SOME ODD FACTS ABOUT THE TILED HOUSE--BEING AN AUTHENTIC NARRATIVE OF
THE GHOST OF A HAND.
I'm sure she believed every word she related, for old Sally was
veracious. But all this was worth just so much as such talk commonly
is--marvels, fabulæ, what our ancestors called winter's tales--which
gathered details from every narrator, and dilated in the act of
narration. Still it was not quite for nothing that the house was held to
be haunted. Under all this smoke there smouldered just a little spark of
truth--an authenticated mystery, for the solution of which some of my
readers may possibly suggest a theory, though I confess I can't.
Miss Rebecca Chattesworth, in a letter dated late in the autumn of 1753,
gives a minute and curious relation of occurrences in the Tiled House,
which, it is plain, although at starting she protests against all such
fooleries, she has heard with a peculiar sort of interest, and relates
it certainly with an awful sort of particularity.
I was for printing the entire letter, which is really very singular as
well as characteristic. But my publisher meets me with his _veto_; and I
believe he is right. The worthy old lady's letter _is_, perhaps, too
long; and I must rest content with a few hungry notes of its tenor.
That year, and somewhere about the 24th October, there broke out a
strange dispute between Mr. Alderman Harper, of High Street, Dublin, and
my Lord Castlemallard, who, in virtue of his cousinship to the young
heir's mother, had undertaken for him the management of the tiny estate
on which the Tiled or Tyled House--for I find it spelt both ways--stood.
This Alderman Harper had agreed for a lease of the house for his
daughter, who was married to a gentleman named Prosser. He furnished it,
and put up hangings, and otherwise went to considerable expense. Mr. and
Mrs. Prosser came there sometime in June, and after having parted with a
good many servants in the interval, she made up her mind that she could
not live in the house, and her father waited on Lord Castlemallard, and
told him plainly that he would not take out the lease because the house
was subjected to annoyances which he could not explain. In plain terms,
he said it was haunted, and that no servants would live there more than
a few weeks, and that after what his son-in-law's family had suffered
there, not only should he be excused from taking a lease of it, but that
the house itself ought to be pulled down as a nuisance and the habitual
haunt of something worse than human malefactors.
Lord Castlemallard filed a bill in the Equity side of the Exchequer to
compel Mr. Alderman Harper to perform his contract, by taking out the
lease. But the Alderman drew an answer, supported by no less than seven
long affidavits, copies of all which were furnished to his lordship, and
with the desired effect; for rather than compel him to place them upon
the file of the court, his lordship struck, and consented to release
him.
I am sorry the cause did not proceed at least far enough to place upon
the files of the court the very authentic and unaccountable story which
Miss Rebecca relates.
The annoyances described did not begin till the end of August, when, one
evening, Mrs. Prosser, quite alone, was sitting in the twilight at the
back parlour window, which was open, looking out into the orchard, and
plainly saw a hand stealthily placed upon the stone window-sill outside,
as if by some one beneath the window, at her right side, intending to
climb up. There was nothing but the hand, which was rather short but
handsomely formed, and white and plump, laid on the edge of the
window-sill; and it was not a very young hand, but one aged, somewhere
about forty, as she conjectured. It was only a few weeks before that the
horrible robbery at Clondalkin had taken place, and the lady fancied
that the hand was that of one of the miscreants who was now about to
scale the windows of the Tiled House. She uttered a loud scream and an
ejaculation of terror, and at the same moment the hand was quietly
withdrawn.
Search was made in the orchard, but no indications of any person's
having been under the window, beneath which, ranged along the wall,
stood a great column of flower-pots, which it seemed must have prevented
any one's coming within reach of it.
The same night there came a hasty tapping, every now and then, at the
window of the kitchen. The women grew frightened, and the servant-man,
taking firearms with him, opened the back-door, but discovered nothing.
As he shut it, however, he said, 'a thump came on it,' and a pressure as
of somebody striving to force his way in, which frightened _him_; and
though the tapping went on upon the kitchen window panes, he made no
further explorations.
About six o'clock on the Saturday evening following, the cook, 'an
honest, sober woman, now aged nigh sixty years,' being alone in the
kitchen, saw, on looking up, it is supposed, the same fat but
aristocratic-looking hand, laid with its palm against the glass, near
the side of the window, and this time moving slowly up and down, pressed
all the while against the glass, as if feeling carefully for some
inequality in its surface. She cried out, and said something like a
prayer on seeing it. But it was not withdrawn for several seconds after.
After this, for a great many nights, there came at first a low, and
afterwards an angry rapping, as it seemed with a set of clenched
knuckles at the back-door. And the servant-man would not open it, but
called to know who was there; and there came no answer, only a sound as
if the palm of the hand was placed against it, and drawn slowly from
side to side with a sort of soft, groping motion.
