Chapter VI: Part II (3)

NOTE.--An attempt to solve the mystery surrounding these hauntings
will appear in a subsequent volume.

THE WAY MEADOW, SOMERSET

THE INVISIBLE HORROR

Technical form of haunting: Unknown

Source of authenticity: Personal and other experiences

Cause of haunting: Unknown

In my boyhood days I was very fond of making long excursions on foot, my peregrinations taking me many miles from Bristol, which was at that time my home. On one of these occasions I took a route that led me past Bath, and eventually arrived at a village that particularly fascinated me.

Lying in a hollow by the side of a sluggish river, or stream, it presented an exceedingly attractive appearance to my somewhat romantic eyes. I especially liked the whitewashed cottages, with their thatched roofs, diamond-fashioned window-panes, walls and trellised arches covered with jasmine and Virginian creepers; their tiny gardens crowded with foxgloves and roses, and their quaint, their very quaint chimney-pots, from which arose spiral columns of fleecy-looking smoke.

It was a pretty village, a pre-eminently peaceful village; a village that was rendered almost fantastic by the close proximity of a queerly constructed water-mill; it was a sunny village, remarkably hot in summer, but intensely cold in winter.

The stream to which I have alluded ran its tortuous course through a succession of open meadows. In the corner of one was a pond, a deep and silent piece of water that was supposed to be connected in some way with the miniature river. It struck me as a very proper place for a bathe, the weeping willows that fringed its margins affording an effectual screen to the prying eyes of children; whilst the gently sloping banks of spongy grass were softer to the tread than any towel.

To add to my inducements the sun was unusually hot, which made the thought of a bath very tempting after my long tramp over dry monotonous roads.

Plunging in, I was, however, immeasurably surprised to find that, despite the abnormal heat, the water was icy cold, and that the scalding rays from above did not appear to have the slightest effect on the temperature.

Taking a few rapid strokes, I found myself nearing the opposite bank, and was preparing to turn about when a sudden panic seized me, and, fancying I was being pursued, I scrambled ashore.

Seeing nothing, and consequently assured that my fears were due to the trickeries of imagination, I once again entered the water and was well on my return voyage when I experienced the same sensation. I seemed to feel the presence of some extremely hostile and repulsive body--something that lived in the pool and bitterly resented intrusion. So strong was this feeling that I would not on any account have bathed there again--at least, not alone.

In response to my inquiries in the village, I learned that the meadow, which went by the name of “The Way,” bore a very evil reputation, being carefully avoided by the local people after nightfall. Though nothing had been actually seen there, those who had attempted to cross the field in the dusk emphatically declared they were assailed by an “invisible something” that was indescribably cold and horrid, and that they only escaped from it after the most strenuous exertions.

Nothing short of force would induce a dog or a horse to enter the meadow, and farmers fought shy of letting their cattle graze there; indeed, should any farmer be so foolish as to do so his beasts invariably died.

I suppose I looked a trifle sceptical at this, as the blacksmith remarked: “Don’t smile, sir; if you saw Way Field, and especially the pool, after twilight, you would form a very different idea of it to what you do now. In the day-time it is, as you see, all sunlight and daisies, an ideal spot for tea in the hay; but in the evening the aspect undergoes a complete change. The temperature is invariably lower there than it is in any of the other meadows, whilst the shadows that crowd upon the grass are not in the least representative of any trees! Curious, sir, is it not?”

I readily agreed it was curious, and I was so deeply impressed by all that had occurred that, years afterwards, when chance once again brought me in the district, I lost no time in setting off to visit the pond.

To my astonishment it was gone, and its site was now occupied by the kitchen garden of a large house, evidently the abode of some person of means.

I made inquiries and had but little difficulty in obtaining an introduction to the owner who was not only acquainted with what I already knew, but was able and willing to give me further information, with the stipulation, however, that on no account must I mention either his name or that of the locality. He wanted, he explained, to sell the place and he could not hope to get a fair price for it, if the story of the hauntings appeared in print.

“I have been here three years!” he began, “during which time I have had no less than eight housekeepers and twenty-five servants (my usual staff consists of four); that signifies a good few changes. Eh?”

“Yes, it has been a confounded nuisance!” he went on, “none of them would stay on account of the ghost! I pooh-poohed the thing at first, although I honestly felt there was something very queer about the place, but when one after another came to me with the same yarns, I was obliged to admit there might be something in it.

“Their complaints, though differing slightly in small technicalities--due, perhaps, to their unequal descriptive powers--were on the whole co-incidental; frightful dreams, sudden awakenings without any apparent cause, strange creakings on the staircases, the foot-falls of something soft and indefinable, the rattling and turning of door handles, and over and above everything else the most pronounced feeling of insecurity.

