more horribly haunted
in Scotland,--and nothing on earth would induce her to remain in it
another night.
However, being anxious, naturally, to discover something that might,
in some degree, account for the apparitions, Lady Adela made endless
inquiries concerning the history of former occupants of the house;
but, failing to find out anything remarkable in this direction, she
was eventually obliged to content herself with the following
tradition: It was said that on the site of No. -- Forrest Road there
had once stood a cottage occupied by two sisters (both nurses), and
that one was suspected of poisoning the other; and that the cottage,
moreover, having through their parsimonious habits got into a very bad
state of repair, was blown down during a violent storm, the surviving
sister perishing in the ruins. Granted that this story is correct, it
was in all probability the ghost of this latter sister that appeared
to Lady Adela. Her ladyship is, of course, anxious to let No.
-- Forrest Road, and as only about one in a thousand people seem to
possess the faculty of seeing psychic phenomena, she hopes she may one
day succeed in getting a permanent tenant. In the meanwhile, she is
doing her level best to suppress the rumour that the house is
haunted.
CASE VI
THE PHANTOM REGIMENT OF KILLIECRANKIE
Many are the stories that have from time to time been circulated with
regard to the haunting of the Pass of Killiecrankie by phantom
soldiers, but I do not think there is any stranger story than that
related to me, some years ago, by a lady who declared she had actually
witnessed the phenomena. Her account of it I shall reproduce as far as
possible in her own words:--
* * * * *
Let me commence by stating that I am not a spiritualist, and that I
have the greatest possible aversion to convoking the earthbound souls
of the dead. Neither do I lay any claim to mediumistic powers (indeed
I have always regarded the term "medium" with the gravest suspicion).
I am, on the contrary, a plain, practical, matter-of-fact woman, and
with the exception of this one occasion, never witnessed any psychic
phenomena.
The incident I am about to relate took place the autumn before last. I
was on a cycle tour in Scotland, and, making Pitlochry my temporary
headquarters, rode over one evening to view the historic Pass of
Killiecrankie. It was late when I arrived there, and the western sky
was one great splash of crimson and gold--such vivid colouring I had
never seen before and never have seen since. Indeed, I was so
entranced at the sublimity of the spectacle, that I perched myself on
a rock at the foot of one of the great cliffs that form the walls of
the Pass, and, throwing my head back, imagined myself in fairyland.
Lost, thus, in a delicious luxury, I paid no heed to the time, nor did
I think of stirring, until the dark shadows of the night fell across
my face. I then started up in a panic, and was about to pedal off in
hot haste, when a strange notion suddenly seized me: I had a latchkey,
plenty of sandwiches, a warm cape, why should I not camp out there
till early morning--I had long yearned to spend a night in the open,
now was my opportunity. The idea was no sooner conceived than put
into operation. Selecting the most comfortable-looking boulder I could
see, I scrambled on to the top of it, and, with my cloak drawn tightly
over my back and shoulders, commenced my vigil. The cold mountain air,
sweet with the perfume of gorse and heather, intoxicated me, and I
gradually sank into a heavenly torpor, from which I was abruptly
aroused by a dull boom, that I at once associated with distant
musketry. All was then still, still as the grave, and, on glancing at
the watch I wore strapped on my wrist, I saw it was two o'clock. A
species of nervous dread now laid hold of me, and a thousand and one
vague fancies, all the more distressing because of their vagueness,
oppressed and disconcerted me. Moreover, I was impressed for the first
time with the extraordinary solitude--solitude that seemed to belong
to a period far other than the present, and, as I glanced around at
the solitary pines and gleaming boulders, I more than half expected to
see the wild, ferocious face of some robber chief--some fierce yet
fascinating hero of Sir Walter Scott's--peering at me from behind
them. This feeling at length became so acute, that, in a panic of
fear--ridiculous, puerile fear, I forcibly withdrew my gaze and
concentrated it abstractedly on the ground at my feet. I then
listened, and in the rustling of a leaf, the humming of some night
insect, the whizzing of a bat, the whispering of the wind as it moaned
softly past me, I fancied--nay, I felt sure I detected something that
was not ordinary. I blew my nose, and had barely ceased marvelling at
the loudness of its reverberations, before the piercing, ghoulish
shriek of an owl sent the blood in torrents to my heart. I then
laughed, and my blood froze as I heard a chorus, of what I tried to
persuade myself could only be echoes, proceed from every crag and rock
in the valley. For some seconds after this I sat still, hardly daring
to breathe, and pretending to be extremely angry with myself for being
such a fool. With a stupendous effort I turned my attention to the
most material of things. One of the skirt buttons on my hip--they were
much in vogue then--being loose, I endeavoured to occupy myself in
tightening it, and when I could no longer derive any employment from
that, I set to work on my shoes, and tied knots in the laces, merely
to enjoy the task of untying them. But this, too, ceasing at last to
attract me, I was desperately racking my mind for some other device,
when there came again the queer, booming noise I had heard before, but
which I could now no longer doubt was the report of firearms. I looked
in the direction of the sound--and--my heart almost stopped. Racing
towards me--as if not merely for his life, but his soul--came the
figure of a Highlander. The wind rustling through his long dishevelled
hair, blew it completely over his forehead, narrowly missing his eyes,
which were fixed ahead of him in a ghastly, agonised stare. He had not
a vestige of colour, and, in the powerful glow of the moonbeams, his
skin shone livid. He ran with huge bounds, and, what added to my
terror and made me double aware he was nothing mortal, was that each
time his feet struck the hard, smooth road, upon which I could well
see there was no sign of a stone, there came the sound, the
unmistakable sound of the scattering of gravel. On, on he came, with
cyclonic swiftness; his bare sweating elbows pressed into his panting
sides; his great, dirty, coarse, hairy fists screwed up in bony
bunches in front of him; the foam-flakes thick on his clenched,
grinning lips; the blood-drops oozing down his sweating thighs. It was
all real, infernally, hideously real, even to the most minute details:
the flying up and down of his kilt, sporan, and swordless scabbard;
the bursting of the seam of his coat, near the shoulder; and the
absence of one of his clumsy shoe-buckles. I tried hard to shut my
eyes, but was compelled to keep them open, and follow his every
movement as, darting past me, he left the roadway, and, leaping
several of the smaller obstacles that barred his way, finally
disappeared behind some of the bigger boulders. I then heard the loud
rat-tat of drums, accompanied by the shrill voices of fifes and
flutes, and at the farther end of the Pass, their arms glittering
brightly in the silvery moonbeams, appeared a regiment of scarlet-clad
soldiers. At the head rode a mounted officer, after him came the
band, and then, four abreast, a long line of warriors; in their centre
two ensigns, and on their flanks, officers and non-commissioned
officers with swords and pikes; more mounted men bringing up the rear.
On they came, the fifes and flutes ringing out with a weird clearness
in the hushed mountain air. I could hear the ground vibrate, the
gravel crunch and scatter, as they steadily and mechanically
advanced--tall men, enormously tall men, with set, white faces and
livid eyes. Every instant I expected they would see me, and I became
sick with terror at the thought of meeting all those pale, flashing
eyes. But from this I was happily saved; no one appeared to notice me,
and they all passed me by without as much as a twist or turn of the
head, their feet keeping time to one everlasting and monotonous tramp,
tramp, tramp. I got up and watched until the last of them had turned
the bend of the Pass, and the sheen of his weapons and trappings could
no longer be seen; then I remounted my boulder and wondered if
anything further would happen. It was now half-past two, and blended
with the moonbeams was a peculiar whiteness, which rendered the whole
aspect of my surroundings indescribably dreary and ghostly. Feeling
cold and hungry, I set to work on my beef sandwiches, and was
religiously separating the fat from the lean, for I am one of those
foolish people who detest fat, when a loud rustling made me look up.
Confronting me, on the opposite side of the road, was a tree, an ash,
and to my surprise, despite the fact that the breeze had fallen and
there was scarcely a breath of wind, the tree swayed violently to and
fro, whilst there proceeded from it the most dreadful moanings and
groanings. I was so terrified that I caught hold of my bicycle and
tried to mount, but I was obliged to desist as I had not a particle of
strength in my limbs. Then to assure myself the moving of the tree was
not an illusion, I rubbed my eyes, pinched myself, called aloud; but
it made no difference--the rustling, bending, and tossing still
continued. Summing up courage, I stepped into the road to get a closer
view, when to my horror my feet kicked against something, and, on
looking down, I perceived the body of an English soldier, with a
ghastly wound in his chest. I gazed around, and there, on all sides of
me, from one end of the valley to the other, lay dozens of
bodies,--bodies of men and horses,--Highlanders and English,
white-cheeked, lurid eyes, and bloody-browed,--a hotch-potch of livid,
gory awfulness. Here was the writhing, wriggling figure of an officer
with half his face shot away; and there, a horse with no head; and
there--but I cannot dwell on such horrors, the very memory of which
makes me feel sick and faint. The air, that beautiful, fresh mountain
air, resounded with their moanings and groanings, and reeked with the
smell of their blood. As I stood rooted to the ground with horror, not
knowing which way to look or turn, I suddenly saw drop from the ash,
the form of a woman, a Highland girl, with bold, handsome features,
raven black hair, and the whitest of arms and feet. In one hand she
carried a wicker basket, in the other a knife, a broad-bladed,
sharp-edged, horn-handled knife. A gleam of avarice and cruelty came
into her large dark eyes, as, wandering around her, they rested on the
rich facings of the English officers' uniforms. I knew what was in
her mind, and--forgetting she was but a ghost--that they were all
ghosts--I moved heaven and earth to stop her. I could not. Making
straight for a wounded officer that lay moaning piteously on the
ground, some ten feet away from me, she spurned with her slender,
graceful feet, the bodies of the dead and dying English that came in
her way. Then, snatching the officer's sword and pistol from him, she
knelt down, and, with a look of devilish glee in her glorious eyes,
calmly plunged her knife into his heart, working the blade backwards
and forwards to assure herself she had made a thorough job of it.
Anything more hellish I could not have imagined, and yet it fascinated
me--the girl was so fair, so wickedly fair and shapely. Her act of
cruelty over, she spoiled her victim of his rings, epaulets, buttons
and gold lacing, and, having placed them in her basket, proceeded
elsewhere. In some cases, unable to remove the rings easily, she
chopped off the fingers, and popped them, just as they were, into her
basket. Neither was her mode of dispatch always the same, for while
she put some men out of their misery in the manner I have described,
she cut the throats of others with as great a nonchalance as if she
had been killing fowls, whilst others again she settled with the
butt-ends of their guns or pistols. In all she murdered a full
half-score, and was decamping with her booty when her gloating eyes
suddenly encountered mine, and with a shrill scream of rage she rushed
towards me. I was an easy victim, for strain and pray how I would, I
could not move an inch. Raising her flashing blade high over her head,
an expression of fiendish glee in her staring eyes, she made ready to
strike me. This was the climax, my overstrained nerves could stand no
more, and ere the blow had time to descend, I pitched heavily forward
and fell at her feet. When I recovered, every phantom had vanished,
and the Pass glowed with all the cheerful freshness of the early
morning sun. Not a whit the worse for my venture, I cycled swiftly
home, and ate as only one can eat who has spent the night amid the
banks and braes of bonnie Scotland.
CASE VII
"PEARLIN' JEAN" OF ALLANBANK
Few ghosts have obtained more notoriety than "Pearlin' Jean," the
phantasm which for many years haunted Allanbank, a seat of the
Stuarts.
The popular theory as to the identity of the apparition is as
follows:--
Mr. Stuart, afterwards created first baronet of Allanbank, when on a
tour in France, met a young and beautiful French Sister of Charity of
the name of Jean, whom he induced to leave her convent. Tiring of her
at length, Mr. Stuart brutally left her, and, returning abruptly to
Scotland, became engaged to be married to a lady of his own
nationality and position in life. But Jean was determined he should
not escape her so easily. For him she had sacrificed everything: her
old vocation in life was gone, she had no home, no honour,--nothing,
so she resolved to leave no stone unturned to discover his
whereabouts. At last her perseverance was rewarded, and, Fortune
favouring her, she arrived without mishap at Allanbank.
The truth was then revealed to her: her cruel and faithless lover was
about to be wedded to another. But despair gave her energy, and,
burning with indignation, she hastened to his house to upbraid him.
