A CASE FROM JAPAN
Since Japan is a country in which I believe many people are intensely
interested, I do not think I need apologise for introducing here the
following account of a Japanese haunting.
Never having been to Japan, I cannot lay claim to having had any
ghostly adventures there myself; but as this is copied, word for word,
from the MSS. of Mr. G. Salis, which was very kindly lent me for the
purpose by Mrs. Salis (Mr. Salis’s mother), I can most certainly answer
for its authenticity.
* * * * *
“In the spring of 1913, I settled in the village of Akaji, in the
southern Island of Japan, in order to work a colliery. The country in
this part is mountainous and quite off the track of any tourists, and
the inhabitants remain in a very primitive condition. All the people
are either farmers, miners, or the keepers of very small shops, and
there is not a single hotel nor even an inn. I stayed at first in one
of the rooms of a farm house, and, after a little while, was able to
lease an old thatched farm house, standing in a small orange orchard,
quite close to the colliery.
“Its owner lived in a little house at the back. My house was
one-storied, but very high, the pitch of the thick thatch being
very steep. On entering, one found a kitchen with various cooking
places, but no chimneys: the smoke curling and losing itself among
the huge rafters that supported the roof. The rest of the house was
raised, and consisted of four rooms divided from each other by sliding
paper-covered screens or fusuma, and with thick padded straw mats or
tatami on the floor. I got a table and chair, and put up some book
shelves, and made the best room as habitable as possible. This room had
a tokonoma, or recess, painted a dark grey; and a scroll, a crystal
and a vase of flowers put in it gave the necessary decoration to the
severely bare interior. For the first few months I slept in one of the
back rooms, but later, when it got very hot, I only used the one room.
I had one servant, and as we got up at dawn, we also went to sleep
very early, and usually by nine o’clock the house was in darkness and
silence. One night I was awakened, and heard talking and laughing in
the next room, only separated from me by a thin screen. Someone was
telling a story in an animated voice, and his auditor every now and
then ejaculated ‘naruhode’ (to be sure) and ‘sodesuka’ (is that so),
but the voices were kept low and the laughs were subdued. Just then the
kitchen clock struck two. I was annoyed at my servant having friends
in at that hour, and in the room next mine, and determining to have it
out with him in the morning, I fell asleep. Next morning he absolutely
denied that anyone had been in the house, and became very indignant
when I insisted on what I had heard.
“Two nights later, I again heard a conversation going on, and
reluctantly got out of bed and from under the mosquito curtains to
investigate. A low chuckling laugh and then a snatch of song—and I
pushed back the sliding fusuma. The room was in darkness, but I had
a little electric torch which I used in the colliery, and, pressing
its button, the room was brightly lit. Inside the mosquito curtain,
Tanaka lay soundly sleeping—no one else was in the room; indeed,
but for the futon or mattress covered by the net it was completely
bare, and the talking still went on, seeming now to come from the room
behind me. I awoke Tanaka, and we went out into the garden. No one was
stirring, and the sounds came from inside the house. Away, down the
road, three miners were returning from a night shift, and my servant
wanted to run and fetch them, but I did not see the object of doing
so. The mosquitoes were very bad, and I wanted to get back under the
nets, conversations or no conversations, and so we re-entered the
house. Silence reigned, and I went back to bed—but not to sleep—for
the remainder of that night. Tanaka took the opportunity, while I
was at the colliery the next morning, to pack up his few belongings
and decamp, leaving a letter saying he could not stay in a house
frequented by demons. I got a girl in from the village as a makeshift,
and afterwards another servant, but no one would stay in the house
after nightfall. I moved my bed into a room at the back, but still
used the other room as a living room, and soon became used to the fact
that it was haunted. Often, during the day, there were noises coming
from near the tokonoma or recess—as though someone was cracking his
finger joints, a habit the Japanese have; on several occasions, flowers
put in the vase below the hanging scroll were taken out of their vase
and arranged lying on a tray. One afternoon I brought my bed into the
room, as the autumn was now getting cold, and I had been unwell for
some days and wanted the benefit of the afternoon sun. I sent the
servant to buy some stamps at the Post Office, a mile away, and stepped
into the garden to gather some late dahlias. Looking up I distinctly
saw a movement in the room I had left, through the pane of glass let
into the paper-covered shoji. Dropping my flowers, I pressed my face
against the pane, and saw the bedclothes, which the servant and myself
had arranged, only five minutes previously, had been whisked off and
were lying on the floor. Twice after this, coats hung on a peg near
the tokonoma were found almost immediately lying on the floor at some
distance, one having been pulled from its peg with such force as partly
to tear it.
