NIGHT RAMBLINGS ON WIMBLEDON COMMON AND HOUNSLOW HEATH
If there are any places in London that should be more haunted than
others, assuredly those places are the parks and commons. When I was
living on the south side of the river, I spent many nights tramping
about Wimbledon, Clapham, Wandsworth, Tooting and Streatham Commons.
Since then I have lived at Blackheath, Hampstead, Hounslow and Dulwich,
so that I may say I know pretty nearly every inch of these places. I
can see myself now standing on Wimbledon Common close to a pool, in the
dead of night. No one about, and the reflection of the moon staring
at me from the unruffled surface of the water. I am trying to get
impressions of any event that may have taken place there. I got none.
Suddenly a hand falls on my shoulder; I swing round, and peering into
my face is the white, haggard face of a tramp.
“You ain’t going to drown yourself, are you?” he said.
“Why?” I asked, anticipating a severe rebuke from this withered and
worn scarecrow of humanity.
“Why,” he said, “because don’t do it here! I can show you a much better
spot, where the water is deep, and where, when once you get in, you
can’t very easily get out.”
“But how will that benefit you?” I enquired, wondering why he was so
eager.
“You can let me have your clothes, can’t you?” he explained; “you won’t
want to take them with you into the next world. From what I hears
about it, sperrits don’t need neither coats nor trousers, and the few
shillings I shall get for them will do me a bit of good, and won’t hurt
you.”
“But I wasn’t contemplating suicide,” I remarked. “I’m not tired of
life yet.”
“Ain’t you,” he said, in extremely disappointed tones. “Then why are
you out here at this time of night?”
“If it comes to that,” I observed, “why are you?”
“I ain’t got nowhere else to go,” he said; “and there are no police out
here to disturb anyone.”
“Nor ghosts?” I remarked.
“Ghosts!” he chuckled. “I’m not afraid of ghosts. I shall soon be one
myself, I expect; but there is one spot here I don’t go near after
dark.”
“Why?”
“Why,” he said. “Come along with me, and maybe you’ll guess.”
Had he been anything like my size I should not have gone, for his
appearance was very far from assuring, but, as he was a small man,
I felt comparatively safe. We walked side by side over the grass,
crossed a gleaming, white path, and steering in a slightly northerly
direction—I could tell that much by the stars—abruptly halted in
front of a shallow pit, on the other side of which was a big bush.
“It’s there,” he said, pointing at the pit. “I’ve tried to sleep there
twice, and each time I’ve been woken up by hearing something heavy
fall close to my head. It seems to come from the bush. It’s the bush
that skeers me,” he added, “and though I don’t mind passing it in the
day-time, nothing on earth will persuade me to look behind it after
dark.”
“Not even sixpence,” I said, fingering that coin in my waistcoat pocket.
“Go on,” he said, “you haven’t sixpence, otherwise you’d not be here.
You’re joking. If anyone really did offer me sixpence now to do it,
well, I don’t say but what I mightn’t try.”
He spoke so hungrily and looked so famished that I decided to part with
it, though sixpence to me just then had a particularly real value. I
showed it him. “Look behind that tree,” I said, “and I’ll give it you.”
He set off at once. “No,” I called out, “that won’t do; you must go
through the pit.” He proceeded to obey, and was in the middle of the
hollow, when I distinctly heard something very heavy strike the ground
apparently close to him. I ran round the bush, just in time to see what
I thought was a black shadow shoot across the ground and disappear in a
neighbouring cluster of trees. When I returned, the tramp was still in
the pit, but I could see nothing there to account for the noise.
“Well,” he said. “Did you hear it?”
“I heard something,” I replied, “and there’s your sixpence.”
I often went to Wimbledon Common afterwards, but never again saw the
tramp, nor found the hollow.
My Blackheath and Greenwich Park experiences, or at least most of them,
are narrated fully in my “Haunted Houses of London,” so that I can only
refer briefly to them here.
From the impressions I got, when walking on the Common at Blackheath,
I shall always believe that the superphysical influences there are
particularly demoralising. It always seemed to me that Blackheath—by
the way a curiously appropriate name—might be the rendezvous of the
very worst type of earth-bound phantasms of the dead, and of the most
vicious neutrarians.
After leaving London and entering on my scholastic career, I was
first of all a master at Daventry, then tutor in an Irish family at
Aldershot, and then, in succession, a master in preparatory schools at
Wandsworth, Hereford and Blackheath. Of these various posts, I liked
that at Blackheath the least, partly because the headmaster there was
the most unmitigated snob, and my pupils hopelessly spoilt, and partly
because I had such a detestation of the heath after dark.