She reached the spot just as he was driving out with his fiancée. With
a cry of anguish, Jean rushed forward and, swinging herself nimbly on
to the fore-wheel of the coach, turned her white and passionate face
towards its occupants. For a moment, Mr. Stuart was too dumbfounded to
do anything; he could scarcely believe his senses. Who on earth was
this frantic female? Good Heavens! Jean! Impossible! How on earth had
she got there? And the tumultuous beating of his guilty heart turned
him sick and faint.
Then he glanced fearfully and covertly at his fiancée. _She_ must not
know the truth at any cost. Possibly he lost his head! At all events,
that is the kindest construction to put on his subsequent action,
for, dastardly as his behaviour had been to Jean in the past, one can
hardly imagine him capable of deliberately murdering her, and in so
horrible a fashion. There was not a second to lose; an instant more,
and the secret, that he had so assiduously hidden from the lady beside
him, would be revealed. Jean's mouth was already open to speak. He
waved her aside. She adhered to her post. He shouted to the postilion,
and the huge, lumbering vehicle was set in motion. At the first turn
of the wheels, Jean slipped from her perch, her dress caught in the
spokes, and she was crushed to death.
Her fate does not appear to have made any deep impression either on
Mr. Stuart or his lady-love, for they continued their drive.
The hauntings began that autumn. Mr. Stuart, as was only fit and
proper, being the first to witness the phenomenon. Returning home from
a drive one evening, he perceived to his surprise the dark outlines of
a human figure perched on the arched gateway of his house, exactly
opposite the spot where Jean had perished. Wondering who it could be,
he leaned forward to inspect it closer. The figure moved, an icy
current of air ran through him, and he saw to his horror the livid
countenance of the dead Jean. There she was, staring down at him with
lurid, glassy eyes; her cheeks startlingly white, her hair fluttering
in the wind, her neck and forehead bathed in blood.
Paralysed with terror, Mr. Stuart could not remove his gaze, and it
was not until one of the menials opened the carriage door to assist
him down, that the spell was broken and he was able to speak and move.
He then flew into the house, and spent the rest of the night in the
most abject fear.
After this he had no peace--Allanbank was constantly haunted. The
great oak doors opened and shut of their own accord at night with loud
clanging and bangs, and the rustling of silks and pattering of
high-heeled shoes were heard in the oak-panelled bedrooms and along
the many dark and winding passages.
From her attire, which was a piece of lace made of thread, the
apparition became known as "Pearlin' Jean," and a portrait of her was
actually painted. It is recorded that when this picture was hung
between one of Mr. Stuart and his lady-love, the hauntings ceased, but
that as soon as it was removed they were renewed. Presumably, it was
not allowed to remain in the aforesaid position long, for the
manifestations appear to have gone on for many years without
intermission.
Most phantasms of the dead inspire those who see them with
horror,--and that is my own experience,--but "Pearlin' Jean" seems to
have been an exception to this rule. A housekeeper called Betty
Norrie, who lived for many years at Allanbank, declared that other
people besides herself had so frequently seen Jean that they had grown
quite accustomed to her, and were, consequently, no more alarmed at
her appearance than they were by her noises.
Another servant at the house, of the name of Jenny Blackadder, used
constantly to hear Jean, but could never see her--though her husband
did.
The latter, when courting Jenny, received a rare scare, which suggests
to me that Jean, in spite of her tragic ending, may not have been
without a spice of humour. Thomas, for that was the swain's name,
made an assignation one night to meet Jenny in the orchard at
Allanbank.
It was early when he arrived at the trysting-place--for Thomas, like
all true lovers, was ever rather more than punctual--and he fully
contemplated a long wait. Judge, then, of his astonishment, when he
perceived in the moonlight what he took to be the well-known and
adored figure of his lady-love. With a cry of delight, Thomas rushed
forward, and, swinging his arms widely open to embrace her, beheld her
vanish, and found himself hugging space! An icy current of air
thrilled through him, and the whole place--trees, nooks, moonbeams,
and shadows, underwent a hideous metamorphosis. The very air bristled
with unknown horrors till flesh and blood could stand no more, and,
even at the risk of displeasing his beloved Jenny, Thomas fled! Some
few minutes later, at the appointed hour, Jenny arrived on the scene,
and no one was there. She dallied for some time, wondering whatever
could have happened to Thomas, and then returned, full of grave
apprehensions, to the house.
It was not until the next morning that the truth leaked out, and
Jenny, after indulging in a hearty laugh at her lover, who felt very
shamefaced now that it was daylight, sensibly forgave him, and raised
no obstacle when asked to fix a day for their marriage.
In after years, Jenny used to retail the story with many harrowing
allusions to "Pearlin' Jean," whom she somewhat foolishly made use of
as a bogey to frighten children into being good. A Mr. Sharpe, who
when he was a little boy was once placed in her charge, confesses that
he was dreadfully scared at her stories, and that he never ventured
down a passage in those days without thinking "Pearlin' Jean," with
her ghostly, blood-stained face, clawlike hands, and rustling lace
dress, was after him.
Nurse Jenny used to tell him that the Stuarts tried in vain to lay
Jean's spirit, actually going to the length of calling in seven
ministers to exorcise it. But all to no purpose; it still continued
its nocturnal peregrinations.
In the year 1790 the Stuarts let the house to strangers, who, when
they took it, had not the least idea that it was haunted. However,
they did not long remain in ignorance, for two ladies, who occupied
the same bedroom, were awakened in the night by hearing some one
walking across the floor. The "presence" did not suggest burglars, for
the intruder behaved in the most noisy manner, pacing restlessly and
apparently aimlessly backwards and forwards across the room, swishing
the floor (with what sounded like a long lace train) and breathing
heavily. They were both terrified, and so cold that they could hear
one another's teeth chatter. They were too frightened to call for
help; they could only lie still, hoping and praying it would not come
nearer to them. The sufferings of these two ladies were indescribable,
for the ghost remained in their room all night, moving restlessly
about until daybreak. It was not until some days later, when other
people in the house had experienced the phenomenon, that they were
told the story of the notorious "Pearlin' Jean."
But was the so-called "Pearlin' Jean" really the apparition of the
murdered French woman? To my mind, her identity with that of the
beautiful Sister of Charity has not been satisfactorily established,
and I think there are reasons to doubt it.
If, for instance, the apparition were that of a Sister of Charity, why
should it appear incongruously attired in a long trailing gown of
lace? And if it were that of a woman of the presumably staid habits of
a Sister of Charity, why should it delight in mischief and play the
pranks of a _poltergeist_? And yet if it wasn't the ghost of Jean,
whose ghost was it?
CASE VIII
THE DRUMMER OF CORTACHY
What ancient Scottish or Irish family has not its Family Ghost? A
banshee--the heritage of Niall of the Nine Hostages--is still the
unenviable possession of his descendants, the O'Donnells, and I, who
am a member of the clan, have both seen and heard it several times. As
it appears to me, it resembles the decapitated head of a prehistoric
woman, and I shall never forget my feelings one night, when, aroused
from slumber by its ghastly wailing, I stumbled frantically out of
bed, and, groping my way upstairs in the dark, without venturing to
look to the left or right lest I should see something horrible, found
every inmate of the house huddled together on the landing, paralysed
with fear. I did not see it on that occasion, but on the following
morning, as I had anticipated, I received the news that a near and
dear relative had died.
Possessing such an heirloom myself, I can therefore readily sympathise
with those who own a similar treasure--such, for example, as the
famous, or rather infamous, Drummer of Cortachy Castle, who is
invariably heard beating a tattoo before the death of a member of the
clan of Ogilvie.
Mrs. Crowe, in her _Night Side of Nature_, referring to the haunting,
says:--
"Miss D., a relative of the present Lady C., who had been staying some
time with the Earl and Countess at their seat, near Dundee, was
invited to spend a few days at Cortachy Castle, with the Earl and
Countess of Airlie. She went, and whilst she was dressing for dinner
the first evening of her arrival, she heard a strain of music under
her window, which finally resolved itself into a well-defined sound of
a drum. When her maid came upstairs, she made some inquiries about the
drummer that was playing near the house; but the maid knew nothing on
the subject. For the moment the circumstance passed from Miss D.'s
mind, but, recurring to her again during the dinner, she said,
addressing Lord Airlie, 'My lord, who is your drummer?' Upon which his
lordship turned pale, Lady Airlie looked distressed, and several of
the company, who all heard the question, embarrassed; whilst the lady,
perceiving that she had made some unpleasant allusion, although she
knew not to what their feelings referred, forebore further inquiry
till she reached the drawing-room; when, having mentioned the
circumstance again to a member of the family, she was answered, 'What,
have you never heard of the drummer boy?' 'No,' replied Miss D.; 'who
in the world is he?' 'Why,' replied the other, 'he is a person who
goes about the house playing his drum, whenever there is a death
impending in the family. The last time he was heard was shortly before
the death of the last Countess (the Earl's former wife); and that is
why Lord Airlie became so pale when you mentioned it. The drummer boy
is a very unpleasant subject in this family, I assure you.'
"Miss D. was naturally much concerned, and indeed not a little
frightened at this explanation, and her alarm being augmented by
hearing the sounds on the following day, she took her departure from
Cortachy Castle, and returned to Lord C.'s, where she related this
strange circumstance to the family, through whom the information
reached me.
"This affair was very generally known in the north, and we awaited the
event with interest. The melancholy death of the Countess about five
or six months afterwards, at Brighton, sadly verified the
prognostications. I have heard that a paper was found in her desk
after her death, declaring her conviction that the drum was for her."
Mrs. Crowe goes on to explain the origin of the phenomenon. According
to legend, she says, there was once at Cortachy a drummer, who,
incurring the jealousy of the then Lord Airlie, was thrust into his
own drum and flung from a window of the tower (in which, by the way,
Miss D. slept). Before being put to death thus, the drummer is stated
to have said he would for ever after haunt the Airlie family--a threat
he has obviously been permitted to fulfil.
During one of my visits to Scotland, I stayed some days in Forfarshire
not far from Cortachy. Among the visitors at my hotel was a very old
gentleman of the name of Porter, who informed me that, when a boy, he
used to visit some relatives who, at that time, lived within easy
walking distance of Cortachy. One of these relatives was a lad of
about fourteen, named Alec, with whom he had always been the closest
of friends. The recollection of their many adventures evidently
afforded Mr. Porter infinite amusement, and one of these adventures,
in particular, he told me, was as fresh in his mind as if it had
happened yesterday.
"Looking back upon it now," he said, with a far-away look in his eyes,
"it certainly was a strange coincidence, and if you are interested in
the hauntings of Cortachy, Mr. O'Donnell, you may, perhaps, like to
hear the account of my ghostly experiences in that neighbourhood."
Of course I replied that nothing would give me greater pleasure, and
Mr. Porter forthwith began his story.
"One misty night in October, my friend Alec and I, both being keen on
rabbiting, determined to visit a spinney adjoining the Cortachy
estate, in pursuit of our quarry. Alec had chosen this particular
night, thinking, under cover of the mist, to escape the vigilance of
the keepers, who had more than once threatened to take him before the
laird for trespassing.
"To gain access to the spinney we had to climb a granite wall and drop
on the other side--the drop, in addition to being steep, being
rendered all the more precarious by reason of the man-traps the
keepers were in the habit of setting. When I got astride the wall and
peered into the well-like darkness at our feet, and heard the grim
rustling of the wind through the giant pines ahead of me, I would have
given all I possessed to have found myself snug and warm in bed; but
Alec was of a different 'kidney'--he had come prepared for excitement,
and he meant to have it. For some seconds, we both waited on the wall
in breathless silence, and then Alec, with a reckless disregard of
what might be in store for him, gently let himself drop, and I,
fearing more, if anything, than the present danger, to be for ever
after branded as a coward if I held back, timidly followed suit. By a
great stroke of luck we alighted in safety on a soft carpeting of
moss. Not a word was spoken, but, falling on hands and knees, and
guiding ourselves by means of a dark lantern Alec had bought
second-hand from the village blacksmith, we crept on all-fours along a
tiny bramble-covered path, that after innumerable windings eventually
brought us into a broad glade shut in on all sides by lofty trees.
