CASES OF HAUNTINGS IN ST. LOUIS, NEW YORK, AND CHICAGO
One of the most extraordinary men I have ever met was Ephraim B.
Vandergooch, who, at the time of my travels in America, practised
dentistry in 6th Street, St. Louis. Dentists are not, as a rule, the
people to associate themselves with psychical research, and it is just
as well for their patients, perhaps, that they are not, for sitting up
all night in dark houses looking for ghosts has an unsteadying effect
on the nerves—it is apt to make one “jumpy”—and if a dentist’s hand
were to jump, it is more than likely that his patient would jump too.
Mr. Vandergooch, however, was an exception. He was a ghost hunter, and
his investigations had but a slight and temporary effect on his nervous
system. His hand was as steady as a rock, his wrists like steel. I went
to him to have a tooth filled, and during the operation I asked him if
he knew of any haunted houses in the town.
He was a stranger to me then, and of course I expected a superior
smile, if not an actual sneer, for, as I have said, dentists are, as a
rule, anything but psychics. To my surprise, however, he took me quite
seriously, and said he knew of several haunted places in St. Louis,
and that nothing interested him more than really first-hand ghost
stories. He told me he had had an experience himself, and narrated the
following:—
“A few years ago,” he began, “I learned of a haunting in a street of
rather older houses than these, close to here; and as the evidence in
this case was to a large extent corroborative, I decided to investigate
it. It was Christmas time, and the thought of earthbound spirits pacing
up and down cold, empty houses, when all around was warmth and jollity,
depressed me. I felt that I must, now that an opportunity had come, try
to see them, and if possible do something for them.
“I set out on Christmas Eve, and I admit that when I left the
cheerfully lighted thoroughfare, and plunged into the dark silent
emptiness of the house, my heart almost failed me. Apart from ghosts
there were so many possibilities, and what more likely than that some
tramp or criminal had forced an entrance, and was hiding somewhere
on the premises. For a few seconds I stood and listened, and then,
feeling a trifle more assured, I closed the door gently and advanced
cautiously along the wide hall. At each step I took I became more and
more sensitive to an atmosphere of intense sadness and desolation—an
atmosphere of intense loneliness, loneliness that is without hope—that
is perpetual and absolute. It could be felt in all parts of the house,
but more particularly, perhaps, in the kitchen, which was built out at
the back on the ground floor. I had never been in such a dreary and
inhospitable kitchen. The night was bitterly cold and the bare stones
sent chilly currents up my legs and back, into my very brain.
“To remain in such a hole till morning was assuredly courting pneumonia
or rheumatic fever. I looked at the range, it was covered with rust and
verdigris. If only it could be lighted! Then I uttered an exclamation
of joy, for lying in one corner was a pile of wood—boxes, shelves,
faggots, etc., intermingled with an assortment of other rubbish. In
my early days I had lived on a ranch out west, and the experience I
had had there now came in useful. In a few minutes there was a loud
crackling, and the kitchen filled with a ruddy glow. A couple of
dresser-drawers served me for a seat, and I was soon ensconced in a
tolerably snug position, from which, however, I was prepared to spring
at a moment’s notice.
“The hours sped by, and the silence deepened.
“At last, just about two o’clock, when I was beginning to think nothing
would happen, I heard a door slam somewhere upstairs. This was followed
by a series of creaks, and I heard someone cautiously descending the
stairs. A great fear now seized me, and had I been able, I should
doubtless have beaten a hasty retreat. Instead, I was possessed with
a kind of paralysis, which rendered me quite helpless and prevented
me from either moving a limb or uttering a sound. The creaks came
nearer—down, down, down, until quite suddenly they stopped, and I
heard a cough.
“It was repeated—cough, cough, cough. The cough of a delicate,
neurotic woman. At first it simply startled me—it sounded so distinct,
so reverberating, so real. Then it irritated me, and then it infuriated
me—almost drove me mad. ‘God take the woman,’ I raved. ‘Will she never
cease.’