“On many nights, when I woke up, I heard talking in the next room, and
gradually came to distinguish a man’s voice, sometimes I thought two
men’s, and certainly that of a woman and a baby. All the village were
now talking of the haunted house, and, now and then, neighbours came in
to listen to the mysterious sounds that came, from time to time, from
the tokonoma, but they took good care to be gone before sunset.
“Winter had now come, and I fell ill, and as the only really pleasant
room in the house was made impossible during the long sleepless nights,
I redoubled my endeavour to find another house. A baby’s wailings
were very distinct, then it was hushed by its mother, and then long
conversations ensued between her and one or two men—sometimes there
were little taps, as though a tobacco pipe were being emptied of its
ashes, but more often a curious noise was heard which sounded like
‘putter putter.’ About this time, an account appeared in all the
Japanese newspapers of a bridge in Tokejo, which was haunted by a
woman, and how this spirit had been laid by priestly intervention,
and it was suggested that the same might be tried in the present
case. I thought it rather a good plan, but, seeing that it was rather
expensive, said that the landlord and not his foreign tenant should
defray the cost and arrange the matter. But my landlord, who was very
unpopular in the village, and with whom I was not on very good terms,
would do nothing; and as, just then, another house near the colliery
became vacant, I was able to move, and so at last be free of my ghostly
visitants. Everyone knew of the reason for my leaving, and the landlord
felt sure he would never find another tenant. After the house had been
empty for some time, the landlord himself determined to live in it
for some months, in order to demonstrate that things were not so bad
after all. He, and his wife, and their two grandchildren accordingly
moved their things across from their other house, but did not at first
occupy the room with the tokonoma. Seeing, however, that their object
in being in the house at all would be defeated unless this room was
used, they hung some pictures in the recess, placed a bronze flower
vase on a carved stand below them, and also moved in a gilt shrine
containing an image of Buddha. A few friends were asked in, but all
left at sunset. Next morning I heard that there had been considerable
disturbance at the house, and that the younger grandson had been taken
with convulsions.
“The same day a move was made again to their former abode, the house
was closed, and still remains empty. A temple on a hill near by was
being repaired, and, on the completion of the work, a priest came to
hold a service. The head man of the village took the opportunity of
consulting with him, and together they went to see my late landlord.
The facts brought to light, many of which were vaguely known in the
district, are as follows:—The house had been built about one hundred
and fifty years previously by the head of the family, which was
then of more consequence than at present, although it still owned
considerable property in pine forests and rice fields. A younger
brother of the original builder had conspired against his feudal lord
and had committed suicide—hara-kiri. It was not known in which room,
but probably it was in the principal one. The next tragedy, that was
known of, had happened some fifteen years before, when the son-in-law,
the father of the two boys already mentioned, was found hanging from a
hook near the wooden ceiling of the room with the tokonoma. He had been
away for some time in Tokejo, had spent a great deal of money, and, on
his return, had quarrelled violently with his wife. She had run out of
the house with her children, and had stayed on the hillside all night.
Next morning her husband was found as above stated. Some months later,
again in the same room, on the eve of the birth of her posthumous
child, this woman killed herself by drinking poison, made from the
leaves of a shrub still growing in the garden. During the convulsions
which preceded her death, the child was born, but dead.
