or uncouth--in comparison a local servant would have made purgatory seem
pleasant.
“I am afraid you will conclude we are rather hard to please: perhaps
we are somewhat exacting, but we cannot help it; we are women of the
old school, may I add, of gentle birth, who claim to the full all the
privileges of our sex and station; besides we offered a good sum for
the house: we expected to be treated fairly.
“According to the advertisement, ‘The Hall’ was furnished: it was, in
reality, nothing of the sort. Can any house in which there is neither
bookcase nor bathroom be said to be furnished? Though standing alone
on a fairly large piece of ground--I cannot truthfully say a garden--it
might well have been called semi-detached, for we searched in it in
vain to find a whole piece of furniture.
“Marie and Eugenie are smart young women: they pride themselves on
being slim and elegant. Imagine then their disgust when the kitchen
chairs actually collapsed under them.
“I, too, had a grievance. Without conceit I may say that it is not in
my nature to be clumsy. How was it then that I broke three cups, a
saucer, and a cream-jug within the short space of half an hour? The
reason was obvious enough! The cups were all cracked, the saucers
damaged, and the jugs should have been labelled ‘beware of the handle.’
Even moderately disfigured china is my mother’s pet aversion. How she
suffered under these circumstances I will not attempt to describe.
“But the plate! I have heard of gold plate, silver plate, copper
plate, brass plate, and electro plate, but with none of these could I
associate this mongrel species, these odds and ends we were called upon
to use. It was, indeed, an enigma, and I hate enigmas, especially when
they are not worth the trouble of solving. Luckily, substitutes were
easily obtainable. I wired for a complete supply of plate from home,
after which the motley crew of hirelings were no longer in evidence.
“And the carpets! I have always thought such luxuries, even the most
costly, a doubtful blessing; these were undoubtedly an unmixed evil.
Fortunately, we were able to dispense with them. The floors underneath
were of polished oak, and with these we were greatly taken. True, we
were somewhat puzzled to account for certain irregularities in the
boards, but, on the whole, I think we should have been more astonished
had we found them intact.
“Could we, by any means, make the place tenantable? Marie and Eugenie
are brave and forgiving girls! In spite of their recent adventure--they
had never been so insulted in their lives--they thought it possible;
mother and I were doubtful.
“We hired all the furniture there was to be hired from the village,
we engaged by the day the only prepossessing and respectable woman it
contained, and we tried to settle down and pretend we enjoyed it. From
the beginning it was a fiasco--we were miserable! and to add to our
distress, or rather, to fill to overflowing our cup of misfortune, the
weather became miserable, too; it began to rain.
“What was there to hope for now? Nothing! What was there to do now?
Nothing! Nothing but sit at the window and gaze at the dreary lawn,
shut off from the road by a hideous wall, or to flit about from room to
room wringing one’s hands like a distracted phantom.
“A phantom! I did not believe in phantoms when I came to Thurlow;
I treated the Unknown with the blind levity of a Voltaire; I was
inconsequently sceptical; I had been born psychic.
“Though I was sublimely unconscious of it, the dawn of my awakening was
at hand.
“Though the house was undesirable in so many ways--cold, bare,
comfortless, dilapidated--it was not without interest. It was old--old
with the antiquity of two or more centuries--and age is always
interesting.
“There were rooms in it, narrow, rectangular rooms darkened by
Virginian creeper that dropped their crimson foliage over diamond
panes, rooms the very air of which seemed charged with the shades of
old-world wits and _savants_.
“In my imagination the house had once been a school: the severity of
the walls, the coldness of their neat yellow stones suggested it;
I even went so far as to fancy I could discern ink-stains on the
skirting-boards; and who but schoolboys ever desecrate a floor with
ink-stains?
“The predominating feature in the house was undoubtedly the staircase.
“It was the first thing one noticed on entering; there was no escaping
it. Confronting the door in the very middle of the hall, it stood
there like some grey and massive sentinel--and barred the way. One
wondered how it had ever got there, it was so disproportionately
large for the house. It was masterful, aggressive, FASCINATING (Marie
declared ‘there was no getting away from it--that it LIVED’)--and--it
was made of STONE. There was no doubt about it now ‘The Hall’ had
indeed been a school; would any one but a pedagogue have a stone
staircase? Eugh! my mother felt a twinge of rheumatism the moment she
set eyes on it.