“Cough, cough, cough. A nervous, hacking cough, a worrying, grating
cough, an intensely silly, murder-instilling cough. I could see the
owner of it—upstairs, hidden from me by impenetrable darkness, and
yet quite distinct—a slight, pale, excessively plain little woman,
with watery eyes and a quivering mouth. Heavens, how the mouth maddened
me! On she went—cough, cough, cough! She was still coughing, when I
suddenly became aware of a presence close beside me, and I saw in the
glow from the dying embers the figure of a man seated at a table in the
middle of the kitchen. He appeared to be trying to write, but to be
unable to collect his thoughts. Every now and then he paused, dashed
his pen down, and clenched his fists furiously. At first I could not
understand his behaviour, and then it all of a sudden occurred to
me—the coughing, of course. That perpetual noise, that everlasting
hacking—it distracted, demented him. I watched him with feelings of
infinite sympathy. At last, unable to stand it any longer, he sprang
from his seat and dashed upstairs.
“I heard him race up two steps at a time. No madman would have raced
faster or more nimbly. Then came a strange variety of sounds—a
gratuitous course in phonetics—an altercation, more coughing, oaths,
bumping, a scream, a thud, a little feeble cough, silence, and then
rapidly descending footsteps—a man’s footsteps. I did not wait for
them. The spell that had hitherto held me limb-tied now abruptly left
me, and I fled out of the building—home.
“The next day—Christmas Day—I made my report to the owner of the
house, and told her exactly what had happened.
“‘Good heavens!’ she exclaimed, ‘and he’s married Maisie! Swear that
you will never tell a soul, no one, not even your most intimate friend,
and I will give you an explanation of what you witnessed.’ (“All this
happened years ago,” Mr. Vandergooch remarked, “so it’s all right my
telling you now.”) I promised, and she at once began.
“‘Ten years ago the occupants of the house you’ve been in were
a well-known dramatist and his wife, whom I will call Mr. and
Mrs. Charles Turner. Mrs. Turner was exactly like the woman you
imagined—frail, small and very plain; whilst her husband would tally
with the man you saw in the kitchen—a tall, muscular, handsome man. He
obviously married her for her money, poor soul, for there was nothing
in her to attract him, and everyone could see how she irritated him,
especially when she coughed—in fact, he often said to me, ‘You don’t
know, Mrs. Wehlen, how Eva annoys me. Whenever I am in the midst of
my work, trying to concentrate my thoughts, she starts her infernal
coughing—I can hear her all over the house—hack, hack, hack.’ ‘She
can’t help it, poor thing,’ I replied. ‘You ought to feel sorry for
her.’ ‘Feel sorry for her,’ he said. ‘You’d feel sorry for her if you
were tormented as I am. I believe she does it on purpose.’
“‘Well, one evening—to be precise, it was Christmas Eve—Mrs. Turner
was found at the foot of the hall staircase with her neck broken.
There was no direct evidence as to how she came there, but as one of
the stair-rods was found loose, it was presumed that she fell over it,
and, accordingly, a verdict of accidental death was returned. Charles
Turner left the house directly afterwards, and a few months ago married
my niece, Maisie. As far as I know, what you have seen has never been
seen by anyone else, but coughing in the house has been heard, and it
is quite plain to me now that Charles Turner murdered his first wife. I
only pray to Heaven he won’t serve Maisie the same.’
“But he did,” Mr. Vandergooch added, “for she, too, was found at the
foot of the staircase with her neck broken! In all probability she had
possessed some idiosyncrasy that worried and annoyed him; or, possibly
having once taken to murder, he felt he must go on with it—the habit
of homicide being, no doubt, just as fascinating as the habit of drugs
or of drink.
“Nothing, however, was proven, and, for all I know to the contrary,
he may still be alive, still be killing people to appease his
hyper-sensitive and outraged nerves.”
