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Weird Tales
TRUE TALES
OF THE WEIRD
SYDNEY DICKINSON
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TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
A Record of Personal Experiences
of the Supernatural
BY
SIDNEY DICKINSON
With an Introduction By
R. H. STETSON
Professor of Psychology
Oberlin College
And a Prefatory Note By
G. O. TUBBY
Assistant Secretary American
Society Psychical Research
NEW YORK
DUFFIELD AND COMPANY
1920
Copyright, 1930, by
DUFTIELD AND COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFATORY NOTE vii
INTRODUCTION 1
AUTHOR'S PREFACE 5
I
A MYSTERY OF Two CONTINENTS 11
"A SPIRIT OF HEALTH" 25
THE MIRACLE OF THE FLOWERS . 41
THE MIDNIGHT HORSEMAN 57
II
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE CONDEMNED 75
II. THE CRIME 83
III. THE FLIGHT AND CAPTURE 96
IV. THE EXPIATION 105
V. THE HOUSE ON THE HILL 116
VI. ON THE WINGS OF THE STORM 126
VII. A GHOSTLY CO-TENANCY 141
VIII. THE DEAD WALKS 152
IX. THE GOBLINS OF THE KITCHEN 162
X. A SPECTRAL BURGLARY 178
XL "REST, REST, PERTURBED SPIRIT !" 187
XII. THE DEMONS OF THE DARK 200
2038588
PREFATORY NOTE
It is a pleasure to testify that the MS. of this
volume of stories has been submitted with
abundant testimonies from the individuals who
knew their author and his facts at first hand,
to the American Society for Psychical Research
for approval or disapproval.
No more interesting or better attested
phenomena of the kind have come to our atten-
tion, and we have asked that a copy of the MS.
be filed permanently in the Society's archives
for preservation from loss. These accounts
by Mr. Dickinson bear internal evidence to
their true psychic origin and to the trained
observer scarcely need corroboration or other
external support. They ring true. And they
are, in addition, moving human documents, with
a strong literary appeal.
GERTRUDE OGDEN TUBBY,
Asst. Sec., A. S. P. R.
April 5, 1920.
[vii]
INTRODUCTION
THIS account of striking and peculiar events
by Mr. Sidney Dickinson is but the fulfillment
of an intention of the writer interrupted by sud-
den death. Mr. Dickinson had taken careful
notes of the happenings described and, being a
professional observer and writer, it was inevit-
able that he should preserve the narrative. He
had been slow to prepare it for publication be-
cause of the prominent and enabling part played
by his wife in the occurrences. After her death,
when an increasing interest in the subject had
developed, it seemed to Mr. Dickinson that the
narrative might be received as he had written
it as a careful and exact account of most re-
markable events. In reverence to the memory
of his wife and out of respect to the friends
concerned he could not present it otherwise to
the public.
As the narrative is of some time ago and the
principal witnesses are dead or inaccessible the
account must stand for itself; the endorsement
of the American Society for Physical Research
El]
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
THESE stories are not "founded upon fact" ;
they are fact. If I may claim any merit for
them it is this they are absolutely and literally
true. They seem to me to be unusual even
among the mass of literature that has been
written upon the subject they illustrate; if they
possess any novelty at all it may be found in
the fact that the phenomena they describe
occurred, for the most part, without invitation,
without reference to "conditions," favorable or
otherwise, and without mediumistic interven-
tion.
I have written these stories with no purpose
to bolster up any theory or to strengthen or
weaken any belief, and I must say frankly that,
in my opinion, they neither prove nor disprove
anything whatsoever. I am not a believer, any
more than I am a sceptic, in regard to so-called
"Spiritualism," and have consistently held to
my non-committal attitude in this matter by
refraining, all my life, from consulting a
medium or attending a professional seance. In
the scientific study of Psychology I have a lay-
man's interest, but even that is curious rather
[5]
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
than expectant; my experience, which I think
this book will show to have been considerable,
in the observation of occult phenomena has
failed to afford me anything like a positive clue
to their causes or meaning.
In fact, I have long ago arrived at the
opinion that any one who devotes himself to
the study of what, for want of a better word,
we may call "supernatural" will inevitably and
at last find himself landed in an impasse. The
first steps in the pursuit are easy, and seduc-
tively promise final arrival at the goal but in
every case of which I, at least, have knowledge
the course abruptly ends (sometimes sooner,
sometimes later) against a wall so high as to
be unscalable, not to be broken through, ex-
tending to infinity on either hand.
That disembodied spirits can at least make
their existence known to us appears to me as a
well-approved fact; that they are "forbid to
tell the secrets of their prison-house" is my
equally firm conviction. I am aware that such
an opinion can be only personal, and that it is
hopeless to attempt to commend it by satis-
factory evidence; those who have had experi-
ences similar to those which I have recorded
(and their number is much greater than is gen-
erally supposed) will understand how this
[6]
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
opinion has been reached to others it will be
inconceivable, as based upon what seems to
them impossible.
If what I have written should seem to throw
any light, however faint, upon the problem of
the Mystery of Existence in whose solution
some of the profoundest intellects of the world
are at present engaged, my labor will have been
worth the while. I submit the results of this
labor as a record, with a lively sense of the
responsibility I assume by its publication.
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
A MYSTERY OF TWO CONTINENTS
THIS story, as well as the one that immedi-
ately follows it, was first related to the late
Wilkie Collins, the noted English novelist,
with whom I had the good fortune to be ac-
quainted and who, as all his intimates know,
and as those whose knowledge of him is derived
from his romances may surmise, was an earnest
and careful student of occult phenomena. I
placed in his hands all the concurrent data which
I could secure, and furnished the names of wit-
nesses to the incidents which names are now
in possession of the publishers of this volume
equipped with which he carried out a thorough
personal investigation. The result of this in-
vestigation he made known to me, one pleasant
spring afternoon, in his study in London.
"During my life," he said, "I have made a
considerable study of the supernatural, but the
knowledge I have gained is not very definite.
Take the matter of apparitions, for instance,
to which the two interesting stories you have
submitted to me relate : I have come to regard
these as subjective rather than objective phe-
nomena, projections from an excited or stimu-
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
lated brain, not actual existences. Why, I have
seen thousands of ghosts myself! Many a
night, after writing until two o'clock in the
morning, and fortifying myself for my work
with strong coffee, I have had to shoulder them
aside as I went upstairs to bed. These ap-
parent presences were nothing to me, since I
knew perfectly well that their origin was no-
where else than in my overwrought nerves and
I have come to conclude that most cases of
visions of this sort are to be explained by
attributing them to a temporary or permanent
disorganization of the brain of the percipient.
Mind, I do not say all cases there are many
that are not to be set aside so readily. Again,
it is not easy to arrive at the facts in any given
case; even if the observer is honest, he may not
have cultivated the habit of exact statement
moreover, stories are apt to grow by repeti-
tion, and a tendency to exaggerate is common
to most of us. Now and then, however, I have
come upon an account of supernatural visitation
which seems an exception to the general run,
and upsets my theories; and I must say that,
having from time to time investigated at least
fifteen hundred such instances, the two stories
you have furnished me are of them all the best
authenticated."
