SOME STRANGE CASES IN SCOTLAND
I returned to England in that “tub-like” old relic of mid-Victorian
steamboats, “The Argo”—long since defunct, but which for many years
sailed to and from Dublin and Bristol with as many passengers and
cattle as could be crammed, with any degree of safety, into her dingy
and clumsy-looking hulk. I remember the passage well, for two of my
fellow students were on board, and we spent nearly all the time on
deck, telling ghost tales, and earnestly discussing the possibility
of a future life. In the end we made a solemn compact, whereby it was
agreed that the one who died first would try his level best to give
some kind of spirit demonstration to the other two. Both my friends
died within a few years of that date, and within three weeks of each
other. The one, who had a commission in a cavalry regiment, was killed
at the Battle of Omdurman, and the other, who having followed in the
footsteps of his distinguished father, had become a novelist of great
promise, was kicked to death by a horse. The day after the death of
the former, as I was busily engaged writing the first chapter of my
novel, “For Satan’s Sake,” a portion of the mantel-piece in the room in
which I was working suddenly fell with a loud crash on to the grate. Of
course, the incident may not have had anything to do with the death of
my friend, but it was nevertheless remarkable, as previously nothing
in the nature of a flaw had been noticeable in the condition of the
mantel-piece. My other friend died—as I subsequently learned, i.e.,
after the incident I am about to narrate had occurred—at ten o’clock
one Friday morning, and that afternoon as I was changing for football,
the grandfather clock on the landing outside my bedroom suddenly struck
ten. I went to look, and the hands pointed to three. There had been
nothing amiss with the striking before, and there was nothing amiss
with the striking after.
These were the only phenomena I experienced at the time these two
friends of mine died.
* * * * *
On arriving at Bristol, I spent some weeks in the West of England and
then journeyed north to Scotland. My original intention had been to
spend a few weeks with an old Clifton friend of mine, whose father
owned an estate near Inverary; but, on arriving at Glasgow, I heard of
such a promising case of haunting in that city, that, unable to resist
the temptation of investigating it, I decided to postpone my journey
west. The case, as outlined to me in the first instance, was this:—
A Glasgow solicitor, named James McKaye, desirous of taking a house
close to his office, went one morning to look at one in Duke Street.
He went there alone, and, carefully closing the front door behind him,
proceeded to wander from room to room, beginning with the basement.
As he was going upstairs to the first floor, he suddenly heard
footsteps following him. He turned sharply round; there was no one
there. Thinking this was odd, but attributing it to the acoustic
properties of the walls, he continued his ascent. Having arrived on the
first landing, he went into one of the rooms. The steps followed him.
A brilliant idea then occurred to him—he stamped his foot. There was
no echo. He turned round and went into the next room, and the steps
once again accompanied him. Then he grew frightened. It was broad
daylight, the sun was shining brilliantly and the birds were singing;
but there was something in this house that jarred on him horribly—a
something that was completely out of humour with the golden sunbeams
and the cheerful chirping of the sparrows. The day was hot, and the
sun was pouring in through the blindless windows; but in spite of this
the rooms were icy, and he was deliberating whether it was worth while
to explore the house further, when he caught sight of a shadow on the
wall. It was not his own shadow. It was that of a man with his arms
stretched out horizontally on either side of him, and whereas the right
arm was complete in every detail, the left had no hand. James McKaye
now yielded to an ungovernable terror and rushed frantically out of the
house.
One would naturally think that after all this McKaye would have vowed
never to go near the place again. Nothing of the sort. The house
fascinated him. He could not get it out of his mind; he even dreamed
of it; dreamed of it in connection with some mystery that he must
solve—that he alone could solve. Besides, there was not another house
in the town so conveniently situated, nor so cheap. Consequently, he
took it, and within a fortnight had moved in with all his family and
household goods. For the first few weeks everything went swimmingly,
and McKaye, who was shrewd, even for a Scot, congratulated himself upon
having made such an excellent bargain.
