Part 11

He called in the doctor and explained what had caused the trouble. The doctor at once said: “Oh, it was old So-and-so; he died in this room and had been rather worried about the deeds of this house.”

Needless to say, her husband didn't ridicule her any more, but set about looking for another house.

A SINISTER ATMOSPHERE

IT is pleasant to sit round the fire on a winter's evening and tell ghost stories. A sort of thrill goes down one's spine which is not altogether unpleasant.

It is not, however, by any means pleasant to be in a house where one frequently gets such thrills.

Some years ago my mother and sister went to live in a large, old-fashioned farmhouse. All old houses seem to have an atmosphere of their own. Some speak of peace as one enters their doors; others of serenity. Then, again, in other houses one realises an atmosphere of depression. In this old house the atmosphere seemed almost sinister. There were such strange unaccountable noises, tappings, knocking and banging everywhere, that one could not sit in comfort in any of the rooms.

One time, when I went over to help nurse my mother, who was ill, a friend and I who were sitting up at night heard distinct footsteps crossing a large, unoccupied, adjoining bedroom.

The nurse who came later also heard these footsteps repeatedly and, strangely, each morning a framed photograph on the mantelpiece was lying on the floor. We also heard music, which sounded like the faint, sweet music of an old harpsichord.

One of the most frequent noises sounded as though a chair was being dragged along the kitchen floor, and there seemed to pass a dim presence with a breath of cold air across the kitchen.

These strange, unaccountable happenings were so disturbing that my sister became afraid to sleep alone in a room.

My mother and sister have now left the house and neighbourhood, but recently I was interested to hear that the people who now live there hear the same uncanny noises.

I think there must be an explanation of these strange sounds, and no doubt one will yet be found.

WAS IT A MONK?

WE live in a rambling, old-fashioned house which is supposed to connect by underground passage with the church and an old priory. In the older wing of the house are two bedrooms, the smaller one leading into the larger by a little passage. For a while I slept alone in this wing, and, night after night, I was roused in the early hours by the sound of slow, measured footsteps. They came from the smaller room, through the passage, and paused at the foot of the bed, then retreated with the same slow, measured strides. They sounded like the steps of a man wearing soft sandals. I lit the candle, but the room was empty and the connecting door was shut. Each time I struck a light the sound ceased and the room was empty, only the air seemed colder and there was a faint earthy smell. I said nothing about it, as I feared ridicule.

Later my brother returned home from abroad, and those rooms were given to his use. One morning he asked if I had heard any strange sounds while sleeping there, and told me he had heard someone walking. We compared notes and found our experiences precisely the same.

Is it the ghost of an old monk engaged in meditation?

A SHADOWY FIGURE

ONE warm afternoon in the summer of 1901 my grandmother asked me to come into her bedroom because, in the big bow window of the house overlooking our garden, there was, so she said, a ghost.

She pointed to the window. “Don't you see it, my dear? It's like the figure of a woman. The people have left the house because it is haunted.”

“Rubbish!” I answered. “I can’t see anyone.”

“Well,” she repeated, “it looks to me like a woman.”

I saw nothing, and said so. The next afternoon I was sitting by myself in the garden, looking up at the bow window, when to my amazement a shadowy figure as of a woman appeared on the pane. I was terrified and went indoors, but I would not say a word to anyone for fear of being laughed at.

For the next six weeks I saw that figure constantly and always in the broad daylight, at 8:30 a.m., when I started for college, at one or four, or any time in the full light of day. The house was empty; I found that out.

I hated the shadowy thing, but there it was.

After about six weeks had passed it disappeared, and I have not seen it from that day to this. So far as I know, there is no mystery connected with the house, which is quite a modern one in a very unromantic situation.

I can only say that to the best of my knowledge this is the truth, and I should be only too glad to understand what the apparition was.

WHAT WAS IT?

MY house is in a quiet corner of a quiet square. We are sheltered from wind and noise, even when it is stormy. About three years ago I was living here quite alone and, while undressing, about eleven o'clock one night, when there was not a breath of wind or a sound to be heard, I suddenly heard a noise in the hall below, like air moving swiftly round and round with a swishing noise, as when something is swung from the end of a string. Then it began to move and come up the stairs. I was very frightened and said to myself—although I knew it wasn't—“This is wind; it will pass out at the landing window.” But it didn’t; it turned the corners—two corners, in fact—and came straight along the corridor and shook the handle of my bedroom door strongly. Then all was quiet as before. I should very much like to know just what it was.

