to wait before the dawn broke. Nor till it was broad daylight did I quit
the haunted house. Before I did so, I revisited the little blind room in
which my servant and myself had been for a time imprisoned. I had a
strong impression--for which I could not account--that from that room
had originated the mechanism of the phenomena--if I may use the
term--which had been experienced in my chamber. And though I entered it
now in the clear day, with the sun peering through the filmy window, I
still felt, as I stood on its floors, the creep of the horror which I
had first there experienced the night before, and which had been so
aggravated by what had passed in my own chamber. I could not, indeed,
bear to stay more than half a minute within those walls. I descended the
stairs, and again I heard the footfall before me; and when I opened the
street door, I thought I could distinguish a very low laugh. I gained my
own house, expecting to find my runaway servant there. But he had not
presented himself, nor did I hear more of him for three days, when I
received a letter from him, dated from Liverpool to this effect:
"Honored Sir:--I humbly entreat your pardon,
though I can scarcely hope that you will think
that I deserve it, unless--which Heaven
forbid!--you saw what I did. I feel that it will
be years before I can recover myself; and as to
being fit for service, it is out of the question.
I am therefore going to my brother-in-law at
Melbourne. The ship sails tomorrow. Perhaps the
long voyage may set me up. I do nothing now but
start and tremble, and fancy It is behind me. I
humbly beg you, honored sir, to order my clothes,
and whatever wages are due to me, to be sent to my
mother's, at Walworth--John knows her address."
The letter ended with additional apologies, somewhat incoherent, and
explanatory details as to effects that had been under the writer's
charge.
This flight may perhaps warrant a suspicion that the man wished to go to
Australia, and had been somehow or other fraudulently mixed up with the
events of the night. I say nothing in refutation of that conjecture;
rather, I suggest it as one that would seem to many persons the most
probable solution of improbable occurrences. My belief in my own theory
remained unshaken. I returned in the evening to the house, to bring away
in a hack cab the things I had left there, with my poor dog's body. In
this task I was not disturbed, nor did any incident worth note befall
me, except that still, on ascending and descending the stairs, I heard
the same footfall in advance. On leaving the house, I went to Mr.
J----'s. He was at home. I returned him the keys, told him that my
curiosity was sufficiently gratified, and was about to relate quickly
what had passed, when he stopped me, and said, though with much
politeness, that he had no longer any interest in a mystery which none
had ever solved.
I determined at least to tell him of the two letters I had read, as well
as of the extraordinary manner in which they had disappeared, and I then
inquired if he thought they had been addressed to the woman who had died
in the house, and if there were anything in her early history which
could possibly confirm the dark suspicions to which the letters gave
rise. Mr. J---- seemed startled, and, after musing a few moments,
answered: "I am but little acquainted with the woman's earlier history,
except, as I before told you, that her family were known to mine. But
you revive some vague reminiscences to her prejudice. I will make
inquiries, and inform you of their result. Still, even if we could admit
the popular superstition that a person who had been either the
perpetrator or the victim of dark crimes in life could revisit, as a
restless spirit, the scene in which those crimes had been committed, I
should observe that the house was infested by strange sights and sounds
before the old woman died--you smile--what would you say?"
"I would say this, that I am convinced, if we could get to the bottom of
these mysteries, we should find a living human agency."
"What! you believe it is all an imposture? for what object?"
"Not an imposture in the ordinary sense of the word. If suddenly I were
to sink into a deep sleep, from which you could not awake me, but in
that sleep could answer questions with an accuracy which I could not
pretend to when awake--tell you what money you had in your pocket--nay,
describe your very thoughts--it is not necessarily an imposture, any
more than it is necessarily supernatural. I should be, unconsciously to
myself, under a mesmeric influence, conveyed to me from a distance by a
human being who had acquired power over me by previous _rapport_."
"But if a mesmerizer could so affect another living being, can you
suppose that a mesmerizer could also affect inanimate objects; move
chairs--open and shut doors?"
"Or impress our senses with the belief in such effects--we never having
been _en rapport_ with the person acting on us? No. What is commonly
called mesmerism could not do this; but there may be a power akin to
mesmerism and superior to it--the power that in the old days was called
Magic. That such a power may extend to all inanimate objects of matter,
I do not say; but if so, it would not be against nature--it would only
be a rare power in nature which might be given to constitutions with
certain peculiarities, and cultivated by practice to an extraordinary
degree.
