Part 23

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.