|
|
J. S. LE FANU'S
GHOSTLY TALES,
VOLUME 2
An Authentic Narrative of
a Haunted House (1862)
by
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
[The Editor of the UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE submits the following very
remarkable statement, with every detail of which he has been for some
years acquainted, upon the ground that it affords the most authentic and
ample relation of a series of marvellous phenoma, in nowise connected with
what is technically termed "spiritualism," which he has anywhere
met with. All the persons—and there are many of them living—upon whose
separate evidence some parts, and upon whose united testimony others, of
this most singular recital depend, are, in their several walks of life,
respectable, and such as would in any matter of judicial investigation be
deemed wholly unexceptionable witnesses. There is not an incident here
recorded which would not have been distinctly deposed to on oath had any
necessity existed, by the persons who severally, and some of them in great
fear, related their own distinct experiences. The Editor begs most
pointedly to meet in limine the suspicion, that he is elaborating a
trick, or vouching for another ghost of Mrs. Veal. As a mere story the
narrative is valueless: its sole claim to attention is its absolute truth.
For the good faith of its relator he pledges his own and the character of
this Magazine. With the Editor's concurrence, the name of the
watering-place, and some special circumstances in no essential way bearing
upon the peculiar character of the story, but which might have indicated
the locality, and possibly annoyed persons interested in house property
there, have been suppressed by the narrator. Not the slightest liberty has
been taken with the narrative, which is presented precisely in the terms
in which the writer of it, who employs throughout the first person, would,
if need were, fix it in the form of an affidavit.]
Within the last eight years—the precise date I purposely omit—I I
was ordered by my physician, my health being in an unsatisfactory state,
to change my residence to one upon the sea-coast; and accordingly, I took
a house for a year in a fashionable watering-place, at a moderate distance
from the city in which I had previously resided, and connected with it by
a railway.
Winter was setting in when my removal thither was decided upon; but
there was nothing whatever dismal or depressing in the change. The house I
had taken was to all appearance, and in point of convenience, too, quite a
modern one. It formed one in a cheerful row, with small gardens in front,
facing the sea, and commanding sea air and sea views in perfection. In the
rear it had coach-house and stable, and between them and the house a
considerable grass-plot, with some flower-beds, interposed.
Our family consisted of my wife and myself, with three children, the
eldest about nine years old, she and the next in age being girls; and the
youngest, between six and seven, a boy. To these were added six servants,
whom, although for certain reasons I decline giving their real names, I
shall indicate, for the sake of clearness, by arbitrary ones. There was a
nurse, Mrs. Southerland; a nursery-maid, Ellen Page; the cook, Mrs.
Greenwood; and the housemaid, Ellen Faith; a butler, whom I shall call
Smith, and his son, James, about two-and-twenty.
We came out to take possession at about seven o'clock in the evening;
every thing was comfortable and cheery; good fires lighted, the rooms neat
and airy, and a general air of preparation and comfort, highly conducive
to good spirits and pleasant anticipations.
The sitting-rooms were large and cheerful, and they and the bed-rooms
more than ordinarily lofty, the kitchen and servants' rooms, on the same
level, were well and comfortably furnished, and had, like the rest of the
house, an air of recent painting and fitting up, and a completely modern
character, which imparted a very cheerful air of cleanliness and
convenience.
There had been just enough of the fuss of settling agreeably to occupy
us, and to give a pleasant turn to our thoughts after we had retired to
our rooms. Being an invalid, I had a small bed to myself—resigning the
four-poster to my wife. The candle was extinguished, but a night-light was
burning. I was coming up stairs, and she, already in bed, had just
dismissed her maid, when we were both startled by a wild scream from her
room; I found her in a state of the extremest agitation and terror. She
insisted that she had seen an unnaturally tall figure come beside her bed
and stand there. The light was too faint to enable her to define any thing
respecting this apparition, beyond the fact of her having most distinctly
seen such a shape, colourless from the insufficiency of the light to
disclose more than its dark outline.