[12]
A MYSTERY OF TWO CONTINENTS
Some years ago, in the course of a tour of
art study which took me through the principal
countries of Europe, I found myself in Naples,
having arrived there by a leisurely progress that
began at Gibraltar, and had brought me by
easy stages, and with many stops en route,
through the Mediterranean. The time of year
was late February, and the season, even for
Southern Italy, was much advanced; so, in
visiting the Island of Capri (the exact date, I
recollect, was February 22) I found this most
charming spot in the Vesuvian Bay smiling and
verdant, and was tempted by the brilliant sun-
shine and warm breezes to explore the hilly
country which rose behind the port at which I
had landed.
The fields upon the heights were green with
grass, and spangled with delicate white flowers
bearing a yellow centre, which, while smaller
than our familiar American field-daisies, and
held upon more slender stalks, reminded me of
them. Having in mind certain friends in then
bleak New England, whence I had strayed into
this Land of Summer, I plucked a number of
these blossoms and placed them between the
leaves of my guide-book Baedeker's "Southern
Italy," intending to inclose them in letters
which I then planned to write to these friends,
[13]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
contrasting the conditions attending their
"Washington's Birthday" with those in which
I fortunately found myself.
Returning to Naples, the many interests of
that city put out of my head for the time the
thought of letter-writing, and three days later
I took the train for Rome, with my corre-
spondence still in arrears. The first day of my
stay in Rome was devoted to an excursion by
carriage into the Campagna, and on the way
back to the city I stopped to see that most in-
teresting and touching of Roman monuments,
the Tomb of Cecilia Metella. Every tourist
knows and has visited that beautiful memorial
so I do not need to describe its massive
walls, its roof (now fallen and leaving the
sepulchre open to the sky) and the heavy turf
which covers the earth of its interior. This
green carpet of Nature, when I visited the
tomb, was thickly strewn with fragrant violets,
and of these, as of the daisylike flowers I had
found in Capri, I collected several, and placed
them in my guide-book this time Baedeker's
"Central Italy."
I mention these two books the "Southern"
and the "Central Italy" because they have an
important bearing on my story.
The next day, calling at my banker's, I saw
[14]
A MYSTERY OF TWO CONTINENTS
an announcement that letters posted before four
o'clock that afternoon would be forwarded to
catch the mail for New York by a specially fast
steamer for Liverpool, and hastened back to
my hotel with the purpose of preparing, and
thus expediting, my much-delayed correspond-
ence. The most important duty of the moment
seemed to be the writing of a letter to my wife,
then living in Boston, and to this I particularly
addressed myself. I described my trip through
the Mediterranean and my experience in Naples
and Rome, and concluded my letter as fol-
lows:
"In Naples I found February to be like our
New England May, and in Capri, which I
visited on 'Washington's Birthday,' I found the
heights of the island spangled over with delicate
flowers, some of which I plucked, and enclose
in this letter. And, speaking of flowers, I send
you also some violets which I gathered yester-
day at the Tomb of Cecelia Metella, outside
of Rome you know about this monument,
or, if not, you can look up its history, and save
me from transcribing a paragraph from the
guide-book. I send you these flowers from
Naples and Rome, respectively, in order that
you may understand in what agreeable sur-
roundings I find myself, as compared with the
[15]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
ice and snow and bitter cold which are probably
your experience at this season."
Having finished the letter, I took from the
guide-book on "Central Italy" which lay on
the table before me, the violets from the Tomb
of Cecilia Metella, enclosed them, with the
sheets I had written, in an envelope, sealed and
addressed it, and was about to affix the stamp,
when it suddenly occurred to me that I had left
out the flowers I had plucked at Capri. These,
I then recalled, were still in the guide-book for
"Southern Italy," which I had laid away in.
my portmanteau as of no further present use
to me. Accordingly I unstrapped and unlocked
the portmanteau, found the guide-book, took
out the flowers from Capri which were still be-
tween its leaves, opened and destroyed the en-
velope already addressed, added the daisies to
the violets, and put the whole into a new in-
closure, which I again directed, stamped, and
duly dropped into the mail-box at the bankers'.
I am insistent upon these details because they
particularly impressed upon my mind the cer-
tainty that both varieties of flowers were in-
closed in the letter to my wife. Subsequent
events would have been strange enough if I
had not placed the flowers in the letter at all
but the facts above stated assure me that there
[16]
A MYSTERY OF TWO CONTINENTS
is no question that I did so, and make what fol-
lowed more than ever inexplicable.
So much for the beginning of the affair in
Italy; now for its conclusion in New Eng-
land.
During my year abroad, my wife was living,
as I have said, in Boston, occupying at the Win-
throp House, on Bowdoin street a hotel which
has since, I believe, been taken down a suite
of rooms comprising parlor, bedroom and bath.
With her was my daughter by a former mar-
riage, whose mother had died at her birth,
some seven years before. On the same floor of
the hotel were apartments occupied by Mrs.
Celia Thaxter, a woman whose name is well
known in American literature, and with whom
my wife sustained a very intimate friendship.
I am indebted for the facts I am now setting
down not only to my wife, who gave me an
oral account of them on my return from
Europe, four months later, but also to this
lady who wrote out and preserved a record of
them at the time of their occurrence, and sent
me a copy of the same while I was still abroad.
About ten days after I had posted my letter,
inclosing the flowers from Capri and Rome,
my wife suddenly awoke in the middle of the
[17]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
night, and saw standing at the foot of her bed
ti\Q form of the child's mother. The aspect
of the apparition was so serene and gracious
that, although greatly startled, she felt no
alarm; moreover, it had once before appeared
to her, as the reader will learn in the second
story of this series, which, for reasons of my
own, I have not arranged in chronological
order. Then she heard, as if from a voice at
a great distance, these words : "I have brought
you some flowers from Sidney." At the next
instant the figure vanished.
The visitation had been so brief that my
wife, although she at once arose and lighted the
gas, argued with herself that she had been
dreaming, and after a few minutes extinguished
the light and returned to bed, where she slept
soundly until six o'clock the next morning. Al-
ways an early riser, she dressed at once and
went from her bedroom, where the child was
still sleeping, to her parlor. In the centre of
the room was a table, covered with a green
cloth, and as she entered and happened to glance
at it she saw, to her surprise, a number of dried
flowers scattered over it. A part of these she
recognized as violets, but the rest were un-
familiar to her, although they resembled very
small daisies.
[18]
'A MYSTERY OF TWO CONTINENTS
The vision of the night before was at once
forcibly recalled to her, and the words of the
apparition, "I have brought you some flowers,"
seemed to have a meaning, though what it was
she could not understand. After examining
these strange blossoms for a time she returned
to her chamber and awakened the child, whom
she then took to see the flowers, and asked her
if she knew anything about them.
"Why, no, mamma," the little girl replied;
"I have never seen them before. I was read-
ing my new book at the table last night until
I went to bed, and if they were there I should
have seen them."
So the flowers were gathered up and placed
on the shelf above the fireplace, and during the
morning were exhibited to Mrs. Thaxter, who
came in for a chat, and who, like my wife, could
make nothing of the matter.
At about four o'clock in the afternoon of
that day the postman called at the hotel, bear-
ing among his mail several letters for my wife,
which were at once sent up to her. Among
them was one that was postmarked "Rome"
and addressed in my handwriting, and with this
she sat down as the first to be read. It con-
tained an account, among other things, of my
experiences in Naples and Rome, and in due
[19]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
course mentioned the enclosure of flowers from
Capri and from the Tomb of Cecilia Metella.
