PERHAPS the most unique of many ghostly experiences—both personal and
those of friends—was one which took place on the fateful night
between August 3rd and 4th, 1914. My brother (who though strong and
unimaginative is somewhat psychic) and I had sat up till about
midnight, and I was amazed to hear him suddenly declare, as he shut
his book and rose, that “no one could sit and read with that noise
going on.” I asked what noise, and, on being bidden to listen (our
house is on a quiet hill off an old Roman road going to the coast)
noticed the sound of a great crowd, a confused, soft sound. “Why,” I
said, “I don’t understand you—it’s no worse than any Bank Holiday.
Quieter, indeed. You can well understand their being about to-night;
they want to know whether it will be war or not.” He maintained that
it was impossible to do anything but get quickly to bed. More and
more amazed—this was so unlike him—I went to the front door with him,
and there, clear and distinct, the sound of thousands of footsteps,
of people shuffling, treading, moving about, but without uttering one
single word, came from the road at the foot of our hill—about four
houses’ distance. Nothing whatever could be seen. My brother
declined absolutely to let me run down to look, or to come with me.
Next day we heard that war had been declared at midnight. We live
five miles out of London and it is not a place where people would
gather for news. Subsequent inquiries made of a friend who lived on
the road where the silent crowd had moved and passed about (remaining
in the one place so far as I could judge), revealed nothing in the
way of explanation. To his knowledge there had been no crowd. It was
as if the ghosts of those who were to fall during those coming four
years of blood had “projected” themselves, eerily, at the hour of the
declaration of the Great War, upon the ancient road where Roman
soldiers, long ago, must have marched. Or were they the spirits of
the long-dead soldiers of the centuries, welcoming the heroes of
1914—1918?