PHILIP ECKERT lived for many years in an old, weather-stained wooden
house about three miles from the little town of Marion, in Vermont.
There must be quite a number of persons living who remember him, not
unkindly, I trust, and know something of the story that I am about to
tell.
“Old Man Eckert,” as he was always called, was not of a sociable
disposition and lived alone. As he was never known to speak of his own
affairs nobody thereabout knew anything of his past, nor of his relatives
if he had any. Without being particularly ungracious or repellent in
manner or speech, he managed somehow to be immune to impertinent
curiosity, yet exempt from the evil repute with which it commonly
revenges itself when baffled; so far as I know, Mr. Eckert’s renown as a
reformed assassin or a retired pirate of the Spanish Main had not reached
any ear in Marion. He got his living cultivating a small and not very
fertile farm.
One day he disappeared and a prolonged search by his neighbors failed to
turn him up or throw any light upon his whereabouts or whyabouts.
Nothing indicated preparation to leave: all was as he might have left it
to go to the spring for a bucket of water. For a few weeks little else
was talked of in that region; then “old man Eckert” became a village tale
for the ear of the stranger. I do not know what was done regarding his
property—the correct legal thing, doubtless. The house was standing,
still vacant and conspicuously unfit, when I last heard of it, some
twenty years afterward.
Of course it came to be considered “haunted,” and the customary tales
were told of moving lights, dolorous sounds and startling apparitions.
At one time, about five years after the disappearance, these stories of
the supernatural became so rife, or through some attesting circumstances
seemed so important, that some of Marion’s most serious citizens deemed
it well to investigate, and to that end arranged for a night session on
the premises. The parties to this undertaking were John Holcomb, an
apothecary; Wilson Merle, a lawyer, and Andrus C. Palmer, the teacher of
the public school, all men of consequence and repute. They were to meet
at Holcomb’s house at eight o’clock in the evening of the appointed day
and go together to the scene of their vigil, where certain arrangements
for their comfort, a provision of fuel and the like, for the season was
winter, had been already made.
Palmer did not keep the engagement, and after waiting a half-hour for him
the others went to the Eckert house without him. They established
themselves in the principal room, before a glowing fire, and without
other light than it gave, awaited events. It had been agreed to speak as
little as possible: they did not even renew the exchange of views
regarding the defection of Palmer, which had occupied their minds on the
way.
Probably an hour had passed without incident when they heard (not without
emotion, doubtless) the sound of an opening door in the rear of the
house, followed by footfalls in the room adjoining that in which they
sat. The watchers rose to their feet, but stood firm, prepared for
whatever might ensue. A long silence followed—how long neither would
afterward undertake to say. Then the door between the two rooms opened
and a man entered.
It was Palmer. He was pale, as if from excitement—as pale as the others
felt themselves to be. His manner, too, was singularly distrait: he
neither responded to their salutations nor so much as looked at them, but
walked slowly across the room in the light of the failing fire and
opening the front door passed out into the darkness.
It seems to have been the first thought of both men that Palmer was
suffering from fright—that something seen, heard or imagined in the back
room had deprived him of his senses. Acting on the same friendly impulse
both ran after him through the open door. But neither they nor anyone
ever again saw or heard of Andrus Palmer!
This much was ascertained the next morning. During the session of
Messrs. Holcomb and Merle at the “haunted house” a new snow had fallen to
a depth of several inches upon the old. In this snow Palmer’s trail from
his lodging in the village to the back door of the Eckert house was
conspicuous. But there it ended: from the front door nothing led away
but the tracks of the two men who swore that he preceded them. Palmer’s
disappearance was as complete as that of “old man Eckert” himself—whom,
indeed, the editor of the local paper somewhat graphically accused of
having “reached out and pulled him in.”