There were, however, no flowers whatever in
the letter, although each sheet and the envelope
were carefully examined; my wife even shook
her skirts and made a search upon the carpet,
thinking that the stated enclosure might have
fallen out as the letter was opened. Nothing
could be found yet ten hours before the
arrival of the letter, flowers exactly such as it
described had been found on the centre-table !
Mrs. Thaxter was summoned, and the two
ladies marvelled greatly. Among Mrs. Thax-
ter's friends in the city was a well-known
botanist, and she at once suggested that the
flowers be offered for his inspection. No time
was lost in calling upon him, and the flowers
were shown (without, however, the curious
facts about them being mentioned), with the
request that he state, if it were possible, whence
they came. He examined them carefully and
then said:
"As to the violets, it is difficult to say where
they grew, since these flowers, wherever they
may be found in the world (and they are of
almost universal occurrence, through cultiva-
tion or otherwise) may everywhere be very
much alike. Certain peculiarities in these speci-
[20]
A MYSTERY OF TWO CONTINENTS
mens, however, coupled with the scent they still
faintly retain and which is characteristic, in-
cline me to the opinion that they came from
some part of Southern Europe perhaps
France, but more likely Italy. As to the others,
which, as you say, resemble small daisies, they
must have come from some point about the
Bay of Naples, as I am not aware of their
occurrence elsewhere."
[21]
"A SPIRIT OF HEALTH"
"A SPIRIT OF HEALTH"
IT is common, and, in the main, a well-
founded objection to belief in so-called super-
natural manifestations, that they seem in
general to subserve no purpose of usefulness
or help to us who are still upon this mortal
plane, and thus are unworthy of intelligences
such as both love and reason suggest our de-
parted friends to be. The mummeries and
too-frequent juggleries of dark-seances, and the
inconclusive and usually vapid "communica-
tions" that are vouchsafed through profes-
sional mediums, have done much to confirm this
opinion, and the possibility of apparitions, par-
ticularly, has been weakened, rather than
strengthened, in the minds of intelligent persons
by the machinery of cabinets and other ap-
pliances which seem to be necessary parapher-
nalia in "materializing" the spirits of the dead.
That the departed ever re-appear in such
form as they presented during life I am not
prepared to affirm, even in view of many ex-
periences of a nature like that which I am about
to relate. In the generality of such cases I
am decidedly in agreement with the opinion of
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
the late Wilkie Collins, as set forth in the
preceding story although I should be inclined
to extend that opinion far enough to include
the admission of the possibility that it was the
actual Presence which so worked upon the mind
of the percipient as to cause it to project from
itself the phantom appearance. This may seem
somewhat like a quibble to confirmed believers
in apparitions, of whom there are many, and
perhaps it is while those who are impatient
of ingenious psychological explanations may
find in the following story a confirmation of the
conviction which they hold, that the dead may
appear in the form in which we knew them,
bringing warning and aid to the living.
It is now thirty-one years ago that the wife
of my youth, after less than a year of married
life, was taken from me by death, leaving to
me an infant daughter, in whom all the personal
and mental traits of the mother gradually re-
produced themselves in a remarkable degree.
Some three years later I married again, and
the child, who, during that period, had been
in the care of her grandparents, at regular in-
tervals, on either side of the house respectively,
was taken into the newly-formed home.
A strong affection between the new mother
[26]
'A SPIRIT OF HEALTH'
and the little girl was established at once, and
their relations soon became more like those of
blood than of adoption. The latter, never
having known her own mother, had no memory
of associations that might have weakened the
influence of the new wife, and the step-mother,
as the years passed and she had no chil-
dren, grew to regard the one who had come
to her at her marriage as in very truth her
own.
I often thought, when seeing those two to-
gether, so fond and devoted each to each,
that if those we call dead still live and have
knowledge of facts in the existence they have
left behind, the mother of the child may have
felt her natural yearnings satisfied in beholding
their mutual affection, and even have found
therein the medium to extend from her own
sphere the influence of happiness which some
may believe they see exercised in'the events that
this narrative, as well as others in the series,
describes.
At the time in which these events occurred, I
was traveling in Europe, and my wife and
daughter were living in Boston, as stated in the
story with which this book opens. In the ad-
joining town of Brookline there resided a lady
of wealth and social prominence, Mrs. John
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
W. Candler, wife of a gentleman who had large
railway interests in the South, and who was,
moreover, Representative for his district in the
Lower House of Congress. Mrs. Candler was
a woman of rare beauty and possessed unusual
intellectual gifts; she was also a close personal
friend of Mrs. Thaxter, whom I have before
mentioned and who introduced her to my wife
the acquaintance thus formed developing
into an affectionate intimacy that ended only
with Mrs. Candler's death, a dozen years ago.
As her husband's business interests and legis-
lative duties frequently compelled his absence
from home, it was Mrs. Candler's delight to
enliven her enforced solitudes by dispensing her
large and unostentatious hospitality to her
chosen friends so that it often happened that
Mrs. Thaxter, and my wife and child, were
guests for considerable periods at her luxurious
residence.
One afternoon in mid-winter, Mrs. Candler
drove into the city to call upon my wife, and,
finding her suffering from a somewhat obstinate
cold, urged her, with her usual warmth and
heartiness, to return home with her for a couple
of days, for the sake of the superior comforts
which her house could afford as compared with
those of the hotel. My wife demurred to this,
[28]
' ' A SPIRIT OF
chiefly on the ground that, as the weather was
very severe, she did not like to take the child
with her, since, being rather delicate that
winter although not actually ill, she dared not
remove her, even temporarily, from the equable
temperature of the hotel.
While the matter was being discussed another
caller was announced in the person of Miss
Mae Harris Anson, a young woman of some
eighteen years, daughter of a wealthy family
in Minneapolis, who was pursuing a course of
study at the New England Conservatory of
Music. Miss Anson was very fond of children,
and possessed an unusual talent for entertain-
ing them and thus was a great favorite of
my little daughter, who hailed her arrival with
rapture. This fact furnished Mrs. Candler
with an idea which she immediately advanced
in the form of a suggestion that Miss Anson
might be willing to care for the child during my
wife's absence. To this proposal Miss Anson
at once assented, saying, in her lively way, that,
as her school was then in recess for a few days,
she would like nothing better than to exchange
her boarding-house for a hotel for a while, and
in consideration thereof to act as nursemaid for
such time as might be required of her. It was
finally agreed, therefore, that Miss Anson
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
should come to the hotel the next morning, pre-
pared for a two or three days' stay; this she
did, and early in the afternoon Mrs. Candler
arrived in her sleigh, and with my wife was
driven to her home.
The afternoon and evening passed without
incident, and my wife retired early to bed, being
assigned to a room next to Mrs. Candler, and
one that could be entered only through that
lady's apartment. The next morning she arose
rather late, and yielding to the arguments of
her hostess, who insisted that she should not
undergo the exertion of going down to break-
fast, that repast was served in her room, and
she partook of it while seated in an easy chair at
a table before an open fire that blazed cheerily
in the wide chimney-place. The meal finished
and the table removed, she continued to sit for
some time in her comfortable chair, being at-
tired only in dressing-gown and slippers, con-
sidering whether she should go to bed again,
as Mrs. Candler had recommended, or prepare
herself to rejoin her friend, whom she could
hear talking in the adjoining room with another
member of the household.
