Chapter 1: The Mortals In The House
Under none of the accredited ghostly circumstances, and environed by none of the conventional ghostly surroundings, did I first make acquaintance with the house
which is the subject of this Christmas piece. I saw it in the daylight, with the sun upon it. There was no wind, no rain, no lightning, no thunder, no awful or unwontedcircumstance, of any kind, to heighten its effect. More
than that: I had come to it direct from a railway station: it was not more than a mile distant from the railway station;
and, as I stood outside the house, looking back upon the way I had come, I could see the goods train running smoothly along the embankment in the valley. I will not say that everythingwasutterlycommonplace,because I doubt if anything can be that, except to utterly commonplace peopleand there my vanity steps in; but, I will take it on myself to say that anybody might see the house as I saw it, any fine autumn morning. Themanner of my lighting on it was this. I was travelling towards London out of the North,
intending to stop by the way, to look at the house. My health required a temporary residence in the country; and a friend of mine who knew that, and who had happened to drive past the house, had written to me to suggest it as a likely place. I had got into the train at midnight, and had fallen asleep, and had woke up and had sat looking out of
window at the brilliant Northern Lights in the sky, and had fallen asleep again, and had woke up again to find the night gone, with the usual discontented conviction on me
that I hadn't been to sleep at all;—upon which question, in the first imbecility of that condition, I am ashamed to believe that I would have done wager by battle with the
man who sat opposite me. That opposite man had had, through the night—as that opposite man always has—several legs too many, and all of them too long. In
addition to this unreasonable conduct (which was only to be expected of him), he had had a pencil and a pocketbook, and had been perpetually listening and taking notes. It had appeared to me that these aggravating notes related to the jolts and bumps of the carriage, and I should have
resigned myself to his taking them, under a general supposition that he was in the civil-engineering way of life, if he had not sat staring straight over my head whenever he listened. He was a goggle-eyed gentleman of a perplexed aspect, and his demeanour became unbearable. It was a cold, dead morning (the sun not being up yet),
and when I had out-watched the paling light of the fires of the iron country, and the curtain of heavy smoke that
hung at once between me and the stars and between me and the day, I turned to my fellow-traveller and said: 'I BEG your pardon, sir, but do you observe anything particular in me'? For, really, he appeared to be taking
down, either my travelling-cap or my hair, with a minuteness that was a liberty.
The goggle-eyed gentleman withdrew his eyes from behind me, as if the back of the carriage were a hundred miles off, and said, with a lofty look of compassion for my
insignificance:
'In you, sir?—B.'
'B, sir?' said I, growing warm.
'I have nothing to do with you, sir,' returned the
gentleman; 'pray let me listen—O.'
He enunciated this vowel after a pause, and noted it
down.
At first I was alarmed, for an Express lunatic and no
communication with the guard, is a serious position. The
thought came to my relief that the gentleman might be
what is popularly called a Rapper: one of a sect for (some
of) whom I have the highest respect, but whom I don'tbelieve in. I was going to ask him the question, when he
took the bread out of my mouth.
'You will excuse me,' said the gentleman
contemptuously, 'if I am too much in advance of common
humanity to trouble myself at all about it. I have passed
the night—as indeed I pass the whole of my time now—in
spiritual intercourse.'
'O!' said I, somewhat snappishly.
'The conferences of the night began,' continued the
gentleman, turning several leaves of his note-book, 'with
this message: 'Evil communications corrupt good
manners.''
'Sound,' said I; 'but, absolutely new?'
'New from spirits,' returned the gentleman.
I could only repeat my rather snappish 'O!' and ask if I
might be favoured with the last communication.
''A bird in the hand,'' said the gentleman, reading his
last entry with great solemnity, ''is worth two in the
Bosh.''
'Truly I am of the same opinion,' said I; 'but shouldn't
it be Bush?'
'It came to me, Bosh,' returned the gentleman.
The gentleman then informed me that the spirit of
Socrates had delivered this special revelation in the course of the night. 'My friend, I hope you are pretty well. There
are two in this railway carriage. How do you do? There
are seventeen thousand four hundred and seventy-nine
spirits here, but you cannot see them. Pythagoras is here.