“It was curiously wanting in proportion; consisting of barely a dozen
steps, it was most uncomfortably steep and of a most unnecessary width.
I compared it with some strange, squatting animal--a comparison that
grew on me the longer I remained in the house.
“At the top of the staircase was a gallery, protected by high rails,
which I discovered connected the used and disused portions of the
house. In the latter there were some rooms we did not care to inhabit;
there were a few we were even unable to explore--they were locked.
“I felt no curiosity about them; they were certain to be both
commonplace, prosaic and dusty: every time I passed them I smelt
dust--and I cannot endure a particle of dust. If I had believed any of
them to be a library, I might have been tempted to pick the lock; I
am passionately fond of books--that is to say, of some books--when I am
exiled in the country and it is always raining.
“I was in search of a book which I had laid down somewhere, when I
crossed the hall one afternoon, and left my mother dozing in a big
armchair before the drawing-room fire.
“Marie said she had seen it on the oak settle; most likely, for I
often took my book and lounged on it. You see I had grown fond of the
oak settle naturally, for it was the only piece of furniture in that
monster house that stirred in me any friendly feeling whatever. But
Marie must have been dreaming, it was certainly not there. I would have
called to Marie to come and help me search for it, had I not remembered
that she and Eugenie had gone into the village to do a little shopping
on their own account. They laugh in their grandest manner at those
‘silly little shops,’ but with a true woman’s instinct they cannot
resist ‘buying.’
“I felt indignant, provoked, angry! never had I wanted to read so much
and never had I been at such a loss to find a book.
“Oh! I recollected there was one upstairs--an ancient and musty edition
of ‘Eugene Aram’--(proof positive, this, that the place was once a
school; would any one save a schoolmaster read ‘Eugene Aram’)? I had
seen it lying on the floor of a disused cupboard--alone and forsaken: a
solitary relic of the Academical bookshelf.
“Were I in a library, ‘Eugene Aram’ would probably be the last book I
would choose to read; Lytton’s tales are horrible; I abominate horrors.
I thought of the staircase, I glanced at it; it was really very dark. I
shuddered!
“I did not understand why I shuddered, unless it was on account of
a draught! Of course, a draught. The house was full of draughts. The
hour was late, the afternoon was cold, it was March, and undoubtedly
a door was open somewhere; the book was not worth the trouble, I was
over-tired, I would return to my mother. This I was actually preparing
to do when the sudden appearance of a light made me pause--it came from
the disused wing overhead.
“I can assure you I wanted very much to go to my mother; I would have
given all I possessed to have gone to my mother; I could not: I could
not stir; that light enthralled me.
“I had never seen such a light--such a queer, unaccountable light--a
light that to anyone less sceptical might have seemed an ‘UNNATURAL’
Light! Perhaps it was an unnatural light--and I laughed. But what--what
in the name of Heaven could it be?
“Drawing rapidly nearer and quickly assuming the appearance and
proportions of a FIRE, it filled me with the most unusual, the most
preposterously unusual, doubts and fears.
“And now for the first time I detected it was accompanied by
incongruous though perfectly intelligible sound--the sound of someone
tapping with all their might, tapping with a pair of high-heeled shoes.
“Aghast at this discovery, my perplexities increased, and I was vainly
endeavouring to extricate myself from a chaotic quagmire of unpleasant
thoughts, when a scream, the very intensity of which made me tremble,
echoed and re-echoed throughout the house.
“‘Fire! Fire! Bring me Fire!’ These words, apparently so strangely
paradoxical, were repeated with renewed vigour and anguish, the voice
after each effort dying away into the most appalling and piteous wail.
“The screams were coming nearer, but before I had time to realise the
tumult was so close at hand, or to fortify myself against the tableau I
now had every reason to anticipate, a girl, her hair and dress a mass
of lurid flames, came rushing frantically into the gallery.
“The spectacle she presented was so satanically awful that I
immediately crossed myself. An indescribable thrill of terror ran
through me. I felt--I KNEW--I was actually in the presence of an
apparition; nothing ‘earthly’ could possibly have produced a similar or
in any way equivalent effect.