This experience of Mr. Vandergooch made me think; and eventually led to
my devoting no small amount of attention to psychology and criminology.
From what a variety of influences, it seemed to me, any one act might
be induced, and to what innumerable and varied causes any one crime,
for instance murder, might be traced. A minute bone pressing on a
certain section of the brain, a stomach continually overladen with
beefsteak and other animal food, over-excited nerves, the sight of
some locality, such as a wood, an object, such as a knife, all may
lead to the same thing—the desire to kill; whilst, at the same time,
the superphysical, through the agency of some evil spirit continually
whispering to its selected victim the arrestive, the compelling
thought, almost enforces any and every sort of crime. Seeing, then,
that in every act of cruelty or violence it is more than likely that
either one or other of these factors has been at work, is it fair that
we should so readily condemn and therewith rest content?
True, it may be, and, I believe, it is expedient to punish the
criminal, but surely it is even more urgent that we should make
ourselves thoroughly acquainted with his case, so that we may if
possible discover the factor that conduces to his crime, and then
either destroy or counteract it.
From St. Louis I went to New York, where I lodged in a fifty cent.
hotel in West Quay.
It was not a particularly elevating neighbourhood, but it was one that
boasted of several haunted houses. I was taken to see one of them—a
small store that supplied seamen’s kits—by a fellow lodger, who, if I
remember rightly, bore the name of Boxer. The proprietor of the store
was a Swede; his name I cannot quite recall, it was, I believe, Jansen,
or something like Jansen. He was at first extremely reticent, but on my
assuring him that I was not in touch with any of the New York journals,
and would not connive at his story getting into print, he agreed to
tell me what had happened.
Calling his wife, a plain, stolid-looking woman, dressed in a neat
and spotlessly clean print gown, he led the way upstairs to the top
landing. There he stopped opposite a closed door, in front of which
stood a large oak chest. “That’s the room,” he said; “we’ve barricaded
it like that to prevent the children going in. When we first came here,
my wife, and I, and our youngest child, Bertha, slept there. But we
none of us liked the room, and we soon began to have very disturbed
nights. I had ghastly nightmares, and so had my wife.
“And Bertha too,” Mrs. Jansen chimed in; “she used to dread being left
alone in the room even for five minutes, and used to cry till one or
other of us went to her.”
“That’s right enough,” Mr. Jansen interrupted; “and Bertha’s never
behaved like that since we moved her into another room.”
“Well, we experienced nothing more disturbing than bad dreams for the
first fortnight or so, and nothing happened until we were both aroused
one night by hearing Bertha scream. We lit a candle and got out of bed.
‘What is the matter,’ I asked; ‘are you in pain?’ ‘No, Poppa,’ she
said. ‘Not in pain, but so frightened. I kept hearing the bed creak,
and I thought one of you was coming out of it to kill me.’
“‘Why, what nonsense,’ I said. ‘You’ve been dreaming again, child.’
Then, turning to my wife, I remarked, ‘If she has many more of these
nightmares we had better send for the doctor. Don’t you think so?’
My wife made no answer, but suddenly gave a cry and pointed at the
bed. ‘Otto!’ she cried. ‘Look at the clothes! We never left them like
that. What’s happened to them?’ I looked. The clothes were all heaped
together down the centre of the bed exactly in the shape of a human
body, with the face turned towards us.
“We all three stared at it in open-mouthed silence, and the longer we
gazed, the more pronounced grew the features, until they at last became
so lifelike, so evil, that my wife and I instinctively shrank back
against the child’s cot, and tried to hide the thing from her. My wife
declares she saw it move.”
“It did,” Mrs. Jansen said. “I saw it distinctly shift nearer to us. So
did Bertha.”
“I know you were both agreed on that point,” Mr. Jansen went on. “All I
can say is I didn’t see it do that, but I started praying, and whether
it was the effect of my prayers or not, the clothes gradually became
clothes again, and, after soothing Bertha, we scrambled back into bed,
feeling rather ashamed we had been so frightened.