He is not at liberty to mention it, but hopes you like
travelling.' Galileo likewise had dropped in, with this
scientific intelligence. 'I am glad to see you, AMICO.
COME STA? Water will freeze when it is cold enough.
ADDIO!' In the course of the night, also, the following
phenomena had occurred. Bishop Butler had insisted on
spelling his name, 'Bubler,' for which offence against
orthography and good manners he had been dismissed as
out of temper. John Milton (suspected of wilful
mystification) had repudiated the authorship of Paradise
Lost, and had introduced, as joint authors of that poem,
two Unknown gentlemen, respectively named Grungers
and Scadgingtone. And Prince Arthur, nephew of King
John of England, had described himself as tolerably
comfortable in the seventh circle, where he was learning
to paint on velvet, under the direction of Mrs. Trimmer
and Mary Queen of Scots.
If this should meet the eye of the gentleman who
favoured me with these disclosures, I trust he will excuse
my confessing that the sight of the rising sun, and the contemplation of the magnificent Order of the vast
Universe, made me impatient of them. In a word, I was so
impatient of them, that I was mightily glad to get out at
the next station, and to exchange these clouds and vapours
for the free air of Heaven.
By that time it was a beautiful morning. As I walked
away among such leaves as had already fallen from the
golden, brown, and russet trees; and as I looked around
me on the wonders of Creation, and thought of the
steady, unchanging, and harmonious laws by which they
are sustained; the gentleman's spiritual intercourse seemed
to me as poor a piece of journey-work as ever this world
saw. In which heathen state of mind, I came within view
of the house, and stopped to examine it attentively.
It was a solitary house, standing in a sadly neglected
garden: a pretty even square of some two acres. It was a
house of about the time of George the Second; as stiff, as
cold, as formal, and in as bad taste, as could possibly be
desired by the most loyal admirer of the whole quartet of
Georges. It was uninhabited, but had, within a year or
two, been cheaply repaired to render it habitable; I say
cheaply, because the work had been done in a surface
manner, and was already decaying as to the paint and
plaster, though the colours were fresh. A lop-sided board drooped over the garden wall, announcing that it was 'to
let on very reasonable terms, well furnished.' It was much
too closely and heavily shadowed by trees, and, in
particular, there were six tall poplars before the front
windows, which were excessively melancholy, and the site
of which had been extremely ill chosen.
It was easy to see that it was an avoided house—a
house that was shunned by the village, to which my eye
was guided by a church spire some half a mile off—a
house that nobody would take. And the natural inference
was, that it had the reputation of being a haunted house.
No period within the four-and-twenty hours of day
and night is so solemn to me, as the early morning. In the
summer-time, I often rise very early, and repair to my
room to do a day's work before breakfast, and I am always
on those occasions deeply impressed by the stillness and
solitude around me. Besides that there is something awful
in the being surrounded by familiar faces asleep—in the
knowledge that those who are dearest to us and to whom
we are dearest, are profoundly unconscious of us, in an
impassive state, anticipative of that mysterious condition to
which we are all tending—the stopped life, the broken
threads of yesterday, the deserted seat, the closed book, the
unfinished but abandoned occupation, all are images of Death. The tranquillity of the hour is the tranquillity of
Death. The colour and the chill have the same association.
Even a certain air that familiar household objects take
upon them when they first emerge from the shadows of
the night into the morning, of being newer, and as they
used to be long ago, has its counterpart in the subsidence
of the worn face of maturity or age, in death, into the old
youthful look. Moreover, I once saw the apparition of my
father, at this hour. He was alive and well, and nothing
ever came of it, but I saw him in the daylight, sitting with
his back towards me, on a seat that stood beside my bed.
His head was resting on his hand, and whether he was
slumbering or grieving, I could not discern. Amazed to see
him there, I sat up, moved my position, leaned out of bed,
and watched him. As he did not move, I spoke to him
more than once. As he did not move then, I became
alarmed and laid my hand upon his shoulder, as I
thought—and there was no such thing.
For all these reasons, and for others less easily and
briefly statable, I find the early morning to be my most
ghostly time. Any house would be more or less haunted,
to me, in the early morning; and a haunted house could
scarcely address me to greater advantage than then. I walked on into the village, with the desertion of this
house upon my mind, and I found the landlord of the
little inn, sanding his door-step. I bespoke breakfast, and
broached the subject of the house.