“The priest said there was no doubt that the spirits of these various
people, related by family ties, and lives, passed among the same
surroundings, and who had all come to a dreadful violent end in the
same house, and, probably, the same room, were earthbound, and were in
the habit of assembling and conversing in the room where their lives
had come to an end. Each addition would strengthen and intensify their
bondage, and the priest expressed his surprise that the spirits were
not actually visible. There was a good deal of discussion as to the
terms for a service and ceremony to free the house from these ghostly
tenants and to give them rest, I offered a small sum, but as they were,
after all, the relations of the landlord, it was upon him that the bulk
of the expense fell, and he refused to provide the necessary funds.
His argument was that, even were the spirits ‘laid,’ no one now would
rent the house, and so he would not spend any money on it. Whether he
also thought that the spirits were as happy holding their ghost-parties
round the tokonoma as they would be if they were at rest, he did not
say, as such thoughts would be contrary to all Japanese ideas on the
subject. Anyway, the house is now closed, the heavy wooden shutters are
rolled across the verandahs and bolted, the garden is overgrown and
choked with weeds, and the only time when there is human activity about
it, is when the orange trees, burdened with fruit, yield their golden
harvest.
“G. SALIS.”
* * * * *
To revert again to my own experiences. I am often sorry, extremely
sorry, I was ever brought into contact with the Unknown. As I said in
one of the early chapters of this book, I did not go out of my way to
seek the superphysical—it came to me. And it has never given me any
peace. I feel its presence beside me at all times. In the evening, when
I am writing, the curtains that are tightly drawn across the closed
windows slowly bulge, the candlestick on the mantel-shelf rattles, a
picture on the wall swings out suddenly at me, and, when I go to bed
and try to sleep, I frequently hear breathings and far-away whispers.
Some of these “presences” no doubt have been with me always—most
probably they were with my ancestors—whilst others have attached
themselves to me in my nocturnal ramblings.
My wife, who was a confirmed disbeliever before our marriage, has
long since thrown aside her scepticism, and for a good reason. She
has had many startling proofs of the power the spirit has of making
itself manifest. The night a near relative of mine died both she and I
heard a loud crash on the panel of our bedroom door, and I, though I
only, saw a hooded figure standing there. Also, besides having heard
the banshee, my wife has seen objects moved by superphysical agency,
seen them fanned by a wind that is apparently non-existing, had small
stones and other articles thrown at her, and heard all sorts of queer,
unaccountable sounds—laughs, sighs, and moans.
Three ghostly incidents have happened to me within the past twelve
months. The first was in Red Lion Square. It was twilight; I was alone
on the top floor of the house, and no one else was in the building,
saving the daughter of the caretaker, who was in the basement.
Suddenly footsteps, slow, ponderous footsteps, began to ascend the
stairs—which, being uncarpetted and of oak, carried the sound—from
the hall. Wondering who it could be, I called out. There was no reply,
and the steps drew nearer. On the landing immediately beneath me they
halted. I went out and looked down. No one was to be seen, and the
steps immediately began to descend. I followed them right down—a few
stairs behind—till they reached the hall, when they abruptly ceased. I
learned afterwards that these footsteps were quite a common phenomenon
in the house, which had long been haunted by them.
My second experience occurred in the Moscow Road, Bayswater. Feeling a
heavy weight on my bed one night and wishing to remove it, I put out my
hand. It was immediately seized and held in a warm grip. I sat up in
bed, but could see no one. The hand that clasped mine was very soft and
small—unmistakably that of a woman. I felt the wrist and forearm, but
beyond the elbow there was nothing.
I was rather alarmed at this occurrence at the time, as I have a friend
who died shortly after experiencing a similar phenomenon. In my case,
however, the lady, whose hand I immediately identified as the hand
that had clasped mine, and this lady solemnly declared that upon the
same night—we compared dates—she had dreamed of a hand which was the
exact counterpart of mine, and that, upon shaking hands with me that
afternoon, she had been instantly reminded of her dream.