Alec prospected the spot first of all to see no keepers were about,
and we then crawled into it, and, approaching the nearest burrows, set
to work at once with our ferrets. Three rabbits were captured in this
fashion, and we were eagerly anticipating the taking of more, when a
sensation of icy coldness suddenly stole over us, and, on looking
round, we perceived, to our utmost consternation, a very tall keeper
standing only a few yards away from us. For once in a way, Alec was
nonplussed, and a deathly silence ensued. It was too dark for us to
see the figure of the keeper very distinctly, and we could only
distinguish a gleaming white face set on a very slight and
perpendicular frame, and a round, glittering something that puzzled us
both exceedingly. Then, a feeling that, perhaps, it was not a keeper
gradually stole over me, and in a paroxysm of ungovernable terror I
caught hold of Alec, who was trembling from head to foot as if he had
the ague. The figure remained absolutely still for about a minute,
during which time neither Alec nor I could move a muscle, and then,
turning round with an abrupt movement, came towards us.
"Half-dead with fright, but only too thankful to find that we had now
regained the use of our limbs, we left our spoil and ran for our lives
in the direction of the wall.
"We dared not look back, but we knew the figure followed us, for we
heard its footsteps close at our heels; and never to my dying day
shall I forget the sound--rat-tat, tat, rat-tat, tat--for all the
world like the beat of a muffled drum.
"How we ever managed to reach the wall I could never tell, but as we
scrambled over it, regardless of man-traps and bruises, and plunged
into the heather on the other side, we heard the weird footsteps
receding in the direction of the castle, and, ere we had reached home,
the rat-tat, tat, rat-tat, tat, had completely died away.
"We told no one a word of what had happened, and a few days after,
simultaneously with the death of one of the Airlies, we learned, for
the first time, the story of the Phantom Drummer.
"I have little doubt," Mr. Porter added, in conclusion, "that the
figure we took to be a keeper was the prophetic Drummer, for I can
assure you there was no possibility of hoaxers, especially in such
ill-omened guise, anywhere near the Cortachy estate."
Poor old Mr. Porter! He did not long survive our _rencontre_. When I
next visited the hotel, some months later, I was genuinely grieved to
hear of his decease. His story had greatly fascinated me, for I love
the solitude of the pines, and have myself from time to time witnessed
many remarkable occult phenomena under the shadow of their lofty
summits. One night, during this second visit of mine to the hotel, the
mood to ramble came upon me, and, unable to resist the seductive
thought of a midnight stroll across the bracken-covered hills, I
borrowed a latchkey, and, armed with a flask of whisky and a thick
stick, plunged into the moonlit night. The keen, heather-scented air
acted like a tonic--I felt younger and stronger than I had felt for
years, and I congratulated myself that my friends would hardly know me
if they saw me now, as I swung along with the resuscitated stride of
twenty years ago. The landscape for miles around stood out with
startling clearness in the moonshine, and I stopped every now and then
to drink in the beauties of the glittering mountain-ranges and silent,
glimmering tarns. Not a soul was about, and I found myself, as I loved
to be, the only human element in the midst of nature. Every now and
then a dark patch fluttered across the shining road, and with a weird
and plaintive cry, a night bird dashed abruptly from hedge to hedge,
and seemingly melted into nothingness. I quitted the main road on the
brow of a low hill, and embarked upon a wild expanse of moor, lavishly
covered with bracken and white heather, intermingled with which were
the silvery surfaces of many a pool of water. For some seconds I stood
still, lost in contemplating the scenery,--its utter abandonment and
grand sense of isolation; and inhaling at the same time long and deep
draughts of the delicious moorland air, unmistakably impregnated now
with breaths of ozone. My eyes wandering to the horizon, I detected,
on the very margin of the moorland, a dense clump of trees, which I
instantly associated with the spinney in my old friend Mr. Porter's
story, and, determining that the renowned spinney should be my goal, I
at once aimed for it, vigorously striking out along the path which I
thought would be most likely to lead to it. Half an hour's brisk
walking brought me to my destination, and I found myself standing
opposite a granite wall which my imagination had no difficulty in
identifying with the wall so well described by Mr. Porter. Removing
the briars and gorse prickles which left little of my stockings whole,
I went up to the wall, and, measuring it with my body, found it was a
good foot taller than I. This would mean rather more climbing than I
had bargained for. But the pines--the grim silence of their slender
frames and gently swaying summits--fascinated me. They spoke of
possibilities few could see or appreciate as I could; possibilities of
a sylvan phantasmagoria enhanced by the soft and mystic radiance of
the moon. An owl hooted, and the rustling of brushwood told me of the
near proximity of some fur-coated burrower in the ground. High above
this animal life, remoter even than the tops of my beloved trees or
the mountain-ranges, etched on the dark firmament, shone multitudinous
stars, even the rings round Saturn being plainly discernible. From the
Milky Way my eyes at length wandered to the pines, and a puff of air
laden with the odour of their resin and decaying brushwood decided me.
I took a few preliminary sips of whisky, stretched my rusty limbs,
and, placing one foot in a jagged crevice of the wall, swarmed
painfully up. How slow and how hazardous was the process! I scratched
my fingers, inured to the pen but a stranger to any rougher substance;
I ruined my box-calf boots, I split my trousers at the knees, and I
felt that my hat had parted with its shape for ever; and yet I
continued the ascent. The end came all too suddenly. When within an
ace of victory, I yielded to impulse, and with an energy the desperate
condition of my skin and clothes alone could account for, I swung up,
and--the outer edge of the wall melted beneath me, my hands
frantically clutched at nothingness, a hideous sensation of falling
surged through my brain, my ears and eyes filled to bursting, and with
a terrific crash that seemed to drive my head and spine right through
my stomach, I met the black, uprising earth, and lost consciousness.
Providentially for me, I had pitched head first into a furze bush
which broke the fall, otherwise I must have met with serious injury.
As it was, when I recovered my momentary loss of consciousness, I
found that I had sustained no worse harm than a severe shaking,
scratches galore, and the utter demolition of my clothes! I picked
myself up with difficulty, and spent some time searching for my hat
and stick--which I at length discovered, lodged, of course, where one
would least have thought of looking for them. I then took close stock
of my surroundings, and found them even grimmer than I had
anticipated. Though the trees were packed closely together, and there
was much undergrowth, the moonbeams were so powerful and so fully
concentrated on the spinney, that I could see no inconsiderable
distance ahead of me. Over everything hung a solemn and preternatural
hush. I saw shadows everywhere--shadows that defied analysis and had
no material counterparts. A sudden crashing of brushwood brought me to
a standstill, and sent the blood in columns to my heart. Then I
laughed loudly--it was only a hare, the prettiest and pertest thing
imaginable. I went on. Something whizzed past my face. I drew back in
horror--it was a bat, merely a bat. My nerves were out of order, the
fall had unsteadied them; I must pull myself together. I did so, and
continued to advance. A shadow, long, narrow, and grotesque, fell
across my path, and sent a thousand and one icy shivers down my back.
In an agony of terror I shut my eyes and plunged madly on. Something
struck me in the face and hurled me back. My eyes opened
involuntarily, and I saw a tree that, either out of pique or sheer
obstinacy, had planted itself half-way across the path. I examined its
branches to make sure they _were_ branches, and continued my march. A
score more paces, a sudden bend, and I was in an open space,
brilliantly illuminated by moonbeams and peopled with countless,
moving shadows. One would have to go far to find a wilder, weirder,
and more grimly suggestive spot. As I stood gazing at the scene in
awestruck wonder, a slight breeze rocked the tops of the pine trees,
and moaning through their long and gloomy aisles reverberated like
thunder. The sounds, suggesting slightly, ever so slightly, a tattoo,
brought with them vivid pictures of the Drummer, too vivid just then
to be pleasant, and I turned to go. To my unmitigated horror, a white
and lurid object barred my way. My heart ceased to beat, my blood
turned to ice; I was sick, absolutely sick, with terror. Besides this,
the figure held me spellbound--I could neither move nor utter a sound.
It had a white, absolutely white face, a tall, thin, perpendicular
frame, and a small, glittering, rotund head. For some seconds it
remained stationary, and then, with a gliding motion, left the path
and vanished in the shadows.
Again a breeze rustled through the tops of the pine trees, moaned
through their long and gloomy aisles, and reverberated like thunder;
rat-tat, tat, rat-tat, tat--and with this sound beating in my ears,
reaction set in, and I never ceased running till I had reached my
hotel.
CASE IX
THE ROOM BEYOND. AN ACCOUNT OF THE HAUNTINGS
AT HENNERSLEY, NEAR AYR
To me Hennersley is what the Transformation Scene at a Pantomime was
to the imaginative child--the dreamy child of long ago--a floral
paradise full of the most delightful surprises. Here, at Hennersley,
from out the quite recently ice-bound earth, softened and moistened
now by spring rain, there rises up row upon row of snowdrops,
hyacinths and lilies, of such surpassing sweetness and beauty that I
hold my breath in astonishment, and ecstatically chant a Te Deum to
the fairies for sending such white-clad loveliness.
And then--then, ere my wonder has had time to fade, it is summer. The
ground opens, and there springs up, on all sides, a veritable sea of
vivid, variegated colour,--scarlet, pink, and white geraniums; red,
white and yellow roses; golden honeysuckle; bright-hued marigolds;
purple pansies; pale forget-me-nots; wallflowers; sweet peas;
many-tinted azaleas; showy hydrangeas; giant rhododendrons; foxgloves,
buttercups, daisies, hollyhocks, and heliotropes; a floral host too
varied to enumerate.
Overcome with admiration, bewildered with happiness, I kneel on the
soft carpet of grass, and, burying my face extravagantly, in alternate
laps of luxurious, downy, scent-laden petals, fill my lungs with
soul-inspiring nectar.
My intoxication has barely worn off before my eyes are dimly conscious
that the soil all around me is generously besprinkled with the remains
of my floral friends. I spring hurriedly to my feet, and, gazing
anxiously about me, suddenly perceive the gaily nodding heads of new
arrivals--dahlias, sunflowers, anemones, chrysanthemums. As I continue
gazing, the aromatic odour of mellow apples from the Hennersley
orchards reaches my nostrils; I turn round, and there, there in front
of me, I see row upon row of richly-laden fruit trees, their leaves a
brilliant copper in the scintillating rays of the ruddy autumn sun. I
gasp for breath--the beauty of tint and tone surpasses all that I have
hitherto seen--it is sublime, the grand climax of transformation. As
the curtain falls with the approach of winter, I hurry to my Edinburgh
home and pray for the prompt return of early spring.
For many years my aged relatives, the Misses Amelia and Deborah
Harbordeens, lived at Hennersley. Rarest and kindest of old ladies,
they were the human prototypes of the flowers both they and I loved.
Miss Amelia, with her beautiful complexion, rounded form and regal
mien, suggested to my childish mind more, much more, than the mere
semblance of a rose, whilst Miss Deborah, with her sprightly grace and
golden hair, was only masquerading as a woman--she was in reality a
daffodil.
Unlike so many of the fair sex who go in for gardening, my aunts were
essentially dainty. Their figures were shapely and elegant, their
hands slim and soft. I never saw them working without gloves, and I
have good reason to believe they anointed their fingers every night
with a special preparation to keep them smooth and white. They were
not--decidedly not--"brainy," neither were they accomplished, never
having made any special study of the higher arts; but they evinced
nevertheless the keenest appreciation of painting, music, and
literature. Their library--a large one--boasted a delightful
harbourage of such writers as Jane Austen, Miss Mitford, and Maria
Edgeworth. And in their drawing-room, on the walls of which art was
represented by the old as well as modern masters, might be seen and
sometimes heard--for the Misses Harbordeens often entertained--a
well-tuned Broadwood, and a Bucksen harpsichord. I will describe this
old-world abode, not as I first saw it, for when I first visited my
aunts Amelia and Deborah, I was only one year old, but as I first
remember it--a house with the glamour of a many-gabled roof and
diamond window-panes.
The house stood by the side of the turnpike road--that broad, white,
interminable road, originating from goodness knows where in the north,
and passing through Ayr--the nearest town of any importance--to
goodness knows where in the south. A shady avenue, entered by a wooden
swing gate bearing the superscription "Hennersley" in neat, white
letters, led by a circuitous route to it, and not a vestige of it
could be seen from the road. In front of it stretched a spacious lawn,
flanked on either side and at the farthest extremity by a thick growth
of chestnuts, beeches, poplars, and evergreens.