“The following evening after Bertha had been put to bed, we heard
her scream again, and we ran up and found her quivering under the
bedclothes. She said our bed had begun rattling, just as if we were
moving in it. On turning to examine it, we found the clothes just as we
had seen them in the night, with one of the pillows pressed and moulded
into the speaking likeness of a face.
“As I looked at it, the features became convulsed with such an
indescribable expression of hellishness that I backed against the table
and upset the light.
“On re-lighting it, the thing on the bed had disappeared, and the
clothes were once again normal. That same night, some time after
we were in bed, I awoke to find myself being roughly shaken by the
shoulders. It was my wife, but, perhaps I had better let her go on with
the story.”
“I shook him,” Mrs. Jansen explained, “because a feeling had suddenly
come over me that I must kill Bertha. The very first night we slept in
the room I became obsessed with a passionate desire to see someone die,
a desire that I can assure you was absolutely novel to me, because I
flatter myself I am naturally kind-hearted and extremely sensitive to
seeing other people suffer.”
“She’s kindness itself,” Mr. Jansen observed.
“Well,” Mrs. Jansen went on, “the feeling became so unbearable, that
fearing I should actually be compelled to kill someone, I awoke my
husband and begged him to tie my hands together; which, after some
hesitation, he did. Bertha was crying bitterly, and told us she had
again heard creaks in the room, just as if someone was getting out
of bed to murder her. That was the last time we slept in the room. I
felt it was a positive danger to spend another night in it, and so we
removed into the one we are sleeping in now.”
“And has it never been occupied since?” I asked.
“Yes, for one night,” Mrs. Jansen replied. “A niece of mine, Charlotte,
came to stay with us, and as we had nowhere else to put her, she had
to sleep there. We went to bed rather late that night, and I dreamed
three times in succession that Charlotte was creeping down the stairs
with some strange weapon in her hand, with which she intended killing
Bertha. Bertha was then sleeping alone in the room facing ours.
“The third dream was so vivid that I awoke from it bathed with
perspiration. I told my husband, and he said, ‘Well, that’s curious,
for I thought I heard someone moving about overhead. I’ll go and
see if anything is amiss.’ He opened the door, and, going on to the
landing, discovered Charlotte tiptoeing cautiously down the stairs,
holding a long, glittering pair of scissors in her hand, and with an
expression on her face similar to that on the face in the bedclothes.
‘What are you doing here?’ my husband demanded, and Charlotte at once
dropped the scissors and began crying. She told us that no sooner
had she got into bed, than she felt like another person. It was
just as if someone else’s soul had crept into her body. All her old
sentiments and ideals vanished, and the maddest and most unholy ideas
presented themselves in rapid succession to her mind. A blind hatred of
everyone in the house possessed her, and she was seized with the most
ungovernable craving to kill. For a long time she fought against this
mania, until at last, unable to restrain it any longer, she got out of
bed and sought some weapon. Cold hands, she declared, seemed to guide
her to the scissors, and armed with them, she crept downstairs, just
as I had seen her in my sleep, determined to butcher Bertha first, and
then, if possible, my husband and myself.
“She pleaded our forgiveness and begged to be allowed to go home
first thing in the morning. ‘I do not feel I am responsible for my
behaviour,’ she said. ‘I never had the slightest inclination to do
anything of the sort before. I am sure it’s that room. There’s some
sinister influence in it, and if I go back to it, I’m certain I shall
do something dreadful.’
“She spent the rest of the night on the sofa in the parlour, and
shortly before noon returned to her parents.
“After that we locked up the room and had this chest placed against the
door, as you now see it.”
“Do you know the history of the house?” I asked.
“Only that before we came here,” Mrs. Jansen said, “there were several
sudden deaths. I do not think any of them were actually attributed to
murder, though they were all due to rather extraordinary accidents.