That there was nothing in common between us, her tastes and outlook on
life being absolutely at variance with mine, makes the occurrence, in
my opinion, none the less interesting, though somewhat difficult to
account for.
My last experience occurred only a few days ago, as I was sitting
on the stairs of a haunted house near Ealing. I had applied to the
landlord for permission to spend the night there, and, pending his
reply, had obtained the keys from the agent, in order to see what the
house was like by daylight. Having just finished jotting down some
notes—a memorandum of something I had suddenly thought of—I paused,
still holding the pencil in my hand, whilst my note-book lay open on my
knee. I had not sat thus for more than a minute, when, with a thrill of
surprise, I felt the pencil suddenly taken from my hand, and, looking
down, I distinctly saw it, of its own accord, scrawl right across my
book. Whether what I afterwards found written in my note-book was
written by the spirit that haunted the house, or by a projection of
one of my own personalities, I cannot say; neither can I, myself, nor
anyone to whom I have shown the symbolic writing, tell what it means.
The appended is a facsimile.
[Illustration]
I might add that this is my one and only experience of spirit-writing,
and also that it was my one and only experience in the haunted house
near Ealing, as I did not succeed in getting leave to spend a night
there.
Although I must confess I have made little progress so far in my
investigations, for my failure to decipher spirit-writing is not the
only set-back that I have encountered, I still have hopes. I hope
that some day, when I am brought face to face with the Unknown, in a
haunted house or elsewhere, I may be able to hit upon some mode of
communication with it, and discover something that may be of real
service both to myself and to the rest of humanity.
If only I could overcome fear!
It is March 28th, midnight, and as I pen these concluding words, my
mind reverts to the symbols and the date—March 28th, twelve o’clock.
Suddenly I hear footsteps—distant footsteps on the road
outside—coming in the direction of the house.
I glance at my wife, wondering whether she hears them too. She is
asleep, however, and, as I covertly watch her, I see a look of terror
gradually steal into her face. Clicking steps. They come nearer and
nearer. They stop for a moment at our door, and then—thank God—pass
slowly on.
I look out of the window—the road is absolutely deserted, but from
close at hand the sounds are wafted to me—click, click, click,
fainter, fainter, fainter—until they abruptly cease.
THE END.
_Printed by W. Mate & Sons, Ltd., Bournemouth._
Transcriber’s note
Words in italics have been surrounded with _underscores_ and small
capitals have been replaced with all capitals.
Small errors in punctuation were corrected without note, also the
following changes were made, on page
11 “ancester” changed to “ancestor” (Niall Garbh, the ancestor
of Red Hugh)
16 “ill” changed to “will” (to wander about at will?)
27 “generation” changed to “generations” (with Irish soil for many
generations.)
28 “i.” added “i.e.” (_i.e._, to announce a death)
33 “remanied” changed to “remained” (and so I remained with my neck
craned over)
42 “genialty” changed to “geniality” (about them all there was an air
of geniality)
44 “wiife” changed to “wife” (my wife met this Mr. Dekon at a ball)
49 “financies” changed to “finances” (in which my finances forced
me to)
59 “lift” changed to “left” (which left me with)
62 “Be” changed to “Bell” (Mrs. Bell asked Stella if she had)
69 “physical” changed to “psychical” (the people to associate
themselves with psychical research)
77 “overheard” changed to “overhead” (I heard someone moving about
overhead)
86 “fo” changed to “of” (of tramp suicides)
99 “happned” changed to “happened” (That was all that happened)
103 “parellel” changed to “parallel” (disturbances of a parallel
nature)
118 “dose” changed to “doze” (As soon as I begin to doze)
164 “his” changed to “my” (pointing to my cap).
Otherwise the original was preserved, including inconsistencies
in spelling, hyphenation, etc. Additional: “the ’98” on page 17
probably refers to the Irish rebellion in 1798.