The house itself was curiously built. It consisted of two storeys, and
formed a main building and one wing, which gave it a peculiarly
lop-sided appearance that reminded me somewhat ludicrously of
Chanticleer, with a solitary, scant, and clipped appendage.
It was often on the tip of my tongue to ask my relatives the reason of
this singular disparity; whether it was the result of a mere whim on
the part of the architect, or whether it had been caused by some
catastrophe; but my curiosity was always held in check by a strange
feeling that my relatives would not like to be approached on the
subject. My aunts Amelia and Deborah belonged to that class of
people, unhappily rare, who possess a power of generating in others an
instinctive knowledge of "dangerous ground"--a power which enabled
them to avert, both from themselves and the might-be offender, many a
painful situation. To proceed--the nakedness of the walls of
Hennersley was veiled--who shall say it was not designedly veiled--by
a thick covering of clematis and ivy, and in the latter innumerable
specimens of the feathered tribe found a sure and safe retreat.
On entering the house, one stepped at once into a large hall. A
gallery ran round it, and from the centre rose a broad oak staircase.
The rooms, with one or two exceptions, opened into one another, and
were large, and low and long in shape; the walls and floors were of
oak and the ceilings were crossed by ponderous oak beams.
The fireplaces, too, were of the oldest fashion; and in their
comfortable ingle-nook my aunts--in the winter--loved to read or knit.
When the warm weather came, they made similar use of the deep-set
window-sills, over which they indulgently permitted me to scramble on
to the lawn.
The sunlight was a special feature of Hennersley. Forcing its way
through the trellised panes, it illuminated the house with a radiancy,
a soft golden radiancy I have never seen elsewhere.
My relatives seemed to possess some phenomenal attraction for the
sunlight, for, no matter where they sat, a beam brighter than the rest
always shone on them; and, when they got up, I noticed that it always
followed them, accompanying them from room to room and along the
corridors.
But this was only one of the many pleasant mysteries that added to the
joy of my visits to Hennersley. I felt sure that the house was
enchanted--that it was under the control of some benevolent being who
took a kindly interest in the welfare of my relatives.
I remember once, on the occasion of my customary good-morning to Miss
Amelia, who invariably breakfasted in bed, I inhaled the most
delicious odour of heliotrope. It was wafted towards me, in a cool
current of air, as I approached her bed, and seemed, to my childish
fancy, to be the friendly greeting of a sparkling sunbeam that rested
on Miss Amelia's pillow.
I was so charmed with the scent, that, alas! forgetful of my manners,
I gave a loud sniff, and with a rapturous smile ejaculated, "Oh!
Auntie! Cherry pie!"
Miss Amelia started. "Dear me, child!" she exclaimed, "how quietly you
entered. I had no idea you were in the room. Heliotrope is the name of
the scent, my dear, but please do not allude to it again. Your Aunt
Deborah and I are very fond of it"--here she sighed--"but for certain
reasons--reasons you would not understand--we do not like to hear the
word heliotrope mentioned. Kiss me, dear, and run away to your
breakfast."
For the first time in my life, perhaps, I was greatly puzzled. I could
not see why I should be forbidden to refer to such a pleasant and
harmless subject--a subject that, looked at from no matter what point
of view, did not appear to me to be in the slightest degree
indelicate. The more I thought over it, the more convinced I became
that there was some association between the scent and the sunbeam,
and in that association I felt sure much of the mystery lay.
The house was haunted--agreeably, delightfully haunted by a golden
light, a perfumed radiant light that could only have in my mind one
origin, one creator--Titania--Titania, queen of the fairies, the
guardian angel of my aged, my extremely aged relatives.
"Aunt Deborah," I said one morning, as I found her seated in the
embrasure of the breakfast room window crocheting, "Aunt Deborah! You
love the sunlight, do you not?"
She turned on me a startled face. "What makes you ask such strange
questions, child?" she said. "Of course I like the--sun. Most people
do. It is no uncommon thing, especially at my age."
"But the sunbeams do not follow every one, auntie, do they?" I
persisted.
Miss Deborah's crochet fell into her lap.
"How queerly you talk," she said, with a curious trembling of her
lips. "How can the sunbeams follow one?"
"But they do, auntie, they do indeed!" I cried. "I have often watched
a bright beam of golden light follow Aunt Amelia and you, in
different parts of the room. And it has settled on your lace collar
now."
Miss Deborah looked at me very seriously; but the moistening of her
eyes I attributed to the strong light. "Esther," she said, laying one
of her soft hands on my forehead, "there are things God does not want
little girls to understand--question me no more."
I obeyed, but henceforth I felt more than ever assured that my aunts,
consciously or unconsciously, shared their charming abode with some
capricious genii, of whose presence in their midst I had become
accidentally aware; and to find out the enchanted neighbourhood of its
mysterious retreat was to me now a matter of all-absorbing importance.
I spent hour after hour roaming through the corridors, the copses, and
my beloved flower gardens, in eager search of some spot I could
unhesitatingly affirm was the home of the genii. Most ardently I then
hoped that the sunbeams would follow me, and that the breeze charged
with cool heliotrope would greet me as it did Aunt Deborah.
In the daytime, all Hennersley was sunshine and flowers, and, stray
where I would, I never felt lonely or afraid; but as the light waned I
saw and felt a subtle change creep over everything. The long aisles of
trees that in the morning only struck me as enchantingly peaceful and
shady, gradually filled with strangely terrifying shadows; the hue of
the broad swards deepened into a darkness I did not dare interpret,
whilst in the house, in its every passage, nook, and corner, a gloom
arose that, seeming to come from the very bowels of the earth, brought
with it every possible suggestion of bogey.
I never spoke of these things to my relatives, partly because I was
ashamed of my cowardice, and partly because I dreaded a fresh rebuke.
How I suffered! and how I ridiculed my sufferings in the mornings,
when every trace of darkness was obliterated, and amid the radiant
bloom of the trees I thought only of heliotrope and sunbeams.
One afternoon my search for the abode of the genii led me to the
wingless side of the house, a side I rarely visited. At the foot of
the ivy-covered walls and straight in their centre was laid a wide
bed of flowers, every one of which was white. But why white? Again
and again I asked myself this question, but I dared not broach it to
my relatives. A garden all white was assuredly an enigma--and to every
enigma there is undoubtedly a key. Was this garden, which was all
white, in any way connected with the sunbeams and heliotrope? Was it
another of the mysteries God concealed from little girls? Could this
be the home of the genii? This latter idea had no sooner entered my
head than it became a conviction. Of course! There was no doubt
whatever--it was the home of the genii.
The white petals were now a source of peculiar interest to me. I was
fascinated: the minutes sped by and still I was there. It was not
until the sun had disappeared in the far-distant horizon, and the grim
shadows of twilight were creeping out upon me from the neighbouring
trees and bushes, that I awoke from my reverie--and fled!
That night--unable to sleep through the excitement caused by my
discovery of the home of the genii--I lay awake, my whole thoughts
concentrated in one soul-absorbing desire, the passionate desire to
see the fairy of Hennersley--I had never heard of ghosts--and hear its
story. My bedroom was half-way down the corridor leading from the head
of the main staircase to the extremity of the wing.
After I said good-night I did not see my aunts again till the
morning--they never by any chance visited me after I was in bed. Hence
I knew, when I had retired for the night, I should not see a human
face nor hear a human voice for nearly twelve hours. This--when I
thought of the genii with its golden beams of light and scent of
heliotrope--did not trouble me; it was only when my thoughts would not
run in this channel that I felt any fear, and that fear was not of the
darkness itself, but of what the darkness suggested.
On this particular night, for the first few hours, I was sublimely
happy, and then a strange restlessness seized me. I was obsessed with
a wish to see the flower-garden. For some minutes, stimulated by a
dread of what my aunts would think of such a violation of
conventionality on the part of a child, I combated furiously with the
desire; but at length the longing was so great, so utterly and wholly
irresistible, that I succumbed, and, getting quietly out of bed, made
my way noiselessly into the corridor.
All was dark and still--stiller than I had ever known it before.
Without any hesitation I plunged forward, in the direction of the
wingless side of the house, where there was a long, narrow, stained
window that commanded an immediate prospect of the white garden.
I had seldom looked out of it, as up to the present this side of the
house had little attraction for me; but all was changed now; and, as I
felt my way cautiously along the corridor, a thousand and one fanciful
notions of what I might see surged through my brain.
I came to the end of the corridor, I descended half a dozen stairs, I
got to the middle of the gallery overlooking the large entrance
hall--below me, above me, on all sides of me, was Stygian darkness. I
stopped, and there suddenly rang out, apparently from close at hand, a
loud, clear, most appallingly clear, blood-curdling cry, which,
beginning in a low key, ended in a shriek so horrid, harsh, and
piercing, that I felt my heart shrivel up within me, and in sheer
desperation I buried my fingers in my ears to deaden the sound.
I was now too frightened to move one way or the other. All the
strength departed from my limbs, and when I endeavoured to move my
feet, I could not--they appeared to be fastened to the ground with
lead weights.
I felt, I intuitively felt that the author of the disturbance was
regarding my terror with grim satisfaction, and that it was merely
postponing further action in order to enjoy my suspense. To block out
the sight of this dreadful creature, I clenched my eyelids tightly
together, at the same time earnestly imploring God to help me.
Suddenly I heard the low wail begin again, and then the echo of a
far-off silvery voice came softly to me through the gloom: "It's an
owl--only an owl!"
With lightning-like rapidity the truth then dawned on me, and as I
withdrew my clammy finger-tips from my ears, the faint fluttering of
wings reached me, through an open skylight. Once again I moved on;
the gallery was left behind, and I was well on my way down the
tortuous passage leading to my goal, when a luminous object, of vast
height and cylindrical shape, suddenly barred my progress.
Overcome by a deadly sickness, I sank on the floor, and, burying my
face in my hands, quite made up my mind that my last moments had come.
How long I remained in this position I cannot say, to me it seemed
eternity. I was eventually freed from it by the echo of a gentle
laugh, so kind, and gay, and girlish, that my terror at once departed,
and, on raising my head, I perceived that the cause of my panic was
nothing more than a broad beam of moonlight on a particularly
prominent angle of the wall.
Heartily ashamed at my cowardice, I got up, and, stepping briskly
forward, soon reached the stained-glass window.
Pressing my face against the pane, I peered through it, and there
immediately beneath me lay the flowers, glorified into dazzling gold
by the yellow colour of the glass. The sight thrilled me with joy--it
was sublime. My instinct had not deceived me, this was indeed the
long-looked-for home of the genii.
The temperature, which had been high, abnormally so for June, now
underwent an abrupt change, and a chill current of air, sweeping down
on me from the rear, made my teeth chatter. I involuntarily shrank
back from the window, and, as I did so, to my utter astonishment it
disappeared, and I saw, in its place, a room.
It was a long, low room, and opposite to me, at the farthest
extremity, was a large bay window, through which I could see the
nodding tops of the trees. The furniture was all green and of a
lighter, daintier make than any I had hitherto seen. The walls were
covered with pictures, the mantelshelf with flowers. Whilst I was
busily employed noting all these details, the door of the room opened,
and the threshold was gorgeously illuminated by a brilliant sunbeam,
from which suddenly evolved the figure of a young and lovely girl.
I can see her now as I saw her then--tall, and slender, with masses
of golden hair, waved artistically aside from a low forehead of
snowy white; finely-pencilled brows, and long eyes of the most
lustrous violet; a straight, delicately-moulded nose, a firm,
beautifully-proportioned chin, and a bewitching mouth. At her bosom
was a bunch of heliotrope, which, deftly undoing, she raised to her
nose and then laughingly held out to me. I was charmed; I took a step
forward towards her. The instant I did so, a wild look of terror
distorted her face, she waved me back, something jarred against my
knee, and, in the place of the room, I saw only the blurred outline
of trees through the yellow window-panes.
Bitterly disappointed, but absolutely sure that what I had seen was
objective, I retraced my steps to my bedroom and passed the remainder
of the night in sound sleep.