We both endeavoured to re-assure her. The room once more looked so
cheerful in the candlelight, that we were quite uninfluenced by the
contagion of her terrors. The movements and voices of the servants down
stairs still getting things into their places and completing our
comfortable arrangements, had also their effect in steeling us against any
such influence, and we set the whole thing down as a dream, or an
imperfectly-seen outline of the bed-curtains. When, however, we were
alone, my wife reiterated, still in great agitation, her clear assertion
that she had most positively seen, being at the time as completely awake
as ever she was, precisely what she had described to us. And in this
conviction she continued perfectly firm.
A day or two after this, it came out that our servants were under an
apprehension that, somehow or other, thieves had established a secret mode
of access to the lower part of the house. The butler, Smith, had seen an
ill-looking woman in his room on the first night of our arrival; and he
and other servants constantly saw, for many days subsequently, glimpses of
a retreating figure, which corresponded with that so seen by him, passing
through a passage which led to a back area in which were some coal-vaults.
This figure was seen always in the act of retreating, its back turned,
generally getting round the corner of the passage into the area, in a
stealthy and hurried way, and, when closely followed, imperfectly seen
again entering one of the coal-vaults, and when pursued into it, nowhere
to be found.
The idea of any thing supernatural in the matter had, strange to say,
not yet entered the mind of any one of the servants. They had heard some
stories of smugglers having secret passages into houses, and using their
means of access for purposes of pillage, or with a view to frighten
superstitious people out of houses which they needed for their own
objects, and a suspicion of similar practices here, caused them extreme
uneasiness. The apparent anxiety also manifested by this retreating figure
to escape observation, and her always appearing to make her egress at the
same point, favoured this romantic hypothesis. The men, however, made a
most careful examination of the back area, and of the coal-vaults, with a
view to discover some mode of egress, but entirely without success. On the
contrary, the result was, so far as it went, subversive of the theory;
solid masonry met them on every hand.
I called the man, Smith, up, to hear from his own lips the particulars
of what he had seen; and certainly his report was very curious. I give it
as literally as my memory enables me:----
His son slept in the same room, and was sound asleep; but he lay awake,
as men sometimes will on a change of bed, and having many things on his
mind. He was lying with his face towards the wall, but observing a light
and some little stir in the room, he turned round in his bed, and saw the
figure of a woman, squalid, and ragged in dress; her figure rather low and
broad; as well as I recollect, she had something—either a cloak or
shawl—on, and wore a bonnet. Her back was turned, and she appeared to be
searching or rummaging for something on the floor, and, without appearing
to observe him, she turned in doing so towards him. The light, which was
more like the intense glow of a coal, as he described it, being of a deep
red colour, proceeded from the hollow of her hand, which she held beside
her head, and he saw her perfectly distinctly. She appeared middle-aged,
was deeply pitted with the smallpox, and blind of one eye. His phrase in
describing her general appearance was, that she was "a miserable,
poor-looking creature."
He was under the impression that she must be the woman who had been
left by the proprietor in charge of the house, and who had that evening,
after having given up the keys, remained for some little time with the
female servants. He coughed, therefore, to apprize her of his presence,
and turned again towards the wall. When he again looked round she and the
light were gone; and odd as was her method of lighting herself in her
search, the circumstances excited neither uneasiness nor curiosity in his
mind, until he discovered next morning that the woman in question had left
the house long before he had gone to his bed.
I examined the man very closely as to the appearance of the person who
had visited him, and the result was what I have described. It struck me as
an odd thing, that even then, considering how prone to superstition
persons in his rank of life usually are, he did not seem to suspect any
thing supernatural in the occurrence; and, on the contrary, was thoroughly
persuaded that his visitant was a living person, who had got into the
house by some hidden entrance.
On Sunday, on his return from his place of worship, he told me that,
when the service was ended, and the congregation making their way slowly
out, he saw the very woman in the crowd, and kept his eye upon her for
several minutes, but such was the crush, that all his efforts to reach her
were unavailing, and when he got into the open street she was gone. He was
quite positive as to his having distinctly seen her, however, for several
minutes, and scouted the possibility of any mistake as to identity; and
fully impressed with the substantial and living reality of his visitant,
he was very much provoked at her having escaped him. He made inquiries
also in the neighbourhood, but could procure no information, nor hear of
any other persons having seen any woman corresponding with his visitant.
