The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories

by James D. Jenkins

  Mrs. Ross rushed to the door in an agony of terror; but, stumbling over a chair, fell senseless to the ground. When she recovered, daylight was streaming into the room; but there was no trace of girl or cradle, nor any sign that a struggle had taken place.

  After Mrs. Ross had gone, a complete search was made in her room; but no sliding panel could be found. However, that night the gentlemen sat up, determined to discover the mystery. Well, just about a quarter to twelve up gets Mr. Woodbury, and says, “Look here, Ferriers; you’re a sensible man; and you know you don’t believe in ghosts; and I think it’s not right for us to lend ourselves to such absurd folly; and, in fact, as a father of a family, I shall not consent—to—watch for a ghost. So good-night!” And off he goes to bed. After this, first one and then another gets up, glances at the clock, and says, each in more or less the same words, “Yes, you know it’s only cats, Ferriers; and Mrs. Ross had nightmare. I agree with Woodbury; so good-night!”

  At last Ferriers finds himself left alone. It wants just two minutes to twelve. He hesitates. Presently a dog begins to howl. This is too much—and Ferriers bolts. Well, the shrieks that night were worse than ever; and next day all the guests went away. Ferriers and his wife, of course, couldn’t spend Christmas there alone, so they went too; and the old house was once more left dark and deserted.

  So Walsham Grange was simply uninhabitable, much to the disgust of Brufton and my great-uncle Ferriers. Lights were seen burning more brightly than ever in the windows of the old place; and many a shepherd passing after dark was half scared out of his wits by the awful shrieks that echoed through the deserted house. Of course, the story about the ghosts, and the sudden departure of the guests from the Grange, made a great sensation in all the villages round, and kept everybody’s tongue wagging for months. In town, too, all the guests were questioned over and over again by their friends, who constantly got up special dinner parties on purpose to hear all about the ghosts from the lips of one who had really been in a haunted house. But, while nearly all the visitors to Walsham declared they never had passed such a terrible time before in their lives, and would not enter the old house again for worlds, there were a great many friends who lamented bitterly that they and their husbands had not been invited.

  Well, Christmas-tide was fast coming round again; and one day who should turn up but Ferriers’ brother Jack, a young Lieutenant, on leave for Christmas, from his Majesty’s ship Tackler, lately off the south coast endeavouring to put down the smuggling that went on there to an enormous extent. So Master Jack was full of anecdotes of hair-breadth escapes and adventures with smugglers both by land and sea.

  “Ah, Jack,” said Mrs. Ferriers, “that south coast is indeed a dreadful place!” And then she told him all about the ghosts at Walsham Grange.

  But instead of laughing, as Ferriers half expected, the young fellow took very great interest in the story, got them to tell it again, and then quite frightened them by jumping up, banging the table, and shouting, “By George! I’ve got it! Hurrah! Look here, old fellow! You take the place at once from Brufton, and we’ll go down together; and I’ll warrant I’ll clear the old house of its ghosts in a week!”

  Now, Ferriers couldn’t find a country house that suited him anything like as well as the Grange, and really hankered after it so much that he had been on the point of proposing to make a fresh attempt to oust the ghosts. So, seeing how much in earnest his brother was, he sprang at the idea.

  Brufton was delighted. He, too, had long been contemplating another visit to the Grange, but did not like to ask Ferriers to help him again. Well, the end of it was, they all three settled to go down together. The ladies, however, much to Jack’s amusement, would not hear of their going alone. If their husbands went, they must go too.

  “Well,” said Jack, “all the better; and better still if you will give another party, just as you did last year. But there’s one thing you must leave to me. You must let me provide you with servants. Perhaps they won’t wait very well at table; but you mustn’t mind that. And they’ll be rather fond of rum! However, directly the ghosts are laid I’ll send them away, and you can get your own domestics down. Of course, the ladies can bring a maid or two; but don’t take too many; and, above all things, don’t let it be known that I sent the servants.”

  Jack started off at once to engage the attendants, and send them down to the Grange. And a most extraordinary lot they seemed, exciting general attention on their way to the coach.

  Well, when the guests arrived at the Grange a few days later, they found half-a-dozen strapping damsels and as many men-servants ready to obey them. Their method of waiting at table was decidedly peculiar, and created a great deal of merriment. The first two or three nights passed away without any ghostly visitation, and everybody felt almost disappointed; but one evening a door was heard to bang in the disused wing, then another, then another. Everyone rushed out of the drawing-room, and saw to their astonishment all the servants, instead of being transfixed with terror, rushing wildly one after the other—maids and men—into the haunted wing. Then Jack, who was the first to disappear, came running back.

  “It’s all right,” says he, “we’ve got him.”

  “Got whom?” scream the guests.

  “Why, the ghosts,” laughs Jack, “or one of them, at any rate. Here he is; look at him!” and just then up comes a party of the servants, bringing with them the ghost, certainly an awful-­looking ruffian, white with rage and mortification at his discovery. He refused positively to say who he was, and how he came there; loudly regretting that his pistol had missed fire. Then a happy thought struck Jack.