"That such a power might extend over the dead--that is, over certain
thoughts and memories that the dead may still retain--and compel, not
that which ought properly to be called the Soul, and which is far beyond
human reach, but rather a phantom of what has been most earth-stained on
earth to make itself apparent to our senses--is a very ancient though
obsolete theory, upon which I will hazard no opinion. But I do not
conceive the power to be supernatural. Let me illustrate what I mean
from an experiment which Paracelsus describes as not difficult, and
which the author of the 'Curiosities of Literature' cites as credible: A
flower perishes; you burn it. Whatever were the elements of that flower
while it lived are gone, dispersed, you know not whither; you can never
discover nor re-collect them. But you can, by chemistry, out of the
burned dust of that flower, raise a spectrum of the flower, just as it
seemed in life. It may be the same with the human being. The soul has as
much escaped you as the essence or elements of the flower. Still you may
make a spectrum of it. And this phantom, though in the popular
superstition it is held to be the soul of the departed, must not be
confounded with the true soul; it is but the _eidolon_ of the dead form.
Hence, like the best attested stories of ghosts or spirits, the thing
that most strikes us is the absence of what we hold to be the soul; that
is, of superior emancipated intelligence. These apparitions come for
little or no object--they seldom speak when they do come; if they speak,
they utter no ideas above those of an ordinary person on earth.
Wonderful, therefore, as such phenomena may be (granting them to be
truthful), I see much that philosophy may question, nothing that it is
incumbent on philosophy to deny--viz., nothing supernatural. They are
but ideas conveyed somehow or other (we have not yet discovered the
means) from one mortal brain to another. Whether, in so doing, tables
walk by their own accord, or fiend-like shapes appear in a magic circle,
or bodyless hands rise and remove material objects, or a Thing of
Darkness, such as presented itself to me, freeze our blood--still am I
persuaded that these are but agencies conveyed, as by electric wires, to
my own brain from the brain of another. In some constitutions there is a
natural chemistry, and those constitutions may produce chemic
wonders--in others a natural fluid, call it electricity, and these may
produce electric wonders. But the wonders differ from Natural Science in
this--they are alike objectless, purposeless, puerile, frivolous. They
lead on to no grand results; and therefore the world does not heed, and
true sages have not cultivated them. But sure I am, that of all I saw or
heard, a man, human as myself, was the remote originator; and I believe
unconsciously to himself as to the exact effects produced, for this
reason: no two persons, you say, have ever experienced exactly the same
thing. Well, observe, no two persons ever experience exactly the same
dream. If this were an ordinary imposture, the machinery would be
arranged for results that would but little vary; if it were a
supernatural agency permitted by the Almighty, it would surely be for
some definite end. These phenomena belong to neither class; my
persuasion is that they originated in some brain now far distant; that
that brain had no distinct volition in anything that occurred; that what
does occur reflects but its devious, motley, ever-shifting, half-formed
thoughts; in short, that it has been but the dreams of such a brain put
in action and invested with a semi-substance. That this brain is of
immense power, that it can set matter into movement, that it is
malignant and destructive, I believe; some material force must have
killed my dog; the same force might, for aught I know, have sufficed to
kill myself, had I been as subjugated by terror as the dog--had my
intellect or my spirit given me no countervailing resistance in my
will."
"It killed your dog! that is fearful! indeed it is strange that no
animal can be induced to stay in that house; not even a cat. Rats and
mice are never found in it."
"The instincts of the brute creation detect influences deadly to their
existence. Man's reason has a sense less subtle, because it has a
resisting power more supreme. But enough; do you comprehend my theory?"
"Yes, though imperfectly--and I accept any crotchet (pardon the word),
however odd, rather than embrace at once the notion of ghosts and
hobgoblins we imbibed in our nurseries. Still, to my unfortunate house
the evil is the same. What on earth can I do with the house?"
"I will tell you what I would do. I am convinced from my own internal
feelings that the small unfurnished room at right angles to the door of
the bedroom which I occupied forms a starting-point or receptacle for
the influences which haunt the house; and I strongly advise you to have
the walls opened, the floor removed--nay, the whole room pulled down. I
observe that it is detached from the body of the house, built over the
small back-yard, and could be removed without injury to the rest of the
building."
"And you think, if I did that----"
"You would cut off the telegraph wires. Try it. I am so persuaded that I
am right that I will pay half the expense if you will allow me to
direct the operations."