The cook and the housemaid occupied a bed-room on the kitchen floor. It
had whitewashed walls, and they were actually terrified by the appearance
of the shadow of a woman passing and repassing across the side wall
opposite to their beds. They suspected that this had been going on much
longer than they were aware, for its presence was discovered by a sort of
accident, its movements happening to take a direction in distinct
contrariety to theirs.
This shadow always moved upon one particular wall, returning after
short intervals, and causing them extreme terror. They placed the candle,
as the most obvious specific, so close to the infested wall, that the
flame all but touched it; and believed for some time that they had
effectually got rid of this annoyance; but one night, notwithstanding this
arrangement of the light, the shadow returned, passing and repassing, as
heretofore, upon the same wall, although their only candle was burning
within an inch of it, and it was obvious that no substance capable of
casting such a shadow could have interposed; and, indeed, as they
described it, the shadow seemed to have no sort of relation to the
position of the light, and appeared, as I have said, in manifest defiance
of the laws of optics.
I ought to mention that the housemaid was a particularly fearless sort
of person, as well as a very honest one; and her companion, the cook, a
scrupulously religious woman, and both agreed in every particular in their
relation of what occurred.
Meanwhile, the nursery was not without its annoyances, though as yet of
a comparatively trivial kind. Sometimes, at night, the handle of the door
was turned hurriedly as if by a person trying to come in, and at others a
knocking was made at it. These sounds occurred after the children had
settled to sleep, and while the nurse still remained awake. Whenever she
called to know "who is there," the sounds ceased; but several
times, and particularly at first, she was under the impression that they
were caused by her mistress, who had come to see the children, and thus
impressed she had got up and opened the door, expecting to see her, but
discovering only darkness, and receiving no answer to her inquiries.
With respect to this nurse, I must mention that I believe no more
perfectly trustworthy servant was ever employed in her capacity; and, in
addition to her integrity, she was remarkably gifted with sound common
sense.
One morning, I think about three or four weeks after our arrival, I was
sitting at the parlour window which looked to the front, when I saw the
little iron door which admitted into the small garden that lay between the
window where I was sitting and the public road, pushed open by a woman who
so exactly answered the description given by Smith of the woman who had
visited his room on the night of his arrival as instantaneously to impress
me with the conviction that she must be the identical person. She was a
square, short woman, dressed in soiled and tattered clothes, scarred and
pitted with small-pox, and blind of an eye. She stepped hurriedly into the
little enclosure, and peered from a distance of a few yards into the room
where I was sitting. I felt that now was the moment to clear the matter
up; but there was something stealthy in the manner and look of the woman
which convinced me that I must not appear to notice her until her retreat
was fairly cut off. Unfortunately, I was suffering from a lame foot, and
could not reach the bell as quickly as I wished. I made all the haste I
could, and rang violently to bring up the servant Smith. In the short
interval that intervened, I observed the woman from the window, who having
in a leisurely way, and with a kind of scrutiny, looked along the front
windows of the house, passed quickly out again, closing the gate after
her, and followed a lady who was walking along the footpath at a quick
pace, as if with the intention of begging from her. The moment the man
entered I told him—"the blind woman you described to me has this
instant followed a lady in that direction, try to overtake her." He
was, if possible, more eager than I in the chase, but returned in a short
time after a vain pursuit, very hot, and utterly disappointed. And,
thereafter, we saw her face no more.
All this time, and up to the period of our leaving the house, which was
not for two or three months later, there occurred at intervals the only
phenomenon in the entire series having any resemblance to what we hear
described of "Spiritualism." This was a knocking, like a soft
hammering with a wooden mallet, as it seemed in the timbers between the
bedroom ceilings and the roof. It had this special peculiarity, that it
was always rythmical, and, I think, invariably, the emphasis upon the last
stroke. It would sound rapidly "one, two, three, four—one,
two, three, four;" or "one, two, three—one, two,
three," and sometimes "one, two—one, two,"
&c., and this, with intervals and resumptions, monotonously for hours
at a time.