The room in which she was sitting had a large
window fronting upon the southeast, and the
[30]
*A SPIRIT OF HEALTH*
morning sun, shining from a cloudless sky,
poured through it a flood of light that stretched
nearly to her feet, and formed a golden track
across the carpet. Her eyes wandered from
one to another object in the luxurious apart-
ment, and as they returned from one of these
excursions to a regard of her more immediate
surroundings, she was startled to perceive that
some one was with her one who, standing in
the full light that came through the window,
was silently observing her. Some subtle and
unclassified sense informed her that the figure
in the sunlight was not of mortal mold it was
indistinct in form and outline, and seemed to be
a part of, rather than separate from, the
radiance that surrounded it. It was the figure
of a young and beautiful woman with golden
hair and blue eyes, and from both face and
eyes was carried the impression of a great
anxiety; a robe of some filmy white material
covered her form from neck to feet, and bare
arms, extending from flowing sleeves, were
stretched forth in a gesture of appeal.
My wife, stricken with a feeling in which
awe dominated fear, lay back in her chair for
some moments silently regarding the appari-
tion, not knowing if she were awake or dream-
ing. A strange familiarity in the face troubled
[31]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
her, for she knew she had never seen it before
then understanding came to her, and the
recollection of photographs, and of the features
of her daughter by adoption, flashed upon her
mind the instant conviction that she was gazing
at the mother who died when the child was
born.
"What is it?" she finally found strength to
whisper. "Why do you come to me?"
The countenance of the apparition took on
an expression of trouble more acute even than
before.
"The child I The child!" the cry came
from the shadowy lips distinctly, yet as if
uttered at a great distance. "Go back to town
at once !"
"But why?" my wife inquired. "I do not
understand what you mean."
The figure began to fade away, as if reab-
sorbed in the light that enveloped it, but the
voice came again as before : "Go to your room
and look in your bureau drawer!" and only
the sunlight was to be seen in the spot where
the phantom had stood.
For some moments my wife remained re-
clining in her chair, completely overcome by her
strange vision; then she got upon her feet, and
half ran, half staggered, into the next room
[3*]
*A SPIRIT OF HEALTH*
where Mrs. Candler and her companion were
still conversing.
"Why, my dear I" exclaimed Mrs. Candler,
"what in the world is the matter? You are as
pale as a ghost!"
"I think I have seen one," panted my wife.
"Tell me, has anyone passed through here into
my room?"
"Why, no," her friend replied; "how could
anyone? We have both been sitting here ever
since breakfast."
"Then it is true!" cried my wife. "Some-
thing terrible is happening in town! Please,
please take me to my rooms at once I" and she
hurriedly related what she had seen.
Mrs. Candler endeavored to soothe her-
she had been dreaming; all must be well with
the child, otherwise Miss Anson would at once
inform them; moreover, rather than have
her brave a ride to town in the bitter cold of
the morning, she would send a servant after
luncheon to inquire for news at the hotel. My
wife was not convinced by these arguments but
finally yielded to them; Mrs. Candler gave her
the morning paper as a medium for quieting
her mind, and she returned with it to her room
and resumed her seat in the easy chair.
She had hardly begun her reading, however,
[33]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
when the newspaper was snatched from her
hand and thrown to the opposite side of the
room, and as she started up in alarm she saw
the apparition again standing in the sunlight,
and again heard the voice this time in a tone
of imperious command "Go to your rooms at
once and look in your bureau drawer!" At the
utterance of these words the apparition van-
ished, leaving my wife so overwhelmed with
fear and amazement that for some time she
was powerless to move then reason and con-
trol of action returned to her, and she was able
to regain her friend's room and acquaint her
with the facts of this second visitation. This
time Mrs. Candler made no attempt to oppose
her earnest purpose to return to town, the
horses and sleigh were ordered from the
stables, my wife hurriedly dressed herself, and
in half an hour both ladies were speeding
toward Boston.
When they reached the entrance of the
hotei, my wife, whose excitement had increased
greatly during the drive, sprang from the sleigh
and rushed upstairs, with Mrs. Candler close
behind her, burst into the door of her rooms
like a whirlwind, and discovered the child
absorbed in architectural pursuits with a set of
building blocks in the middle of the sitting-
[34]
'A SPIRIT OF HEALTH'
room, and Miss Anson calmly reading a novel
in a rocking chair by the window !
The picture thus presented was so serene and
commonplace by comparison with what my
wife's agitation had led her to expect, that Mrs.
Candler at once burst out laughing; my wife's
face also showed intense bewilderment then,
crying, "She said 'look in the bureau drawer!' '
she hurried into the bedroom with Mrs. Cand-
ler at her heels.
The bureau, a conventional piece of bedroom
furniture, stood at the head of the child's bed,
and presented an entirely innocent appearance;
nevertheless my wife went straight up to it, and,
firmly grasping the handles, pulled out the top-
most drawer. Instantly a mass of flame burst
forth, accompanied by a cloud of acrid smoke
that billowed to the ceiling, and the whole in-
terior of the bureau seemed to be ablaze. Mrs.
Candler, with great presence of mind, seized
a pitcher of water and dashed it upon the fire,
which action checked it for the moment, and
Miss Anson flew into the hall, arousing the
house with her cries. Mrs. Thaxter, who was
at the moment coming to my wife's apartment
from her own, hurried in and saw the blazing
bureau and the two white-faced women before
it and turned quickly to summon help em-
[35]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
ployes came running with an extinguisher, and
in five minutes the danger was over.
When the excitement had subsided, an
examination was made as to the cause of the
conflagration, with the following result:
My wife, who was a skilful painter in oils,
and devoted much of her time to this employ-
ment, was accustomed to keep her colors and
brushes in the upper drawer of the bureau in
her bedroom. She had also, and very care-
lessly, placed in a corner of the drawer a quan-
tity of loose rags which had become thoroughly
saturated with oil and turpentine from their
use in cleaning her palette and brushes.
I am indebted for the above facts not only
to Mrs. Thaxter and Mrs. Candler, both of
whom I have frequently heard relate this story,
but, particularly, to Miss Anson herself, who
has been, at the time of writing this, for several
years connected with the editorial staff of the
Minneapolis Journal. In a letter which she
sent me in response to my request that she
should confirm my recollection, she set forth
clearly the causes of the conflagration in the
following words:
"Some time before she [my wife] had put
a whole package of matches into a stewpan, in
which she heated water, and set the pan in
[36]
t k
A SPIRIT OF HEALTH 1 *
with these paints and rags. Then, one night,
when in a hurry for some hot water, she had
gone in, in the dark, and forgetting all about
the matches, had dumped them upon the tubes
of oil paints when she pulled out the pan.
"Every one of the heads of these matches
had been burned off, evidently through spon-
taneous combustion. I went through them all,
and not one had been ignited. The rags were
burned and the whole inside of the drawer was
charred. The fire could not have been kept
under longer than the following night, and
would probably have burned the child and me
in bed, before anyone dreamed there was a
fire."