Then occurred an incident which recalled sharply the day he had first
seen the place. He was writing some letters one morning in his study,
when the nurse-maid entered, white and agitated. “Oh, do come to the
nursery, sir,” she implored; “the children are playing with something
that looks like a dog, and yet isn’t one. I don’t know what it is!” And
she burst out crying.
“You’re mad,” McKaye said sharply and, springing to his feet, he ran
upstairs.
On reaching the nursery, the blurred outline of something like a huge
dog or wolf came out of the half-open door, and raced past him, so
close that he distinctly felt it brush against his clothes.
Where it went he could not say; he was thinking of the children, and
did not stop to look. Oddly enough, the children were not a bit afraid;
on the contrary, they were pleased and curious. “What a strange doggy
it was, Daddy!” they cried; “it never wagged its tail, like other
doggies, and whenever we tried to stroke it, it slipped away from
us—we never touched it once.”
Sorely puzzled, McKaye told his wife, and the two decided that if
anything further happened, they must leave the house.
That night McKaye happened to sit up rather late; at last he got up,
and was about to turn off the gas, when he felt his upstretched hand
suddenly caught hold of by something large and soft, that did not seem
to have any fingers. He was so frightened that he screamed; whereupon
his hand was instantly released, and there was a loud crash overhead.
Thinking something had happened to his wife, he rushed upstairs,
and found her sitting up in bed and talking in her sleep. She was
apparently addressing a black, shadowy figure that was crouching on the
floor, opposite her. As McKaye approached, the thing moved towards the
wall, and vanished.
Mrs. McKaye then awoke, and begged her husband to take her out of the
house at once, as she had dreamed most vividly that an appalling murder
had been committed there, and that the murderer had come out of the
room with outstretched hands, asking her to look at them. McKaye, who
had had quite enough of it, too, promised to do as she wished, and
before another twenty-four hours had passed the house was once again
empty.
These were the bare facts of the case, and as they were given me by one
of his clients, I had no difficulty in obtaining an interview with Mr.
McKaye, who, I was told, still had the keys of the house. It was not,
however, so easy to obtain consent to spend a night on the premises,
and he would only permit me to do so on the condition that he himself
accompanied me, and that I promised to keep the visit a profound secret.
The evening chosen for our enterprise proved ever memorable.
The rain came down in torrents, and the wind—a veritable tornado—made
any attempt to hold up an umbrella utterly impossible. Indeed, it
was as much as I could do to hold up myself, whilst, to add to my
discomfort, at almost every step I plunged ankle-deep in icy cold
puddles. At length, drenched to the skin, I arrived at the house.
McKaye was standing on the doorstep, swearing furiously. He could not,
so he said, find the key. However, he produced it now, and we were soon
standing inside, shaking the water from our clothes. Those were the
days before pocket flashlights had become general, and we had to be
content with candles.
We each lighted one, and at once commenced to search the premises to
make sure no one was in hiding.
The house, as far as I can recollect, consisted of four storeys and
a basement. None of the rooms were very large; the wall-papers were
hideous, and I remember thanking my stars that I was not called upon to
live in such hopelessly inartistic quarters. McKaye asked me if I could
detect anything peculiar in the atmosphere, but I could only detect
extreme mustiness, and told him so. I fancied he seemed very fidgety
and ill at ease; however, as he was a much older man than myself, and
had some experience of the house, I felt perfectly safe with him. After
we had been in all the rooms, we descended to the ground floor, and
commenced our vigil on the staircase leading from the hall to the first
landing.
“I think we stand more chance of seeing something here than anywhere
else,” McKaye said; “and in the case of anything very alarming
happening, we are close to the front door.”
[Illustration: “We both looked in the direction he indicated”]
He spoke only half in fun and I observed that his fingers twitched a
good deal and that his eyes were never at rest.
“Oughtn’t we to put out the candles?” I said. “Ghosts surely materialise
much more readily in the dark.” But he would not hear of it. All his
experiences, he said, had taken place in the light, and he believed
only spoof ghosts at séances required the opposite conditions. Then he
regaled me once more with all that had happened during his occupation
of the house. He was still telling me, when there came a loud rat-rat
at the door.