'Is it haunted?' I asked.
The landlord looked at me, shook his head, and
answered, 'I say nothing.'
'Then it IS haunted?'
'Well!' cried the landlord, in an outburst of frankness
that had the appearance of desperation—'I wouldn't sleep
in it.'
'Why not?'
'If I wanted to have all the bells in a house ring, with
nobody to ring 'em; and all the doors in a house bang,
with nobody to bang 'em; and all sorts of feet treading
about, with no feet there; why, then,' said the landlord,
'I'd sleep in that house.'
'Is anything seen there?'
The landlord looked at me again, and then, with his
former appearance of desperation, called down his stableyard for 'Ikey!'
The call produced a high-shouldered young fellow,
with a round red face, a short crop of sandy hair, a very
broad humorous mouth, a turned-up nose, and a great sleeved waistcoat of purple bars, with mother-of-pearl
buttons, that seemed to be growing upon him, and to be
in a fair way—if it were not pruned—of covering his head
and overunning his boots.
'This gentleman wants to know,' said the landlord, 'if
anything's seen at the Poplars.'
''Ooded woman with a howl,' said Ikey, in a state of
great freshness.
'Do you mean a cry?'
'I mean a bird, sir.'
'A hooded woman with an owl. Dear me! Did you
ever see her?'
'I seen the howl.'
'Never the woman?'
'Not so plain as the howl, but they always keeps
together.'
'Has anybody ever seen the woman as plainly as the
owl?'
'Lord bless you, sir! Lots.'
'Who?'
'Lord bless you, sir! Lots.'
'The general-dealer opposite, for instance, who is
opening his shop?' 'Perkins? Bless you, Perkins wouldn't go a-nigh the
place. No!' observed the young man, with considerable
feeling; 'he an't overwise, an't Perkins, but he an't such a
fool as THAT.'
(Here, the landlord murmured his confidence in
Perkins's knowing better.)
'Who is—or who was—the hooded woman with the
owl? Do you know?'
'Well!' said Ikey, holding up his cap with one hand
while he scratched his head with the other, 'they say, in
general, that she was murdered, and the howl he 'ooted
the while.'
This very concise summary of the facts was all I could
learn, except that a young man, as hearty and likely a
young man as ever I see, had been took with fits and held
down in 'em, after seeing the hooded woman. Also, that a
personage, dimly described as 'a hold chap, a sort of oneeyed tramp, answering to the name of Joby, unless you
challenged him as Greenwood, and then he said, 'Why
not? and even if so, mind your own business,'' had
encountered the hooded woman, a matter of five or six
times. But, I was not materially assisted by these witnesses:
inasmuch as the first was in California, and the last was, as Ikey said (and he was confirmed by the landlord),
Anywheres.
Now, although I regard with a hushed and solemn fear,
the mysteries, between which and this state of existence is
interposed the barrier of the great trial and change that fall
on all the things that live; and although I have not the
audacity to pretend that I know anything of them; I can
no more reconcile the mere banging of doors, ringing of
bells, creaking of boards, and such-like insignificances,
with the majestic beauty and pervading analogy of all the
Divine rules that I am permitted to understand, than I had
been able, a little while before, to yoke the spiritual
intercourse of my fellow- traveller to the chariot of the
rising sun. Moreover, I had lived in two haunted houses—
both abroad. In one of these, an old Italian palace, which
bore the reputation of being very badly haunted indeed,
and which had recently been twice abandoned on that
account, I lived eight months, most tranquilly and
pleasantly: notwithstanding that the house had a score of
mysterious bedrooms, which were never used, and
possessed, in one large room in which I sat reading, times
out of number at all hours, and next to which I slept, a
haunted chamber of the first pretensions. I gently hinted
these considerations to the landlord. And as to this particular house having a bad name, I reasoned with him,
Why, how many things had bad names undeservedly, and
how easy it was to give bad names, and did he not think
that if he and I were persistently to whisper in the village
that any weird-looking old drunken tinker of the
neighbourhood had sold himself to the Devil, he would
come in time to be suspected of that commercial venture!
All this wise talk was perfectly ineffective with the
landlord, I am bound to confess, and was as dead a failure
as ever I made in my life.