At first this caused my wife, who was a good deal confined to her bed,
much annoyance; and we sent to our neighbours to inquire if any hammering
or carpentering was going on in their houses but were informed that
nothing of the sort was taking place. I have myself heard it frequently,
always in the same inaccessible part of the house, and with the same
monotonous emphasis. One odd thing about it was, that on my wife's calling
out, as she used to do when it became more than usually troublesome,
"stop that noise," it was invariably arrested for a longer or
shorter time.
Of course none of these occurrences were ever mentioned in hearing of
the children. They would have been, no doubt, like most children, greatly
terrified had they heard any thing of the matter, and known that their
elders were unable to account for what was passing; and their fears would
have made them wretched and troublesome.
They used to play for some hours every day in the back garden—the
house forming one end of this oblong inclosure, the stable and coach-house
the other, and two parallel walls of considerable height the sides. Here,
as it afforded a perfectly safe playground, they were frequently left
quite to themselves; and in talking over their days' adventures, as
children will, they happened to mention a woman, or rather the woman, for
they had long grown familiar with her appearance, whom they used to see in
the garden while they were at play. They assumed that she came in and went
out at the stable door, but they never actually saw her enter or depart.
They merely saw a figure—that of a very poor woman, soiled and
ragged—near the stable wall, stooping over the ground, and apparently
grubbing in the loose clay in search of something. She did not disturb, or
appear to observe them; and they left her in undisturbed possession of her
nook of ground. When seen it was always in the same spot, and similarly
occupied; and the description they gave of her general appearance—for
they never saw her face—corresponded with that of the one-eyed woman
whom Smith, and subsequently as it seemed, I had seen.
The other man, James, who looked after a mare which I had purchased for
the purpose of riding exercise, had, like every one else in the house, his
little trouble to report, though it was not much. The stall in which, as
the most comfortable, it was decided to place her, she peremptorily
declined to enter. Though a very docile and gentle little animal, there
was no getting her into it. She would snort and rear, and, in fact, do or
suffer any thing rather than set her hoof in it. He was fain, therefore,
to place her in another. And on several occasions he found her there,
exhibiting all the equine symptoms of extreme fear. Like the rest of us,
however, this man was not troubled in the particular case with any
superstitious qualms. The mare had evidently been frightened; and he was
puzzled to find out how, or by whom, for the stable was well-secured, and
had, I am nearly certain, a lock-up yard outside.
One morning I was greeted with the intelligence that robbers had
certainly got into the house in the night; and that one of them had
actually been seen in the nursery. The witness, I found, was my eldest
child, then, as I have said, about nine years of age. Having awoke in the
night, and lain awake for some time in her bed, she heard the handle of
the door turn, and a person whom she distinctly saw—for it was a light
night, and the window-shutters unclosed—but whom she had never seen
before, stepped in on tiptoe, and with an appearance of great caution. He
was a rather small man, with a very red face; he wore an oddly cut frock
coat, the collar of which stood up, and trousers, rough and wide, like
those of a sailor, turned up at the ankles, and either short boots or
clumsy shoes, covered with mud. This man listened beside the nurse's bed,
which stood next the door, as if to satisfy himself that she was sleeping
soundly; and having done so for some seconds, he began to move cautiously
in a diagonal line, across the room to the chimney-piece, where he stood
for a while, and so resumed his tiptoe walk, skirting the wall, until he
reached a chest of drawers, some of which were open, and into which he
looked, and began to rummage in a hurried way, as the child supposed,
making search for something worth taking away. He then passed on to the
window, where was a dressing-table, at which he also stopped, turning over
the things upon it, and standing for some time at the window as if looking
out, and then resuming his walk by the side wall opposite to that by which
he had moved up to the window, he returned in the same way toward the
nurse's bed, so as to reach it at the foot. With its side to the end wall,
in which was the door, was placed the little bed in which lay my eldest
child, who watched his proceedings with the extremest terror. As he drew
near she instinctively moved herself in the bed, with her head and
shoulders to the wall, drawing up her feet; but he passed by without
appearing to observe, or, at least, to care for her presence. Immediately
after the nurse turned in her bed as if about to waken; and when the
child, who had drawn the clothes about her head, again ventured to peep
out, the man was gone.