SOMEBODY WAS BITING HER EARS

IN 1913 my husband and self and two children went to reside in North Devon, and took a house that had been empty some years. It was old and next to a churchyard. The landlord was anxious for us to take the house, and had it decorated. We took it on a weekly tenancy. Within the first week of our occupation my little daughter, aged two years, used to wake up at midnight screaming and say somebody was biting her ears. At the same time I used to break out into a cold sweat and tremble from head to feet. Then I saw a tall shadow go round the room with a lighted candle and disappear before it reached me. I was quite unable to get out of bed to take my baby into my bed. My husband saw none of this. My son, aged eight years, would ask us why we always rapped on his wall at night, and once he said he saw a hand over his bed. The last week of our occupation my husband heard padded feet come up the stairs and to the bedroom door, but no one entered. Curiously enough, fresh flowers put into a room at night would be quite dead the next morning. We stayed in that house only six weeks, and found no solution to the mystery.

GETTING USED TO IT

WE live in an old house with long passages, so when we intend to pass an afternoon or evening in a back room, somebody usually locks and bolts the front door against sneak-thieves.

More times than we can count we have heard someone open and close the front door, rattle his stick into the hall-stand, and walk up the passage into the drawing-room.

Yet, on going to see, we have found no one in the house and the door locked and bolted just as we had left it. This has occurred both in the afternoon and evening.

Many times, also, anyone awake in the night has heard someone open the bathroom door, walk along the upstairs passage and go downstairs. Again, “no one.”

Both these phenomena have been experienced by visitors, some of whom have proved decidedly nervous as a consequence; but, as nothing ever follows the sounds, we do not worry, and we have lived through them for ten years.

AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY

WITHIN half an hour's journey of the City of London, in one of its pleasant suburbs, stands a pretty little house in a quiet and pretty road. There is nothing in the least remarkable in its appearance; a one-storeyed, bay-windowed house, with a high thick-set hedge and a holly tree in the front garden. Yet some years ago we experienced some very unpleasant thrills within its prosaic looking doors. It looked then, as it does now, particularly bright and cheerful and even new—on the outside. We went there in 1912, and for many months nothing happened, though we experienced many minor “queernesses.”

For instance, one winter evening, when there was a bright fire burning in the front room, the door closed, the table cloth blew right up as though a strong wind stirred it, and covered my brother's dinner which was then laid.

One night, mother and I were sitting together playing cards, laughing and chatting gaily, a bright fire burning, the room well lighted, everything about us very matter of fact, and we ourselves feeling in the highest spirits. Suddenly three sharp, clear shots rang out, seeming to come from the back room which we called the garden room because it gave straight on to the garden. We both jumped up, scattering the cards on the floor, and mother ran to the door. As she opened it, I saw her stand, rigid: the dark, heavy curtains in the hall leading to the stairs were waving to and fro as though blown by a strong breeze. She afterwards told me that she felt her scalp freeze and her hair rise. I was trembling, but advanced boldly to the stairs and commenced to ascend. When I reached the third from the top I stood, rooted; my feet refused to carry me any further. I lifted them to do so; but it was of no use, so I was obliged to come down again. All the time I had that horrible and indefinable feeling that there was another presence near me, all about the house, besides my mother's. My sister came in and we told her.

On two more successive nights we were tormented with most weird and hateful noises, which disturbed our peace and made us unable to do anything while they continued.

My sister was with us the next night, and this time, not shots but other noises, seeming to come from the cellar, occurred. Sometimes we knocked at the walls and cellar door, but this only seemed to aggravate the unknown disturbers; for the sounds were redoubled.

Knowing that rats sometimes make strange noises, my mother put some pieces of fat meat in the cellar in likely places. But no trace of mice or rats did we ever discover and the meat remained untouched.