All this time, sitting in the back parlour, which, for the time, they
used as a drawing-room, Mr. and Mrs. Prosser were disturbed by rappings
at the window, sometimes very low and furtive, like a clandestine
signal, and at others sudden, and so loud as to threaten the breaking of
the pane.
This was all at the back of the house, which looked upon the orchard as
you know. But on a Tuesday night, at about half-past nine, there came
precisely the same rapping at the hall-door, and went on, to the great
annoyance of the master and terror of his wife, at intervals, for nearly
two hours.
After this, for several days and nights, they had no annoyance
whatsoever, and began to think that nuisance had expended itself. But on
the night of the 13th September, Jane Easterbrook, an English maid,
having gone into the pantry for the small silver bowl in which her
mistress's posset was served, happening to look up at the little window
of only four panes, observed through an auger-hole which was drilled
through the window frame, for the admission of a bolt to secure the
shutter, a white pudgy finger--first the tip, and then the two first
joints introduced, and turned about this way and that, crooked against
the inside, as if in search of a fastening which its owner designed to
push aside. When the maid got back into the kitchen we are told 'she
fell into "a swounde," and was all the next day very weak.'
Mr. Prosser being, I've heard, a hard-headed and conceited sort of
fellow, scouted the ghost, and sneered at the fears of his family. He
was privately of opinion that the whole affair was a practical joke or a
fraud, and waited an opportunity of catching the rogue _flagrante
delicto_. He did not long keep this theory to himself, but let it out by
degrees with no stint of oaths and threats, believing that some domestic
traitor held the thread of the conspiracy.
Indeed it was time something were done; for not only his servants, but
good Mrs. Prosser herself, had grown to look unhappy and anxious. They
kept at home from the hour of sunset, and would not venture about the
house after night-fall, except in couples.
The knocking had ceased for about a week; when one night, Mrs. Prosser
being in the nursery, her husband, who was in the parlour, heard it
begin very softly at the hall-door. The air was quite still, which
favoured his hearing distinctly. This was the first time there had been
any disturbance at that side of the house, and the character of the
summons was changed.
Mr. Prosser, leaving the parlour-door open, it seems, went quietly into
the hall. The sound was that of beating on the outside of the stout
door, softly and regularly, 'with the flat of the hand.' He was going to
open it suddenly, but changed his mind; and went back very quietly, and
on to the head of the kitchen stair, where was a 'strong closet' over
the pantry, in which he kept his firearms, swords, and canes.
Here he called his man-servant, whom he believed to be honest, and, with
a pair of loaded pistols in his own coat-pockets, and giving another
pair to him, he went as lightly as he could, followed by the man, and
with a stout walking-cane in his hand, forward to the door.
Everything went as Mr. Prosser wished. The besieger of his house, so far
from taking fright at their approach, grew more impatient; and the sort
of patting which had aroused his attention at first assumed the rhythm
and emphasis of a series of double-knocks.
Mr. Prosser, angry, opened the door with his right arm across, cane in
hand. Looking, he saw nothing; but his arm was jerked up oddly, as it
might be with the hollow of a hand, and something passed under it, with
a kind of gentle squeeze. The servant neither saw nor felt anything, and
did not know why his master looked back so hastily, cutting with his
cane, and shutting the door with so sudden a slam.
From that time Mr. Prosser discontinued his angry talk and swearing
about it, and seemed nearly as averse from the subject as the rest of
his family. He grew, in fact, very uncomfortable, feeling an inward
persuasion that when, in answer to the summons, he had opened the
hall-door, he had actually given admission to the besieger.
He said nothing to Mrs. Prosser, but went up earlier to his bed-room,
'where he read a while in his Bible, and said his prayers.' I hope the
particular relation of this circumstance does not indicate its
singularity. He lay awake a good while, it appears; and, as he supposed,
about a quarter past twelve he heard the soft palm of a hand patting on
the outside of the bed-room door, and then brushed slowly along it.
Up bounced Mr. Prosser, very much frightened, and locked the door,
crying, 'Who's there?' but receiving no answer but the same brushing
sound of a soft hand drawn over the panels, which he knew only too well.
In the morning the housemaid was terrified by the impression of a hand
in the dust of the 'little parlour' table, where they had been unpacking
delft and other things the day before. The print of the naked foot in
the sea-sand did not frighten Robinson Crusoe half so much. They were by
this time all nervous, and some of them half-crazed, about the hand.
Mr. Prosser went to examine the mark, and made light of it but as he
swore afterwards, rather to quiet his servants than from any
comfortable feeling about it in his own mind; however, he had them all,
one by one, into the room, and made each place his or her hand, palm
downward, on the same table, thus taking a similar impression from every
person in the house, including himself and his wife; and his 'affidavit'
deposed that the formation of the hand so impressed differed altogether
from those of the living inhabitants of the house, and corresponded with
that of the hand seen by Mrs. Prosser and by the cook.