[37]
THE MIRACLE OF THE FLOWERS
THE MIRACLE OF THE FLOWERS
AMONG the "phenomena" which attend the
average spiritualistic seance a favorite one is
the apparent production from space of quan-
tities of flowers to the supernatural source
of which credence or doubt is given according
'to the degree of belief or scepticism inherent
in the individual sitters. Having never at-
tended one of these gatherings, I am not able
to describe such an incident as occurs under
such auspices; but the suggestion recalls to my
mind two very remarkable events in which
flowers were produced in a seemingly inex-
plicable manner, and without the assistance (if
that be the right word) of mediumistic control.
In one of these experiences I personally par-
ticipated, and in both of them my wife was con-
cerned therefore I can vouch for their occur-
rence.
Some months after the happenings recorded
in the two previous narratives, I was spending
the summer following my return from Europe
in Northampton, Massachusetts, at the resi-
dence of my father, having with me my wife
and daughter. The mother of the child, who,
[41]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
as I have said, died in giving her birth, was a
resident of the town at the time of our mar-
riage, and her body reposed in our family's
lot in the cemetery. The circumstance of this
bereavement caused the warmest affections of
my father and and mother to centre upon my
daughter, she being then their only grandchild.
The little girl was passionately fond of flow-
ers, and her indulgent grandfather, himself a
zealous horticulturist and grower of choice
fruits, had that summer allotted to her sole
use a plot six feet square in his spacious gardens,
which became the pride of her heart from the
brilliant array of blooms which she had coaxed
to grow in it. Her favorite flowers were
pansies, with the seeds of which she had planted
nearly one-half of the space at her disposal.
They had germinated successfully and flourished
amazingly, and at the time of which I write
that part of the bed devoted to them was a
solid mass of pansies of every conceivable
variety.
At about four o'clock one afternoon my wife
and I set out for a walk through the famous
meadows that stretched away from the back
of the grounds, and on our return, some two
hours later, we saw at a distance the child stand-
ing upon the terrace awaiting us, clean and
[42]
THE MIRACLE OF THE FLOWERS
wholesome in a fresh white frock, and bearing
a large bouquet of her favorite pansies in her
hand. As we approached she ran to meet us
and extended the pansies to my wife, saying:
"Mamma, see these lovely pansies! I have
picked them for you from my pansy-bed."
My wife thanked the child and kissed her,
and we went upstairs to our room together to
prepare for supper that was then about to be
served. A vase stood on the shelf at one side
of the room, and in this, first partly filling it
with water, I placed the bunch of pansies.
After supper I suggested to my wife that we
should call upon some relatives who lived about
a quarter of a mile away, and went with her to
our room while she made her preparations for
our excursion. While waiting for her I took
from the shelf the vase containing the pansies,
and we examined and commented upon them for
some time; then, her toilette being completed,
I restored the vase and flowers to their former
position, and we left the room, and immediately
thereafter the house, together.
We found our friends at home and spent a
pleasant evening with them, leaving on our
return at about ten o'clock. The night was
warm and perfectly calm, and, as there was no
[43]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
moon, the way was dark save where, here and
there, a street lamp threw about its little circle
of light. As we turned into the street which
led to my father's house we passed under a
row of maple trees whose heavy foliage made
the darkness even more profound than we had
known it elsewhere, and beside a high hedge
which enclosed the spacious grounds of a man-
sion that stood at the corner of the two high-
ways. This hedge extended for a distance of
about fifty yards, and as many feet beyond the
point where it terminated a lighted street lamp
dimly illumined the pathway. We were at a
point about midway of the hedge when my wife,
who was the nearer to it, suddenly stopped and
exclaimed: "Was it you that gave that pull
at my shawl?" and readjusted the garment a
light fleecy affair which I at once observed was
half off her left shoulder.
"Why, no," I replied, "I did not touch your
shawl. What do you mean?"
"I mean," she answered, "that I felt a hand
seize my shawl and try to draw it away from
me."
I pointed out the fact that I could not well
have reached her shawl on the side on which
it had been disarranged, and suggested that it
might have caught upon a projecting twig; but
[44]
THE MIRACLE OF THE FLOWERS
although she accepted this explanation as
reasonable she still insisted that she had the
consciousness of some person having laid a hand
upon her.
After a few moments we went on, and had
left the hedge behind us and were within a few
feet of the street lamp, when my wife stopped
a second time, declaring that her shawl had
been seized again. Sure enough, the garment
was as before, lying half off her shoulder, and
this time obviously not because of any project-
ing twig, since we were in a perfectly clear
space, and could look about us over an area of
several yards in every direction. This we did,
puzzled but not alarmed at the twice-recurring
incident; then, on a sudden, my wife seized my
arm with a convulsive grip, and, raising her
eyes until I thought she was looking at the light
in the street lamp before us, whispered:
"Heavens ! Do you see that?"
I followed the direction of her gaze, but
could see nothing, and told her so, in the same
breath asking her what she meant.
"It is Minnie!" she gasped (thus uttering
the name of my dead wife) "and she has her
hands full of flowers ! Oh, Minnie, Minnie,
what are you doing?" and hid her face in her
hands. I clasped her in my arms, thinking she
[45]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
was about to faint, and gazed fearfully above
us in a vain effort to discern the declared ap-
parition and at the same moment I felt a
shower of soft objects strike upon my upturned
face and upon my straw hat, and saw against
the light before me what seemed like blossoms
floating downward to the ground.
As soon as I could quiet my wife's agitation
and induce her to look again for the appearance
which she believed she had beheld, but which
she told me had now vanished, I made a search
upon the sidewalk for the objects whose fall I
had both felt and seen. They were plainly evi-
dent, even in the dim light, and I gathered up
a number of them and carried them under the
lamp for examination. They were pansies,
freshly gathered, and with their leaves and
stems damp, as if just taken from water.
Hastening to the house, we went directly to our
room, and lighting the gas looked eagerly
toward the shelf where we had left the vase
filled with pansies some three hours before. The
vase was there, half-filled with water, but not
a single flower was standing in it.
The next day was Sunday and all the family
went to morning service at the church. As my
wife and I, with our daughter between us and
[46]
THE MIRACLE OF THE FLOWERS
following my father and mother at some dis-
tance, reached the scene of our adventure on
the previous night, we saw lying on the side-
walk a half-dozen pansies which we had evi-
dently overlooked, owing to the dim light in
which we had gathered up the others. At sight
of them the little girl dropped my hand, to
which she was clinging, and with a cry of sur-
prise ran to pick them up.
"Why," she exclaimed, "how did these come
here? They are the pansies I picked for
mamma yesterday from my pansy bed!"
"Oh, no, dear," I said; "these are probably
some other pansies; how can you tell they came
from your bed?"
"Why," she replied, "I know every one of
my pansies, and this one" holding up a blos-
som that was of so deep and uniform a purple
as to appear almost black "I could tell any-
where, for there was no other in the bed like
it."
So she collected all the scattered flowers and
insisted on carrying them to church, and on
returning home they were replaced, with their
fellows, in the vase from which they had been
so mysteriously transferred the night before.