"Nay, I am well able to afford the cost; for the rest, allow me to write
to you."
About ten days after I received a letter from Mr. J----, telling me that
he had visited the house since I had seen him; that he had found the two
letters I had described, replaced in the drawer from which I had taken
them; that he had read them with misgivings like my own; that he had
instituted a cautious inquiry about the woman to whom I rightly
conjectured they had been written. It seemed that thirty-six years ago
(a year before the date of the letters) she had married, against the
wish of her relations, an American of very suspicious character; in
fact, he was generally believed to have been a pirate. She herself was
the daughter of very respectable tradespeople, and had served in the
capacity of a nursery governess before her marriage. She had a brother,
a widower, who was considered wealthy, and who had one child of about
six years old. A month after the marriage, the body of this brother was
found in the Thames, near London Bridge; there seemed some marks of
violence about his throat, but they were not deemed sufficient to
warrant the inquest in any other verdict than that of "found drowned."
The American and his wife took charge of the little boy, the deceased
brother having by his will left his sister the guardianship of his only
child--and in the event of the child's death, the sister inherited. The
child died about six months afterward--it was supposed to have been
neglected and ill-treated. The neighbors deposed to having heard it
shriek at night. The surgeon who had examined it after death said that
it was emaciated as if from want of nourishment, and the body was
covered with livid bruises. It seemed that one winter night the child
had sought to escape--crept out into the back-yard--tried to scale the
wall--fallen back exhausted, and had been found at morning on the stones
in a dying state. But though there was some evidence of cruelty, there
was none of murder; and the aunt and her husband had sought to palliate
cruelty by alleging the exceeding stubbornness and perversity of the
child, who was declared to be half-witted. Be that as it may, at the
orphan's death the aunt inherited her brother's fortune. Before the
first wedded year was out, the American quitted England abruptly, and
never returned to it. He obtained a cruising vessel, which was lost in
the Atlantic two years afterward. The widow was left in affluence; but
reverses of various kinds had befallen her; a bank broke--an investment
failed--she went into a small business and became insolvent--then she
entered into service, sinking lower and lower, from housekeeper down to
maid-of-all-work--never long retaining a place, though nothing decided
against her character was ever alleged. She was considered sober,
honest, and peculiarly quiet in her ways; still nothing prospered with
her. And so she had dropped into the workhouse, from which Mr. J----
had taken her, to be placed in charge of the very house which she had
rented as mistress in the first year of her wedded life.
Mr. J---- added that he had passed an hour alone in the unfurnished room
which I had urged him to destroy, and that his impressions of dread
while there were so great, though he had neither heard nor seen
anything, that he was eager to have the walls bared and the floors
removed as I had suggested. He had engaged persons for the work, and
would commence any day I would name.
The day was accordingly fixed. I repaired to the haunted house--we went
into the blind dreary room, took up the skirting, and then the floors.
Under the rafters, covered with rubbish, was found a trap-door, quite
large enough to admit a man. It was closely nailed down, with clamps and
rivets of iron. On removing these we descended into a room below, the
existence of which had never been suspected. In this room there had been
a window and a flue, but they had been bricked over, evidently for many
years. By the help of candles we examined this place; it still retained
some moldering furniture--three chairs, an oak settle, a table--all of
the fashion of about eighty years ago. There was a chest of drawers
against the wall, in which we found, half-rotted away, old-fashioned
articles of a man's dress, such as might have been worn eighty or a
hundred years ago by a gentleman of some rank--costly steel buttons and
buckles, like those yet worn in court-dresses, a handsome court
sword--in a waistcoat which had once been rich with gold lace, but which
was now blackened and foul with damp, we found five guineas, a few
silver coins, and an ivory ticket, probably for some place of
entertainment long since passed away. But our main discovery was in a
kind of iron safe fixed to the wall, the lock of which it cost us much
trouble to get picked.
In this safe were three shelves, and two small drawers. Ranged on the
shelves were several small bottles of crystal, hermetically stoppered.
They contained colorless volatile essences, of the nature of which I
shall only say that they were not poisonous--phosphor and ammonia
entered into some of them. There were also some very curious glass
tubes, and a small pointed rod of iron, with a large lump of rock
crystal, and another of amber--also a loadstone of great power.
In one of the drawers we found a miniature portrait set in gold, and
retaining the freshness of its colors most remarkably, considering the
length of time it had probably been there. The portrait was that of a
man who might be somewhat advanced in middle life, perhaps forty-seven
or forty-eight.
