One night I heard footsteps dragging their way upstairs, and the tick of the clock like the beat of a heart sounded loudly in my ears. I was terrified and could only pray desperately: “Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, O Lord and by Thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of the night . . .”
The footsteps stopped at my door. Later I learnt that a Cavalier who had been wounded by the Roundheads came back there to die.
1917: Asham House, a Regency-Gothic house in the village of Beddingham near Lewes in East Sussex was the home for several years of VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882–1941), the famous English novelist. Here from 1912–17 she wrote her books including To The Lighthouse, entertained members of the Bloomsbury Group and experienced the ghostly couple that, according to local legend, had been restlessly opening and shutting doorways for years in the yellow-washed property that was said to be . . .
A HAUNTED HOUSE
Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure – a ghostly couple.
“Here we left it,” she said. And he added, “Oh, but here too!” “It’s upstairs,” she murmured. “And in the garden,” he whispered. “Quietly,” they said, “or we shall wake them.”
But it wasn’t that you woke us. Oh, no. “They’re looking for it; they’re drawing the curtain,” one might say, and so read on a page or two. “Now they’ve found it,” one would be certain, stopping the pencil on the margin. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. “What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?” My hands were empty. “Perhaps it’s upstairs then?” The apples were in the loft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the book had slipped into the grass.
But they had found it in the drawing-room. Not that one could ever see them. The window panes reflected apples, reflected roses; all the leaves were green in the glass. If they moved in the drawing-room, the apple only turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment after, if the door was opened, spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendant from the ceiling – what? My hands were empty. The shadow of a thrush crossed the carpet; from the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon drew its bubble of sound. “Safe, safe, safe,” the pulse of the house beat softly. “The treasure buried; the room . . .” the pulse stopped short. Oh, was that the buried treasure?
A moment later the light had faded. Out in the garden then? But the trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so rare, coolly sunk beneath the surface the beam I sought always burnt behind the glass. Death was the glass; death was between us; coming to the woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the windows; the rooms were darkened. He left it, left her, went North, went East, saw the stars turned in the Southern sky; sought the house, found it dropped beneath the Downs. “Safe, safe, safe,” the pulse of the house beat gladly. “The Treasure yours.”
The wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop and bend this way and that. Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain. But the beam of the lamp falls straight from the window. The candle burns stiff and still. Wandering through the house, opening the windows, whispering not to wake us, the ghostly couple seek their joy.
“Here we slept,” she says. And he adds, “Kisses without number.” “Waking in the morning –” “Silver between the trees –” “Upstairs –” “In the garden –” “When summer came –” “In winter snowtime –” The doors go shutting far in the distance, gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.
Nearer they come; cease at the doorway. The wind falls, the rain slides silver down the glass. Our eyes darken; we hear no steps beside us; we see no lady spread her ghostly cloak. His hands shield the lantern. “Look,” he breathes. “Sound asleep. Love upon their lips.”
Stooping, holding their silver lamp above us, long they look and deeply. Long they pause. The wind drives straightly; the flame stoops slightly. Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall, and, meeting, stain the faces bent; the faces pondering; the faces that search the sleepers and seek their hidden joy.
“Safe, safe, safe,” the heart of the house beats proudly. “Long years –” he sighs. “Again you found me.” “Here,” she murmurs, “sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure –” Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes. “Safe! safe! safe!” the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry “Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart.”
1920: Bath is one of England’s ancient cities with a long history of hauntings. The notorious cleric and expert on demonology and occult lore, MONTAGUE SUMMERS (1880–1948) lived and worked there for years on a number of his exhaustively researched works including The Vampire: His Kith and Kin (1928). Despite his enquiries into the supernatural, it was not until after his death that he revealed in his posthumously published autobiography The Galanty Show (1980) about his meeting with a dishevelled-looking creature known as . . .