It has been my purpose, in preparing these
[47]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
stories for publication, not to permit myself to
be led into any attempt to explain them, or even
to embellish them with comment, and thus per-
haps weaken what I desire to present as a plain
statement of fact yet this incident of the
pansies seems to me (although for quite per-
sonal reasons) so touching, and so tender in
its suggestions, that I cannot forbear a word
or two concerning it. In thus indulging myself
I am aware that the reader may think he finds
a contradiction of the statement I have made
in the preface of this book as to my non-com-
mittal attitude regarding Spiritualism. On this
point I can only say that while I am not con-
vinced as to the origin of the phenomenon, I
should find much comfort if I could with as-
surance attribute it to a spiritualistic source.
There are doubtless many who will thus refer
it, and I write these lines in sympathy, even if
somewhat doubtingly, with their point of view.
In every way this event stands unique in my
experience in place of its occurrence, and in
all its circumstances. The town was the scene
of my youthful wooing the street one in which
my fiancee and I had walked and talked a thou-
sand times on the way between my home and
hers. To this town, and to this familiar path,
the new wife had come with me, and with us
THE MIRACLE OF THE FLOWERS
both the child of her love and sacrifice. Is
there no significance, is there no consolation, not
only to myself but to others who have been
bereaved, in this episode? The loving gift of
flowers to her new guardian by the innocent
and unconscious child; the approval of the
offering through its repetition, by the apparent
spirit of the mother that bore her! these
things may mean nothing, yet in me whom they
approached so nearly they have strengthened
the hope that lives in every human hearc, that
the flame of our best and purest affections shall
survive the seeming extinguishment of the
grave.
Science, to be sure, has its explanation, and
in fairness that explanation should be heard.
To quote an eminent authority who has favored
me with his views on the subject: "The power
that moved the pansies was a psychic force in-
herent in the human personality [of your wife]
and exercised without the knowledge or co-
operation of the objective self." (Dr. John D.
Quackenbos.)
In other words, it was not the spirit of the
dead wife that lifted the pansies and showered
them upon us, but what we must call, for want
of a better term, the living wife's "subliminal
self." The vision that appeared and seemed to
[49]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
be casting the flowers was a freak of the
psychical consciousness there was no appari-
tion save in my wife's overwrought imagination.
To quote again : "But that does not pre-
clude the possibility of the levitation of the
pansies, which levitation was accomplished by
the lady herself, however ignorant of the opera-
tion of this psychic force she used objectively.
The fact that she was thus objectively ignorant
would be no obstacle to her subjective mind
using in the objective earth-life her own super-
sensible attributes and powers."
The principal objection to this argument
seems to me to lie in this : the pansies did not
first fall upon us, and thus, by suggestion or
otherwise, so excite my wife's imagination that
she thought she saw the apparition; the appari-
tion was first manifest, and the rain of flowers
followed. That is to say, an appearance of the
immaterial was followed by a tangible mani-
festation there was nothing imaginary about
that. Had the conditions been reversed, the
fall of the flowers might very well have excited
apprehension of the vision but I cannot see
where there was any place for fancy in ex-
perience of this incident.
The second episode to which I have alluded
[50]
THE MIRACLE OF THE FLOWERS
in the opening paragraph of this narrative oc-
curred in the following winter, and was, in a
certain sense, a sequel to the first. Business
took me from my home in Boston, and during
my absence my wife and daughter were invited
by the lady I have already mentioned to spend
a few days at her house in Brookline. Her hus-
band was away on one of his frequent business
trips, leaving with his wife her widowed sister,
Mrs. Myra Hall, his daughter, a girl of
eighteen, and a young German lady, Fraulein
Botha, whose acquaintance the hostess had
formed abroad, and who at the time was at the
head of the Department of Instruction in Art
at Wellesley College. All these were witnesses,
with my wife, of the remarkable event which I
am about to describe.
On the afternoon of the second day of my
wife's visit, the child became suddenly ill, and
as evening drew on exhibited rather alarming
symptoms of fever. A physician was sum-
moned who prescribed remedies, and directed
that the patient should be put to bed at once.
This was done, and at about ten o'clock my
wife, accompanied by the ladies I have men-
tioned, went quietly upstairs to observe her con-
dition before retiring for the night themselves.
The upper floor was reached by a very broad
[51]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
staircase which branched near the top to give
access to the chambers upon a wide hall, from
every part of which one could look down over
a railing upon the floor below and the room
in which the child lay was about half-way
around this hall on the left-hand side.
The ladies entered the chamber and the
hostess turned up the gas, showing the child
peacefully slumbering and with forehead and
hands moist with a wholesome perspiration,
although her face was still somewhat flushed.
As the night was a bitter cold one in mid-Janu-
ary, the mistress of the house suggested that
some additional covering should be placed upon
the bed, and produced from another room an
eider-down counterpane, covered with scarlet
silk, which was carefully arranged without
waking the sleeper. All then left the room and
started downstairs again, the hostess being the
last to go out, after lowering the gas until it
showed only a point of light.
They were near the bottom of the staircase
when my wife suddenly cried out: "Oh, there
is Minnie! She passed up the stairs by me, all
in white, and has gone into the room! Oh, I
know something dreadful is going to happen !"
and she rushed frantically to the upper floor,
THE MIRACLE OF THE FLOWERS
followed by the others in a body. At the half-
open door of the child's room they all stopped
and listened, not daring for the moment to
enter, but no sound came from within. Then,
mustering up courage and clinging to each
others' hands, they went softly in, and the
hostess turned up the gas. With one accord
they looked toward the bed, and, half-blinded
by the sudden glare of the gaslight, could not
for a moment credit what their eyes showed
them that the sleeping child was lying under
a coverlet, not of scarlet, as they had left her
hardly a minute before, but of snowy white.
Recovering from their astonishment, an exami-
nation revealed the cause of the phenomenon.
The scarlet eider-down counterpane was in its
place, but completely covered with pure white
lilies on long stalks, so spread about and lying
in such quantities that the surface of the bed
was hidden under their blooms. By actual
count there were more than two hundred of
these rich and beautiful blossoms strewn upon
the coverlet, representing a moderate fortune
at that time of year, and probably unprocurable
though all the conservatories in the city had
been searched for them.
They were carefully gathered and placed
about the house in vases, jugs, and every other
[53]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
receptacle that could be pressed into service to
hold them, filling the rooms for several days
with their fragrance until, like other flowers,
they faded and died.
[54]
THE MIDNIGHT HORSEMAN
THE MIDNIGHT HORSEMAN
ON a brilliant moonlit evening in August,
1885, a considerable party of friends and more
or less intimate acquaintances of the hostess
assembled at the summer cottage of Mrs.
Thaxter at Appledore Island, Isles of Shoals.
Included in the company were the then editor
of the New York Herald, Rev. Dr. Hepworth,
also well known as a prominent divine and
pulpit orator two of the leading musicians of
Boston (Julius Eichberg and Prof. John K.
Paine) of whom one occupied a chair in Har-
vard University, and, among others, my wife
and myself. The cottr.ge was the charming
resort which the visitor would be led to expect
from the well-known refinement and artistic
taste of its occupant, and its interior attractions
might well have been suggested even to the
casual passer-by who looked upon its wonder-
ful flower-garden, wherein seeds of every
variety had in spring been scattered broadcast
and in profusion, and now, as autumn ap-
proached, had developed into a jungle of
blooms of every conceivable color.