To cut this part of the story short, I was piqued about
the haunted house, and was already half resolved to take it.
So, after breakfast, I got the keys from Perkins's brotherin-law (a whip and harness maker, who keeps the Post
Office, and is under submission to a most rigorous wife of
the Doubly Seceding Little Emmanuel persuasion), and
went up to the house, attended by my landlord and by
Ikey.
Within, I found it, as I had expected, transcendently
dismal. The slowly changing shadows waved on it from
the heavy trees, were doleful in the last degree; the house
was ill-placed, ill-built, ill-planned, and ill-fitted. It was
damp, it was not free from dry rot, there was a flavour of
rats in it, and it was the gloomy victim of that j indescribable decay which settles on all the work of man's
hands whenever it's not turned to man's account. The
kitchens and offices were too large, and too remote from
each other. Above stairs and below, waste tracts of passage
intervened between patches of fertility represented by
rooms; and there was a mouldy old well with a green
growth upon it, hiding like a murderous trap, near the
bottom of the back-stairs, under the double row of bells.
One of these bells was labelled, on a black ground in faded
white letters, MASTER B. This, they told me, was the
bell that rang the most.
'Who was Master B.?' I asked. 'Is it known what he did
while the owl hooted?'
'Rang the bell,' said Ikey.
I was rather struck by the prompt dexterity with which
this young man pitched his fur cap at the bell, and rang it
himself. It was a loud, unpleasant bell, and made a very
disagreeable sound. The other bells were inscribed
according to the names of the rooms to which their wires
were conducted: as 'Picture Room,' 'Double Room,'
'Clock Room,' and the like. Following Master B.'s bell to
its source I found that young gentleman to have had but
indifferent third-class accommodation in a triangular cabin
under the cock-loft, with a corner fireplace which Master B. must have been exceedingly small if he were ever able
to warm himself at, and a corner chimney- piece like a
pyramidal staircase to the ceiling for Tom Thumb. The
papering of one side of the room had dropped down
bodily, with fragments of plaster adhering to it, and almost
blocked up the door. It appeared that Master B., in his
spiritual condition, always made a point of pulling the
paper down. Neither the landlord nor Ikey could suggest
why he made such a fool of himself.
Except that the house had an immensely large rambling
loft at top, I made no other discoveries. It was moderately
well furnished, but sparely. Some of the furniture—say, a
third—was as old as the house; the rest was of various
periods within the last half-century. I was referred to a
corn-chandler in the market-place of the county town to
treat for the house. I went that day, and I took it for six
months.
It was just the middle of October when I moved in
with my maiden sister (I venture to call her eight-andthirty, she is so very handsome, sensible, and engaging).
We took with us, a deaf stable- man, my bloodhound
Turk, two women servants, and a young person called an
Odd Girl. I have reason to record of the attendant last
enumerated, who was one of the Saint Lawrence's Union Female Orphans, that she was a fatal mistake and a
disastrous engagement.
The year was dying early, the leaves were falling fast, it
was a raw cold day when we took possession, and the
gloom of the house was most depressing. The cook (an
amiable woman, but of a weak turn of intellect) burst into
tears on beholding the kitchen, and requested that her
silver watch might be delivered over to her sister (2
Tuppintock's Gardens, Liggs's Walk, Clapham Rise), in
the event of anything happening to her from the damp.
Streaker, the housemaid, feigned cheerfulness, but was the
greater martyr. The Odd Girl, who had never been in the
country, alone was pleased, and made arrangements for
sowing an acorn in the garden outside the scullery
window, and rearing an oak.
We went, before dark, through all the natural—as
opposed to supernatural—miseries incidental to our state.
Dispiriting reports ascended (like the smoke) from the
basement in volumes, and descended from the upper
rooms. There was no rolling-pin, there was no salamander
(which failed to surprise me, for I don't know what it is),
there was nothing in the house, what there was, was
broken, the last people must have lived like pigs, what
could the meaning of the landlord be? Through these distresses, the Odd Girl was cheerful and exemplary. But
within four hours after dark we had got into a supernatural
groove, and the Odd Girl had seen 'Eyes,' and was in
hysterics.