“‘I won’t on any account remain downstairs after the rest have gone to bed,’ one of my housekeepers observed on my asking her to sit up for me, ‘the very first night I stayed here--before I had heard any rumour of the place being haunted--I underwent the most unpleasant sensations on being left alone. I instinctively felt some uncanny creature had begun to walk the house as soon as the lights were out. No, sir. I am ready and anxious to fulfil all my other duties, save this, and if it is really indispensable, why I fear, sir, you must get someone else in my place.’

“This I promptly did, but all to no effect. The newcomer had not been with me a week before she approached me with a very woe-begone face.

“‘I am sorry, sir,’ she said, ‘I must give notice. I am by no means nervous, indeed I have always laughed at ghosts, but there is something unmistakably the matter with this place, especially the garden!’

“‘The garden!’ I exclaimed, ‘Come, it’s the first time I have heard there’s anything amiss with the garden.’

“‘But not the last, I’ll warrant you,’ she remarked caustically. ‘Why sir, unless I am very much mistaken, the origin of the disturbances lies in that garden, over there,’ and she shot a bony forefinger (why should housekeepers invariably have bony fingers?) in the direction of the filled-in pond. ‘As I was gathering some lettuce there last night I felt (I could see nothing) some horribly cold and sticky thing clasp me in its arms. It must have been hiding among the raspberry canes. Struggling with all my might I managed to free myself just as a mass of fetid jelly was closing over my throat and mouth. Oh! how desperately I struggled, and what a blessed relief it was to be free from that loathsome presence. I can assure you, sir, I ran across the garden as fast as any girl, nor did I pause for one second, till Johnson and one of the maids came to my assistance. They did not ask me what had happened, bless you sir, they knew! Nor was a word said about it at supper, no one dare even as much as mention the thing by gaslight!’

“It was useless, Mr. O’Donnell, to try and persuade the woman to remain with me after THAT, she went and, by the bye, I have just heard she has recently undergone an operation for tumour in some provincial hospital.

“With my next housekeeper I was rather more fortunate. She stayed with me for more than six months before showing any of the usual signs of restlessness.

“Then she came to the point without the least embarrassment, springing her surprise on me over the breakfast cups.

“‘I must leave!’ she said demurely, proceeding at the same time to pour out the coffee, ‘there is a certain dampness here that is very trying to one subject to rheumatism, as well as to one’s nerves.’

“I started guiltily. ‘A dampness! Nerves! you astonish me,’ I stammered, ‘pray explain yourself.’ She did so.

“‘What I mean is,’ she observed, ‘that I can never enter the lower part of the kitchen garden without being persistently followed by a “mist”--I should have put it down to mere imagination, had I not accidentally heard some one speak about the ghost, and I at once concluded that the mist must in some way be connected with it--am I not right?’

“Of course I assented--what else could I do?

“‘I thought so,’ she went on demurely, ‘I suppose you do not think it necessary to tell your applicants the place is haunted?’

“I shook my head feebly and muttered: ‘Continue.’

“‘Last night,’ she said, ‘the mist was more pertinacious than ever--it not only pursued me in the garden, but came to my window after I had gone to bed. I was looking at the moon when the temperature of the room suddenly fell to zero, the moonlight blurred, and to my amazement I saw the mist clinging to the window-pane. Mr. ----, I am not a nervous woman as a rule, but I wouldn’t stay in this house another month under any conditions.’

“She went--and once again I had to go through all the bother of advertising. The wretched thing now began to haunt more vigorously than ever. It attacked Emily, the cook, on the kitchen staircase, and Mark, my general factotum, in the stables, both leaving in consequence, and both being afterwards taken very ill. Indeed it was the report of their illness that prompted me to wage war against the ghost--if I had to leave the house, it should not be till I had ascertained something more definite about my enemy. I would try and discover its identity--what it actually was! With this end in view I laid every trap imaginable, my ingenuity being at length rewarded by finding a faint and barely perceptible impression on the surface of a very large tray full of a carefully prepared mixture of gelatine and wax. I had placed the tray in one of the passages usually frequented by the EVIL PRESENCE. On examining the impression under a powerful microscope I fancied I could detect innumerable granules composed of radiating threads with bulbous terminations.