After breakfast, however, unable to restrain my curiosity longer, I
sought Miss Amelia, who was easier to approach than her sister, and,
managing after several efforts to screw up courage, blurted out the
story of my nocturnal escapade.
My aunt listened in silence. She was always gentle, but on this
occasion she surpassed herself.
"I am not going to scold you, Esther," she said, smoothing out my
curls. "After what you have seen it is useless to conceal the truth
from you. God perhaps intends you to know all. Years ago, Esther, this
house was not as you see it now. It had two wings, and, in the one
that no longer exists was the bedroom you saw in your vision. We
called it the Green Room because everything in it was green, your Aunt
Alicia--an aunt you have never heard of--who slept there, having a
peculiar fancy for that colour.
"Alicia was our youngest sister, and we all loved her dearly. She was
just as you describe her--beautiful as a fairy, with golden hair, and
violet eyes, and she always wore a bunch of heliotrope in her dress.
"One night, Esther, one lovely, calm, midsummer night, forty years
ago, this house was broken into by burglars. They got in through the
Green Room window, which was always left open during the warm
weather. We--my mother, your Aunt Deborah, and I--were awakened by a
loud shriek for help. Recognising Alicia's voice, we instantly flew
out of bed, and, summoning the servants, tore to the Green Room as
fast as we could.
"To our horror, Esther, the door was locked, and before we could break
the lock the ruffians had murdered her! They escaped through the
window and were never caught. My mother, your great-grandmother, had
that part of the house pulled down, and on the site of it she planted
the white garden.
"Though Alicia's earthly body died, and was taken from us, her
beautiful spirit remains with us here. It follows us about in the
daytime in the form of a sunbeam, whilst occasionally, at night, it
assumes her earthly shape. The house is what is generally termed
haunted, and, no doubt, some people would be afraid to live in it. But
that, Esther, is because they do not understand spirits--your Aunt
Deborah and I do."
"Do you think, auntie," I asked with a thrill of joy, "do you think it
at all likely that I shall see Aunt Alicia again to-night?"
Aunt Amelia shook her head gently. "No, my dear," she said slowly, "I
think it will be impossible, because you are going home this
afternoon."
CASE X
"---- HOUSE," NEAR BLYTHSWOOD SQUARE, GLASGOW.
THE HAUNTED BATH
When Captain W. de S. Smythe went to look over "---- House," in the
neighbourhood of Blythswood Square, Glasgow, the only thing about the
house he did not like was the bathroom--it struck him as excessively
grim. The secret of the grimness did not lie, he thought, in any one
particular feature--in the tall, gaunt geyser, for example (though
there was always something in the look of a geyser when it was old and
dilapidated, as was the case with this one, that repelled him), or in
the dark drying-cupboard, or in the narrow, slit-like window; but in
the room as a whole, in its atmosphere and general appearance. He
could not diagnose it; he could not associate it with anything else he
had ever experienced; it was a grimness that he could only specify as
grim--grim with a grimness that made him feel he should not like to
be alone there in the dead of night. It was a nuisance, because the
rest of the house pleased him; moreover, the locality was convenient,
and the rent moderate, very moderate for such a neighbourhood. He
thought the matter well over as he leaned in the doorway of the
bathroom. He could, of course, have the room completely renovated--new
paper, new paint, and a fresh bath. Hot-water pipes! The geyser should
be done away with. Geysers were hideous, dangerous, and--pshaw, what
nonsense!--Ghostly! Ghostly! What absurd rot! How his wife would
laugh! That decided the question. His wife! She had expressed a very
ardent wish that he should take a house in or near Blythswood Square,
if he could get one on anything like reasonable terms, and here was
his chance. He would accompany the agent of the property to the
latter's office, and the preliminaries should be forthwith settled.
Six weeks later, he and his family were installed in the house, which
still reeked with the smell of fresh paint and paper. The first thing
the Captain did when he got there was to steal away slyly to the
bathroom, and as soon as he opened the door his heart sank. Despite
the many alterations the room had undergone, the grimness was still
there--there, everywhere. In the fine new six-foot bath, with its
glistening, gleaming, wooden framework; in the newly papered, newly
painted cupboard; in the walls, with their bright, fresh paper; in
the snowy surface of the whitewashed ceiling; in the air,--the very
air itself was full of it. The Captain was, as a rule, very fond of
his bath, but in his new quarters he firmly resolved that some one
else should use the bath before he made the experiment. In a very few
days the family had all settled down, and every one, with the
exception of the Captain, had had a bath, but no matter how many and
how bitter were his wife's complaints, try how he would, he could
not, he positively _could_ not, bring himself to wash in the
bathroom--_alone_. It was all right so long as the door was open, but
his wife resolutely refused to allow him to keep it open, and the
moment it was shut his abject terror returned--a terror produced by
nothing that he could in any way analyse or define. At last, ashamed
of his cowardice, he screwed up courage, and, with a look of
determined desperation in his eyes and mouth--an expression which
sent his wife into fits of laughter--set out one night from his
bedroom, candle in hand, and entered the bathroom. Shutting and
locking the door, he lighted another candle, and, after placing them
both on the mantelshelf, turned on the bath water, and began to
undress.
"I may as well have a peep in the cupboard," he said, "just to satisfy
myself no one is hiding there--for every one in the house knows how I
hate this beastly bathroom--with the intention of playing me a
practical joke. Supposing one of the maids--Polly, for example, I'm
sure she'd be quite capable--took it into her pretty head to"--but
here the Captain was obliged to stop; he really was not equal to
facing, even in his mind's eye, the situation such a supposition
involved, and at the bare idea of such a thing his countenance assumed
a deeper hue, and--I am loth to admit--an amused grin. The grin,
however, died out as he cautiously opened the door and peered
furtively in; no one--nothing was there! With a breath of relief he
closed the door again, placed a chair against it, and, sitting down,
proceeded to pull off his clothes. Coat, vest, under-garments, he
placed them all tenderly in an untidy heap on the floor, and then,
with a last lingering, affectionate look at them, walked sedately
towards the bath. But this sedateness was only momentary. The first
few steps he walked, but, a noise in the grate startling him, he
suddenly assumed an air of the greatest gaiety, and, bowing with mock
gallantry to his trousers, he now waltzed coquettishly to the bath. It
was grim, horribly grim, and horribly hot too, for, when he felt the
temperature with one of his squat, podgy toes, it made him swear quite
involuntarily. Turning on the cold water, and slapping his thighs
playfully, he felt again. Too hot yet, far too hot even for him! He
loved heat. More cold! and he was hoisting one chubby leg to feel
again, when, a repetition of the noise in the grate making him swing
round, he lost his balance, and descended on the floor with a hard, a
very hard, bump. For some seconds he lay still, too sulky and
aggrieved even to get up, but, the draught from under the ill-fitting
door tickling his bare flesh in the most immodest fashion, he roused
himself from this lethargy, and was about to raise himself from the
floor, when the lights went out--went out without a moment's warning,
and he found himself engulfed in the most funereal darkness. To say he
was startled is to put it very mildly--he was absolutely
terror-stricken--far too terror-stricken to think of moving now, and
least of all of getting up and groping for the matches. Indeed, when
he came to think of it, he had not seen any matches in the room, and
he had not brought any with him, his wife had flurried him so much.
The moment the candles were extinguished the grimness sensibly
increased, and he could feel all around him, thickly amalgamated with
the ether, a superphysical presence, at once hostile and horrible.
Then, to bring his terror to a climax, there issued from the bath a
loud rubbing and splashing, as if some one, some very heavy person,
was vigorously washing. The water rose and fell, squished and bubbled
as it does when one is lying at full length in it, raising and
lowering oneself, kicking and plunging first on one side and then on
the other. Whilst, to add to the realism, Captain Smythe distinctly
heard gasping and puffing; and the soft, greasy sound of a well-soaped
flannel. He could indeed follow every movement of the occupant of the
bath as graphically as if he had seen him--from the brisk scrubbing of
body and legs to the finicky process of cleaning the ears and toes.
It was whilst the bather was occupied thus that the cupboard door
began to open very quietly and stealthily, and Captain de Smythe heard
the chair he had so carefully placed against it being gradually
propelled across the floor.
Then something, he would have given anything to tell what, came out
and began to steal towards him. He tried to crawl out of its way, but
could not; his limbs no longer acted conjointly with his brain, and
when he opened his mouth to shout at it, his voice withered away in
his throat. It came up to him, and directly it touched his naked skin
he knew it was a woman--a woman with a much-beflounced silk skirt and
silk petticoats--a woman whose person was perfumed with violets (a
scent for which the Captain had a particular weakness), and without
doubt, loaded with jewellery. Her behaviour did not betray any
symptoms of embarrassment when she encountered the Captain lying on
the floor, but, planting one icy-cold high-heeled shoe on his chest
and the other on his cheek, she stepped on him as if he had been an
orthodox cushion or footstool, purposely placed there for her
convenience. A hollow exclamation, which died away in a gasp, issued
from the bath, as the woman, with a swift movement of her arms, threw
something over it. What followed, the Captain could only surmise, but
from the muttered imprecations and splashes in the water, it seemed to
him that nothing short of murder was taking place. After a while the
noises in the bath grew feebler and feebler, and when they finally
ceased, the woman, with a sigh of relief, shook the water from her
arms, and, stepping off the Captain, moved towards the fireplace. The
spell which had, up to the present, enthralled the unfortunate
Captain, was now broken, and, thinking that his ghostly visitor had
betaken herself right away, he sat up. He had hardly done so before
the darkness was rudely dissipated, and, to his horror, he saw
looking at him, from a distance of only a few feet, a white, luminous
face, presumably that of a woman. But what a woman! What a
devil!--what a match for the most lurid of any of Satan's male
retainers. Yet she was not without beauty--beauty of the richest
sensual order; beauty that, had it been flesh and blood, would have
sent men mad. Her hair, jet black, wavy, and parted in the centre, was
looped over her shell-like ears, which were set unusually low and far
back on her head; her nose was of that rare and matchless shape termed
Grecian; and her mouth--in form, a triumph of all things heavenly, in
expression, a triumph of all things hellish. The magnificent turn of
its short upper lip, and the soft voluptuous line of its under lip;
its sportive dimples and ripe red colour; its even rows of dazzling,
pearly teeth were adorable; but they appealed to the senses, and in no
sense or shape to the soul. Her brows, slightly irregular in outline,
met over the nose; her eyelashes were of great length, and her
eyes--slightly, ever so slightly, obliquely set, and larger than those
of living human beings--were black, black as her hair; and the pupils
sparkled and shone with the most damnable expression of satanical
hatred and glee. The whole thing, the face and the light that emanated
from it, was so entirely awful and devilish, that Captain Smythe sat
like one turned to stone, and it was not until long after it had
vanished that he groped his way to the door, and in Adam's costume,
for he dared not stay to put on his clothes, fled down the passage to
his bedroom.
From his wife he got little sympathy; her sarcasm was too deep for
words, and she merely ordered her husband on no account to breathe a
word of his "silliness" before either the children or the servants.
The injunction, however, which was naturally carried out to the
letter, was futile as a precaution, for, on running into the bathroom
one morning when every one else was downstairs, the eldest boy,
Ronald, saw, floating in the bath, the body of a hoary-headed old man.
It was bloated and purplish blue, and had big, glassy eyes that stared
at him in such a hideous, meaningless manner that he uttered a scream
of terror and fled. Alarmed at the noise, most of the household ran to
see what had happened. Only the Captain remained behind. He knew only
too well, and he hid, letting his wife and the servants go upstairs
alone. They entered the bathroom--there was nothing in the bath, not
even water, but, as they were leaving, they ran into a dark, handsome,
evil-eyed woman, clad in the most costly of dresses, and sparkling
with jewellery. She glided past them with sly, silent footsteps, and
vanished by the cupboard. Cured of scepticism, and throwing dignity to
the wind, the Captain's wife raced downstairs, and, bursting into the
drawing-room, flung herself on the sofa in hysterics.