My sister and I had agreed to keep the haunting strictly
to ourselves, and my impression was, and still is, that I had
not left Ikey, when he helped to unload the cart, alone
with the women, or any one of them, for one minute.
Nevertheless, as I say, the Odd Girl had 'seen Eyes' (no
other explanation could ever be drawn from her), before
nine, and by ten o'clock had had as much vinegar applied
to her as would pickle a handsome salmon.
I leave a discerning public to judge of my feelings,
when, under these untoward circumstances, at about halfpast ten o'clock Master B.'s bell began to ring in a most
infuriated manner, and Turk howled until the house
resounded with his lamentations!
I hope I may never again be in a state of mind so
unchristian as the mental frame in which I lived for some
weeks, respecting the memory of Master B. Whether his
bell was rung by rats, or mice, or bats, or wind, or what
other accidental vibration, or sometimes by one cause,
sometimes another, and sometimes by collusion, I don't
know; but, certain it is, that it did ring two nights out of three, until I conceived the happy idea of twisting Master
B.'s neck—in other words, breaking his bell short off—
and silencing that young gentleman, as to my experience
and belief, for ever.
But, by that time, the Odd Girl had developed such
improving powers of catalepsy, that she had become a
shining example of that very inconvenient disorder. She
would stiffen, like a Guy Fawkes endowed with unreason,
on the most irrelevant occasions. I would address the
servants in a lucid manner, pointing out to them that I had
painted Master B.'s room and balked the paper, and taken
Master B.'s bell away and balked the ringing, and if they
could suppose that that confounded boy had lived and
died, to clothe himself with no better behaviour than
would most unquestionably have brought him and the
sharpest particles of a birch-broom into close acquaintance
in the present imperfect state of existence, could they also
suppose a mere poor human being, such as I was, capable
by those contemptible means of counteracting and limiting
the powers of the disembodied spirits of the dead, or of
any spirits?—I say I would become emphatic and cogent,
not to say rather complacent, in such an address, when it
would all go for nothing by reason of the Odd Girl's suddenly stiffening from the toes upward, and glaring
among us like a parochial petrifaction.
Streaker, the housemaid, too, had an attribute of a most
discomfiting nature. I am unable to say whether she was of
an usually lymphatic temperament, or what else was the
matter with her, but this young woman became a mere
Distillery for the production of the largest and most
transparent tears I ever met with. Combined with these
characteristics, was a peculiar tenacity of hold in those
specimens, so that they didn't fall, but hung upon her face
and nose. In this condition, and mildly and deplorably
shaking her head, her silence would throw me more
heavily than the Admirable Crichton could have done in a
verbal disputation for a purse of money. Cook, likewise,
always covered me with confusion as with a garment, by
neatly winding up the session with the protest that the
Ouse was wearing her out, and by meekly repeating her
last wishes regarding her silver watch.
As to our nightly life, the contagion of suspicion and
fear was among us, and there is no such contagion under
the sky. Hooded woman? According to the accounts, we
were in a perfect Convent of hooded women. Noises?
With that contagion downstairs, I myself have sat in the
dismal parlour, listening, until I have heard so many andsuch strange noises, that they would have chilled my blood
if I had not warmed it by dashing out to make discoveries.
Try this in bed, in the dead of the night: try this at your
own comfortable fire-side, in the life of the night. You
can fill any house with noises, if you will, until you have a
noise for every nerve in your nervous system.
I repeat; the contagion of suspicion and fear was among
us, and there is no such contagion under the sky. The
women (their noses in a chronic state of excoriation from
smelling-salts) were always primed and loaded for a
swoon, and ready to go off with hair- triggers. The two
elder detached the Odd Girl on all expeditions that were
considered doubly hazardous, and she always established
the reputation of such adventures by coming back
cataleptic. If Cook or Streaker went overhead after dark,
we knew we should presently hear a bump on the ceiling;
and this took place so constantly, that it was as if a fighting
man were engaged to go about the house, administering a
touch of his art which I believe is called The Auctioneer,
to every domestic he met with.