My only consolation in those days was cricket and writing. Every
evening, after my work with the boys was done, I repaired to a room
over a library in Blackheath village, and it was there that I completed
my first novel, “For Satan’s Sake.”
The book deals with the soul of a suicide, and was based, as I have
already stated, on my experiences in America and York Road, Lambeth.
I tried it with various publishers, but without success, and it was
not until six years later, when I was living in a small fishing town
in Cornwall, that I eventually got it taken. It so happened that a
well-known novelist came to see me one day, and when I told him that I
had attempted a book, he said he would like to see it. I fished it out
of the box, where it had lain undisturbed for years, and he went off
with it, subsequently showing it to a reader of a publishing firm—also
a well-known novelist—who was staying in the town at the time, and who
was so impressed with it, that he advised his firm to accept it. It did
not even then come out for over a year, and the anxiety of awaiting my
début as an author can better be imagined than described. The success I
prayed for was not showered upon me, but the book was well received on
the whole, and paved the way for other works to follow.
And now, let me hie back to London and its commons. Though Hampstead
has, in all probability, its share of phantasms, my impressions there
have been of a more agreeable nature than at Blackheath. I spent the
greater part of several consecutive nights one summer sitting on a
bench in a very rustic glade on the heath, waiting for anything that
might happen. Once or twice between one and two something seemed to be
making a violent effort to materialise, and I fully expected to see a
figure suddenly appear before me. My impressions were that it would be
the figure of a woman, and that she would be carrying a white bundle
in her arms. I felt that she was in great trouble and wanted to ask
me for advice. I associated her worries with a big house that used to
stand somewhere near the summit of Hampstead Hill. I felt all this very
acutely, and I used to repeat aloud my willingness to do anything I
could to assist her.
Strange to say, a few years later, I met a lady who told me that she
had had a curious experience in the same spot. She was walking through
it rather late one autumn evening, accompanied by her dog, a big black
retriever. When she came to the seat where I used to sit, the dog
started barking and showed signs of great terror. Somewhat alarmed,
she was about to hurry on, when a voice close to her said, “It’s only
me, Winifred; don’t be frightened. The boat I sailed in to America was
wrecked, and only the child was saved.”
The lady looked round, but there was no one in sight. On reaching
home, she mentioned the incident to her mother, who exclaimed in
astonishment, “Well, that is odd! I was sitting on a seat, I should
think in that very spot, about forty years ago—we were living in D——
House, on Haverstock Hill, at the time—when a letter was brought me
announcing the loss of a big sailing vessel in the Atlantic, on which
my maid, Winnie, as we used to call her, had sailed with her husband
to America. Only a very few of the passengers and crew survived, and
Winnie and her husband were both drowned. But I never knew they had a
child.”
Hounslow Heath should teem with ghosts, for it once swarmed with
foot-pads, who, after committing every conceivable act of violence on
and around the heath, usually ended their career there on gibbets. I
once had rooms near the Bath Road, and spent many nights rambling
about the Heath in quest of ghostly adventure. One evening I kept
fancying I was followed everywhere by a tall, muffled figure, and when,
in alarm, I hastened over the grass on to the roadway, I heard a low,
cynical laugh. All the way home the steps seemed to pursue me, and when
I got into bed and prepared to blow out the light, I saw the curtains
by the window rustle and swell out, as if someone was behind them. It
was a long time before I ventured to blow out the light, and, when I
slept, I dreamed a dark, hooded figure was bending over me.
On another occasion, as I perambulated the heath, where the trees were
thickly clustered and the undergrowth had become the densest tangle, I
caught a glimpse of two men playing dice. I heard their laughter and
the rattling of the box, as they shook it in the air and threw out
the dice. Then suddenly their gaiety was turned to wrath—there were
oaths and blows, cries and groans, and all became silent, save for the
soughing and moaning of the wind through the lofty tree-tops. But as I
came away from the heath, there was again that cynical laugh, and again
footsteps seemed to follow me home, and again the curtain by the window
of my room shook and swelled.
I did not go to the heath one night; I lay awake in bed instead, and
about the hour I had usually returned I heard steps, long, swinging
steps coming down the little side road towards the house. My memory
at once went back to that night in Dublin, and I strained my ears to
catch the accompanying sound. I had not long to wait—it soon came, the
same old familiar click, click, click! In an agony of fear, lest the
steps should stop at the house and there should be a repetition of the
terrible knocking at the door, I lighted a candle and sat up. Nearer
and nearer they came, and then, when I felt certain they would stop, to
my infinite relief they went on. On past the house, the echoes ringing
out loud and clear in the keen, frosty air, until they reached the Bath
Road.