“That’s a policeman,” he said; “he must have seen our light.” He spoke
truly, for, when we opened the door, a burly figure in helmet and cape
stood on the step and flashed his dripping bull’s-eye in our faces. On
hearing McKaye’s name the constable was instantly appeased, and, when
we mentioned ghosts, he laughed long and loud. “Well, gentlemen,” he
said, “you won’t never be alarmed by a happarition so long as you have
that dog with you. I bet he would scare away any number of ghosts, and
burglars, too. If I may be so bold as to ask, what breed do you call
him? I’ve never seen anything quite like him before,” and he waved his
lamp towards the stairs. We both looked in the direction he indicated,
and there, half way up the stairs, with its face apparently turned
towards us, was the black, shadowy outline of some shaggy creature,
which to me looked not so much like a dog as a bear. It remained
stationary for a moment or so, and then, retreating backwards, seemed
to disappear into the wall.
“Well, gentlemen, good-night,” the policeman said, lowering his lamp,
“it’s time I was going.” He turned on his heel, and was walking off,
when McKaye called him back.
“Wait a moment, constable,” he said, “and we’ll come with you.”
He cast a swiftly furtive glance around him as he spoke, then, blowing
out the lights, he caught me by the arm and dragged me away.
“But the dog, sir,” the policeman said, as the front door closed behind
us with a bang; “it ain’t come out!”
“And it never will,” McKaye responded grimly. “You have seen the ghost,
constable, or at least one of them.”
I have never had an opportunity of visiting the house again, but for
aught I know to the contrary, it still stands there, and is still
haunted.
From Glasgow I went on to Inverary, where I had the most delightful
time, fishing and shooting.
I then went to Perth, and there, quite by chance, met a Mr. and Mrs.
Rowlandson, who informed me that they were just quitting a badly
haunted house on the outskirts of the town. The name of the house
was “Bocarthe.” It was their own, and had only been built a year,
but they could not possibly remain in it, they told me, owing to the
perpetual disturbance to which they were subjected. They were just
beginning a detailed description of the manifestations, when I begged
them to desist. I would like, I explained, with their permission, to
investigate the case, and I thought it would be better to do so without
knowing the nature of the hauntings, as in these circumstances—should
my experience happen to tally with theirs—there could be no question
either of suggestion or of imagination.
I had resolved to conduct all my investigations with an absolutely
open mind, and I intended, when once I had satisfied myself that
the phenomena were objective, to try and alight upon some code
whereby I could communicate with them, and learn from them something
certain—something definite, at all events, about the other world. To
what extent I have succeeded I shall make it the purpose of this volume
to reveal.
But to continue: “What strikes us as so extraordinary about the whole
thing,” the Rowlandsons said, “is that a new house, with absolutely no
history attached to it, for we were the first people who ever inhabited
it, and we can assure you,” they added laughingly, “there were no
murders or suicides there during our occupancy, should be haunted. Our
neighbours declare that we must have brought the ghost with us.”
I told them I thought it quite possible that such might be the case,
and narrated to them my experiences in Dublin. They appeared to be
greatly interested; and were, moreover, quite willing, provided I
promised them not to discuss the matter too openly, as they wanted to
let the house, that I should spend a few nights at “Bocarthe.” They
were, in fact, rather anxious to know if anything unusual still took
place there. Thinking, perhaps, that I might not like to go alone, they
gave me an introduction to a young friend of theirs, Dr. Swinton, who,
they thought, might be prevailed upon to accompany me; and, before I
left them, all the preliminaries relating to my visit to “Bocarthe”
were satisfactorily arranged.