[57]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
We had some music, as I remember, and
after that an interesting conversation, which, in
consequence of the many varied and brilliant
intellects there assembled, took a wide range,
coming around finally I do not recall by what
steps 'to occultism, clairvoyance, and the phe-
nomena of so-called "Spiritualism." In the
course of the discussion of this topic, the editor
interested us by a humorous account of some
recent experiences of his own in "table-tipping"
and "communications" by rappings and inci-
dentally remarked that he believed any assembly
of persons who wished could experience similar
phenomena, even though none of them pos-
sessed what it is usual to describe as "medium-
istic" powers. Some one else then suggested
that, as our company seemed to fulfil this con-
dition, the present might be a favorable time
to test the theory whereupon we all pro-
ceeded to the adjoining dining-room with the
view of making experiment by means of the
large dinner table that stood in the middle of
it.
(I may here state that although my wife had
already had some abnormal experiences, only
Mrs. Thaxter and I were acquainted with the
fact, and even these had come to her unsought
in every instance.)
[58]
THE MIDNIGHT HORSEMAN
Somewhat to our disappointment, the table
failed to show itself susceptible to any "in-
fluence" other than the law of gravitation, but
remained insensible and immovable, even
though we sat about it under approved "con-
ditions" for half an hour or so lights lowered,
and our imposed hands touching each other in
order to form upon it an uninterrupted "cir-
cuit." We finally tired of this dull sport, turned
up the lights, and pushing back our chairs from
the table, fell into general conversation.
Hardly had we done so, when my wife sud-
denly exclaimed: "How strange! Why, the
wall of the room seems to have been removed,
and I can see rocks and the sea, and the moon-
light shining upon them !" At this interrup-
tion our talk naturally ceased abruptly, and one
of us asked her to describe more in detail what
was visible to her.
"It is growing stranger still," she replied.
"I do not see the sea any more. I see a long,
straight road, with great trees like elms here
and there on the side of it, and casting dark
shadows across it. There are no trees like those
and no such road near here, and I cannot under-
stand it. There is a man standing in the middle
of the road, in the shadow of one of the trees.
Now he is coming toward me and I can see his
[59]
TRUE. TALES OF THE WEIRD
face in the moonlight. Why ! it is John Weiss !"
(naming the Liberal clergyman and writer
whom most of us had known in Boston, and
who had died some five or six years before)
"Why, is that you? What are you doing here,
and what does this mean? He smiles, but does
not speak. Now he has turned and gone back
into the shadow of the tree again."
After a few moments' pause : "Now I can
see something coming along the road some
distance away. It is a man on horseback. He
is riding slowly, and he has his head bent and
a slouch hat over his eyes, so that I cannot see
his face. Now John Weiss steps out of the
shadow into the moonlight; the horse sees him
and stops he rears up in the air and whirls
about and begins to run back in the direction
from which he came. The man on his back
pulls him up, lashes him with his whip, turns
him around, and tries to make him go forward.
The horse is terrified and backs again, trying
to break away from his rider; the man strikes
him again, but he will not advance.
"The man dismounts and tries to lead the
horse, looking about to see what he is fright-
ened at. I can see his face now very clearly
I should know him anywhere ! John Weiss is
walking toward him, but the man does not see
[60]
THE MIDNIGHT HORSEMAN
him. The horse does, though, and plunges and
struggles, but the man in strong and holds him
fast. Now John Weiss is so close to the man
that he must see him. Oh! Oh! he does see
him, and is horribly frightened! He steps back
but John Weiss does not follow only points
his hand at him. The man jumps on his horse
and beats him fiercely with his whip, and the
two fly back down the road and disappear in
the distance. Tell me, John Weiss, what it
all means? He smiles again and shakes his
head now he is gone, too; I can see nothing
more."
We were all profoundly impressed by this
graphic recital and spent some time discussing
what possible meaning the strange vision could
have; but we were compelled to abandon all
efforts to elucidate it, and it was not until some
seven months later that the sequel to the mystery
was furnished a sequel that for the moment
seemed about to offer an explanation, but, if
anything, beclouded the matter even more
deeply than before.
Early in March of the following year a party
of eight or ten persons was dining at the house
of Mrs. Candler, in Brookline, already men-
tioned in this series, and after dinner went up to
the sitting-room of the hostess, upon the second
[61]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
floor. The weather for a week previous had
been warm and spring-like, but on the day in
question a heavy snowstorm had been raging,
which cleared at nightfall, leaving a foot or so
of snow upon the ground. Of the dinner-party
only my wife and I had been at the Isles of
Shoals the previous summer when the incident
above narrated had occurred; but all present
were acquainted with the circumstance, which
had been a frequent subject of conversation
among us at our frequent gatherings at one
another's houses during the autumn and
winter that had followed.
As I sat near the door and let my eye wander
about the apartment, I idly noticed, among the
many souvenirs of foreign travel which it con-
tained, two Japanese vases set upon brackets
in opposite corners, and about six feet from the
floor. These vases were, perhaps, twenty feet
apart the width of the room. The vase on
the bracket at my right was empty, while the
other contained a bunch of "pussy-willows,"
which attracted my attention as the usual season
for these growths had not arrived. I com-
mented upon this circumstance to my hostess,
who replied: r 'Yes, it is very early for them,
is it not? I was driving yesterday, and was
surprised to see a willow-tree bearing those
[62]
THE MIDNIGHT HORSEMAN
'pussies' in a sheltered spot beside Jamaica
Pond. I had the footman get down and gather
them, and when I reached home I put them in
that vase."
This remark, of course, drew all eyes to the
bracket bearing the vase filled with the "pussies"
which, thereupon and at the instant, disap-
peared, leaving the vase in its place, but quite
empty; a soft thud was heard as two or three
of the stalks fell upon the carpet midway be-
tween the two brackets, and a rustling sound in
the right-hand corner attracted the attention of
all present to the singular fact that the "pussies"
were now standing in the vase on the second
bracket as quietly as if they had been there at
the outset.
It is to be noted that no one in the room was
within a dozen feet of either of the two vases,
and that neither of them could be reached by
anyone who did not stand upon a chair for the
purpose. Moreover, the room was brilliantly
illuminated by several gas-jets. We had been
accustomed to singular happenings in this par-
ticular house, and consequently were amused
rather than startled by the whimsical nature of
this one. In discussing it some one suggested
that peculiar influences seemed to be about, and
it was agreed to invite them to further mani-
[63]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
festations if possible. Consequently the centre
of the room was cleared and a large table
moved into it around which, after locking the
door that led into the hall, and extinguishing
all the lights but one (which also was turned
down to a faint glimmer), we drew up our
chairs and awaited developments. A half-hour
passed without anything whatever happening
whereupon, deciding that conditions were un-
favorable, we relighted all the gas-jets and fell
into general conversation, although leaving the
table still in its position in the middle of the
room.
In a few minutes our hostess said: "Oh, by
the way, I want you to see the new decorations
I have had placed in my daughter's room. You
know it is her birthday" in fact, I believe that
evening's dinner party was in honor of the event
"and I have had her room entirely refitted,
since she is no longer a girl, but a young lady."
So, following her lead, we all trooped away
to inspect the new arrangement. In doing so
we passed down the hall for a distance of some
fifty feet, and entered the room in question,
which was at the front of the house and over-
looked its extensive grounds. The apartment
was decorated with all the luxury and display
of taste that large means and the command of
[64]
THE MIDNIGHT HORSEMAN
expert skill could provide, and we spent some
time in examination of its rich and beautiful
details.