“Staring at me through the yellow inferno of flames was a woman’s
face that, despite its horribly contorted features, was amazingly and
uniquely beautiful, the perfect regularity of the Jewish lineaments
being strikingly enhanced by the whiteness of the teeth, the blueness
of the eyes.
“The latter came upon me as a further shock. Though very lovely both
in their excessive length and hue, they did not match that style of
face; to have done so they should have been black or brown--and their
expression was repellent.
“I say repellent; I might with great accuracy say ‘hellish,’ for I saw
in them the mirror of a sinful soul--of a VERY sinful soul.
“I could form no idea as to her dress, the blaze effectually hid
everything save her face; but from the partial glimpse I caught of
a pair of satin shoes, I surmised she was in some sort of ball-room
costume. The duration of her transit, though to me an eternity, could
not, I fancy, have occupied more than a very few seconds.
“Still gazing at me and beating the air with its hands, the phantom
rushed shrieking onwards, disappearing with the impetus of a tornado in
the inhabited portion of the house.
“I had no further ‘use’ for ‘Eugene Aram.’ I returned to my mother.
“The same phenomena was witnessed by Marie and Eugenie respectively
within the next three days--on the fourth we left. Had we remained,
there might have been a fatality; we were all genuinely frightened--and
mother is an invalid--a very nervous invalid.
“Perhaps you feel inclined to say it was all a matter of nerves. What
more likely! We were an isolated quartet of over-imaginative women! Or
you might say that some story we had heard in connection with the house
suggested these occult demonstrations.
“Do not be premature! We only heard a few weeks ago that ‘The Hall’
had a reputation for being haunted, and it is now several months since
we left Thurlow. Our informant, a former tenant, was, we have every
reason to believe, a person of indisputable veracity and common sense,
in short, a person quite incapable of inventing any such story as the
following which he kindly narrated for our satisfaction.
“It appears from what he told us (his MS. is still in my bureau) that
Thurlow Hall once belonged to Mrs. Purvis, an old lady with one child,
Charles.
“Charles was, of course, the apple of her eye; Charles ruled the house;
every one must obey Mr. Charles; Mr. Charles could do nothing wrong.
Nothing wrong until, in the heyday of his youth, in the season of wild
oats, he unexpectedly fell in love with a Gaiety girl--Phyllis (no one
remembered her other name)--and married her--and THAT was very wrong.
“His mother was indignant--FURIOUS--not with Charles, of course--but
with that creature--Phyllis.
“Phyllis had inveigled him into marrying her; Phyllis would bring
eternal disgrace on the family; Phyllis would run away with another man
and ruin him.
“Ruin HIM--ruin Charles--and the fond mother grew despondent, very
despondent, so despondent indeed that unkind neighbours said she was
mad. They were wrong; the despondency was only a reaction, she suddenly
cheered up, all was apparently forgiven and forgotten. Charles and
Phyllis were invited to spend Christmas at Thurlow.
“They went, very naturally they went--Charles overjoyed at the prospect
of displaying the Purvis estate to his charming wife.
“His mother welcomed Phyllis effusively; she made her feel thoroughly
at home; she expressed an ardent desire to see her in her bridal robes.
“Phyllis consented--what else could she do? She had been a Gaiety girl!
she had lived for admiration.
“Arrayed in her wedding garments she entered Mrs. Purvis’s room,
surprising the old lady in the act of lighting an oil lamp--a rather
‘shaky’ old lamp filled to the brim with oil.
“Phyllis was radiant; her sole thought was of the sensation she would
create at the coming Christmas festivities. Had she been less absorbed
she might have noticed how the hand trembled that raised the lamp; she
might even have been on her guard.
“But vanity as well as love is blind. Phyllis accepted Mrs. Purvis’s
profuse expressions of admiration and delight in good faith; they were,
of course, both genuine and natural; they were, moreover, her due. The
bride was intent on examining herself in the mirror; her mother-in-law
approached her from behind, and, bending suddenly forward, deliberately
hurled the lamp on to the train of her dress. There was a loud crash--an
explosion--and the wedding dress was on fire.
“No one was at hand to render assistance, Charles and the servants
having been slyly inveigled out of the house, and the only response
to her screams were loud peals of laughter from her now wholly insane
mother-in-law.