That same day the Rowlandsons went to Edinburgh, where they told me
they intended living, and the following day at noon I wended my way
to the house they had vacated. As there was no story connected with
“Bocarthe,” I set to work to make enquiries about the ground on which
it stood, and instead of learning too little, I learned too much. An
old minister, who looked fully eighty, was sure that the ground in
question, until it was built upon quite recently, had been grazing
land ever since he was a boy, and that it had never witnessed anything
more extraordinary than the occasional death of a sheep or a cow that
had been struck by lightning. An equally aged and equally positive
postmistress declared that the ground had never been anything better
than waste land, where, amid rubbish heaps galore, all the dogs in the
parish might have been seen scratching and fighting over bones. Another
person remembered a pond being there, and another a nursery garden;
but from no one could I extract the slightest hint as to anything that
could in any way account for the haunting.
When I entered the house, I thought I had seldom seen such a cheerful
one: the rooms were light and lofty, and about them all there was an
air of geniality, that hitherto, at all events, I had never dreamed of
associating with ghosts.
Dr. Swinton joined me in the evening, but although we sat up till long
after dawn, we neither saw nor heard anything we could not account for
by natural causes. We repeated the process for two more nights, and
then, feeling that we had given the house a fair trial, we concluded it
was either no longer haunted, or that the hauntings were periodical,
and might not occur again for years. I wrote to Mr. Rowlandson, upon
returning the keys of the house, and, in reply, received the following
letter from him:—
No. —, C—— Crescent,
Edinburgh.
November 8th, 1893.
Dear Mr. O’Donnell,
Many thanks for the keys. No wonder you did not see our ghost! It
is here, and we are having just the same experiences in this house
as we had in “Bocarthe.” If you would care to stay a few nights
with us, on the chance of seeing the ghost, we shall be delighted
to put you up.
Yours, etc.,
ROBERT ROWLANDSON.
I was obliged to return home very shortly, in order to decide
definitely and speedily what I intended to do for a living; but
although I knew I had little or no time to waste, I could not resist
the Rowlandsons’ kind invitation to try and see their ghost, and
accordingly accepted.
They lived in C—— Crescent. When I arrived there, I found the entire
household in a panic, the ghost having appeared to one and all during
the previous night.
“It was so terrible,” Mrs. Rowlandson said, “that I can’t bear even
to think of it, and shall certainly never forget it. One of the maids
fainted, and was so ill afterwards, we were obliged to have the doctor,
and all have given notice to leave.”
“Did nothing of the sort happen before you went to ‘Bocarthe’?” I
ventured to ask.
“No,” Mr. Rowlandson replied, “not a thing. We were then sceptics where
ghosts were concerned, but we’re certainly not sceptical now.”
“Do you think it possible,” I said, “that the ghost is attached to some
piece of old furniture? I have read of such cases.”
Mr. Rowlandson shook his head.
“No,” he said, “we have no old furniture, all our furniture is modern
and new; at least, it was new when we came to ‘Bocarthe.’”
“Then, if the ghost is neither attached to the house, nor to the
ground, nor to the furniture, it must surely be attached to some
person,” I remarked. “I have read that one of the dangers of attending
Spiritualistic Séances is that spirits occasionally attach themselves
to people, and can only be got rid of with great difficulty. I suppose
no one in the house has gone in for Spiritualism?”
“I can safely say I haven’t,” Mr. Rowlandson laughed; “and you haven’t,
either, Maud, have you?” he said, looking at his wife.
Mrs. Rowlandson flushed.
“The only Spiritualist I ever knew,” she stammered, “was—you know,
dear, whom I mean——”
Mr. Rowlandson raised his eyebrows and stared at her in astonishment.
“I don’t,” he said. “Who?”
“Ernest Dekon!”
“Dekon!” Mr. Rowlandson ejaculated. “Dekon! Why, of course, I might
have guessed Spiritualism was in his line. Some years ago, Mr.
O’Donnell,” he went on, turning to me, “my wife met this Mr. Dekon at
a ball given by a mutual friend, and from that time, up to his death,
he persecuted her with his undesirable attentions. I never knew anyone
so persistent.”
“He resented your marriage, of course,” I remarked.