Within a week the house was once again empty, and the rumour getting
about that it was haunted, the landlord threatened the Smythes with an
action for slander of title. But I do not think the case was taken to
court, the Smythes agreeing to contradict the report they had
originated. Astute inquiries, however, eventually led them to discover
that a lady, answering to the description of the ghost they had seen,
had once lived at ---- House. Of Spanish descent, she was young,
beautiful, and gay; and was married to a man, an extremely wealthy man
(people remembered how rich he was after he died), old enough to be
her grandfather. They had nothing in common, the husband only wanting
to be quiet, the wife to flirt and be admired. Their neighbours often
heard them quarrel, and it was declared that the wife possessed the
temper of a fiend. The man was eventually found dead in his bath, and
there being no indications of violence, it was generally supposed that
he had fainted, (his wife having been previously heard to declare that
he often had fainting fits), and had thus been accidentally drowned.
The beautiful young widow, who inherited all his money, left the house
immediately and went abroad, and the neighbours, when questioned by
the Smythes as to whether anything had been seen of her since, shook
their heads dubiously, but refused to commit themselves.
CASE XI
THE CHOKING GHOST OF "---- HOUSE," NEAR
SANDYFORD PLACE, GLASGOW
The last time I was passing through Glasgow, I put up for the night at
an hotel near Sandyford Place, and met there an old theatrical
acquaintance named Browne, Hely Browne. Not having seen him since I
gave up acting, which is now, alas! a good many years, we had much to
discuss--touring days, lodgings, managers, crowds, and a dozen other
subjects, all included in the vulgar term "shop." We spent the whole
of one evening debating thus, in the smoke-room; whilst the following
night we went to an entertainment given by that charming reciter and
raconteur, Miss Lilian North, who, apart from her talent, which, in my
opinion, places her in the first rank of her profession, is the
possessor of extraordinary personal attractions, not the least
remarkable of which are her hands. Indeed, it was through my attention
being called to the latter, that I am indirectly indebted for this
story. Miss North has typically psychic hands--exquisitely white and
narrow, and her long, tapering fingers and filbert nails (which, by
the way, are always trimly manicured) are the most perfect I have ever
seen. I was alluding to them, on our way back to the hotel after her
performance, when Hely Browne interrupted me.
"Talking about psychic things, O'Donnell," he said, "do you know there
is a haunted house near where we are staying? You don't? Very well,
then, if I tell you what I know and you write about it, will you
promise not to allude to the house by its right number? If you do,
there will be the dickens to pay--simply call it '---- House,' near
Sandyford Place. You promise? Good! Let us take a little stroll before
we turn in--I feel I want a breath of fresh air--and I will tell you
the experience I once had there. It is exactly two years ago, and I
was on tour here in _The Green Bushes_. All the usual theatrical
'diggings' had been snapped up long before I arrived, and, not
knowing where else to go, I went to No.--Sandyford Place, which I saw
advertised in one of the local papers as a first-class private hotel
with very moderate charges. A wild bit of extravagance, eh? But then
one does do foolish things sometimes, and, to tell the truth, I wanted
a change badly. I had 'digged' for a long time with a fellow called
Charlie Grosvenor. Not at all a bad chap, but rather apt to get on
one's nerves after a while--and he had got on mine--horribly.
Consequently, I was not at all sorry for an excuse to get away from
him for a bit, even though I had to pay dearly for it. A private hotel
in a neighbourhood like that of Sandyford Place is a big order for an
ordinary comedian. I forget exactly what the terms were, but I know I
pulled rather a long face when I was told. Still, being, as I say,
tired of the usual 'digs,' I determined to try it, and accordingly
found myself landed in a nice-sized bedroom on the second floor. The
first three nights passed, and nothing happened, saving that I had the
most diabolical nightmares--a very unusual thing for me. 'It was the
cheese,' I said to myself, when I got out of bed the first morning; 'I
will take very good care I don't touch cheese to-night.' I kept this
resolution, but I had the nightmare again, and even, if anything,
worse than before. Then I fancied it must be cocoa--I was at that time
a teetotaller--so I took hot milk instead; but I had nightmare all the
same, and my dreams terrified me to such an extent that I did not dare
get out of bed in the morning (it was then winter) till it was broad
daylight. It was now becoming a serious matter with me. As you know,
an actor more than most people needs sleep, and it soon became as much
as I could do to maintain my usual standard of acting. On the fourth
night, determining to get rest at all costs, I took a stiff glass of
hot brandy just before getting into bed. I slept,--I could scarcely
help sleeping,--but not for long, for I was rudely awakened from my
slumbers by a loud crash. I sat up in bed, thinking the whole house
was falling about my ears. The sound was not repeated, and all was
profoundly silent. Wondering what on earth the noise could have been,
and feeling very thirsty, I got out of bed to get a drink of
lime-juice. To my annoyance, however, though I groped about
everywhere, knocking an ash tray off the mantelpiece and smashing the
lid of the soap-dish, I could find neither the lime-juice nor matches.
At length, giving it up as a bad job, I decided to get into bed again.
With that end in view, I groped my way through the darkness, steering
myself by the furniture, the position of which was, of course, quite
familiar to me--at least I imagined it was. Judge, then, of my
astonishment when I could not find the bed! At first I regarded it as
a huge joke, and laughed--how rich! Ha! ha! ha! Fancy not being able
to find one's way back to bed in a room of this dimension! Good enough
for _Punch_! Too good, perhaps, now. Ha! ha! ha! But it soon grew past
a joke. I had been round the room, completely round the room, twice,
and still no bed! I became seriously alarmed! Could I be ill? Was I
going mad? But no, my forehead was cool, my pulse normal. For some
seconds I stood still, not knowing what else to do; then, to make one
more desperate attempt, I stuck straight in front of me--and--ran
into something--something that recoiled and hit me. Thrilled with
amazement, I put up my hand to feel what it was, and touched a noose."
"A noose!" I ejaculated, interrupting Hely Browne for the first time
since he began.
"Yes, a noose!" he repeated, "suspended in mid-air. As you can
imagine, I was greatly astonished, for I knew there had been nothing
that I could be now mistaking for a noose in the room overnight. I
stretched out my arms to feel to what it was fastened, but, to add to
my surprise, the cord terminated in thin air. Then I grew frightened,
and, dropping my arms, tried to move away from the spot; I could
not--my feet were glued to the floor. With a gentle, purring sound
the noose commenced fawning--I use that word because the action was
so intensely bestial, so like that of a cat or snake--round my neck
and face. It then rose above me, and, after circling furiously round
and round and creating a miniature maelstrom in the air, descended
gradually over my head. Lower and lower it stole, like some sleek,
caressing slug. Now past the tips of my ears, now my nose, now my
chin, until with a tiny thud it landed on my shoulders, when, with a
fierce snap, it suddenly tightened. I endeavoured to tear it off, but
every time I raised my hands, a strong, magnetic force drew them to
my side again; I opened my mouth to shriek for help, and an icy
current of air froze the breath in my lungs. I was helpless,
O'Donnell, utterly, wholly helpless. Cold, clammy hands tore my feet
from the floor; I was hoisted bodily up, and then let drop. A
frightful pain shot through me. A hundred wires cut into my throat at
once. I gasped, choked, suffocated, and in my mad efforts to find a
foothold kicked out frantically in all directions. But this only
resulted in an increase of my torments, since with every plunge the
noose grew tauter. My agony at last grew unbearable; I could feel the
sides of my raw and palpitating thorax driven into one another, while
every attempt to heave up breath from my bursting lungs was rewarded
with the most excruciating paroxysms of pain--pain more acute than I
thought it possible for any human being to endure. My head became
ten times its natural size; blood--foaming, boiling blood--poured
into it from God knows where, and under its pressure my eyes bulged
in their sockets, and the veins in my nose cracked. Terrific
thunderings echoed and re-echoed in my ears; my tongue, huge as a
mountain, shot against my teeth; a sea of fire raged through my
brain, and then--blackness--blackness inconceivable. When I recovered
consciousness, O'Donnell, I found myself standing, cold and
shivering, but otherwise sound and whole, on the chilly oilcloth. I
had, now, no difficulty in finding my way back to bed, and in about
an hour's time succeeded in falling asleep. I slept till late, and,
on getting up, tried to persuade myself that my horrible experience
was but the result of another nightmare.
"As you may guess, after all this, I did not look forward to bedtime,
and counted the minutes as they flew by with the utmost regret. Never
had I been so sorry when my performance at the theatre was over, and
the lights of my hotel once again hove in sight. I entered my bedroom
in fear and trembling, and was so apprehensive lest I should be again
compelled to undergo the sensations of hanging, that I decided to keep
a light burning all night, and, for that reason, had bought half a
pound of wax candles. At last I grew so sleepy that I could keep awake
no longer, and, placing the candlestick on a chair by the bed, I
scrambled in between the sheets. Without as much as a sip of spirits,
I slept like a top. When I awoke the room was in pitch darkness. A
curious smell at once attracted my notice. I thought, at first, it
might be but the passing illusion of a dream. But no--I sniffed
again--it was there--there, close to me--under my very nose--the
strong, pungent odour of drugs; but not being a professor of smells,
nor even a humble student of physics, I was consequently unable to
diagnose it, and could only arrive at the general conclusion that it
was a smell that brought with it very vivid recollections of a
chemist's shop and of my old school laboratory. Wondering whence it
originated, I thrust my face forward with the intention of trying to
locate it, when, to my horror, my lips touched against something cold
and flabby. In an agony of fear I reeled away from it, and, the bed
being narrow, I slipped over the edge and bumped on to the floor.
"Now I think it is quite possible that up to this point you may have
attributed my unhappy experience to nothing more nor less than a bad
dream, but your dream theory can no longer hold good, for, on coming
in such sudden contact with the floor, I gave my funny-bone a knock,
which, I can assure you, made me thoroughly awake, and the first thing
I noticed on recovering my scattered senses--was the smell. I sat up,
and saw to my terror my bed was occupied, but occupied in the most
alarming manner. On the middle of the pillow was a face, the face
of--I looked closer; I would have given every penny I possessed not to
have done so, but I could not help myself--I looked closer, and it
was--the face of my brother; my brother Ralph--you may recollect my
mentioning him to you, for he was the only one of us who was at that
time making money--whom I believed to be in New York. He had always
been rather sallow, but apart from the fact that he now looked very
yellow, his appearance was quite natural. Indeed, as I gazed at him, I
grew so convinced it was he that I cried out, 'Ralph!' The moment I
did so, there was a ghastly change: his eyelids opened, and his
eyes--eyes I recognised at once--protruded to such a degree that they
almost rolled out; his mouth flew open, his tongue swelled, his whole
countenance became convulsed with the most unparalleled, and for that
reason indescribable, expression of agony, whilst the yellowness of
his complexion deepened to a livid, lurid black, that was so
inconceivably repellent and hellish that I sprang away from the
bed--appalled. There was then a gasping, rasping noise, and a voice
that, despite its unnatural hollowness, I identified as that of Ralph,
broke forth: 'I have been wanting to speak to you for ages, but
_something_, I cannot explain, has always prevented me. I have been
dead a month; not cancer, but Dolly. Poison. Good-bye, Hely. I shall
rest in peace now.' The voice stopped; there was a rush of cold air,
laden with the scent of the drug, and tainted, faintly tainted, with
the nauseating smell of the grave, and--the face on the pillow
vanished. How I got through the remainder of the night I cannot say--I
dare not think. I dare only remember that I did not sleep. I was
devoted to Ralph, and the thought that he had perished in the
miserable manner suggested by the apparition, completely prostrated
me. In the morning I received a black-edged letter from my mother,
stating that she had just heard from Dolly, my brother's wife, saying
Ralph had died from cancer in the throat. Dolly added in a postscript
that her dearly beloved Ralph had been very good to her, and left her
well provided for. Of course, we might have had the body exhumed, but
we were poor, and Ralph's widow was rich; and in America, you know,
everything goes in favour of the dollars. Hence we were obliged to let
the matter drop, sincerely trusting Dolly would never take it into her
head to visit us. She never did. My mother died last year--I felt her
death terribly, O'Donnell; and as I no longer have any fixed abode,
but am always touring the British provinces, there is not much fear
of Ralph's murderess and I meeting. It is rather odd, however, that
after my own experience at the hotel, I heard that it had borne the
reputation for being haunted for many years, and that a good many
visitors who had passed the night in one of the rooms (presumably
mine) had complained of hearing strange noises and having dreadful
dreams. How can one explain it all?"