“It was small wonder that the poor girl lost her head, and, craving
water, cried in her agony, ‘Bring me fire, oh! bring me fire!’
“In that mad rush from the room along the disused corridors her one
endeavour would appear to have been to reach her bedroom--perhaps she
had forgotten that Charles had gone OUT--but her efforts were frustrated
by the fiendish fury of the flames. The amount of oil on her dress
must have made it blaze like a furnace.
“She had barely crossed the gallery into the opposite wing of the house
before her scorched and smouldering limbs gave way, and falling to the
ground she was speedily burned to ashes; her supreme and final agony
being summed up in a despairing cry, so loud and piercing that it was
even heard outside by Charles.
“Not daring to approach the house alone, Charles summoned some
villagers, and keeping well in their rear, gingerly accompanied them
across the lawn to the front entrance.
“There they were met by Mrs. Purvis, chuckling horribly.
“Corridors, gallery and staircase were in flames, and had it not been
for the opportune arrival of the vicar the whole place would have been
consumed; thanks, however, to his vigour and level-headedness the
fire was eventually extinguished, and although the damage done was
considerable, the bulk of the property remained unscathed.
“No trace of the unfortunate Mrs. Charles Purvis being found, the
precise manner of her death for many years remained a mystery. But
the erratic babblings of her mother-in-law supplied material for
certain conjectures, which were afterwards confirmed by the lucid and
exhaustive confession of the old lady, who regained her reason on her
deathbed.
“Though a thorough restoration of the property was effected, Charles
would never live at the Hall. A long series of unsatisfactory
tenancies succeeded the events I have just related, and the story of a
ghost has at length come to stay.
“N.B.--I have good reason for believing the house is still (August 1908)
haunted; most probably this will always be the case.”
THE GUILSBOROUGH GHOST
OR A
MINUTE ACCOUNT[4] OF THE APPEARANCE OF
THE GHOST OF
JOHN CROXFORD
EXECUTED AT NORTHAMPTON, AUGUST 4, 1764
For the Murder of a Stranger
in the Parish of GUILSBOROUGH
Printed in the year 1764 and reprinted by
F. Cordeaux, Northampton, 1819
[4] The different styles of writing in the following are due to
certain alterations I have been obliged to make, the English
of the original being so involved in places as to be nearly
unintelligible.
PART I
Technical form of apparition: Phantasm of dead
Source of authenticity: Copied almost _ad verbum_ from the above
MS., lent me by a resident in Guilsborough, August 5, 1908
Cause of Haunting: Murder
PREFACE
The publication from which the following extracts are taken was printed
at Northampton (where the original may still be seen, August 1908) in
the year 1764.
It appears that the author, who was officiating there as temporary
chaplain to the jail, was a man of indisputable and well-known
integrity, and a very popular preacher throughout the county.
In order to render his work useful and instructive, innumerable
references are made to the Scriptures, but his quotations are of too
great a length for the following abridged tract, which is copied from
the original and contains only the account of the interview the author
had with Croxford’s Ghost.
THE GHOST
It appears from the account given in a pamphlet reprinted and sold
by G. Henson, Letterpress and Copper-plate Printer, Bridge Street,
Northampton, 1848, that on Saturday, August 4, 1764, John Croxford,
together with three others of the names of Seamark, Deacon and Butlin
were tried at the Assizes of Northampton and convicted of murder.
It came out at the trial that the unfortunate victim was a native of
Scotland, travelling with goods, and that by chance he called at the
house of Seamark, a shepherd’s hut in the parish of Guilsborough,
Northamptonshire, where Croxford and his companions used to meet,
where they robbed and afterwards cruelly murdered him, and in order to
prevent a discovery consumed his body in an oven; which was proved on
the evidence of one of Seamark’s children, who was an eye-witness to
the transaction, by looking through the crevices of the floor from the
room above.
They were all found guilty and executed on August 4, 1764, and
Croxford’s body hung in chains on Hollowell Heath, in the parish of
Guilsborough, near the spot where the horrid deed was perpetrated--(and
no spot more suggestive of such a tragedy could be imagined).