Originally, I believe, the house was an inn, kept by a woman who bore a
very evil reputation, and we have always wondered if the hauntings had
anything to do with her.”
“I suppose you couldn’t tell whether the face formed by the bedclothes
was a man or a woman’s?” I remarked.
“Not, perhaps, by the actual features,” she responded, “only by the
expression. I can’t explain how, but it was an expression which at once
explained to me its sex, and that sex was not masculine.”
* * * * *
As I have said, this was not the only case of haunting in West Quay
that I heard of during this visit of mine to New York, but it is the
only one of sufficient interest to note here. Two equally interesting
cases, perhaps, came my way when I was travelling West. The one was in
Boston, the other in Chicago. I will deal with the Chicago one first:—
A banker in Chicago, to whom I had a letter of introduction, hearing
that I was interested in ghosts, showed me a house close to Michigan
Avenue where he had had a somewhat novel experience.
“Some years ago,” he said, “that house had the reputation for being
very badly haunted, and not by one ghost, but by dozens. It was
then occupied by an eccentric old millionaire, whom I will call Mr.
Hoonigan. Mr. Hoonigan had a very curious hobby. In a room, which he
named Duckdom, he had a collection of the most exquisitely wrought
models of women, clad in costumes which must surely have cost thousands
of pounds. They were all made in Paris, and many of them had once stood
in windows in the Rue de Rivoli. I have never seen anything to equal
them; their eyes, hair, and finger nails were not only beautifully
coloured and moulded, they were most natural and life-like. Mr.
Hoonigan worshipped them. He used to spend hours a day sitting before
each of them in turn, fondling their hands and making love to them in
the most exaggerated fashion. Mad! Yes, of course, he was mad; but his
madness did not always take such a harmless form. In a room opposite
Duckdom, which he named Devildom, he had collected the models—some
fifty or more—of murderers, and other criminals of the lowest type,
besides a heterogeneous assortment of the most revolting objects.
Amongst these objects were images of the South Sea Islands and Mexican
gods; figures in wood and stone, representing ghosts and demons;
cases full of mummies and skeletons; weapons that had once belonged
to murderers and still bore traces of their victims’ blood; scalping
and flaying knives; and a variety of ancient instruments of torture;
whilst to accentuate the horror of the room as a whole, paintings such
as only a brain in the most advanced stage of morbid disease could have
conceived covered the walls. Mr. Hoonigan did not make a practice of
showing his collections promiscuously, he was far too jealous of them,
and I do not suppose there were ten people in Chicago who knew of their
existence. Indeed, it was only with the very greatest difficulty that
I got his permission to view them. He allowed no servants to sleep in
the house, and when I went there one evening to see his treasures, he
opened the door to me himself. ‘Do you see this?’ he cackled, pointing
to the brown muzzle of a revolver, which showed itself from under
his coat. ‘Well, I have two more of them, and the house is full of
pitfalls, all admirable inventions of my own, and warranted to upset
the calculations of even the most experienced cracksman.’ ‘Have you
ever been troubled by burglars?’ I asked, glancing over the shoulders
of the queer old figure before me, and letting my eyes wander round
the great hall, dimly lighted and full of many suggestive nooks. ‘Yes,
several times,’ he said, ‘and once, one actually got in. He is here
now.’ ‘Here now!’ I cried. ‘Why, you surely don’t mean to say that
you’ve reformed him and kept him as your servant?’
“Mr. Hoonigan chuckled, and his yellow fangs reminded me unpleasantly
of the blunt and rusty teeth of a saw. ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘He fell
into one of my traps. You will see him later in my little chamber of
horrors. He’s been there ever since.’ (This seemed a trifle indiscreet;
but Mr. Hoonigan knew he could trust me. You see, I was his banker, and
business means business in Chicago.)