"One can't," I responded, as we turned in for the night.
CASE XII
THE GREY PIPER AND THE HEAVY COACH OF
DONALDGOWERIE HOUSE, PERTH
Donaldgowerie House, until comparatively recent times, stood on the
outskirts of Perth. It was a long, low, rambling old place, dating
back to the beginning of the seventeenth century. At the time of the
narrative it was in the possession of a Mr. William Whittingen, who
bought it at a very low price from some people named Tyler. It is true
that it would cost a small fortune to repair, but, notwithstanding
this disadvantage, Mr. Whittingen considered his purchase a bargain,
and was more than satisfied with it. Indeed, he knew of no other house
of a similar size, of such an imposing appearance, and so pleasantly
situated, that he could have bought for less than twice the amount he
had paid for this; and he was really very sorry for the Tylers, who
explained to him, in confidence, that had they not been in such
urgent need of money, they would never have sold Donaldgowerie House
at such a ridiculously low figure. However, with them it was a
question of cash--cash down, and Mr. Whittingen had only to write out
a cheque for the modest sum they asked, and the house was his. It was
June when Mr. Whittingen took possession of the house--June, when the
summer sun was brightest and the gardens looked their best. The
Whittingen family, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Whittingen, two sons,
Ernest and Harvey, and three daughters, Ruth, Martha, and Mary, were,
as one might gather from their names alone, plain, practical, genteel,
and in fact very superior people, who were by no means lacking in that
exceedingly useful quality of canniness, so characteristic of the
Lowland Scot to which race they belonged. Mr. Whittingen had, for
years, conducted a grocery business in Jedburgh, twice filling the
honoured and coveted post of mayor, and when he at length retired into
private life, his friends (and it was astonishing how many friends he
had) shrewdly suspected that his pockets were not only well lined but
full to bursting. Acting on the advice of his wife and daughters, who
were keen on social distinction, he sent Ernest to Oxford,
conditionally that he should take Holy Orders in the Church of
England, whilst Harvey, who, when scarcely out of the petticoat stage,
displayed the regular Whittingen talent for business by covertly
helping himself to the sugar in his father's shop, and disposing of it
at strictly sale price to his sisters' cronies in the nursery, was
sent to one of those half preparatory and half finishing schools (of
course, for the sons of gentlemen only) at Edinburgh, where he was
kept till he was old enough to be articled to a prosperous,
exceedingly prosperous, firm of solicitors.
The girls, Ruth, Martha, and Mary, had likewise been highly educated,
that is to say, they had remained so many years at an English seminary
for young ladies, and had been given a final twelve months in France
and Germany to enable them to obtain "the correct accent."
At the time of the story they were as yet unmarried, and were awaiting
with the most laudable patience the advent of men of title. They were
delighted with their new home (which Ruth had persuaded her father to
christen "Donaldgowerie," after the house in a romantic novel she had
just been reading), and proud of their gilded premises and magnificent
tennis lawns; they had placed a gigantic and costly tray in the hall,
in confident assurance that it would speedily groan beneath the weight
of cards from all the gentry in Perthshire.
But please be it understood, that my one and only object in alluding
to these trifling details is to point out that the Whittingens, being
entirely engrossed in matters mundane, were the very last people in
the world to be termed superstitious, and although imaginative where
future husbands' calls and cards were concerned, prior to the events
about to be narrated had not an ounce of superstition in their
natures. Indeed, until then they had always smiled in a very
supercilious manner at even the smallest mention of a ghost.
September came, their first September in Donaldgowerie, and the family
welcomed with joy Ernest and his youthful bride.
The latter was not, as they had fondly hoped (and roundly announced in
Perth), the daughter of a Peer, but of a wealthy Bristol draper, the
owner of a house near the Downs, whose son had been one of Ernest's
many friends at Oxford. The coming of the newly-married pair to
Donaldgowerie brought with it a burst of bird-like gaiety. All sorts
of entertainments--musical "at homes," dinners, dances, tennis and
garden parties, in fact, every variety that accorded with the family's
idea of good taste--were given; and with praiseworthy "push," for
which the Whittingens had fast become noted, all the County was
invited. This splendid display of wealth and hospitality was not
disinterested; I fear, it might be not only accounted a "send off" for
the immaculately-clad curate and his wife, but also a determined
effort on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Whittingen to attract the right
sort of lover for their girls. It was during the progress of one of
their alfresco entertainments that the scepticism of certain of the
Whittingens with regard to the supernatural received a rude blow.
Martha, Mary, and two eligible young men, friends of Harvey's, having
finished a somewhat spirited game of croquet, were refreshing
themselves with lemonade, whilst they continued their flirtation.
Presently Mary, whose partner declared how much he should like to see
some photographs she had recently had taken of herself, with a
well-affected giggle of embarrassment set off to the house to fetch
her album. The minutes passed, and, as she did not return, Martha went
in search of her. The album, she knew, was in their boudoir, which was
situated at the end of the long and rather gloomy corridor of the
upper storey. Highly incensed at her sister's slowness, she was
hastening along the corridor, when, to her supreme astonishment, she
suddenly saw the figure of a man in kilts, with a bagpipe under his
arm, emerge through the half-open door of the boudoir, and with a
peculiar gliding motion advance towards her. A curious feeling, with
which she was totally unfamiliar, compelled her to remain mute and
motionless; and in this condition she awaited the approach of the
stranger. Who was he? she asked herself, and how on earth had he got
there, and what was he doing? As he drew nearer, she perceived that
his face was all one hue,--a ghastly, livid grey,--and that his eyes,
which were all the time fixed on hers, were lurid and menacing,--so
terrible, in fact, that she turned cold with fear, and felt the very
hair on her head beginning to rise on end. She opened her mouth to
shriek, but found she could not ejaculate a syllable; neither could
she, even with the most desperate efforts, tear her feet from the
floor. On came the figure, and, without swerving either to the right
or left, it glided right up to and through her; and, as she
involuntarily turned round, she saw it disappear through a half-open
staircase window, at least twenty feet above the ground outside.
Shaking all over with terror, and not understanding in the slightest
what to make of it, Martha ran to the boudoir, where her heart almost
sprang out of her body at the spectacle of her sister Mary stretched
at full length on the floor, her cheeks ashy pale, her lips blue.
Martha at once made a frantic rush to the bell, and, in a few minutes,
half the establishment, headed by Mr. Whittingen, poured into the
room. With the aid of a little cold water, Mary speedily recovered,
and, in reply to the anxious inquiries of her sympathetic rescuers as
to what had happened, indignantly demanded why such a horrible
looking creature as "that" piper had been allowed not merely to enter
the house but to come up to her room, and half frighten her to death.
"I had just got my album," she added, "when, feeling some one was in
the room, I turned round--and there (she indicated a spot on the
carpet) was the piper, not ten paces away from me, regarding me with
the most awful look imaginable. I was too taken aback with surprise to
say anything, nor--for some unaccountable reason--could I escape,
before he touched me on the shoulder with one of his icy cold hands,
and then commenced playing. Up and down the floor he paced, backwards
and forwards, never taking his hateful glance off my face and ever
piping the same dismal dirge. At last, unable to stand the strain of
it any longer, and convinced he was a madman, bent on murdering
me--for who but a lunatic would behave in such a way?--I gave way to a
violent fit of hysterics, and fainted. Now tell me who he was, and why
he was permitted to frighten me in this manner?" And Mary stamped her
feet and grew vicious, as only her class will when they are at all
vexed. Her speech was followed by a silence that exasperated her. She
repeated her inquiries with crimson cheeks, and then, as again no one
responded, she signalled out the head footman and raved at him. Up to
this point Mr. Whittingen had been dumb with amazement. The idea of a
strange piper having the twofold effrontery to enter his house and
proceed to the private and chaste sanctuary of his highly respectable
daughters, almost deprived him of breath. He could scarcely believe
his ears. "What--what in the name of--what does it all mean?" he at
length stammered, addressing the unfortunate footman. "A piper! and
without any invitation from me, how dare you let him in?"
"I did not, sir," the luckless footman replied; "no such person came
to the door when I was in the hall."
"No more he did when I was there," chimed in the second footman, and
all the other servants vociferated in a body, "We never saw any piper,
sir, nor heard one either," and they looked at Mary reproachfully.
At this Mr. Whittingen looked exceedingly embarrassed. In the face of
such a unanimous denial what could he say? He knew if he suggested
the servants were untruthful they would all give notice to leave on
the spot, and knowing good servants are scarce in Perth as elsewhere,
he felt rather in a fix. At length, turning to Mary, he asked if she
was sure it was a piper. "Sure!" Mary screamed, "why, of course I am,
did I not tell you he marched up and down here playing on his
disgusting bagpipes, which nearly broke the drum of my ear."
"And I saw him too, pa," Martha put in. "I met him in the corridor, he
had his pipes under his arm, and the most dreadful expression in his
face. I don't wonder Mary was frightened."
"But where did he go?" Mr. Whittingen cried.
"You would not believe me if I told you," Martha said, her cheeks
flushing. "He seemed to pass right through me, and then to vanish
through the staircase window. I have never been so terribly upset in
my life," and, sinking on to the sofa, she began to laugh
hysterically.
"Dear me! dear me! it is very odd!" Mr. Whittingen exclaimed, as Mary
handed her sister a wineglass of sal-volatile. "They can't both have
been dreaming; it must--but there, what a nonsensical notion, there
are no such things as ghosts! Only children and nursemaids believe in
them nowadays. As soon as you have quite recovered, my dears, we will
return to the garden, and I think that under the circumstances, the
rather peculiar circumstances, ahem! it will be better to say nothing
to your mother. Do you understand?" Mr. Whittingen went on, eyeing the
servants, "Nothing to your mistress."
The affair thus terminated, and for some days nothing further happened
to disturb the peace of the family. At the end of a week, however,
exactly a week after the appearance of the piper, Mary met with a
serious accident. She was running across the croquet lawn to speak to
her sister-in-law, when she tripped over a hoop that had been
accidentally left there, and, in falling, ran a hatpin into her head.
Blood poisoning ensued, and within a fortnight she was dead. Martha
was the only one in the house, however, who associated Mary's accident
and death with the piper; to her that sinister expression in the
mysterious Highlander's eyes portended mischief, and she could not
but suspect that, in some way or another, he had brought about the
catastrophe. The autumn waned, and Christmas was well within sight,
when another mysterious occurrence took place. It was early one Sunday
evening, tea was just over, and the Whittingen family were sitting
round the fire engaged in a somewhat melancholy conversation, for the
loss of Mary had affected them all very deeply, when they heard the
far-away rumble of a heavy coach on the high-road. Nearer and nearer
it came, till it seemed to be about on a level with the front lodge
gate; then to their surprise there was a loud crunching of gravel, and
they heard it careering at a breakneck speed up the carriage-drive.
They looked at one another in the utmost consternation.
"A coach, and driven in this mad fashion! Whose was it? What did it
mean? Not visitors, surely!"
It pulled up at the front door, and the champing and stamping of the
horses vibrated loudly through the still night air. Sounds as of one
or more people descending were next heard, and then there came a
series of the most terrific knockings at the door. The Whittingen
family stared at one another aghast; there was something in those
knockings--something they could not explain--that struck terror in
their souls and made their blood run cold. They waited in breathless
anxiety for the door to be opened; but no servant went to open it. The
knocks were repeated, if anything louder than before, the door swung
back on its hinges, and the tread of heavy footsteps were heard slowly
approaching the drawing-room. Mrs. Whittingen gave a low gasp of
horror, Ruth screamed, Harvey buried his face in his hands, Mr.
Whittingen rose to his feet, and made desperate efforts to get to the
bell, but could not stir, whilst Martha rushed to the drawing-room
door and locked it. They then with one accord began to pray. The steps
halted outside the room, the door slowly opened, and the blurred
outlines of a group of ghastly-looking figures, supporting a
grotesquely shaped object in their midst, appeared on the threshold.
For some seconds there was a grim silence. It was abruptly broken by a
thud--Ruth had slipped from her chair to the floor in a dead faint;
whereupon the shadowy forms solemnly veered round and made their way
back again to the front door. The latter swung violently open, there
was a rush of icy wind which swept like a hurricane across the hall
and into the drawing-room, the front door then slammed to with a
crash, and the coach drove away.