“Elated at my success and wondering very much what it represented, I took a photograph of the impression and sent it to a medical friend--a bacteriologist--in London, whom I knew to be interested in psychical research. In the course of a few days he came to see me, and, pointing to the wax tablet, remarked:

“‘I showed the photograph you sent me to some of my colleagues, and we came to the conclusion that the impression bore a distinct likeness to a number of actinomyces, which, as you may know, are a kind of fungi inimically disposed to every kind of animal--cattle in particular. Indeed they are in the main responsible for one of the most common and deadly bovine diseases which is called actinomycosis, and is acquired by cattle eating infected barley or other cereal, the actinomyces adhering to the tongue or jaw.

“‘In man the disease is very similar in its clinical character and may be caused by a number of organisms belonging to the streptothrix group (I fear this is rather too technical for you) forming colonies in the tissues and obtaining access to the body from a carious tooth or not infrequently from the tonsil.

“‘The disease is sometimes wrongfully diagnosed as tuberculosis; it usually occurs in farmers, millers, and others who are brought in contact with grain; it has a tendency to spread locally, and although not dangerous in itself, may become so by attacking important organs or by becoming generalised, thereby giving rise to pyæmic abscesses in all parts of the body.

“‘In the description of the assault on your housekeeper, to which you gave special prominence (and rightly so) in your letter, you mentioned that the EVIL PRESENCE tried to “get at her mouth”--well that would be in strict accordance with the _modus operandi_ of actinomyces, the primary endeavour of which is to obtain a passage through the lips. Furthermore, you gathered from local gossip that the unfortunate woman had undergone an operation in some provincial hospital for tumours; now tumours are usually one of the sure indications of the nature and progress of the disease.

“‘Lastly, you referred to fatality in any cattle allowed to graze in the haunted meadow. Now you know from what I have already told you that cattle are the favourite victims of the fungi.

“‘From these deductions then, one must inevitably arrive at the conclusion--that the haunting here is due to nothing more or less than the phantasm of a giant mass of ACTINOMYCES--and as this type of spirit would undoubtedly be proof against exorcism my only advice to you is to shut up the house and go.’

“Afterwards, with a view to corroborate my friend’s theory, partly for his satisfaction, partly for my own, I am afraid, Mr. O’Donnell, I agreed to rather a cruel thing--the proposal being that we should experiment on one of our dogs--Spot. Turning him loose in the lower extremity of the garden, we took up a position in the loft of a neighbouring barn, where we clearly saw each act in the grim but exciting drama.

“To begin with, Spot did not at all appreciate being left alone. From the very first he manifested distinct signs of uneasiness, his preliminary barks of disapproval speedily changing to those of fear and culminating in howls of positive terror, as tucking his tail between his legs, he careered madly round the enclosure.

“He did not, however, keep up this pace for long, but soon showed unmistakable signs of flagging, coming to an abrupt halt sooner than we had expected.

“The Evil Presence had, we felt sure, got hold of him.

“Thrust back on his haunches and snapping viciously, his eyes protruding and his mouth foaming, poor Spot presented such an appearance of impotence and terror that I rose to interfere and would doubtless have done so, had I not been persuaded to the contrary by my medical friend, whose professional interests he either could not or would not sacrifice for the sake of sentiment.

“Poor Spot eventually died, and our _post mortem_ pointed to ACTINOMYCOSIS--his body being literally perforated with abscesses.

“Thus you see, Mr. O’Donnell, in discovering the identity of the phantasm I accomplished--in part at all events--my purpose; the cause of the haunting must, I am afraid, remain a mystery.”[5]

[5] In a subsequent volume I have attempted to give a
satisfactory solution.

NO. -- HACKHAM TERRACE SWINDON

THE GHASTLY SCREAMS ON THE STAIRCASE

Technical form of apparition: Phantasm of dead

Cause of hauntings: Unknown

Last December I journeyed up from Cornwall, as usual, to the annual concert given by my old school, Clifton College, and at the subsequent House Supper I made the acquaintance of several O. C.s who were considerably my juniors in point of age.

We chatted together for a long time, and in the course of our conversation touched upon the superphysical.

“You couldn’t have a better authenticated instance of a haunted house,” one of my young friends remarked, “than that of No. --, Hackham Terrace, Swindon. Isn’t that so, Neilson? You come from Swindon.”

Neilson agreed.

“I know the people who live there,” my informant, Jarvis, continued, “and they have seen and heard the phantasm over and over again.”

“What form does it take?” I asked.

“A shrieking woman’s.”

“Like the ghost of Tehiddy,” I ejaculated.

“I have never heard of the ghost of Tehiddy,” Jarvis rejoined, “but I cannot conceive anything more gruesome than the Hackham Terrace apparition. Let me tell you some of Mrs. Belmont’s experiences.

“You must know the house is quite new, the Belmont’s being the first tenants, and that nothing has been discovered, so far, that can in any way account for the hauntings.