The child had no idea of her having seen any thing more formidable than
a thief. With the prowling, cautious, and noiseless manner of proceeding
common to such marauders, the air and movements of the man whom she had
seen entirely corresponded. And on hearing her perfectly distinct and
consistent account, I could myself arrive at no other conclusion than that
a stranger had actually got into the house. I had, therefore, in the first
instance, a most careful examination made to discover any traces of an
entrance having been made by any window into the house. The doors had been
found barred and locked as usual; but no sign of any thing of the sort was
discernible. I then had the various articles—plate, wearing apparel,
books, &c., counted; and after having conned over and reckoned up
every thing, it became quite clear that nothing whatever had been removed
from the house, nor was there the slightest indication of any thing having
been so much as disturbed there. I must here state that this child was
remarkably clear, intelligent, and observant; and that her description of
the man, and of all that had occurred, was most exact, and as detailed as
the want of perfect light rendered possible.
I felt assured that an entrance had actually been effected into the
house, though for what purpose was not easily to be conjectured. The man,
Smith, was equally confident upon this point; and his theory was that the
object was simply to frighten us out of the house by making us believe it
haunted; and he was more than ever anxious and on the alert to discover
the conspirators. It often since appeared to me odd. Every year, indeed,
more odd, as this cumulative case of the marvellous becomes to my mind
more and more inexplicable—that underlying my sense of mystery and
puzzle, was all along the quiet assumption that all these occurrences were
one way or another referable to natural causes. I could not account for
them, indeed, myself; but during the whole period I inhabited that house,
I never once felt, though much alone, and often up very late at night, any
of those tremors and thrills which every one has at times experienced when
situation and the hour are favourable. Except the cook and housemaid, who
were plagued with the shadow I mentioned crossing and recrossing upon the
bedroom wall, we all, without exception, experienced the same strange
sense of security, and regarded these phenomena rather with a perplexed
sort of interest and curiosity, than with any more unpleasant sensations.
The knockings which I have mentioned at the nursery door, preceded
generally by the sound of a step on the lobby, meanwhile continued. At
that time (for my wife, like myself, was an invalid) two eminent
physicians, who came out occasionally by rail, were attending us. These
gentlemen were at first only amused, but ultimately interested, and very
much puzzled by the occurrences which we described. One of them, at last,
recommended that a candle should be kept burning upon the lobby. It was in
fact a recurrence to an old woman's recipe against ghosts—of course it
might be serviceable, too, against impostors; at all events, seeming, as I
have said, very much interested and puzzled, he advised it, and it was
tried. We fancied that it was successful; for there was an interval of
quiet for, I think, three or four nights. But after that, the noises—the
footsteps on the lobby—the knocking at the door, and the turning of the
handle recommenced in full force, notwithstanding the light upon the table
outside; and these particular phenomena became only more perplexing than
ever.
The alarm of robbers and smugglers gradually subsided after a week or
two; but we were again to hear news from the nursery. Our second little
girl, then between seven and eight years of age, saw in the night
time—she alone being awake—a young woman, with black, or very dark
hair, which hung loose, and with a black cloak on, standing near the
middle of the floor, opposite the hearthstone, and fronting the foot of
her bed. She appeared quite unobservant of the children and nurse sleeping
in the room. She was very pale, and looked, the child said, both
"sorry and frightened," and with something very peculiar and
terrible about her eyes, which made the child conclude that she was dead.
She was looking, not at, but in the direction of the child's bed, and
there was a dark streak across her throat, like a scar with blood upon it.
This figure was not motionless; but once or twice turned slowly, and
without appearing to be conscious of the presence of the child, or the
other occupants of the room, like a person in vacancy or abstraction.
There was on this occasion a night-light burning in the chamber; and the
child saw, or thought she saw, all these particulars with the most perfect
distinctness. She got her head under the bed-clothes; and although a good
many years have passed since then, she cannot recall the spectacle without
feelings of peculiar horror.