Every one's attention was now directed to Ruth. At first sal-volatile
and cold water produced no effect, but after a time she slowly, very
slowly regained consciousness. As soon as she had recovered
sufficiently to speak, she expressed an earnest desire that no
reference should ever be made in her presence to what had just
happened. "It was for me!" she said in such an emphatic tone as filled
her audience with the direst forebodings. "I know it was for me; they
all looked in my direction. God help me! I shall die like Mary."
Though greatly perplexed as to what she meant, for no one excepting
herself had been able to make out the phenomena with any degree of
distinctness, they yielded to her entreaties, and asked her no
questions. The servants had neither heard nor seen anything. A
fortnight later, Ruth was taken ill with appendicitis; peritonitis
speedily set in, and she died under the operation. The Whittingens now
began to wish they had never come to Donaldgowerie; but, with the
astuteness that had been characteristic of the family through
countless generations of fair days and foul, they took the greatest
precautions never to drop even as much as a hint to the servants or to
any one in the town that the house was haunted.
A year passed without any further catastrophe, and they were beginning
to hope their ghastly visitors had left them, when something else
occurred. It was Easter-time, and Ernest, his wife, and baby were
staying with them. The baby, a boy, was fat and bonny, the very
picture of health and happiness.
Mrs. Whittingen and Martha vied with one another in their devotion to
him; and either one or other of them was always dancing attendance on
him. It so happened that one afternoon, whilst the servants were
having their tea, Martha found herself alone in the upper part of the
house with her precious nephew. Mr. Whittingen had gone to Edinburgh
to consult his lawyer (the head of the firm with whom Harvey was
articled) on business, whilst Mrs. Whittingen had taken her son and
daughter-in-law for a drive. The weather was glorious, and Martha,
though as little appreciative of the beauties of nature as most
commercial-minded young women, could not but admire the colouring of
the sky as she looked out of the nursery window. The sun had
disappeared, but the effect of its rays was still apparent on the
western horizon, where the heavens were washed with alternate streaks
of gold and red and pink--the colour of each streak excessively
brilliant in the centre, but paling towards the edges. Here and there
were golden, pink-tipped clouds and crimson islets surrounded with
seas of softest blue. And outside the limits of this sun-kissed pale,
the blue of the sky gradually grew darker and darker, until its line
was altogether lost in the black shadows of night that, creeping over
the lone mountain-tops in the far east, slowly swept forward. Wafted
by the gentle breeze came the dull moaning and whispering of the pine
trees, the humming of the wind through the telephone wires, and the
discordant cawing of the crows. And it seemed to Martha, as she sat
there and peered out into the garden, that over the whole atmosphere
of the place had come a subtle and hostile change--a change in the
noises of the trees, the birds, the wind; a change in the
flower-scented ether; a change, a most marked and emphatic change, in
the shadows. What was it? What was this change? Whence did it
originate? What did it portend? A slight noise, a most trivial noise,
attracted Martha's attention to the room; she looked round and was
quite startled to see how dark it had grown. In the old days, when she
had scoffed at ghosts, she would as soon have been in the dark as in
the light, the night had no terrors for her; but now--now since those
awful occurrences last year, all was different, and as she peered
apprehensively about her, her flesh crawled. What was there in that
corner opposite, that corner hemmed in on the one side by the
cupboard--how she hated cupboards, particularly when they had shiny
surfaces on which were reflected all sorts of curious things--and the
chest of drawers on the other. It was a shadow, only a shadow, but of
what? She searched the room everywhere to find its material
counterpart, and at last discovered it in the nurse's shawl which hung
over the back of a chair. Then she laughed, and would have gone on
laughing, for she tried to persuade herself that laughter banished
ghosts, when suddenly something else caught her eyes. What was it? An
object that glittered evilly like two eyes. She got up in a state of
the most hideous fascination and walked towards it. Then she laughed
again--it was a pair of scissors. The nurse's scissors--clean, bright,
and sharp. Why did she pick them up and feel the blades so caressingly
with her thumb? Why did she glance from them to the baby? Why? In the
name of God, why? Frightful ideas laid hold of her mind. She tried to
chase them away but they quickly returned. The scissors, why were they
in her fingers? Why could not she put them down? For what were they
intended? Cutting! cutting thread, and tape,--and throats! Throats!
And she giggled hysterically at the bare notion. But what was this
round her waist--this shadowy arm-like object! She looked fearfully
round, and her soul died within her as she encountered the
malevolent, gleeful eyes of the sinister piper, pressed closely
against her face. Was it she he wanted this time--she, or--or whom--in
the name of all that was pitiable?
Desperately, as if all the lives in the universe and the future of her
soul were at stake, did she struggle to free herself from his
grasp--but in vain; every fibre, every muscle of her body was
completely at his will. On and on he pushed her, until foot by foot,
inch by inch, she approached the cradle, and all the while his hellish
voice was breathing the vilest of inspirations into her brain. At last
she stood by the side of the baby, and bent over it. What a darling!
What a dear! What a duck! A sweet, pretty, innocent, prattling duck!
How like her mother--how like her handsome brother--how like
herself--very, very like herself! How every one loved it--how every
one worshipped it--how (and here the grey face beside her chuckled)
every one would miss it! How pink its toes--how fat its calves--how
chubby its little palms--how bonny its cheeks--and how white, how
gloriously, heavenly, snowy white--its throat! And she stretched
forth one of her stubby, inartistic fingers and played with its flesh.
Then she glanced furtively at the scissors, and smiled.
It was soon done, soon over, and she and the grey-faced piper danced a
minuet in the moonbeams; afterwards he piped a farewell dirge,--a
wild, weird, funereal dirge, and, marching slowly backwards, his dark,
gleaming eyes fixed gloatingly on hers, disappeared through the
window. Then the reaction set in, and Martha raved and shrieked till
every one in the house flew to the rescue.
Of course, no one--saving her father and mother--believed her. Ernest,
his wife, and the servants attributed her bloody act to jealousy; the
law--to madness; and she subsequently journeyed from Donaldgowerie to
a criminal lunatic asylum, where the recollection of all she had done
soon killed her. This was the climax. Mr. Whittingen sold
Donaldgowerie, and a new house was shortly afterwards erected in its
stead.
CASE XIII
THE FLOATING HEAD OF THE BENRACHETT INN,
NEAR THE PERTH ROAD, DUNDEE
Some years ago, when I was engaged in collecting cases for a book I
contemplated publishing, on _Haunted Houses in England and Wales_, I
was introduced to an Irish clergyman, whose name I have forgotten, and
whom I have never met since. Had the incident he related taken place
in England or Wales, I should have noted it down carefully, but as it
occurred in Scotland (and I had no intention then of bringing out a
volume on Scottish phantasms), I did not do so.
My memory, however, I can assure my readers, in spite of the many
ghost tales committed to it,--for scarcely a day passes that I do not
hear one,--seldom fails, and the Irish clergyman's story, which I am
about to relate, comes back to me now with startling vividness.
One summer evening, early in the eighties, Mr. Murphy--the name by
which I will designate the originator of this story--and his wife
arrived in Dundee. The town was utterly unknown to them, and they were
touring Scotland for the first time. Not knowing where to put up for
the night, and knowing no one to whom they could apply for
information, they consulted a local paper, and from the long list of
hotels and boarding-houses advertised therein selected the Benrachett
Inn, near the Perth Road, as being the one most likely to meet their
modest requirements. They were certainly not disappointed with the
exterior of the hotel they had chosen, for as soon as they saw it they
exclaimed simultaneously, "What a delightful old place!" And old it
certainly was, for the many-gabled, oaken structure and projecting
windows unquestionably indicated the sixteenth century, whilst, to
enhance the effect and give it a true touch in detail of "ye ancient
times," a huge antique lantern was hung over the entrance. Nor did the
interior impress them less favourably. The rooms were large, and low,
the ceilings, walls, floors, and staircase all of oak. The
diamond-lattice windows, and narrow, tortuous passages, and
innumerable nooks and crannies and cupboards, created an atmosphere of
combined quaintness and comfort that irresistibly appealed to the
Murphys. Viewed under the searching rays of the sun, and cheered by
the voices of the visitors, the interior of the house, for artistic
taste and cheerfulness, would indeed be hard to beat; but, as Mrs.
Murphy's eyes wandered up the stairs and down the corridors, she was
filled with misgivings as to how the place would strike her at night.
Though not nervous naturally, and by no means superstitious, at night,
when the house was dark and silent, and the moon called forth the
shadows, she was not without that feeling of uneasiness which most
people--even avowed sceptics, experience when passing the night in
strange and novel quarters.
The room they engaged--I cannot say selected, as, the hotel being
full, they had "Hobson's choice"--was at the end of a very long
passage, at the back of the house, and overlooking the yard. It was a
large apartment, and in one of its several recesses stood the bed, a
gigantic, ebony four-poster, with spotlessly clean valance, and, what
was of even greater importance, well-aired sheets. The other furniture
in the room, being of the same sort as that in the majority of
old-fashioned hostels, needs no description; but a fixture in the
shape of a cupboard, a deep, dark cupboard, let into the wall facing
the bed, instantly attracted Mrs. Murphy's attention. There is always
something interesting in cupboards, particularly old and roomy
cupboards, when it is night-time and one is about to get into bed. It
is then that they suggest all manner of fascinating possibilities.
It was to this cupboard, then, that Mrs. Murphy paid the greatest
attention, before commencing to undress prior to getting into bed. She
poked about in it for some moments, and then, apparently satisfied
that no one was hidden there, continued her investigation of the room.
Mr. Murphy did not assist--he pleaded fatigue, and sat on the corner
of the bed munching a gingerbread and reading the _Dundee Advertiser_
till the operation was over. He then helped Mrs. Murphy unpack their
portmanteau, and, during the process, whiled away so much time in
conversation, that they were both startled when a clock from some
adjacent church solemnly boomed twelve. They were then seized with
something approaching a panic, and hastened to disrobe.
"I wish we had a night-light, John," Mrs. Murphy said, as she got up
from her prayers. "I suppose it wouldn't do to keep one of the candles
burning. I am not exactly afraid, only I don't fancy being left in the
dark. I had a curious sensation when I was in the cupboard just now--I
can't exactly explain it--but I feel now that I would like the light
left burning."
"It certainly is rather a gloomy room," Mr. Murphy remarked, raising
his eyes to the black oak ceiling, and then allowing them to dwell in
turn on each of the angles and recesses. "And I agree with you it
would be nice if we had a night-light, or, better still, gas. But as
we haven't, my dear, and we shall be on our feet a good deal
to-morrow, I think we ought to try and get to sleep as soon as
possible."
He blew out the candle as he spoke, and quickly scrambled into bed. A
long hush followed, broken only by the sound of breathing, and an
occasional ticking as of some long-legged creature on the wall and
window-blind. Mrs. Murphy could never remember if she actually went to
sleep, but she is sure her husband did, as she distinctly heard him
snore--and the sound, so detestable to her as a rule, was so welcome
to her then. She was lying listening to it, and wishing with all her
soul she could get to sleep, when she suddenly became aware of a
smell--a most offensive, pungent odour, that blew across the room and
crept up her nostrils. The cold perspiration of fear at once broke out
on her forehead. Nasty as the smell was, it suggested something more
horrible, something she dared not attempt to analyse. She thought
several times of rousing her husband, but, remembering how tired he
had been, she desisted, and, with all her faculties abnormally on the
alert, she lay awake and listened. A deathlike hush hung over the
house, interrupted at intervals by the surreptitious noises peculiar
to the night--enigmatical creaks and footsteps, rustlings as of
drapery, sighs and whisperings--all very faint, all very subtle, and
all possibly, just possibly, attributable to natural causes. Mrs.
Murphy caught herself--why, she could not say--waiting for some
definite auditory manifestation of what she instinctively felt was
near at hand. At present, however, she could not locate it, she could
only speculate on its whereabouts--it was somewhere in the direction
of the cupboard. And each time the stench came to her, the conviction
that its origin was in the cupboard grew. At last, unable to sustain
the suspense any longer, and urged on by an irresistible fascination,
she got softly out of bed, and, creeping stealthily forward, found her
way with surprisingly little difficulty (considering it was pitch dark
and the room was unfamiliar to
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