“Well, the ghosts of the men hung at Is-Sur-Tille have company. For
myself, I wouldn’t even want a photograph of the place. No, sir, not
me. I can remember it without that. That’s why they’ve put me in this
hospital with all these crazy people. Yet a tortoise shell comb is as
good an alibi as any....
“What? Ghosts? No sir, of course not; I don’t believe in ’em, not on
_this_ side of the Atlantic ... who ever told you _I_ believed in ghosts.
“The hospital intern?... If they’d kept me ’round that chateau in the
woods at Is-Sur-Tille, it might ’a’ been different. It had a queer story
about it, that chateau. That’s what set _me_ off; that and the fact that
I never did like Captain Bott.
“He was hardboiled, that guy was. No, sir; he didn’t own that French
chateau, although at one time he acted as though he thought he did....
I’m coming to that.
“Over there the frogs said the original owner of the place, in his youth,
had fallen madly in love with a young girl and married her. He must ’a’
been crazy about her all right because, according to their story, he
often was seen combing her hair—yes, sir, the French folks are like that;
that’s romance—combing her long red hair as it hung over the back of her
chair, touching the floor.
“I particularly remember that they said her hair was long, very long,
and red, like copper is red in candle light. After a year, she died,
suddenly, of heart disease—‘killed by love itself,’ one of the frogs
said; that’s romance, and he, her husband, the owner of that chateau
there in the woods at Is-Sur-Tille, left that part of the country on the
very day of her funeral. The place, probably, is there yet, like it was
when I saw it, late in the summer of 1918.
“The house was set back from the road among the trees. It looked, then,
as though it had been deserted for a long time. Most of the furniture had
been removed from it, except in one room—I’m coming to that—and the gate
leading into the yard had fallen open on one rusty hinge. Grass filled
the paths; and you couldn’t tell the flowerbeds from the lawns except by
the weeds.
“Nobody had used the place, even in wartime, until our outfit was
billeted at Is-Sur-Tille. That ghost story of a dead bride begging some
one to comb her hair had kept the Frenchies off the place. But Captain
Bott was a hard-boiled guy.
“We went into the house late one afternoon, Captain Bott and me. He led
the way into the kitchen and through the first floor into a large hall,
where the stairs went up to the floor above. Dust was over everything.
The only room in the house that looked at all as though it had been
occupied in years was that bedroom upstairs where, they had told us, the
bride had slept and died. We recognized it because it was the only room
in the house where the door was shut.
“We opened it—that is, Captain Bott did—and went in. I stood in the
doorway until he swore at me and ordered me to follow him in. The room
smelled moldy. It smelled dead. It was a fine room for a ghost. It was
dark in there, but gradually my eyes got accustomed to the gloom enough
to make out that there was a bed in it. On the captain’s orders, I went
to the window to open it for light, but I had to break the rusty hinges
of the outside shutters before I could loosen them.
“At the court martial inquiry they wouldn’t believe me when I said that
was the only reason I went into the room, and on the captain’s orders.
“The room was on the north side of the house and the sun was setting, so
opening the window didn’t help much. There was pillows and a mattress and
sheets—yellow sheets, yellow with age—on the bed. The chairs seemed all
in confusion. There was another door in the room, probably leading to a
closet. It was closed.
“Captain Bott went over and felt of the mattress and patted the
pillows—the pillows on which they had said the bride’s head, nestled in
its mass of copper-colored hair, had rested when she died. Captain Bott
was hard-boiled, like I just said. He didn’t believe in ghosts.
“He said it was the best shakedown he’d seen in weeks.
“‘I’ll damned soon get a good night’s rest,’ he said.
“And he ordered me to go for some candles and his stuff; and, when I got
back, I was to clear the place up. I went. I was glad to go. But I hated
like hell to return.”
* * * * *
“When I did get back into the house, it was twilight and, inside, as dark
as a black cat’s belly. Downstairs, in the kitchen, I lighted one of the
candles and held it before me in one hand, the other being occupied with
the captain’s luggage. Then I went through the first floor into the large
hall where the stairs went up to the floor above.
“In the light of my candle at the landing I saw that the door into the
bedroom was closed again, as it had been the only room in the house
where the door was shut when we first went up there together—the captain
who didn’t believe in ghosts and I, who did, over there.... No sir, of
course not; I _don’t_ believe in ’em, not on _this_ side of the Atlantic.
But, in the woods, at Is-Sur-Tille at night, that’s different.
“And it must be worse, since they hung those men there ... and with
Captain Bott who thought the bed of a dead bride was a handsome billet.
He was sure hard-boiled, that guy. I hated him for it.
“When I left him to go for the candles, that door had been open. When
I returned, it was closed. I didn’t like to open it again. But he was
alone there in the dark in that bedroom. I knew that if I waited for him
to come to open the door, stumbling across chairs and things, he sure
would cuss me out—that’s the hell of being a private and a servant to an
officer; no white man likes it—so, finally, I opened the door, with the
hand which held the candle.
“Everything seemed as before, but so quiet. My ears were straining for
sound like they used to do at the sudden cessation of barrage-firing. But
I heard nothing, nothing at all. And the place smelled moldy. It smelled
dead. It was a fine room for a ghost. I thought of it then.
“And, as I stepped across the threshold, I noticed that that other door
in the room, probably that of a closet, was open. It had been closed.
I thought perhaps that the captain had opened it while I was gone. It
wasn’t so dark when I left him as when I returned, and maybe he would ’a’
been snooping around a bit, out of curiosity, perhaps. _I’m_ not curious
like that. But Captain Bott was hard-boiled. And he didn’t believe in
ghosts....