“To proceed, about a month after they had taken the house, every one was aroused in the middle of the night by a succession of the most unearthly screams, coming, so it seemed, from the basement of the house.

“For some seconds no one ventured out of their rooms, and then, Mrs. Belmont very pluckily taking the lead, other members of the family followed her down-stairs.

“Arriving at the commencement of the passage leading to the kitchen, they all saw an indefinable black object lying on the ground.

“Frozen to the spot with horror, the Belmonts watched the thing slowly rise, developing as it did so until it assumed the appearance and dimensions of a gigantic naked woman. But what was so inconceivably horrid about her was the face: she had no eyes, their places being filled by ordinary flesh.

“Confronting them for some moments in silence, she suddenly and without the least warning assumed a horizontal position in mid-air, dematerialised, and passed through the wall in the guise of a rectangular mass of pale blue light. Could anything be more ghastly?”

“It has parallels in the luminous woman known as Proctor’s ghost, Wellington, near Newcastle, and in a house, also new, in Portishead. Can you tell me any further experiences there?”

“Yes,” Jarvis rejoined; “one of the servants was breaking coal in the cellar one evening, when the hammer was unceremoniously snatched from her hand, the candle blown out, and a blue, tatooed arm thrust so roughly against her face that one of her front teeth was actually loosened.

“She screamed, and the arm vanished.

“Still another incident: One of the Belmont boys, Percy, was preparing to get into bed one night, when something caught him sharply by the foot, and looking down, he saw to his surprise a large hairy hand encircling his ankle.

“He particularly noticed the nails, which, though filbert in shape, were excessively long and dirty.

“Mumbling a prayer, the first that came into his mind, he emphasised it by a violent kick. He could not say which produced the desired effect--the prayer or the kick--but the hand let go its hold, and the next moment a shapeless mass of blue something rising from the bed, and hovering for the briefest duration of time on a level with his eyes, disappeared through the ceiling.

“On another occasion, when Mrs. Belmont was in the conservatory watering flowers, one of the pots behind her suddenly fell to the ground with a crash.

“She turned round and found herself confronted by a blue face that occupied the spot where the pot had stood.

“Too dismayed and startled even to think of escape, she stood rooted to the spot, gazing at the evil thing in open-mouthed horror. What was it?

“Though resembling a man in contour and features, its expression was too thoroughly bestial to belong to anything human.

“The eyes, deep, sunken and lurid, leered malignantly at her, whilst the mouth was distorted into a diabolical grin.

“The apparition had no body.

“Mrs. Belmont is of the opinion she might have stayed there till doomsday had not the unexpected arrival of the gardener scared the thing away--it disappeared as he entered the greenhouse door and its place was once again taken by the flower-pot!

“Mrs. Belmont had another unpleasant experience only this week.

“As she was crossing the landing to her bedroom one morning, some one seized her by her shoulders, and, pulling her violently backwards, threw her on the floor.

“She was then gripped by the throat (so firmly that the impressions of the fingers could be seen next day), and on looking up she encountered the same awful face she had seen in the conservatory.

“The hateful thing was now in full possession of a body which, blue and hairy, accorded well with the strangely animal expression in its eyes.

“Mrs. Belmont was too fascinated and horror-stricken to struggle, and she thinks she would undoubtedly have been strangled had not succour once again arrived at the most opportune moment.

“Her rescuer this time was Bruce, a very pugnacious Irish terrier.

“Nothing daunted, and contrary to what one is led to expect from the generality of psychic tales, Bruce flew at the figure.

“The phantasm immediately dissolved into a blue vapour and vanished.

“I could enumerate many other occasions on which similar occult phenomena occurred in the house; sometimes the eyeless woman would be seen gliding down the staircase or heard screaming in the passages; at other times the blue man would pounce upon his unsuspecting victims out of some dark sequestered corner, or frighten them to the verge of a fit, by simply peering at them through a door or window--the manifestations always terminating in a bluish vapour.”

“The house, you say, was quite new,” I observed.

Jarvis nodded.

“Then the history of the hauntings,” I replied, “must either be in some piece of furniture or in the ground itself. The blue man with the bestial expression in his face and tatoo-marks on his arms suggests to me the probability that he is a phantasm of an ancient Celt.

“Possibly he was a suicide or murderer; possibly he was neither, but is merely tied to this earth by his animal propensities--in either case, he would hover round the place of his burial, and his naturally ferocious spirit would be rendered doubly ferocious at being disturbed.

“The woman, of course, may have been some one associated with him in this life--the lack of eyes the sign of some dreadful depravity in her nature.”[6]

[6] A more thorough solution to these hauntings will appear in
a subsequent volume.