  “Tie him up tight to the balusters. Then come along to Mrs. Ross’s room!” and there, sure enough, the panel by the fire-place stood open just as she had described it. “Follow me, my lads,” cries Jack, snatching a lantern from one of the men, and jumping through the panel. Ferriers and Brufton were after him like lightning, followed by the servants. They found themselves in a narrow passage running inside the walls of several rooms, and leading to a winding staircase. After descending cautiously for some way, they see a light at the foot of the stairs. “Hullo! Jim,” cries a voice, “have you woke ’em up a bit?”

  “Ay! ay!” says Jack, bounding down the stairs, “that I have; and you, too, Brackenbury! ” and before the man has time to recover himself Jack has thrown him to the ground and snatched his pistols from his belt. Some eight or ten men, sitting round a fire, are as quickly pinioned by Jack’s followers. There was but very little resistance made, for they all seemed quite dazed at Jack’s sudden onslaught. On examination, they find they are in an old cellar well stocked with casks of spirits, wines, silks, satins, and all kinds of excisable goods. Then Brufton and Ferriers understood why Jack was so anxious to know about the ghosts, for they prove to be a gang of the most notorious smugglers on the south coast!

  Several women appeared on the scene, bewailing the capture of their husbands; and Brufton called Ferriers’ attention to an old-fashioned cradle, that no doubt played part in the mock tragedy that Mrs. Ross had beheld. Indeed, ultimately Brackenbury confessed they had shammed ghosts to keep the house empty; and some ancient dresses they found in a chest enabled them to act part of an old legend connected with the house, while a subterraneous passage leading from the cellar to a wood at the back of the Grange, the entrance being completely hidden by thick ivy, afforded them a means of coming and going unobserved. Jack got his promotion for capturing the smugglers; and the servants, who, it is perhaps needless to say, were some of the Tackler’s crew, got well rewarded.

  But, after all, Brackenbury and his gang got off scot-free at the Assizes, for it could not be proved that they had smuggled these particular goods, nor even that the goods were smuggled. And neither Brufton nor Ferriers made any charge against them, feeling a kind of sympathy with their wild life; but the secret door was bricked up, and good care was taken that never again should they play the Ghost at Walsham Grange.

  Coulson K
ernahan

  HAUNTED!

  This short tale, which can be read as either a story of the supernatural or of madness, first appeared in the British periodical Time in November 1885. Like several other authors in this volume, Coulson Kernahan (1858-1943) was a rather popular and prolific writer in his lifetime, though he has been mostly forgotten today. This is probably because his works, heavily tinged with religion and ardently advocating military expansion and compulsory army service, have not aged well, though given the impact of “Haunted!” one might be tempted to wish Kernahan had written more fiction in this vein.

  A bitter, stinging taunt; a burning sense of wrong and hatred; a moment of wild, mad passion—and two human lives for ever hopelessly wrecked and blasted! How strange and unreal it all seems to me! Although I know that I must die to-morrow, although I can hear the sound of hammer and saw as they ply their ghastly task—yet, even now, I cannot bring myself to realize that it is not some hideous dream from which I may at any moment awake. But I know only too well that the vision which I see ever before me, by day and by night, is no dream—is no phantom. Would God that it were! I see myself and him standing together again on that wild, craggy hillside. We are talking of her, and there is an evil smile about his cruel lips as he tells me carelessly that I need not trouble to send her any more letters,—that she has commissioned him to inform me that our engagement is at an end, and that she has promised to marry him on his return to England. I hear the sneering tone in his voice as he taunts me, when high words arise, with being a pauper and a beggar; and then, as a burning sense of all my wrongs seizes me, and a fierce thirst for revenge rushes through my blood, I see myself raise the pocket-knife with which I have been idly pruning an oak-sapling—I see myself raise it suddenly aloft, and in a fit of insane fury plunge it to the very hilt in his false heart!

  It was but the work of a moment—a moment when I was goaded and maddened to such a pitch by the sense of all my wrongs, that I cannot believe God will hold me altogether answerable for what I did. The words had hardly died upon those lying lips before he lay dead at my feet, the warm blood gushing and gurgling from the spot where the knife was still buried. And yet I felt no horror for what I had done, no feeling of remorse came over me. Only a hideous consciousness that the corpse lay there, and must be got rid of in some way; because if it were so found, everything would point to me as the murderer. A sudden terror, a wild panic, possessed me. Although I knew there was none near, yet I felt that I could not breathe, could not think until I had hid it anywhere—anywhere out of sight, and out of mind. I seized it in my arms and staggered blindly on, hardly knowing what I sought, or whither I went. But fate favoured me, for my eye fell upon a long, narrow crevice in the limestone rock over which I was hastening. Panting and trembling with fear, I bent down and stuffed my burden through this opening, but it lay ghastly and bare before me, as though the very earth refused to receive the witness of my crime. With hands that shook with agitation, I seized a wedge of rock and forced it through the crevice as a covering, and saw, to my inexpressible relief, that the body had disappeared; so I hastily filled every chink with the stones and shingle that lay about, in order that no trace of my crime might remain. And then I stood up and thought of what I had done. God knows how little I ever dreamt that I should be a murderer. Only that morning I had read of the execution of some unhappy wretch, and had thought of him with horror and loathing, as of a foul thing between whom and myself there could be no kinship save that of our common humanity. And now I, too, was such an one as he! Yet I felt no remorse, no detestation of my crime. Only a dull, dead, dreamy feeling of some hideous illusion which possessed me, and which I strove to arouse myself from in vain. I knew there was little or no fear of discovery; that none, excepting myself, was aware of his being in Germany; and that, from his strange habits and uncertain movements, it might be months before he was missed. I thought it best, however, to leave the immediate neighbourhood, so that night I paid my bill at the hotel, and took the train to Rocheburg, a town some ten miles distant.