“All these things I’m telling you about what I saw and thought and felt,
they wouldn’t hardly listen to at the court martial inquiry....
“I don’t know how long it was from the time I lighted the candle in the
kitchen downstairs until I stood with it in the doorway of the bedroom
of the dead bride. Not very long, probably, because the melting candle
grease was just beginning to run hot onto my fingers when I turned to
glance toward the bed, wondering why the captain had kept so damned
quiet. It wasn’t like him.
“And there he was, lying across the bed on his back, the tips of his
shoes just touching the floor. Asleep? No. I don’t know how I knew he
wasn’t asleep ... the court martial inquiry kept asking me that....
“But I saw he had something wound round his neck, something that glinted
in the candle light like the braid of a woman’s copper-red hair. And his
hands were above his head. One of them clutched a tortoise-shell comb. I
knew he wasn’t asleep. I knew he was _dead_!...
“How I knew, I couldn’t tell you nor any damned court martial inquiry on
earth. God knows they drove me crazy enough asking me that and what else
I saw....
“Didn’t I see nothing else? No, but I thought I _heard_ or _felt_
something move near that black hole where that other door opened yawning
into a closet. My candle went out—maybe it was only the night wind from
the window—and I dropped it. I dropped the bundle of things belonging
to Captain Bott. I crossed the threshold. I went down the stairs in the
dark, running.
“I fell at the bottom. I remember that.... And I told the court martial
inquiry so; ’twas about the only thing those smug guys believed that I
told them.... But I was on my feet and out of that house before I knew I
had fallen....”
* * * * *
“Ha! I can see it! You, too, think I’m soft-boiled.... So did the court
martial inquiry. That’s why they sent me here, among these crazy people.
But say, Buddy, don’t believe what the hospital interne tells you. He’s
crazy, like the rest of ’em. He’s as hard-boiled, too, as Captain Bott
was. And _that_ guy was so hard-boiled he didn’t believe in French ghost
stories.”
* * * * *
“That nut you just talked with tells his story to anyone who will
listen,” the interne remarked casually, as we returned to the office of
the commandant of the Army and Navy Insane Asylum. “Probably you think
you’ve heard a crackin’ good ghost story, but what you really heard was
the confession of a crazy murderer who ought to have been the third on
the gallows at Is-Sur-Tille.”
“Isn’t there a haunted chateau at Is-Sur-Tille, and didn’t the officer he
tells about die in the bedroom there?”
“_Oui, mais certainement!_ as the frogs have it. If that chateau isn’t
haunted, it ought to be. There’s a story in the village of the bride’s
death there. And Captain Bott died there all right enough. But that thing
they found twined around his neck ‘like the braid of a woman’s copper-red
hair’ was, in fact, real copper—copper wire stolen from a lineman’s kit.
It might _look_ like hair to a crazy man.”
“But that comb?” I persisted. “What about that tortoise-shell comb?”
“That? Oh, the nut stole that, too. It belonged to one of the girls of
the town whom the private knew before the captain beat his time with
her.”
_A Photographic Phantasm_
_By Paul Crumpler, M. D._
I have always believed that there is a simple and natural explanation for
all seemingly supernatural happenings; but I recently had occasion to
question this belief.
I cannot doubt my own personal knowledge, nor can I deny what my own eyes
have seen, therefore, I cannot dismiss it as a figment of imagination.
The facts are as follows:
There is a rural section near me into which I frequently make visits in
the practice of my profession as a physician. The people are a quaint,
simple and kindly sort, honest, unsophisticated.
I was called, not long ago, to see a little girl in this neighborhood
and found her very ill and with a poor chance for recovery. She was the
younger of two children of a very intelligent farmer and his wife, the
latter, however, having a rather nervous temperament. I had treated the
woman before the little girl was born, and, although she, too, was above
the average in intelligence in her neighborhood, she was a person who
would be classed medically as a neurasthenic.
Realizing the seriousness of her child’s sickness, she was becoming
very nervous, so much so that I found it necessary to leave her some
sedatives. She was worrying a great deal because she did not have a
picture of the little girl. It seemed that the family had planned on
several occasions to have a group picture made in the village, but each
time something had prevented their doing so. This, she informed me, was
preying on her mind and accentuating her grief.
The child died and I heard nothing more from the family until about two
months later. This time my call was to the mother. I found her in a state
of hysteria bordering almost on insanity. She was holding a number of
photographs to her breast, and alternately laughing and crying; it was
impossible to get any coherency into her actions.
Her husband, however, told me that just before he sent for me, the Rural
Mail Carrier had delivered the photographs which had been taken of
himself, his wife and the remaining little girl about six weeks after the
death of their child.
After much persuasion we were able to get the photographs from her and
after glancing at them we saw the cause of her hysteria. THE DEAD CHILD
WAS PHOTOGRAPHED IN THE GROUP ALMOST AS PLAINLY AS THE OTHERS.
She was sitting on her mother’s lap, and on her feet were the little
white shoes which had been bought after her death to satisfy the mother,
who did not want to bury the child in the old and ragged pair which were
all she had. She was dressed exactly as when she was buried, wearing the
dress that the mother had made for her to wear when the family group was
to be photographed.
Did this phenomenon happen by mental telepathy from the mother to the
camera? The mother had grieved unusually and her mind was entirely filled
with thoughts of her child. If the explanation is not to be had from this
line of reasoning, I am unable to solve it.
The picture is there, and also the photographer to verify the truth of
this. The picture shows two children and the mother and father. The
photographer is ready to swear that only one child was visible to his eye
when he made the negative.
_One “Creepy” Night in a House of Death_