“Resented it!” Mr. Rowlandson responded; “I should rather think he did,
though to everyone’s surprise he came to it. Ye Gods! I shall never
forget the expression on his face, as we caught sight of him in the
vestibule of the church. Talk about Satan! Satan never looked half as
evil.”
“And Mr. Dekon was a Spiritualist!” I said.
“He was very keen on séances,” Mrs. Rowlandson interposed. “Most keen,
and was at one time always trying to persuade me to go to one with him.”
“I never knew that,” Mr. Rowlandson exclaimed.
“Perhaps not,” his wife said demurely. “You see, you don’t know
everything. However, I never went.”
“And how did he die?” I ventured.
“Suicide,” Mr. Rowlandson said. “He shot himself, and was dastardly
enough to leave a note behind him, pinned to the toilet-cover of
his dressing-table, stating that his death was entirely due to the
heartless conduct of my wife.”
“When was that, Mr. Rowlandson?” I asked.
“Let me see,” Mr. Rowlandson soliloquised. “We have been married not
quite eighteen months. About fifteen months ago—shortly before we came
to ‘Bocarthe.’”
“I know what’s in your mind,” Mrs. Rowlandson observed. “You think that
very possibly it is the spirit of Ernest Dekon that is troubling us. Do
you really think it could be?”
“From what you have told me,” I said, “I should say that it is more
than likely. The mere fact of his having been a Spiritualist would
mean that he had, in some measure, got in touch with the Unknown; so
that on passing over with his mind solely concentrated on revenge, he
would, in all probability, speedily become closer acquainted with those
spirits whom he had known here—not a very high class, but apparently
the only class that a séance can attract—and these would undoubtedly
aid him in his attempt to come back and annoy you.”
Mrs. Rowlandson gave vent to an exclamation of dismay. “I have always
felt,” she said, “that there might be some mysterious connection
between Ernest Dekon and the dreadful thing we have seen.”
“Of course,” I added, “that is only a suggestion on my part. When does
the phenomenon usually appear?”
“At all times, and when we least expect it,” Mrs. Rowlandson said. “For
example, if I am going upstairs alone, it either springs out at me or
peers down at me from over the banisters. Or, again, it rouses us in
the middle of the night by rocking our bed! Always some alarming trick
of that kind.”
“Then you could hardly expect it to manifest itself if we all sat here
in the dark?”
“Hardly.”
“You haven’t a photograph of Mr. Dekon, I suppose?” I hazarded.
“A photograph of that scoundrel,” Mr. Rowlandson cried. “If he had
given her one, it wouldn’t have remained long in her possession, I can
assure you.”
“Well, he never did,” Mrs. Rowlandson said, forcing a smile, “but I can
describe him.”
“I don’t know whether that will do much good,” I observed. “Because
I understand that if one of the lower order of earthbounds, usually
called Elementals, wanted to ‘fool’ us, it could easily impersonate
him. Dekon’s phantom would not, of necessity, be very like his material
body; it would depend entirely on how much of the animal there was in
him; if a great deal, then one might expect to see a creature with
a pig’s, or some other kind of beast’s, head, with only a slight
facial resemblance to Dekon. Can you describe his hands? Because I
believe spirits that have lost all other resemblance with the physical
body might be identified by some peculiarity in the formation of the
fingers.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Rowlandson said; “I do remember his hands distinctly. They
were so ugly! They were long, and red, and the tips were club-shaped; I
am sure I should recognise them anywhere.”
This conversation took place in the interval between tea and dinner.
After dinner we sat in the drawing-room, discussing plans for the
night, and finally came to the conclusion that when bed-time came we
should retire to our respective rooms, and sit there in the dark,
waiting and watching for whatever might happen. It was furthermore
agreed that directly anyone saw or heard anything, they should at once
summon the others.
We sat up rather late, and it was close on midnight before Mrs.
Rowlandson rose, and we all—there were two guests besides myself,
a Colonel and Mrs. Rushworth—took our candlesticks, and followed
her upstairs. We had mounted the first flight, and had turned the
bend leading to the second—the house seemed all stairs—when Mrs.