  It was in vain that I tried to shake off the lethargy which oppressed me. All my thoughts were merged into one dull consciousness. As I looked at the faces of those around, they seemed to recede and withdraw to a distance, and even their voices had a weird, far-off sound. So strange and unreal did it all seem that I would repeat to myself in a mechanical way: “This is I, I, Richard Spalding,” and try to shake off the spell that bound me, but it was in vain. I saw the faces of the people around, and answered when I was addressed, but they were the faces of dream-phantoms, not of living men and women.

  One morning the manager of the hotel asked me if I would make one in a party which was going to drive to the famous caverns of Terrane. I said that I should be pleased to do so, or rather the automatic creature which moved and spoke in my name said so, for the real self was still wrapt in the dreamlike torpor. I have very little recollection of the drive, but I remember our arrival at the mouth of the caverns,—which I had heard were miles in extent, and the most wonderful in Europe. Our guide marshalled us in Indian file, I being last, and having placed a lighted torch in the hand of every third person, he led us into the grotto. Even in my dazed and wildered condition I was filled with wonder at what we saw. We passed through dark, icy caverns where gigantic stalactites and stalagmites writhed and twisted like huge reptiles around us. We crept, bent double, through slimy cavities and winding passages, where the chill water dripped monotonously about us; and then we emerged into an enormous cavern, so vast and lofty that the lurid light of our torches utterly failed to penetrate the unsearchable darkness that brooded around. The air, chill as in the halls of death, seemed heavy with a mysterious blackness, and above us there swept a fierce wind that howled and rumbled, like far-off thunder in the hollow womb of night. Then, as we stood there full of shuddering awe, as the wind lulled, we heard sweeping and rushing below the roar of mighty waters, and as the guide flung a torch into the gloom that encircled us, we found that we stood on the edge of a vast abyss, at the bottom of which we could see the inky gleam of black waters rolling sullenly below. And around crept and writhed foul, slimy, crawling things, that stole noiselessly away into the darkness, and above wheeled and circled clouds of strange bat-like creatures, uttering unearthly cries of blind, impotent anger.

  What I have now to relate I cannot hope will be believed. It will be regarded, I doubt not, as the delirious dream of a madman—the creation of an over-wrought brain. But I know only too well that what I saw that fearful morning I did veritably and indeed see—that it was no illusion, no hallucination. Would to God that it had been! I have said that I felt no remorse for the crime I had committed, no feeling of detestation or horror, nor had I in any way brooded or dwelt upon the memory of my guilt. Had it been so, I could then have well believed that what I saw had no real existence, but was the creation of a diseased brain. But no thought of my victim was in my mind at the time. I can hardly realize now that I could so readily dismiss the memory of what I had done; but such was the case, and hence it was that what I then beheld came upon me with so fearful a shock.

  I was the last of the party, the others having moved on some little way ahead; when suddenly a strange fascination seized and held me spell-bound, so that I could neither move nor stir, but stood rooted to the spot like one in a dream. I tried to call for help as I saw that I was being left behind, but all power of utterance seemed gone. And then a dreadful horror came over me, an awful consciousness of some evil presence. Slowly and mechanically I turned round, impelled by a strange fascination. I tried to resist, but all will-power and self-control had left me. At first I was aware only of a bluish, misty, phosphorescent light, and then a ghastly terror, that froze the very blood in my veins, seized me, for suddenly I saw rise up out of the inky darkness of a cavern behind me the form of a man—the eyes wide distended, and of a hideous red, fixed on mine with a look of hate, the mouth half-closed, but with the teeth showing like the teeth of a wild beast
before it makes its spring; and the left hand pointing to a wound in the breast, where I could see gleaming out, even in the darkness, the blade of a knife!

  It was but a moment, for even as I looked the awful apparition died away into the gloom, but in that moment (to me it seemed years) I recognised the face of the man I had foully murdered. A wild, exultant cry of devilish triumph seemed to ring in my ears, whence coming I knew not, and then a darkness blacker and more hideous than the impenetrable night of that awful cavern seized me, and I knew no more.