SOME years ago, some friends took a house for three months at the
seaside. In August, I went to stay with them arriving about three on
a sunny afternoon. Coming downstairs from the bedroom, I had to pass
the open door of a room immediately at the foot of the stairs.
Standing just inside, with her back towards me, was a woman dressed
in drab, and with her hair arranged in an old-fashioned way; she was
looking out of a window, and I paused a moment wondering who it was.
I continued my way down and, when within three yards of her, the
figure vanished. I went into the room, looked all round—no one there.
Then I realised it was a ghost.
Next day I saw a coloured photo of a woman with dress and hair just
like the apparition’s. It was not until some weeks later that we were
told the portrait was of the owner's first wife. The house had been
left her by a relative, and she had planned to have the window, at
which I had seen her standing, changed into a bow. Sudden illness
seized her and she died, trying to say something about the window.
Some other friends who had the house lent them before this time, saw
the figure of a woman going before them up the stairs, but there was
no one. Another friend was sitting on the lawn facing that window
when the house was empty, and saw the figure of a woman pass across
it. She went into the house—no one there—all doors locked.
It was not until months later that we told each other what we had seen.
Are not these apparitions what Mrs. Besant calls “thought-forms?”
This woman knew nothing of me; her thoughts came back to the familiar
spot and the familiar dress. When I came too near this “form”
apparently so solid, but as evanescent as a soap bubble, it broke and
vanished.
“The Very Same Ghost”
AS a young medical student on holiday I used often to stay with a
doctor uncle, and even now, looking back after all these years, I
feel grateful for all I learnt while accompanying him on his rounds.
Uncle Will was a bachelor, too matter-of-fact and prosaic ever to
fall in love, I thought. The more surprised, therefore, was I one day
to hear him recount his treatment of a patient, a young lady
suffering only from what to me seemed an acute attack of hysteria,
nothing more. This patient was one of those highly-strung young
ladies who easily develop hysteria, and the story she narrated to
Uncle Will of what had brought her to the pitiful state she was in
seemed to me a tissue of rubbish. She vividly described her meeting
with a real ghost on her way home late from a party, alone, through
some accidental misunderstanding. Her way lay past a lonely mansion
infrequently occupied, rich in historical associations, but so far
unclaimed by any ghost. Miss S———, however, succeeded in describing
the one she saw in great detail, from his cavalier hat to his buckled
shoes. He was leaning against a gate through which she had to pass,
and he moved aside courteously to make way for her. She thanked him,
and to her horror, he vanished into thin air. The clear moonlight and
the snow combined to make any rational explanation impossible.
That was her tale. “A silly fanciful girl, over-excited by the
evening's pleasure,” was my comment.
“Yet this girl came a distance of three miles through the worst
thunderstorm we've had for years, in the dead of night, to fetch me
to her sick mother a short while ago,” answered Uncle Will, and then
added: “Good thing I’m her medical man and not a raw fellow like you,
laddie; I can understand her, because (I have told no one else) I
myself have seen at the very same place the very same ghost.”