THE BELLE OF BATH
Many years ago, when I was living in Queen’s Square, Bath, one morning, in plain daylight, there passed me in the hall a lady powered and patched, in sacque and hoop. As I stood aside to let her go by in her tempestuous petticoat she dropped me a pretty little curtsy with a piquant wave of her fan, and I smelled the sweet fragrance of neroli. Bath was very full of visitors just then because of the Grand Pageant, and I merely thought how admirably this nymph had dressed herself for her part – doubtless she was wearing the gown of an ancestress to grace her role. That evening I casually observed to my good landlady, “I see, Mrs Norris, that we have pageant-guests staying in the house. How beautifully dressed that lady was whom I met in the hall. She will surely be the belle of the show.” Mrs Norris stared at me for a moment, and I noticed that she turned white. “A lady! I assure you there’s nobody staying here but yourself. What was she like?” As best I could, I described the Sylvia or Araminta or Dorinda whom I had seen. Mrs Norris dropped the salver she was holding, and exclaimed: “Oh, whatever shall I do? She’s come back!” “Who’s come back?” I asked. “Oh dear, oh dear!” and she began to sob in a subdued hopeless kind of way. “Whatever is the matter?” I queried. “I’ve lost visitors through her in past years, and now you’ll go. I did think we were free of her at last. And the lease won’t run out for another couple of years. Oh dear, oh dear, what can I do?” Eventually I succeeded in discovering that the lady in the eighteenth-century dress had several times been seen in the hall and on the stairs. Apparently, two or three years had elapsed since she last appeared, and Mrs Norris, poor good soul, had made sure that she was gone for ever. “I can’t think what she wants. Why can’t she rest and leave us alone? They say she lived here once, and was the Belle of Bath. I don’t know her name, or why she could return. She never speaks or does anyone any harm, but there she is! And now you’ll go.” I soon reassured the frightened housewife, and convinced her that so far from intending to leave, I was most interested. But I never saw the lady in the sacque again, and I could never find out anything about her.
1922: The Magic Mountain written in 1924 by THOMAS MANN (1875–1955), probably the greatest German novelist of the century, contains several vivid and realistic descriptions of séances that have convinced experts that the author must have been an eyewitness to parapsychical events. After his death, a little-known essay entitled simply, “Occult Experiences”, confirmed this fact. In it, Mann describes sitting in on a séance in Munich in 1922 conducted by Dr Albert von Schrenck-Notzing with the physical medium Rudi Schneider, and the remarkable events that took place in . . .
THE ROOM OF APPARITIONS
During my lifetime I have remained rather distant from questions of occultism. I was only interested in them in a theoretically sympathetic way, leaving – with a good will – things to take care of themselves. The
n one day I was invited to a séance organised by von Schrenck-Notzing, with the famous Rudi as medium. I was given the task of holding the control. In an uncomfortable position, bent over, without a backrest, but unconscious of these inconveniences, I held on to Rudi’s wrists and was moved by his painful efforts.
Soon the young man had fallen into a trance between my hands. I had never before witnessed such a state; and, persuaded that here was a remarkably significant set of circumstances, I gave them rapt attention. There followed a long period of waiting for the manifestations. During this time the participants were supposed to chat for a while and then become quiet again. A zoology professor played the accordion, an old music box was set in motion, all this to help bring on the apparitions.
Finally the thing that from all evidence was not possible nevertheless took place! May I be struck by lightning if I’m lying! Before my eyes, which were free of any kind of influence and were equally disposed to see nothing if there weren’t anything to see, the thing occurred; not once but repeatedly: as soon as it was lowered the drapery rose again toward the light, quicker this time than before; and there I saw with indisputable clarity, coming from the inside, intermingled and clutched together, the members of a hooked organ which was thinner than a human hand, like a claw, sinking, then rising. . . . When it had risen up there for the third time, the drapery was violently shaken by something invisible. . . . Several times the Baron asked me if I saw, if I could see everything clearly.
Of course, how could I not see? I would have had to close my eyes, whereas I had never before opened them so intensely. I have seen on this earth things more grandiose, more beautiful, more imposing; but that the impossible, in spite of its impossibility, should take place, that I had never yet seen.