Whoever or whatever the owner of that hand might be, they all felt this
subtle demonstration to mean that it was declared he was no longer out
of doors, but had established himself in the house.
And now Mrs. Prosser began to be troubled with strange and horrible
dreams, some of which as set out in detail, in Aunt Rebecca's long
letter, are really very appalling nightmares. But one night, as Mr.
Prosser closed his bed-chamber-door, he was struck somewhat by the utter
silence of the room, there being no sound of breathing, which seemed
unaccountable to him, as he knew his wife was in bed, and his ears were
particularly sharp.
There was a candle burning on a small table at the foot of the bed,
beside the one he held in one hand, a heavy ledger, connected with his
father-in-law's business being under his arm. He drew the curtain at the
side of the bed, and saw Mrs. Prosser lying, as for a few seconds he
mortally feared, dead, her face being motionless, white, and covered
with a cold dew; and on the pillow, close beside her head, and just
within the curtains, was, as he first thought, a toad--but really the
same fattish hand, the wrist resting on the pillow, and the fingers
extended towards her temple.
Mr. Prosser, with a horrified jerk, pitched the ledger right at the
curtains, behind which the owner of the hand might be supposed to stand.
The hand was instantaneously and smoothly snatched away, the curtains
made a great wave, and Mr. Prosser got round the bed in time to see the
closet-door, which was at the other side, pulled to by the same white,
puffy hand, as he believed.
He drew the door open with a fling, and stared in: but the closet was
empty, except for the clothes hanging from the pegs on the wall, and the
dressing-table and looking-glass facing the windows. He shut it sharply,
and locked it, and felt for a minute, he says, 'as if he were like to
lose his wits;' then, ringing at the bell, he brought the servants, and
with much ado they recovered Mrs. Prosser from a sort of 'trance,' in
which, he says, from her looks, she seemed to have suffered 'the pains
of death:' and Aunt Rebecca adds, 'from what she told me of her visions,
with her own lips, he might have added, "and of hell also."'
But the occurrence which seems to have determined the crisis was the
strange sickness of their eldest child, a little boy aged between two
and three years. He lay awake, seemingly in paroxysms of terror, and the
doctors who were called in, set down the symptoms to incipient water on
the brain. Mrs. Prosser used to sit up with the nurse by the nursery
fire, much troubled in mind about the condition of her child.
His bed was placed sideways along the wall, with its head against the
door of a press or cupboard, which, however, did not shut quite close.
There was a little valance, about a foot deep, round the top of the
child's bed, and this descended within some ten or twelve inches of the
pillow on which it lay.
They observed that the little creature was quieter whenever they took it
up and held it on their laps. They had just replaced him, as he seemed
to have grown quite sleepy and tranquil, but he was not five minutes in
his bed when he began to scream in one of his frenzies of terror; at the
same moment the nurse, for the first time, detected, and Mrs. Prosser
equally plainly saw, following the direction of _her_ eyes, the real
cause of the child's sufferings.
Protruding through the aperture of the press, and shrouded in the shade
of the valance, they plainly saw the white fat hand, palm downwards,
presented towards the head of the child. The mother uttered a scream,
and snatched the child from its little bed, and she and the nurse ran
down to the lady's sleeping-room, where Mr. Prosser was in bed, shutting
the door as they entered; and they had hardly done so, when a gentle tap
came to it from the outside.
There is a great deal more, but this will suffice. The singularity of
the narrative seems to me to be this, that it describes the ghost of a
hand, and no more. The person to whom that hand belonged never once
appeared: nor was it a hand separated from a body, but only a hand so
manifested and introduced that its owner was always, by some crafty
accident, hidden from view.
In the year 1819, at a college breakfast, I met a Mr. Prosser--a thin,
grave, but rather chatty old gentleman, with very white hair drawn back
into a pigtail--and he told us all, with a concise particularity, a
story of his cousin, James Prosser, who, when an infant, had slept for
some time in what his mother said was a haunted nursery in an old house
near Chapelizod, and who, whenever he was ill, over-fatigued, or in
anywise feverish, suffered all through his life as he had done from a
time he could scarce remember, from a vision of a certain gentleman, fat
and pale, every curl of whose wig, every button and fold of whose laced
clothes, and every feature and line of whose sensual, benignant, and
unwholesome face, was as minutely engraven upon his memory as the dress
and lineaments of his own grandfather's portrait, which hung before him
every day at breakfast, dinner, and supper.
Mr. Prosser mentioned this as an instance of a curiously monotonous,
individualised, and persistent nightmare, and hinted the extreme horror
and anxiety with which his cousin, of whom he spoke in the past tense as
'poor Jemmie,' was at any time induced to mention it.
I hope the reader will pardon me for loitering so long in the Tiled
House, but this sort of lore has always had a charm for me; and people,
you know, especially old people, will talk of what most interests
themselves, too often forgetting that others may have had more than
enough of it.