“‘But come,’ he continued, ‘I will show you Duckdom first, because you
will then the better appreciate its opposite. There is nothing like
contrasts to teach you true enjoyment.’ He stepped into an elevator,
and we went up, passing storey after storey, all dark, silent and
deserted. At last we stopped, and getting out, entered a brilliantly
illuminated room. ‘Here they are!’ Mr. Hoonigan exclaimed. ‘Let me
introduce you to my fair women friends.’ I looked round, and there
before me was a vast assemblage of women, all of them richly dressed
in the very latest fashion. All beautiful, however, and all most
artistically posed; some sitting, some standing, some lying at full
length on rugs and sofas. They were so absolutely natural that it took
me some seconds to realise they were only models—models in wax. Mr.
Hoonigan approached one, and taking its hand, pressed it reverently.
‘When I die,’ he said, ‘I shall be placed here, and the room shall be
hermetically sealed. I want no other heaven.’ He then took me across
the landing to another room. I had been prepared for a shock, but not
for the kind of shock I got when the door opened, and a hell, seething
with devilry—ten thousand times more devilish than the devilry of
Dante’s Hell—was suddenly thrust under my very nose. I recoiled, and
Mr. Hoonigan, perceiving my fright, playfully pushed me in. When we
were well in the midst of them, he pointed with great glee to several
of the most notorious murderers, and insisted upon my picking up and
examining their weapons. He then made me sit on a garotting chair,
which he had quite recently purchased in Cuba, and when I was thus
seated, he thrust a skull on my knee, which he said was that of a Red
Indian Chief, who had for certain skinned alive with his own hands a
whole family of whites.
“By this time, as you may think, I had had enough of it, but, as Mr.
Hoonigan truly remarked, there was so much to be seen; besides, he
must, he said, whilst I was there, show me a stock of engravings which
he had just bought in Madrid. They dated from the reign of Philip
II., and represented, in grim detail, all the horrors of the Spanish
Inquisition. But this was not all. Their chief interest, according
to Mr. Hoonigan, lay in the fact that the inquisitors—to quote Mr.
Hoonigan’s own words—‘just as an appetiser—an hors d’œuvre, don’t
you know,’ used to give them to their victims to examine before they
commenced to torture them.
“At the conclusion of this exhibition I managed somehow to get away,
and was walking to the elevator, when I saw something slink past us. I
turned round, and in the gloom could only see, indistinctly, the form
of a man of medium height, with a thick-set, brutal figure, and ambling
gait. I could not see his face. He seemed to walk right through the
door, which was shut, into the room we had just vacated. ‘What is it?’
Mr. Hoonigan asked. Somewhat nervously, I told him. ‘Ah,’ he said,
‘that’s only one of them, and one of the least terrifying. You didn’t
know, I suppose, that the house is haunted. From your description I
should say that what you have just seen is the ghost of the burglar I
told you about. But there are other ghosts—if you like to term them
so—that are most troublesome. I have had to give up sleeping on this
landing. I sleep on the ground floor now, with the electric light full
on, all night.’”
The case of the Boston ghost came to my notice in a very direct
fashion. I only stayed in the town two nights, and chance led me to
put up in an hotel which I learned bore an undeniable reputation for
being haunted. It was in rather a poor neighbourhood—at least poor
for Boston—and there were few visitors; indeed, on the landing where
I slept, no one. I spent all my first day in the town sight-seeing and
visiting relatives whom I had never met before, and I did not get back
to the hotel till very late. The place was dimly lit and oppressively
silent.
“Am I the last in?” I asked the night porter, who rubbed his eyes
wearily and yawned.
“Yes, sir,” he said; “the other guests have been gone to bed two hours
or more. It’s close on one.”
“What part of Ireland do you come from?” I enquired.
“County Limerick, to be sure,” he said; “but you couldn’t tell I was
Irish!”
“At once,” I said. “What were you over there?”
“I was working on the roads,” he said, “and before that I was in the
Army—in the Inniskillings.”
“What date?” I enquired.
He told me, and it then transpired that he had enlisted in that
regiment when one of my uncles was a major in it, and he remembered
him well. We were thus talking away and recalling episodes of the long
past, when I heard a familiar sliding kind of noise, and broke off in
the middle of a sentence.