I fully expected some misfortune would happen to me after this
occurrence, as the last time I had heard the steps had been at the time
of my failure to pass the medical for the R.I.C., and shortly before
my disastrous trip to America. Yet nothing of a specially untoward
nature happened. Apparently, the steps on this occasion merely heralded
another change in my vocation, for I shortly afterwards became imbued
with the desire to be an actor, and commenced what was destined to be
a lively, though very brief theatrical career, as a pupil in the Henry
Neville Studio, Oxford Street.
Before, however, passing on to subsequent events, I must relate one
other—the only other—ghostly happening I experienced at Hounslow. In
a remote corner of the heath there was one spot that had a peculiar
fascination for me, and, whenever I returned from it, I dreamed the
same dream—that a beautiful girl in an old-world costume, with fair
hair, large, blue eyes and daintily-moulded lips, approached my bed and
leaned over me. She had the most appealing expression in her face, and
seemed to be anxious to make me her confidant. I was always about to
address her, when some extraordinary metamorphosis took place, and I
awoke, palpitating with terror.
The dream greatly impressed me, and I tried my best to discover a
reason for it. I did eventually, but not until the year I published
“Some Haunted Houses of England and Wales,” when I got into
correspondence with a very old lady, whom I will call Miss Carmichael.
Miss Carmichael lived at Ealing, close to the Parish Church, and wrote
to me to the effect that, if I liked to call on her, she could tell me
a curious tale about an old house that used to stand on the outskirts
of Hounslow Heath. Of course I accepted this invitation.
I found Miss Carmichael, when I called, lying on a sofa, crippled with
rheumatism, but otherwise in the full possession of all her senses, and
wonderfully vivacious, despite the fact that she was well over ninety.
“The house I want to tell you about,” she said, “was called ‘The
Gables.’ It was a large, old-fashioned manor house with very extensive
grounds, and at the beginning of the last century it belonged to my
aged relative, Miss Denning. She never lived in it herself, but she
kept it in excellent repair, and at her death, in or about 1820, her
nephew inherited an apparently valuable property. Now, Tom Denning had
a great friend, Dick Mayhew, and it was from Dick Mayhew, who was also
a great friend of mine, that I heard the most detailed account of the
hauntings. I will try and tell you the story just as my friend told it
to me.”[3]
[3] I have reproduced the gist of this narrative in my own
language.
* * * * *
“I was sitting in my stuffy office in Jermyn Street one spring morning,
when, who should suddenly walk in but Tom Denning, whom I had not seen
for some time. ‘Why, Dick,’ he said, ‘how fagged and run down you look.
A spell in the country is what you need, it would do you all the good
in the world. Supposing you come down to my place at Hounslow, and have
a blow on the Heath. I keep a couple of horses, and you can ride all
day if you like.’
“What surprises you spring on one,” I ejaculated. “I didn’t know you
were living so near London—and at Hounslow, too! Aren’t you afraid of
highwaymen. I hear they still visit the place occasionally. How long
have you been there?”
“I haven’t been there yet,” Dick replied with a laugh; “at least, not
to stay. The property has just been left me by my aunt. It’s a queer
old house, just the kind of place a romantic beggar like you would
like, and if any house ought to be haunted, it ought. They say a murder
was once committed there by an ancestress of mine, a girl whose face
was as beautiful as she herself was evil, and that her spirit still
roams the house and grounds.”
“I should certainly like to see her,” I said, “and so, I am sure, would
Greg.” (Greg was Dick’s bloodhound).
“Well, I’ll give you both an opportunity,” Tom laughed. “Take Greg with
you, and a friend too, if you like, for I may not be able to join you
at once.”
“I accepted, and in due course arrived at ‘The Gables,’ accompanied by
my cousin Ralph, who was then a Lieutenant in the Buffs, and Greg.
“The grounds surrounding ‘The Gables,’ which stood near the edge of the
heath, were encompassed by a very high, red-brick wall, and consisted
of a broad, well-kept lawn in front, a small spinney on one side, an
extensive shrubbery on the other, and big kitchen gardens at the back.
The house itself, seventeenth century and covered with ivy from tip to
toe, was picturesque in the extreme. There were no servants, only the
caretakers, a middle-aged man and his wife, who occupied rooms in the
east wing. The west wing was reserved for us.