One day, when the children were playing in the back garden, I asked
them to point out to me the spot where they were accustomed to see the
woman who occasionally showed herself as I have described, near the stable
wall. There was no division of opinion as to this precise point, which
they indicated in the most distinct and confident way. I suggested that,
perhaps, something might be hidden there in the ground; and advised them
digging a hole there with their little spades, to try for it. Accordingly,
to work they went, and by my return in the evening they had grubbed up a
piece of a jawbone, with several teeth in it. The bone was very much
decayed, and ready to crumble to pieces, but the teeth were quite sound. I
could not tell whether they were human grinders; but I showed the fossil
to one of the physicians I have mentioned, who came out the next evening,
and he pronounced them human teeth. The same conclusion was come to a day
or two later by the other medical man. It appears to me now, on reviewing
the whole matter, almost unaccountable that, with such evidence before me,
I should not have got in a labourer, and had the spot effectually dug and
searched. I can only say, that so it was. I was quite satisfied of the
moral truth of every word that had been related to me, and which I have
here set down with scrupulous accuracy. But I experienced an apathy, for
which neither then nor afterwards did I quite know how to account. I had a
vague, but immovable impression that the whole affair was referable to
natural agencies. It was not until some time after we had left the house,
which, by-the-by, we afterwards found had had the reputation of being
haunted before we had come to live in it, that on reconsideration I
discovered the serious difficulty of accounting satisfactorily for all
that had occurred upon ordinary principles. A great deal we might
arbitrarily set down to imagination. But even in so doing there was, in
limine, the oddity, not to say improbability, of so many different
persons having nearly simultaneously suffered from different spectral and
other illusions during the short period for which we had occupied that
house, who never before, nor so far as we learned, afterwards were
troubled by any fears or fancies of the sort. There were other things,
too, not to be so accounted for. The odd knockings in the roof I
frequently heard myself.
There were also, which I before forgot to mention, in the daytime,
rappings at the doors of the sitting-rooms, which constantly deceived us;
and it was not till our "come in" was unanswered, and the hall
or passage outside the door was discovered to be empty, that we learned
that whatever else caused them, human hands did not. All the persons who
reported having seen the different persons or appearances here described
by me, were just as confident of having literally and distinctly seen
them, as I was of having seen the hard-featured woman with the blind eye,
so remarkably corresponding with Smith's description.
About a week after the discovery of the teeth, which were found, I
think, about two feet under the ground, a friend, much advanced in years,
and who remembered the town in which we had now taken up our abode, for a
very long time, happened to pay us a visit. He good-humouredly pooh-poohed
the whole thing; but at the same time was evidently curious about it.
"We might construct a sort of story," said I (I am giving, of
course, the substance and purport, not the exact words, of our dialogue),
"and assign to each of the three figures who appeared their
respective parts in some dreadful tragedy enacted in this house. The male
figure represents the murderer; the ill-looking, one-eyed woman his
accomplice, who, we will suppose, buried the body where she is now so
often seen grubbing in the earth, and where the human teeth and jawbone
have so lately been disinterred; and the young woman with dishevelled
tresses, and black cloak, and the bloody scar across her throat, their
victim. A difficulty, however, which I cannot get over, exists in the
cheerfulness, the great publicity, and the evident very recent date of the
house." "Why, as to that," said he, "the house is not
modern; it and those beside it formed an old government store, altered and
fitted up recently as you see. I remember it well in my young days, fifty
years ago, before the town had grown out in this direction, and a more
entirely lonely spot, or one more fitted for the commission of a secret
crime, could not have been imagined."
I have nothing to add, for very soon after this my physician pronounced
a longer stay unnecessary for my health, and we took our departure for
another place of abode. I may add, that although I have resided for
considerable periods in many other houses, I never experienced any
annoyances of a similar kind elsewhere; neither have I made (stupid dog!
you will say), any inquiries respecting either the antecedents or
subsequent history of the house in which we made so disturbed a sojourn. I
was content with what I knew, and have here related as clearly as I could,
and I think it a very pretty puzzle as it stands.
[Thus ends the statement, which we abandon to the ingenuity of our
readers, having ourselves no satisfactory explanation to suggest; and
simply repeating the assurance with which we prefaced it, namely, that we
can vouch for the perfect good faith and the accuracy of the narrator.—E.D.U.M.]
|