“Surely, that’s the elevator,” I exclaimed. “I hope our talking has not
disturbed anyone.”
[Illustration: “But there are other ghosts—if you like to term them
so—that are more troublesome”]
“I don’t think so, sir,” he said. “At any rate, I shouldn’t trouble
myself about it.” His voice sounded so strange, I thought, and there
was such an odd, furtive look in his eyes, that I became curious, and
walking across the hall, arrived on the other side, just in time to see
the elevator come slowly and softly down.
To my astonishment there was no one in it.
“How’s that happened?” I remarked. “No one called it, and had they done
so we must have seen them.”
“I can’t say, sir,” the porter replied, looking very uneasy.
“Well, it’s certainly rather odd,” I ejaculated. “Anyhow, it’s chosen
to come down at a very convenient moment.” And, getting in, I went up.
The following night I returned late, and entered the vestibule of the
hotel just as the elevator stopped.
“Does it come down at the same time every night?” I asked the porter.
“Yes, sir,” he muttered, “every night.”
“And the reason?—there must, of course, be some reason. An elevator
can’t start off unless someone or something starts it.” He was silent.
“I see there’s some mystery attached to it,” I persisted. “What is
it? Tell me.” He remained obdurate for some seconds, but eventually
succumbed.
“For goodness sake, don’t let on, sir,” he said, “because the boss has
forbidden any of the staff to mention it, and if he found out I’d told
you, he’d sack me at once. This hotel is haunted. Several years ago,
before my time, a visitor arrived here late one night and was found by
the day porter dead in the lift. How he died was never exactly known;
it was rumoured he had either committed suicide or been murdered. It
was never found out who he was or where he came from, and, as he had no
money on him, he was buried like a pauper. Well, sir, ever since then
that elevator has taken it into its head to set itself in motion at the
same time every night. Sometimes the gates clang just as if someone
were getting in and out. At first I usedn’t to like it at all. You can
imagine, perhaps, what it’s like to know that you are the only person
about in a place of this sort—and then to hear the elevator suddenly
beginning to descend. However, by degrees, I got accustomed to it, and
if that was all that happened, I shouldn’t mind.”
“What else does happen?” I asked.
“I can’t tell you, sir. Would you like a bit of exercise?”
“I don’t mind,” I said. “Why?”
“Will you try the staircase, then, instead of the elevator? Count the
stairs and note carefully when you come to the forty-first.”
I agreed. The stairs were narrow and tortuous, the light meagre, and
soon I began to feel very, very far from my friend the porter, and
very much alone in the building. This feeling increased the further I
proceeded, until, at last, it became so unbearable that I involuntarily
halted. I had conscientiously counted the steps. I was at the
thirty-ninth. I looked around me. High over head was a kind of funnel
formed of black, funereal, and apparently never-ending banisters; below
me was a similarly constructed pit. The flickering gas-light brought
into play innumerable shadows. I tried to look away from them, for
their gambols were unpleasantly emphasized by the ominously oppressive
silence, but they fascinated me to such an extent that I was forced
to watch them, and, whilst I was thus engaged, I became suddenly
aware of a presence. Something I could not see was standing on the
staircase, a few steps ahead, barring my way. I advanced one step, and
with a tremendous effort I struggled on to the next one. Then the most
frightful, the most overwhelming, diabolical terror seized me, and
turning round, I tore downstairs.
“Well,” the door porter said, “you’ve come back. Couldn’t pass it. No
one who tries to do so at this time of night ever can.”
“What is it?” I gasped. “What is the beastly thing?”
“I don’t know,” he replied; “no one knows. This place was once a
madhouse, I believe, and perhaps——”
“Ah, well,” I said, “I can understand it now. Thank goodness I’m
leaving to-morrow, and as it’s a choice of two evils, I’ll go up in the
lift.”