“After dinner, in a hall so enormous that it made us feel positively
lilliputian, we wandered out into the garden. It was a glorious night,
the sky one mass of silver, scintillating stars, the air redolent with
the odour of spring flowers. ‘By Jove,’ Ralph remarked to me, as we
strolled across the lawn, ‘By Jove! No one would think we were so close
to that God-forsaken heath; why, it was only a few years ago that a
fellow in my regiment was set on there, and, after being robbed of all
he had on him, half beaten to death with bludgeons. It’s one of the
worst cut-throat spots round London.’ Then he uttered an exclamation of
surprise and jogged my elbow.
“Coming towards us from the house was the figure of a young girl. She
wore a white dress with a dark cloak flung loosely over her shoulders,
and the moonlight playing over her face revealed a countenance of
extraordinary delicacy and beauty. Her eyes were large and childlike in
their expression, her lips daintily modelled, her teeth wonderfully
white and even, her hair golden. Whether it was the effect of the
moonlight on them or not, I cannot say, but her cheeks were absolutely
devoid of colour, almost strikingly pale, whilst I fancied I detected
in the slightly open mouth an expression of pain. I saw every detail
most distinctly, even to the shape of her fingers, which were very
pointed. She came on without apparently noticing us, and we watched her
trip past us and disappear in the spinney.
“‘What a stunner!’ Ralph exclaimed. ‘I don’t know when I’ve seen a
prettier face! Sly fellow, Denning! I wonder who she can be!’ He had
hardly finished speaking when we heard the most awful scream, a shriek
of terror and despair, such as sent all the blood in my body to my
heart, and left the rest of me like ice.
“‘My God! What’s happened to her?’ Ralph gasped. ‘She’s being murdered.
Quick!’ We dashed into the spinney, but despite the fact that we
searched everywhere, no girl was to be found.
“Returning to the house, we made enquiries of the caretakers, who were
vehement in their denial of knowing the girl or of having heard her
cries. Much puzzled, we then retired to our night quarters. The room
that had been assigned to us, for we preferred to share one between us,
was situated about midway down a long, narrow corridor, lighted at the
further end by a casement window, across which sprays of ivy blew to
and fro in the cool breeze.
“For a long time we sat in front of the fire chatting, but at one
o’clock Ralph got up, and exclaimed that it was high time we turned
into bed.
“‘Hullo, look at Greg!’ he said, pointing to the dog, who was crouching
on the floor in front of the door showing its teeth in a series of
savage growls. ‘What’s the matter with him?’
“Before I had time to reply, we suddenly heard a regular, measured tap,
tap, tap, as of high-heeled shoes, coming along the corridor towards
our door.
“‘That can’t be either the caretaker or his wife,’ Ralph whispered.
‘I wonder if it’s the young lady! Perhaps she’s going to pay us a
surreptitious visit. I only wish she would—the little darling!’
“Nearer and nearer came the steps, until they seemed to stop just
outside our door. Greg’s hair bristled, he gave a deep growl, and
retreated half way across the room. Then there came a loud knock on the
door, followed by the sound of a violent scuffle. Springing forward,
Ralph threw the door wide open. There was nothing there, only the cold
light of the moon, and the white, motionless faces of the Dennings’
ancestors hanging on the walls.
“‘It’s deuced odd,’ Ralph said. ‘I swear I heard steps and a knock, and
yet there’s nothing to account for it. Could it have been rats?’
“‘I don’t think so,’ I said; ‘rats wouldn’t have frightened Greg. Look
at him now; he has quite recovered.’ Greg had come to my side and was
licking my hand and wagging his tail.
“In the morning I asked the caretaker’s wife if the place was haunted.
“‘Haunted,’ she stammered. ‘No. Whatever made you think of such a
thing, sir! There ain’t no such things as ghosts. It’s them howls you
’eard.’
“Seeing there was nothing to be got out of her, Ralph and I did not
refer to the subject again, but spent our time reading in the library,
and wandering about the heath.
“In the evening we sauntered out into the garden and tried to coax Greg
to come with us, but he resolutely refused, and so we had to leave him
behind. Just about the same time as on the previous evening, and in
identically the same place, we again saw the girl.
“‘I’ll speak to her, hanged if I don’t,’ Ralph muttered, and taking
off his hat, he stepped forward and accosted her. Without apparently
perceiving us, she passed resolutely on, and, entering the spinney, was
speedily lost to sight. Almost directly afterwards, the same awful,
wailing scream rose shrill and high on the still night air. This time
we did not rush after her, but, walking hurriedly back to the house, we
sought the companionship of the bright and cheery fireside.
“At one o’clock we were again seated in our bedroom, and the events of
the preceding night were repeated in every detail.
“On the morrow Tom joined us. When we told him of the ghost, he became
intensely interested.
“‘It must be my ancestress,’ he said. ‘The girl who was supposed to
have murdered somebody. I’ll sit up with you two fellows to-night and
we’ll have the door open.’