It was in vain to do anything. It was in vain to be
frightened, for the moment in one's own person, by a real
owl, and then to show the owl. It was in vain to discover,
by striking an accidental discord on the piano, that Turkalways howled at particular notes and combinations. It was
in vain to be a Rhadamanthus with the bells, and if an
unfortunate bell rang without leave, to have it down
inexorably and silence it. It was in vain to fire up
chimneys, let torches down the well, charge furiously into
suspected rooms and recesses. We changed servants, and it
was no better. The new set ran away, and a third set came,
and it was no better. At last, our comfortable
housekeeping got to be so disorganised and wretched, that
I one night dejectedly said to my sister: 'Patty, I begin to
despair of our getting people to go on with us here, and I
think we must give this up.'
My sister, who is a woman of immense spirit, replied,
'No, John, don't give it up. Don't be beaten, John. There
is another way.'
'And what is that?' said I.
'John,' returned my sister, 'if we are not to be driven
out of this house, and that for no reason whatever, that is
apparent to you or me, we must help ourselves and take
the house wholly and solely into our own hands.'
'But, the servants,' said I.
'Have no servants,' said my sister, boldly.
Like most people in my grade of life, I had never
thought of the possibility of going on without those faithful obstructions. The notion was so new to me when
suggested, that I looked very doubtful. 'We know they
come here to be frightened and infect one another, and
we know they are frightened and do infect one another,'
said my sister.
'With the exception of Bottles,' I observed, in a
meditative tone.
(The deaf stable-man. I kept him in my service, and
still keep him, as a phenomenon of moroseness not to be
matched in England.)
'To be sure, John,' assented my sister; 'except Bottles.
And what does that go to prove? Bottles talks to nobody,
and hears nobody unless he is absolutely roared at, and
what alarm has Bottles ever given, or taken! None.'
This was perfectly true; the individual in question
having retired, every night at ten o'clock, to his bed over
the coach-house, with no other company than a pitchfork
and a pail of water. That the pail of water would have
been over me, and the pitchfork through me, if I had put
myself without announcement in Bottles's way after that
minute, I had deposited in my own mind as a fact worth
remembering. Neither had Bottles ever taken the least
notice of any of our many uproars. An imperturbable and
speechless man, he had sat at his supper, with Streaker present in a swoon, and the Odd Girl marble, and had
only put another potato in his cheek, or profited by the
general misery to help himself to beefsteak pie.
'And so,' continued my sister, 'I exempt Bottles. And
considering, John, that the house is too large, and perhaps
too lonely, to be kept well in hand by Bottles, you, and
me, I propose that we cast about among our friends for a
certain selected number of the most reliable and willing—
form a Society here for three months—wait upon
ourselves and one another—live cheerfully and socially—
and see what happens.'
I was so charmed with my sister, that I embraced her
on the spot, and went into her plan with the greatest
ardour.
We were then in the third week of November; but, we
took our measures so vigorously, and were so well
seconded by the friends in whom we confided, that there
was still a week of the month unexpired, when our party
all came down together merrily, and mustered in the
haunted house.
I will mention, in this place, two small changes that I
made while my sister and I were yet alone. It occurring to
me as not improbable that Turk howled in the house at
night, partly because he wanted to get out of it, I stationed him in his kennel outside, but unchained; and I seriously
warned the village that any man who came in his way
must not expect to leave him without a rip in his own
throat. I then casually asked Ikey if he were a judge of a
gun? On his saying, 'Yes, sir, I knows a good gun when I
sees her,' I begged the favour of his stepping up to the
house and looking at mine.
'SHE'S a true one, sir,' said Ikey, after inspecting a
double- barrelled rifle that I bought in New York a few
years ago. 'No mistake about HER, sir.'
'Ikey,' said I, 'don't mention it; I have seen something
in this house.'
'No, sir?' he whispered, greedily opening his eyes.
''Ooded lady, sir?'
'Don't be frightened,' said I. 'It was a figure rather like
you.'
'Lord, sir?'
'Ikey!' said I, shaking hands with him warmly: I may
say affectionately; 'if there is any truth in these ghoststories, the greatest service I can do you, is, to fire at that
figure. And I promise you, by Heaven and earth, I will do
it with this gun if I see it again!'