On the last night of these visitations, my brother was with us, and I think it was as well, for our nerves would not have borne much more alone. Still the noises in the cellar continued, and this time like loud, heavy footsteps walking up and down. We were kept up until the small hours with these horrid sounds almost continuous until, at last, they ceased altogether, and we were permitted to sleep.

Next day a complete search of the cellar was made, but no trace of anything or anyone was found.

Soon after, we moved away, but from that day to this our strange experience has been an unsolved mystery.

THAT NAUGHTY MAN

“GHOSTS or no ghosts,” said my friend Terrington, “what I am going to tell you is absolutely true. It is strange and inexplicable, and I make no effort to explain the happening. Listen.”

Twenty-five years ago I obtained work at a factory in a northern town, and, eventually, got a house near my work—a little old-fashioned dwelling which had once been used as a shop. My little girl, Marion, was then about four years old and had always been a good child to take to bed.

But a few weeks after our going to that place, she simply would not be left in bed alone. She and her sister slept together, and once, in the middle of the night, she awakened us by screaming loudly. I hastened to the room, but unable to pacify her, I brought her into my own bed. Of this occurrence I thought little, thinking that the child had just had a bad dream.

A few nights afterwards, I took her upstairs to bed and gently chided her for being such a frightened girl, and asked her why she did not like to go to bed alone, as she had always been in the habit of doing. “Oh, dada,” she said, “I don’t like that naughty man!” “Which naughty man?” I asked. “Oh that bad man! That naughty man, all dirty here.” And she drew her hand across her little neck.

I assured her that there was no bad man, but the fear never left her.

A few days afterwards, one of my work-mates asked me how I liked my house, which I told him was all right and very handy for my work. But my liking was turned to antipathy when he related how the place had once been occupied by an old chemist who committed suicide by cutting his throat. He was found in the very room in which my little daughter slept.

I can assure you that not one of my family knew of the tragedy which once occurred in that little house, but I soon found a reasonable excuse to leave it.

THE ROW DOWNSTAIRS

ABOUT twenty years ago I secured the tenancy of a large cottage, formerly an inn, in the suburbs of Bristol, not knowing at the time it had the reputation of being haunted, and caring nothing when I was informed. For some time nothing unusual happened, then my wife complained of hearing noises in the night, generally when I was away from home. But occasionally we both heard them. One night, about a year after we had taken the house, I was awakened and kept awake by what seemed to be the movement of all the articles of furniture downstairs—chairs, tables, etc., being, apparently, lifted off the ground and noisily replaced; after listening to this for some minutes, my wife, who I thought was asleep, said, “Now, hark at the row downstairs.” “Yes,” said I, “there's something going on down there to-night,” and I lighted a candle and went down, but, rather to my disappointment, the noises ceased as I was descending the stairs, and, though I examined each room carefully, nothing was out of place. There was no dog or cat in the house to put the blame on. My wife always fastened the door before retiring, but on several occasions we found the front door wide open in the morning, although it had been fastened by a spring lock—a big old-fashioned lock and a bolt. We lived in the house for over two years, and, towards the end of our tenancy, my wife would on no account stay in the house at night in my absence, without having an adult friend with her in addition to the children.

A HEADLESS FORM

MY parents rented a very large old-fashioned house in Norfolk, standing on its own grounds.

Living with them was a very pious old lady, also an uncle of mine. One dark, still night, my mother was sitting alone sewing when, suddenly, the room seemed to be filled with a rushing wind, and she experienced the feeling of a cold hand pressed upon her cheek, followed by a low wail and moan. She said nothing to the other inmates of the occurrence at the time.

Two nights later, my father went to the pantry which was approached by a short passage. There by the door he saw standing the headless form of a man wearing a brown coat with large pearl buttons attached. After a few days had passed, the old lady asked my mother whether she thought there was in the house anyone who walked in his sleep as for several nights past, she had had her bedroom door opened and closed, and she distinctly heard footsteps along the landing and staircase.

For two nights in succession my uncle got out of bed and closed his bedroom door three times each night. He examined the door and found it impossible to open without some aid. Each one of these inmates related to one another their experiences. They decided to keep watch for a few nights, but nothing happened. Needless to say, they soon quitted the house. Rumour followed that the place was once known as a house of ill-fame.