The author of the work--at that time (1764) holding the appointment of
chaplain to the Northampton Jail--after quoting passages from various
writers to prove the reality of the subject, proceeds to give an
account of the appearance of Croxford’s Ghost, as follows:
“I shall now proceed without further lett or impediment to a plain and
conscientious account of the ghost or apparition which was the occasion
of my troubling the world with this narrative; unless I first observe
that the behaviour of the prisoners, one of whom is the subject of
these pages, lately tried, condemned and executed at Northampton, for
the murder of a person unknown, upon the evidence of Ann Seamark and
her son, about nine or ten years old, was such as astonished every
beholder....
“Clear and conclusive as the evidence was against them, no arguments,
even after condemnation, though delivered and enforced with the utmost
energy, precision and perspicuity by a learned and worthy divine,
were able to reach their hardened hearts and prevail for an open and
unreserved confession of their guilt. Even at the gallows, in their
last addresses to the people, they insisted on their innocence in the
strongest terms imaginable; wishing the heaviest penalties an offended
God could inflict might be their portion in the next world, if they
were guilty of the murder that was laid to their charge and for which
they were about to suffer.
“Thus did they divide the sentiments of the crowd that many were
brought over to a full persuasion of their innocence, while others
were left halting between two opinions and severely agitated with
conflicting doubts. But mark the event.
“After having instructed my people as a teacher in the knowledge of the
Scriptures, I used to spend the superfluous hours of the Lord’s Day in
perusing some part or other of the Old and New Testament.
“Accordingly, on August 12, 1764, being the Sabbath, I returned as
usual into my study, the door of which is secured by a lock with a
spring-bolt, and sat down to my accustomed evening devotion; the
business of this day by rotation laying in the New Testament, and
in that part of it where St. Paul in his Epistle to the Corinthians
proposes, maintains and proves the resurrection of the body. Struck
with the sublimity of his thoughts, boldness of his figures, and
energy of his diction, and convinced by the number and weight of
his arguments, and looking with a pleasing foretaste of happiness
into futurity, I was on a sudden surprised with the perfect form and
appearance of a man, who stood erect at a small distance from my right
side.
“Conscious that the door was locked and that there was no other
means by which my visitor could have entered, I was considerably
surprised--surprise turning into abject terror--when, glancing with
irresistible fascination at the man, I perceived in him something
indefinably but most unmistakably Unnatural.
“Feeling sure that I was in the actual presence of an apparition,
I contrived, by an almost superhuman effort, I admit, to sum up
sufficient courage to speak--my voice seeming dry and unrecognisable.
“I addressed it in the power and spirit of the Gospel; inquiring on
what errand it was sent; what was intended by such an application, and
what services could be expected from a person of so little note and
mean abilities as myself.
“I must here state that although the spectre had inspired me with so
much awe, I did not associate it with anything EVIL.
“Every second tended to strengthen my composure, and when it spoke in
a voice rather more hollow and intense, perhaps, than that of a human
being, my fears were instantly dissipated. I was now able to take a
close stock of it, and observed that in features, general appearance,
and clothes it closely resembled any ordinary labouring man; it was in
expression and colouring, only it differed--its eyes were lurid, its
cheeks livid.
“Raising one extremely white and emaciated hand, it desired me to
compose myself, saying that as it was now strictly limited by a
Superior Power, and could do no one act but by the permission of God, I
had no reason to be afraid, abrupt as was its appearance, and that if
I would endeavour to overcome the visible perturbation I was in, it
would proceed in the business of its errand.
“At this announcement my heart fluttered with an excitement I found
difficult to control. Was the wonderful mystery that had hitherto
enshrouded the existence and composition of the Unknown about to
be revealed to me--was I going to be initiated into those secrets
heretofore denied to man? Eagerly promising to compose myself, and lost
to all else save the fascinating presence of my guest, I settled down
to listen to anything the phantasm might have to say.
“The room, I must here state, was lighted by a single, though rather
powerful, double-wick oil lamp, which I had always deemed sufficient
to illuminate the whole apartment, but which now--and I could not help
noticing the phenomenon--did not extend its rays beyond the cadaverous
face of my intruder, upon which the full force of its light seemed
concentrated.
“Commencing in clear and solemn tones, the phantasm stated that it was
one of the unhappy prisoners executed at Northampton on the 4th of
August, 1764.