AS children we were taught that only ignorant people believed in
ghosts, and at twenty-one years of age I would have slept, without a
tremor, in any room reported to be haunted. At that age I went to
stay with a recently-married brother in a modern and comfortable
house near Manchester.
On the first night, at about twelve o’clock, I was still awake. A dim
light came from the street gas, and the fire that was nearly out; but
it was too dark to see anything distinctly. Suddenly something leant
over me, and fear that no words can describe possessed me. My hair
seemed to prick me, and intense cold seemed to penetrate to my heart.
I thought if it went on I should die. No thought of burglar or any
physical danger entered my mind. From the first instant I knew that
this was something from outside normal human life—something “ghostly.”
“Who are you? What do you want?” I gasped to the vague form leaning
over me. There was no answer. Suddenly it was gone. I jumped out of
bed, lit the gas, and left it full on. In the daylight I dared not
tell my tale and ask to change my room; I knew how I should have
regarded such a tale the day before. When I went to bed the second
night I left the gas dimly alight. Towards midnight I felt suddenly
cold, and my hair began to prick. I jumped up and turned the gas on
full. The fear and cold passed away.
The next night I left the gas full on. Towards midnight I was aware
of a little sudden cold, a little sense of panic, but both passed
quickly. After that third night nothing happened.
Some weeks later, when I was no longer afraid, I told my brother that
something had leant over me in bed. He looked amazed; and, with a sort
of horror, I saw that something he knew would give reason for the
terror I had felt.
He said the house had been untenanted for some years because the room
I slept in was reported to be haunted. A woman had either fallen or
thrown herself from the window and had been killed, and she was said
to lean over the bed. My brother utterly disbelieved the tale, and
forgot it. Had he mentioned it to me I should have laughed at it and
gone to bed in that room without a tremor.
Those are the facts. I cannot explain them, but in Hudson's Psychic
Phenomena” there is a very possible explanation of such apparitions.