“After dinner we all three went into the garden.
“‘It’s here we first caught sight of her,’ Ralph exclaimed, as we
halted on the lawn, ‘here, and precisely at this hour. Yes—by
Jove!—and there she is!’
“I looked, and there was the figure I knew so well, tripping daintily
towards us, her yellow hair and silver shoe buckles gleaming furiously
in the moonlight.
“‘She wears a hood,’ Tom cried, ‘and it completely hides her face.’
“‘What!’ Ralph retorted; ‘she has no hood, you must be dreaming.’
“As before, the girl passed us and we lost sight of her amongst the
trees. The next moment, and we again heard her scream. Then we searched
everywhere, but with no result. She was certainly not on the premises,
and as there was no avenue of escape save by scaling a ten foot
wall, we could only conclude she had melted into fine air, in other
words—vanished.
“‘I’ll get to the bottom of this mystery,’ Tom growled between his
teeth, ‘if I root up every tree in the garden.’
“‘What you’ve seen so far,’ Ralph observed, ‘is only the prelude.
There’s more to come, and I’m not sure if Act II. is not the most
exciting. What do you think, Dick?’
“‘Ask Greg,’ I replied. ‘I believe he knows more about it than we do.’
“On arriving indoors, we all three retired to the bedroom we had agreed
to share. The night was so exquisite that I sat by the open window.
Directly beneath me was the gravel drive, which lay like a broad,
white belt encircling the house, and beyond it, on the level sweep of
lawn, danced the shadows from the larch and fir trees in the paddock;
the only sign of life came from the bats and night birds that wheeled
and skimmed in silent flight in and out the bushes. There was very
little breeze, sufficient only to make the ivy rustle and the window
in the corridor outside give the faintest perceptible jar. I gazed at
my companions. Ralph lay on the sofa, sound asleep, a half-serious,
half-amused look on his handsome features, while Tom sat in an armchair
directly in front of the fire, his head buried in the palms of his
hands, as if wrapt in profound thought. A distant church clock boomed
one. Greg growled, and Tom, at once springing up, flung the door widely
back on its hinges. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Come what may, we’re ready for
it.’ As he concluded, there came a tapping.
“Tap, tap, tap; someone in high-heeled shoes was walking over the
polished oak boards of the corridor in our direction. To me there was a
world of stealth and cautiousness in the sounds, that suggested a host
of conflicting motives. As the steps drew nearer, the door suddenly
swung to with a loud crash, and before we had time to recover from our
astonishment, someone rapped. With a shout of baffled rage, Tom leaped
to his feet and tore at the handle. The massive door at once flew open.
The corridor was empty—only moonbeams and pictures—nothing more.
“The following day was wet, and we stayed indoors, all the morning and
afternoon, reading. As it cleared up a little towards supper-time, Tom
proposed going for a short walk. We slipped on our overcoats, and were
crossing the big entrance hall to the front door, when Tom suddenly
exclaimed, ‘Hang it! I’ve left my pipe upstairs. I say, wait a minute,
you fellows, till I get it.’ He started running, and then stopped
short, giving vent to a loud exclamation. Ascending the broad staircase
in front of us was a form, whose back view exactly resembled that of
the golden-haired beauty we had seen in the garden. Where she had
sprung from we could not say. We only knew she was there.
“‘By Jove! I’ll see her face this time,’ Tom said. ‘I’ll see it, even
if I have to force her to turn round.’ He ran after her, and, mounting
the stairs two at a time, stretched out his hand to pluck at her
sleeve. She turned, and her face was to us a blank. What Tom saw we
never knew. Shouting, ‘Take the damned thing away from me!’ he stepped
back and fell; and when we ran forward, we found him lying at the foot
of the stairs—dead.”
The property, Miss Carmichael informed me, passed to a distant
relative, who, after trying in vain to let it, pulled it down. The
ghost, it was rumoured, was that of a very beautiful ancestress of
the Dennings, who, after leading a life, evil even for those times,
disappeared. What happened to her material body no one ever knew, but
her spirit was supposed to haunt the house and grounds in dual form.
To the stranger, that is to say, to those outside her own family,
she appeared in all the radiant beauty of her earthly body, but to
the Dennings she seldom revealed her face. When she did, they beheld
something too terrible for the mind to conceive—and live.
“I have heard,” Miss Carmichael added, “that the ghost has been seen
quite recently haunting the site once occupied by the house and
grounds, and also the borders of the heath.”
And as Miss Carmichael was very emphatic on this last point, I may not
unreasonably conclude that the girl of my dreams was the actual ghost
of “The Gables.”