And so I kept repeating, overwhelmed: “Very good! Very good!” . . . all the while feeling a certain uneasiness. I was holding the wrists of Rudi, which were covered by his sweater sleeves, and right next to me I could see his knees firmly held by the Polish man. It was impossible (there was not even the shadow of a possibility) to think that this sleeping boy could have done here what was going on up there. Who, then? Nobody! There was no one present who could have done it; and nevertheless it was done. Again I felt a vague uneasiness.”
The seance went on. The little hand bell has just been grasped and it is impossible that a hand did it. By what other than a hand, then, can the handle of a bell be grasped? It is lifted up, held at an angle, high up, and rings loudly; then, in a circle, carried across part of the room, rings once again; then, in a loud clamor it is thrown in one swoop under the chair of a participant!
And that sort of thing goes on. As soon as the Baron has taken the bell out of the basket, the latter begins to waddle, is pushed, wavers, turns upside down and, in that position, is seized and lifted very high in the air; in a half-vertical position it hovers up there for four or five seconds, in a space dazzling with luminous, opaque red rays, then falls to the floor.”
On my word of honor, our ears are hearing the tapping of the typewriter which had been set some distance away on the floor. This is all crazy! After what has just happened, it is ridiculous, stupefying, revolting in its very absurdity, extremely attractive in its extravagance.
Who is typing on the machine? Nobody. Nobody is stretched out on the carpet over there and nobody is using the machine in the darkness. And yet it is being used! It is operating as if under the hands of a capable typist; when a line is finished the little warning bell rings, the carriage is brusquely pushed back, a new line is begun.”
In front of the curtain there appears, fleetingly, an oblong, immaterial thing, casting a pale whitish light; it is of the size and approximately the form of a section of forearm with a closed hand, not precisely identifiable. Hurriedly, the thing rises and sinks several times demonstratively, lights up, while, coming from its right flank, a white flash completely blots out its shape, and everything disappears. The séance is then declared over.
After having seen for myself, I consider it my duty to testify that, by any human estimation, all possibility of mechanical fraud, prestidigitation or illusionism must be excluded from the experiences in which I participated.”
What, in sum, did I see? Two-thirds of my readers will reply: “Charlatanism, sleight of hand, hoax.” Some day, however, when our knowledge of these things will have progressed, when this realm becomes broadly known, they will deny having uttered such a judgment; right now, even if they consider me as a hysterical person easily duped and played upon, they ought to have been impressed by the testimony of experimenters like the French scientist Gustave Geley, who finished his report with this categorical declaration: I don’t say that during this séance there wasn’t a hoax; but that the very possibility of a hoax did not exist. My position is identical. . . .
1924: Few authors have written of nature with more knowledge and understanding than HENRY WILLIAMSON (1895–1977) whose Tarka The Otter (1927) has become a classic and, tragically, was on the first day of filming when he died. To escape the horrors of life in the army in the trenches during the First World War, Williamson moved to Devon and the countryside there provided him with the inspiration for many of his novels. The events which he describes enveloping him in this essay written for the Daily Telegraph also occurred in Devon, but were not imaginary and their implication provided him with a rare insight into . . .
THE UNSEEN WORLD
One evening, forty and more years ago, while I was exploring a sunken lane in North Devon, the sky clouded over and soon rain was falling, as they said locally, “like aught out of sieve”. Wide streams of water were pouring down the narrow gulley past me. There was nothing for it but to keep going and hope to find shelter. Near the top of the hill I came upon a ruinous thatched cottage. Entry was through a porch nearly obscured by withering bines of wild clematis.
I got through a broken casement window, followed by my spaniel. There was the usual one room, the kitchen downstairs, with its open hearth and cloam ovens on either side. Now for a fire. As soon as the downpour stopped I searched for wood outside, and noticed something white in the weeds of the garden. It was the skull of a dog; some of the teeth had gone from a long narrow jaw – greyhound or lurcher. Usually there was a lurcher, for silent rabbiting at night, in every hamlet at that time – the early twenties.