It was a remarkable face--a most impressive face. If you could fancy
some mighty serpent transformed into a man, preserving in the human
lineaments the old serpent type, you would have a better idea of that
countenance than long descriptions can convey; the width and flatness of
frontal--the tapering elegance of contour disguising the strength of
the deadly jaw--the long, large, terrible eye, glittering and green as
the emerald--and withal a certain ruthless calm, as if from the
consciousness of an immense power.
Mechanically I turned round the miniature to examine the back of it, and
on the back was engraved a pentacle; in the middle of the pentacle a
ladder, and the third step of the ladder was formed by the date 1765.
Examining still more minutely, I detected a spring; this, on being
pressed, opened the back of the miniature as a lid. Withinside the lid
was engraved, "Marianna to thee--Be faithful in life and in death to
----." Here follows a name that I will not mention, but it was not
unfamiliar to me. I had heard it spoken of by old men in my childhood as
the name borne by a dazzling charlatan who had made a great sensation in
London for a year or so, and had fled the country on the charge of a
double murder within his own house--that of his mistress and his rival.
I said nothing of this to Mr. J----, to whom reluctantly I resigned the
miniature.
We had found no difficulty in opening the first drawer within the iron
safe; we found great difficulty in opening the second: it was not
locked, but it resisted all efforts, till we inserted in the chinks the
edge of a chisel. When we had thus drawn it forth, we found a very
singular apparatus in the nicest order. Upon a small thin book, or
rather tablet, was placed a saucer of crystal; this saucer was filled
with a clear liquid--on that liquid floated a kind of compass, with a
needle shifting rapidly round; but instead of the usual points of the
compass were seven strange characters, not very unlike those used by
astrologers to denote the planets. A peculiar but not strong nor
displeasing odor came from this drawer, which was lined with a wood that
we afterward discovered to be hazel. Whatever the cause of this odor, it
produced a material effect on the nerves. We all felt it, even the two
workmen who were in the room--a creeping, tingling sensation from the
tips of the fingers to the roots of the hair. Impatient to examine the
tablet, I removed the saucer. As I did so the needle of the compass went
round and round with exceeding swiftness, and I felt a shock that ran
through my whole frame, so that I dropped the saucer on the floor. The
liquid was spilled--the saucer was broken--the compass rolled to the end
of the room--and at that instant the walls shook to and fro, as if a
giant had swayed and rocked them.
The two workmen were so frightened that they ran up the ladder by which
we had descended from the trap-door; but seeing that nothing more
happened, they were easily induced to return.
Meanwhile I had opened the tablet; it was bound in plain red leather,
with a silver clasp; it contained but one sheet of thick vellum, and on
that sheet were inscribed, within a double pentacle, words in old
monkish Latin, which are literally to be translated thus: "On all that
it can reach within these walls--sentient or inanimate, living or
dead--as moves the needle, so work my will! Accursed be the house, and
restless be the dwellers therein."
We found no more. Mr. J---- burned the tablet and its anathema. He razed
to the foundations the part of the building containing the secret room
with the chamber over it. He had then the courage to inhabit the house
himself for a month, and a quieter, better-conditioned house could not
be found in all London. Subsequently he let it to advantage, and his
tenant has made no complaints.
FOOTNOTE:
[Q] Reprinted by special permission from "Great Ghost Stories."
Copyright, 1918, by Dodd, Mead and Company.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Page 43, "by" changed to "my" (replied my uncle)
Page 61, "the the" changed to "the" (find the gasoline)
Page 109, "elvation" changed to "elevation" (the rear elevation)
Page 131, "ge" changed to "we" (then we got interested)
Page 132, "inspiried" changed to "inspired" (murmured Tusky, inspired)
Page 144, "Hut" changed to "Huh" ("Huh!" said Billy, grimly)
Page 177, "Wiliams" changed to "Williams" (quarreling," said Mrs.
Williams)
Page 333, "forbiding" changed to "forbidding" (forbidding the
performance)
Page 347, "matinee" changed to "matinee" (dress after the matinee)
Page 385, "well" changed to "will" (nobody will ever)
Page 391, "notural" changed to "nocturnal" (nocturnal adventure to
which)
Page 404, "succeded" changed to "succeeded" (I succeeded at last)
Page 407, "someing" changed to "something" (there was something)
End of Project Gutenberg's The Boy Scouts Book of Stories, by Various