Rowlandson halted, and, looking back at us, said, “Hush! Do you hear
anything?”
We stood still and listened. There was a thump, that apparently came
from a room just at the top of the stairs—then another—and then a
very curious sound, as if something was bounding backwards and forwards
over bare boards with its feet tied together. At a signal from Mr.
Rowlandson, we immediately blew out our lights. A church clock solemnly
struck twelve. We heard it very distinctly, as the Rowlandsons, being
enthusiasts for fresh air, kept every window in the house wide open.
The reverberation of the final stroke had hardly ceased when a loud
gasp from someone in front of me sent a chilly feeling down my spine.
At the same moment the darkness ahead of us was dissipated by a faint,
luminous glow. As I watched, the glow speedily intensified, and
suddenly took the shape of a cylindrical column of six or seven feet
in height, and this in turn developed with startling abruptness into
the form of something so shockingly grotesque and bestial that I was
rendered speechless.
It is extremely difficult to give a very accurate description of it,
because, like the generality of occult phenomena I have experienced
in haunted houses, it was a baffling mixture of the distinct and yet
vague, entirely without substance, and apparently wholly constituted
of vibrating light that varied each second in tone and intensity. I
can only say that the impression I derived was that of a very gross or
monstrous man.
The head, ill-defined on the crown and sides, appeared to be abnormally
high and long, and to be covered with a tangled mass of coarse,
tow-coloured hair; the nose seemed hooked, the mouth cruel, the
eyes leering. The general expression on the face was one of intense
antagonism. The body of the thing was grey and nude, very like the
trunk of a silver beech, the arms long and knotted, the hands huge, the
fingers red and club-shaped. The latter corresponded exactly with Mrs.
Rowlandson’s description.
This hideous, baleful apparition was the spirit of animal man,
the symbolical representation of all carnal lusts—it was Ernest
Dekon—soulless.
But although this spirit was without substance, it was composed of
complex forces—forces both physical and mental. It could shut and
open doors, move furniture, rap and make sundry other noises, and it
could also convey the sensation of intense cold, and the feeling of the
most abject fear. I now found myself wondering if it possessed other
properties: Was it sensible? Could it communicate in any way?
I was thus deliberating, when the figure seemed to move forward; then
someone shrieked. Mr. Rowlandson struck a light, and simultaneously
the apparition vanished. The effect it had had on us all was novel
and striking—we were all more or less demoralized; and yet no two
of us had seen the ghost the same—and some, Mr. Rowlandson and Mrs.
Rushworth, had not seen it at all.
We went back again into the drawing-room and discussed it. Mrs.
Rowlandson was the first to speak. She, too, had been particularly
impressed by the hands, and she was sure they were the hands of Ernest
Dekon.
“I can say nothing about the face,” she cried, “as it did not appear to
me, but having seen the hands, I am firmly convinced that the ghost is
Ernest Dekon, and that it is Ernest Dekon who is tormenting us. Can’t
any of you think of a plan to get rid of him?”
“Cremation is the only thing I can think of!” cried Colonel Rushworth,
who had hitherto been silent. “That is the means employed, I believe,
by the hill tribes in Northern India. When a spirit—a spirit they can
identify—begins to haunt a place, they dig up the body and burn it,
and they say that as soon as the last bone is consumed the haunting
ceases. They have a theory that phantoms of dead people and animals can
materialise as long as some remnant of their physical body remains.
Where did this Ernest Dekon die?”
“In Africa,” Mr. Rowlandson said.
“That’s capital! If we can find the cemetery, there ought to be no
difficulty in getting at the body. The officials are, as a rule, open
to bribery. Anyhow, we might try it as an experiment.”
I left Edinburgh next day, but I heard some months later from Mr.
Rowlandson.
“You may recollect Colonel Rushworth’s suggestion,” he wrote. “Well,
the hauntings have ceased. We are shortly returning to ‘Bocarthe’!”
From this I gathered that an attempt to exhume and cremate Ernest
Dekon’s body had been made, and had proved successful.