Room 1 (where we heard noises). Mr. F----.
" 2. Dressing-room communicating with Nos. 1 and 3; doors
opened between.
" 3. Mr. L. F---- (specially "haunted").
" 4. Mr. MacP----.
" 5. Mr. W----.
" 6. Dressing-room, Miss Moore.
" 7. Myself.
" 8. Mr. C----. (Sounds alleged, see evidence.)
_N.B._--Nothing is alleged against 4 and 5.
_February 7th, Sunday._--Miss Moore was awakened this morning
soon after one o'clock by a loud reverberating bang, which
seemed close to her bed. She lay awake for a long time
afterwards, but the sound was not repeated. The men heard
nothing. They report that they went to bed soon after eleven,
and very quietly.
My maid, who has had to give up her room, slept downstairs last
night. She was kept awake nearly all night by noises and
footsteps. The wing is not yet fit for use, as all the pipes are
frozen, and the only downstairs bedroom was insufficiently
aired; so I told her to use that for dressing, and make herself
up a bed on one of the sitting-room sofas, and she slept (or
rather, lay awake) in the drawing-room. She was not frightened,
as she thought all the noises were made by the gentlemen; but
they declare they made no noise.
I asked her as to the other servants. She says the maids are
still very nervous. I spoke to them for the first time about the
noises to-day. The butler's wife has heard sounds, but her
husband only scoffs. The upper housemaid thinks ghosts the
proper thing, and tolerates them along with the high families to
which she is accustomed. The under housemaid is very shy, is
Highland, and knows little English, and won't talk, but owns to
discomfort, and is scoffed at by the other servants, who think
it all part of her having been only a "general" till she came
here. The kitchenmaid goes home to sleep, but I believe some one
fetches her.
I have had a girl out of the village to make up the linen, and
she, we notice, is careful to go home before dark.
This morning we all went to churches of various sorts. When the
men came in to tea they reported that they had had a
conversation with an outdoor servant, who proved to have been
in the service of [Mr. F----'s father] Lord D----, and was
consequently the more communicative. I know him, and have found
him extremely intelligent.
He says that having heard from the H----s' butler (who slept on
the dining-room floor, in the room my maid is to occupy
to-night) that it was impossible to sleep in a room so noisy, he
induced him to allow him to share his room, that they heard
much, but they dared not show a light for fear of his admission
being discovered (the H----s being much on the alert), and they
saw nothing [_cf._ p. 40 for evidence of the H----s' butler].
We did not like to send for him on a Sunday, but decided to have
him in on Monday, and test him as to the intensity of the noise.
In the evening, while we were all chatting in the drawing-room,
Miss Moore came out into the hall, where she had been looking
after the dog. In spite of the noise we were all making, she
distinctly heard the clang noise upstairs. She had said the same
thing, though with less certainty, once before, and we agreed
that one night some one must sit up in the hall. (This was
afterwards done without result.)
_February 8th, Monday._--Last night my maid heard footsteps and
the sound of hands fumbling on her door; this she told us when
she came in with our early tea.
Miss Moore in the early morning, between one and two, heard
again the sharp, reverberating bang as before. We speculated at
breakfast as to whether the sound could have been made by the
men after we had gone upstairs, though they were all sure of
having been quite still before midnight. We made them rehearse
every sound they had in fact made, but nothing was in the least
like it, either in quality or quantity.
I had been disturbed about 5.30 A.M. by the sound (which we had
not heard hitherto) described by former witnesses as
"explosive." I know of nothing quite like it. I have heard the
Portsmouth guns when at a place eight miles away; the sound was
like that, but did not convey the same impression of distance. I
heard it, at intervals, during half-an-hour. Miss Moore is a
very light sleeper, but she did not awake. At six I got up and
went through my room to the dressing-room door (No. 6), after a
sound that seemed especially near. It was so near, that though I
thought it quite unlikely under the circumstances, I wanted to
satisfy myself that no one was playing jokes on Mr. C----, whose
room was close by. The house was deadly still. I could hear the
clocks ticking on the stairs. As I stood, the sound came again.
It might have been caused by a very heavy fall of snow from a
high roof--not sliding, but percussive. Miss Moore had wakened
up and heard it too.
(_N.B._--We afterwards found that, as the roof is flat, the snow
is cleared away daily.)
Mr. W----, an utter sceptic, he declares, left early; then we
all went for a walk. We spent the whole afternoon making
experiments. Miss Moore or my maid or I, as having heard the
noises, shut ourselves up in the room whence they were heard, or
stood in the right places on hall or staircase.