The few sticks I had picked up were wet, so I went up a narrow staircase, to where two small bedrooms were divided by the usual laths, nailed to upright studs, to hold the plaster. The dividing wall had partly fallen, and with an armful of trailing laths I went downstairs, broke them up, and lit a fire.
My spaniel, all this time, had shown uneasiness. Now he was whimpering, keeping close to me, as I knelt to blow under pale flame rising tenuously out of wavering smoke. By means of continually breathing upon the damp mass I got the fire going; and to keep it going with lengths of dry-rotted floorboards. At last ruddy flames were flickering on the walls, and limewashed ceiling.
The fire sank, I made it up. It consumed itself twice again, while rain outside fell steadily. We were in for a night of it. I lay down contentedly to sleep, secure with thoughts of no more Flanders trenches. And then I became aware of moonlight, wasted by low vapour everywhere, while the dog was pressed against my side, shivering. The change from sleep to that state of mind known as wide-awake seemed to have been instant. One was filled by a mournful feeling, as though one were turning to stone. The spaniel was trembling against one, suspended in pallid gloom; the spaniel was clawing my jacket, trying to get away from a grey movement on the floor under the window. I saw it divide into several parts, which moved away and then drew together again, coming towards where I was lying. The dog, with a howl of fear, leapt at the window space, and crashed through glass and rotten wooden frame.
The noise woke me up. I had been dreaming. I knew that with immense relief. Yet the spaniel was gone, the casement shattered. When I went outside, the south-west rains had blown inland, the night was starry. But there wa
s no moon.
Later, the landlord of the village inn told me about the last tenant of the cottage. He was an old pensioner who lived alone with several dogs, two of them lurchers, which regularly brought him rabbits at night. One Friday he didn’t turn up at the post office for his five-shilling pension, and when he didn’t appear the next day the constable went up to his cottage. Both door and casement being fastened from within, where the dogs were barking, he returned for the sergeant, and pushed in a pane of glass in the casement in order to unhasp the fastening. Such was the ferocity of the lurchers, one actually thrusting its bared teeth through the small opening, that they decided to throw in poisoned meat.
The old soldier had died in his bed; the dogs had been faithful to the last. Their master was laid in consecrated ground, the dogs in the garden. The cottage became ruinous, for no one cared to occupy it after what had happened. Indeed, it was said to be haunted. I wonder . . . No! I do not wonder. There is a phrase in the Bible which expresses what one feels about the unseen world which surely is all about us. The very stones cry out . . .
1928: As an advocate of the theory of reincarnation and ancestral memory, JOAN GRANT (1907–89) caused a sensation when publicizing her groundbreaking novel, Winged Pharaoh (1937), a first-person account of life in Ancient Egypt, by declaring she had lived there in the first of her thirty-one lives. Her other books have also revealed a profound knowledge of the supernatural and she undoubtedly experienced some very unusual phenomena during her lifetime, including this account of an encounter in 1928 with . . .
SOMETHING UTTERLY MALIGN
On one of our Sundays off my husband Leslie and I went to Rothiemurchus intending to climb towards the Cairngorms. It was a beautiful day and we had it to ourselves. Basking naked in the sun, we ate sandwiches beside a burn. It was far too hot and peaceful for serious walking, so we decided to wander on for another mile or so, and then go for dinner to the hotel in Aviemore. Nothing could have been farther from my mind than spooks when suddenly I was seized with such terror that I turned and in panic fled back along the path. Leslie ran after me, imploring me to tell him what was wrong. I could only spare breath enough to tell him to run faster, faster. Something – utterly malign, four-legged and yet obscenely human, invisible and yet solid enough for me to hear the pounding of its hooves, was trying to reach me. If it did I should die, for I was far too frightened to know how to defend myself. I had run about half a mile when I burst through an invisible barrier behind which I was safe. I knew I was safe now, though a second before I had been in mortal danger; knew it as certainly as though I were a torero who has jumped the barrier in front of a charging bull.
The Mammoth Book of True Hauntings Page 49