The young man thanked me, and took his leave with
some little precipitation, after declining a glass of liquor. I imparted my secret to him, because I had never quite
forgotten his throwing his cap at the bell; because I had,
on another occasion, noticed something very like a fur
cap, lying not far from the bell, one night when it had
burst out ringing; and because I had remarked that we
were at our ghostliest whenever he came up in the
evening to comfort the servants. Let me do Ikey no
injustice. He was afraid of the house, and believed in its
being haunted; and yet he would play false on the
haunting side, so surely as he got an opportunity. The
Odd Girl's case was exactly similar. She went about the
house in a state of real terror, and yet lied monstrously and
wilfully, and invented many of the alarms she spread, and
made many of the sounds we heard. I had had my eye on
the two, and I know it. It is not necessary for me, here, to
account for this preposterous state of mind; I content
myself with remarking that it is familiarly known to every
intelligent man who has had fair medical, legal, or other
watchful experience; that it is as well established and as
common a state of mind as any with which observers are
acquainted; and that it is one of the first elements, above
all others, rationally to be suspected in, and strictly looked
for, and separated from, any question of this kind.To return to our party. The first thing we did when we
were all assembled, was, to draw lots for bedrooms. That
done, and every bedroom, and, indeed, the whole house,
having been minutely examined by the whole body, we
allotted the various household duties, as if we had been on
a gipsy party, or a yachting party, or a hunting party, or
were shipwrecked. I then recounted the floating rumours
concerning the hooded lady, the owl, and Master B.: with
others, still more filmy, which had floated about during
our occupation, relative to some ridiculous old ghost of
the female gender who went up and down, carrying the
ghost of a round table; and also to an impalpable Jackass,
whom nobody was ever able to catch. Some of these ideas
I really believe our people below had communicated to
one another in some diseased way, without conveying
them in words. We then gravely called one another to
witness, that we were not there to be deceived, or to
deceive—which we considered pretty much the same
thing—and that, with a serious sense of responsibility, we
would be strictly true to one another, and would strictly
follow out the truth. The understanding was established,
that any one who heard unusual noises in the night, and
who wished to trace them, should knock at my door;
lastly, that on Twelfth Night, the last night of holy Christmas, all our individual experiences since that then
present hour of our coming together in the haunted
house, should be brought to light for the good of all; and
that we would hold our peace on the subject till then,
unless on some remarkable provocation to break silence.
We were, in number and in character, as follows:
First—to get my sister and myself out of the way—
there were we two. In the drawing of lots, my sister drew
her own room, and I drew Master B.'s. Next, there was
our first cousin John Herschel, so called after the great
astronomer: than whom I suppose a better man at a
telescope does not breathe. With him, was his wife: a
charming creature to whom he had been married in the
previous spring. I thought it (under the circumstances)
rather imprudent to bring her, because there is no
knowing what even a false alarm may do at such a time;
but I suppose he knew his own business best, and I must
say that if she had been MY wife, I never could have left
her endearing and bright face behind. They drew the
Clock Room. Alfred Starling, an uncommonly agreeable
young fellow of eight-and-twenty for whom I have the
greatest liking, was in the Double Room; mine, usually,
and designated by that name from having a dressing-room
within it, with two large and cumbersome windows, which no wedges I was ever able to make, would keep
from shaking, in any weather, wind or no wind. Alfred is
a young fellow who pretends to be 'fast' (another word for
loose, as I understand the term), but who is much too
good and sensible for that nonsense, and who would have
distinguished himself before now, if his father had not
unfortunately left him a small independence of two
hundred a year, on the strength of which his only
occupation in life has been to spend six. I am in hopes,
however, that his Banker may break, or that he may enter
into some speculation guaranteed to pay twenty per cent.;
for, I am convinced that if he could only be ruined, his
fortune is made. Belinda Bates, bosom friend of my sister,
and a most intellectual, amiable, and delightful girl, got the
Picture Room. She has a fine genius for poetry, combined
with real business earnestness, and 'goes in'—to use an
expression of Alfred's—for Woman's mission, Woman's
rights, Woman's wrongs, and everything that is woman's
with a capital W, or is not and ought to be, or is and
ought not to be. 'Most praiseworthy, my dear, and
Heaven prosper you!' I whispered to her on the first night
of my taking leave of her at the Picture-Room door, 'but
don't overdo it. And in respect of the great necessity there
is, my darling, for more employments being within thereach of Woman than our civilisation has as yet assigned to
her, don't fly at the unfortunate men, even those men
who are at first sight in your way, as if they were the
natural oppressors of your sex; for, trust me, Belinda, they
do sometimes spend their wages among wives and
daughters, sisters, mothers, aunts, and grandmothers; and
the play is, really, not ALL Wolf and Red Riding-Hood,
but has other parts in it.' However, I digress.
Belinda, as I have mentioned, occupied the Picture
Room. We had but three other chambers: the Corner
Room, the Cupboard Room, and the Garden Room. My
old friend, Jack Governor, 'slung his hammock,' as he
called it, in the Corner Room. I have always regarded Jack
as the finest-looking sailor that ever sailed. He is gray now,
but as handsome as he was a quarter of a century ago—
nay, handsomer. A portly, cheery, well-built figure of a
broad-shouldered man, with a frank smile, a brilliant dark
eye, and a rich dark eyebrow. I remember those under
darker hair, and they look all the better for their silver
setting. He has been wherever his Union namesake flies,
has Jack, and I have met old shipmates of his, away in the
Mediterranean and on the other side of the Atlantic, who
have beamed and brightened at the casual mention of his
name, and have cried, 'You know Jack Governor? Thenyou know a prince of men!' That he is! And so
unmistakably a naval officer, that if you were to meet him
coming out of an Esquimaux snow-hut in seal's skin, you
would be vaguely persuaded he was in full naval uniform.
Jack once had that bright clear eye of his on my sister;
but, it fell out that he married another lady and took her
to South America, where she died. This was a dozen years
ago or more. He brought down with him to our haunted
house a little cask of salt beef; for, he is always convinced
that all salt beef not of his own pickling, is mere carrion,
and invariably, when he goes to London, packs a piece in
his portmanteau. He had also volunteered to bring with
him one 'Nat Beaver,' an old comrade of his, captain of a
merchantman. Mr. Beaver, with a thick-set wooden face
and figure, and apparently as hard as a block all over,
proved to be an intelligent man, with a world of watery
experiences in him, and great practical knowledge. At
times, there was a curious nervousness about him,
apparently the lingering result of some old illness; but, it
seldom lasted many minutes. He got the Cupboard
Room, and lay there next to Mr. Undery, my friend and
solicitor: who came down, in an amateur capacity, 'to go
through with it,' as he said, and who plays whist better than the whole Law List, from the red cover at the
beginning to the red cover at the end.
I never was happier in my life, and I believe it was the
universal feeling among us. Jack Governor, always a man
of wonderful resources, was Chief Cook, and made some
of the best dishes I ever ate, including unapproachable
curries. My sister was pastrycook and confectioner.
Starling and I were Cook's Mate, turn and turn about, and
on special occasions the chief cook 'pressed' Mr. Beaver.
We had a great deal of out-door sport and exercise, but
nothing was neglected within, and there was no illhumour or misunderstanding among us, and our evenings
were so delightful that we had at least one good reason for
being reluctant to go to bed.
We had a few night alarms in the beginning. On the
first night, I was knocked up by Jack with a most
wonderful ship's lantern in his hand, like the gills of some
monster of the deep, who informed me that he 'was going
aloft to the main truck,' to have the weathercock down. It
was a stormy night and I remonstrated; but Jack called my
attention to its making a sound like a cry of despair, and
said somebody would be 'hailing a ghost' presently, if it
wasn't done. So, up to the top of the house, where I could
hardly stand for the wind, we went, accompanied by Mr. Beaver; and there Jack, lantern and all, with Mr. Beaver
after him, swarmed up to the top of a cupola, some two
dozen feet above the chimneys, and stood upon nothing
particular, coolly knocking the weathercock off, until they
both got into such good spirits with the wind and the
height, that I thought they would never come down.
Another night, they turned out again, and had a chimneycowl off. Another night, they cut a sobbing and gulping
water-pipe away. Another night, they found out
something else. On several occasions, they both, in the
coolest manner, simultaneously dropped out of their
respective bedroom windows, hand over hand by their
counterpanes, to 'overhaul' something mysterious in the
garden.
The engagement among us was faithfully kept, and
nobody revealed anything. All we knew was, if any one's
room were haunted, no one looked the worse for it.
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