One item that particularly attracted our at-
tention was a small but very heavy clock that
stood on the mantelpiece, its case of Japanese
carved bronze, and its interior mechanism
giving forth a very peculiarly musical and rapid
"tick-tock, tick-tock" as its short pendulum
swung to and fro. It was, in fact, a unique and
curious ornament, and all the members of the
party admiringly examined it for my own
part, I was so struck with its rare character that
I stood regarding it after the others had left the
room, and turned from it only when our hostess,
who alone remained, playfully inquired if I in-
tended to study the clock all night, and, ex-
tinguishing the light, passed out into the hall
with me.
Returning to the sitting-room, we decided to
make some further experiment, and, again
extinguishing the lights and relocking the door
leading into the hall, seated ourselves around
the table as before. We had not been in this
position more than a few minutes when there
came a tremendous thump upon the table, like
the fall of some heavy object. Being nearest
to the lowered gas-jet which gave the only light
[65]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
to the room, I jumped up and turned it on to
its full capacity whereupon everyone present
saw standing, in the exact centre of the table,
its "tick-tock, tick-tock" ringing out sonorously,
the carved bronze clock which we had so re-
cently inspected in the distant bedchamber, and
which had been passed in some mysterious
fashion along fifty feet of hall space, and
through a shut and locked door, to astonish us
by its present appearance.
Forming ourselves into a committee of the
whole, we carried the clock back to its former
place, which, it need not be said, we found
unoccupied then returned to the sitting-room,
where, with lowered lights, we discussed the
strange occurrences of the evening. Although
carious to see if any other manifestations would
occur, we made no effort to invite them beyond
dimming the lights, and as we found the room
had become rather warm and close, we opened
the door into the hall for the sake of better
ventilation. The hall was only partially
lighted, but objects in it were easily visible in
comparison with the almost total darkness that
shrouded the sitting-room. Our talk was of
ghosts and of other subjects uncanny to the un-
initiated, and might have seemed unpleasantly
[66]
summer!
it
THE MIDNIGHT HORSEMAN
interesting to anyone listening to it from the
hall as we were afterward led to believe was
the case.
Directly facing the open door, and the only
one of the company so seated, was my wife
who suddenly startled us all by springing to
her feet and crying out : "There he is ! There
is the man I saw at the Isles of Shoals last
I"
What is it?" we inquired; "an apparition?"
"No, no !" she exclaimed; "it is a living man !
I saw him look around the edge of the door
and immediately draw back again! He is here
to rob the house! Stop him! Stop him!"
and she rushed out into the hall with the whole
company in pursuit. The servants, who by this
time had gone to bed, were aroused and set to
work to examine the lower floors, while we
above searched every room, but in each case
without result.
Next to the sitting-room was a large apart-
ment some thirty feet long by twenty wide,
which was used for dancing parties, and dinners
on occasions when many guests were invited.
It was at the time unfurnished, except, I be-
lieve, that a few chairs were scattered about
it, and along one side was a row of several
windows, before which hung heavy crimson
[67]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
draperies that completely covered them. We
lighted the gas in this room, but a glance was
sufficient to show that it was unoccupied and
afforded no possible place of concealment. I
passed through it, however, and, as I did so,
felt a current of cold air, which I immediately
traced, by the swaying of one of the heavy
curtains, to a window which its folds covered.
Going up to the drapery and drawing it
aside, I saw that the window behind it was half
open, and on the sill and the stone coping out-
side I perceived, in the several inches of snow
that covered both, marks which showed the pas-
sage of what was evidently a human body.
Reaching nearly to the window was the slant-
ing roof, formed by heavy plate glass, of the
conservatory, which opened from the dining-
room on the lower floor and in the snow which
covered this was a furrow which indicated that
someone had by this means allowed himself to
slide from the second story to the ground.
Further investigation below showed, by the
tell-tale marks in the snow, that the person who
had thus escaped from the house, and who, after
gliding down the glass roof of the conservatory,
had fallen sprawling under it, had lost no time
in picking himself up, and making good his es-
cape. The footsteps of a man running with
[68]
THE MIDNIGHT HORSEMAN
long strides were traced through the grounds
to the street, two hundred yards away, where
they were lost in the confused tracks of the
public highway and from that time to the
present the mystery has remained unsolved.
[69]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
PREFATORY NOTE
The annals of crime contain few chapters
more lurid than those contributed to them by
the record of Frederick Bailey Deeming, who
suffered the extreme penalty of the law on the
scaffold of the Melbourne (Victoria, Au-
stralia) jail on the morning of the twenty-third
of May, in the year one thousasnd, eight hun-
dred and ninety-two.
The details of his misdeeds, his trial, and
his punishment were set forth by me at the
time in letters to the New York Times and the
Boston Journal of which, as well as of several
other publications, I was accredited correspon-
dent during several years of residence and
travel in Australasia and the South Seas.
In the narrative that follows, so far as it
describes atrocities which shocked the whole
English-speaking world, I have endeavored to
subordinate particulars in the presentation of
a general effect; my purpose has been, not to
picture horrors, but to suggest the strange and
abnormal personality that lay behind them.
[73]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
In regard to the peculiar manifestations
which followed the criminal's execution, and
for which some undefined influence that sur-
vived his physical extinction seemed, in part at
least, to be responsible, I can advance no
opinion.
[74]
CHAPTER I
THE CONDEMNED
WHEN I called upon the Colonial Secretary,
in the Government Offices at Melbourne, with
a request that I might be allowed to visit the
prisoner as he lay in jail awaiting execution,
T was informed that such permission was con-
trary to all precedent.
I had sat directly under the eye of the culprit
four weary days while the evidence accumulated
that should take away his life. I had watched
his varied changes of expression as the tide of
testimony ebbed and flowed, and finally swelled
up and overwhelmed him. I had heard against
him the verdict of "the twelve good men and
true" who had sat so long as arbiters of his
fate, and the words of the judge condemning
him to "be hanged by the neck until he was
dead," and commending his soul to the mercy
of a God who seemed far aloof from the scheme
of human iustice so long and so laboriously
planned.
Short shrift had been allowed him. Con-
demned and sentenced on a Monday, the date
[75]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
for his act of expiation had been set for the
early morning of the Monday then a scant
three weeks away;* an appeal for a respite
had been quickly and formally made, and as
quickly and formally disallowed; the days
granted for preparation had glided by with
portentous speed, and now but five remained
between him and his introduction to the gallows
and the cord.
As a special and gruesome favor I had re-
ceived one of the few cards issued for the
execution; and it was perhaps due as much to
this fact as to that of my newspaper connections
(as already stated) that the Colonial Secre-
tary finally consented to waive in my interest
the usual rule of exclusion, and handed me his
order for my admission to the jail. I cannot
confess to any high exultation when the man-
date of the Secretary, bravely stamped with the
Great Seal of the Colony of Victoria, was
placed in my hands particularly as it was ac-
*This is in accordance with the terms of the English
law in capital cases : whereby a condemned prisoner is
allowed two Sundays to live after the pronouncement of
his sentence, and is executed on the morning following
the second. Thus Deeming had the longest respite possible
under the statute twenty days. The shortest lease of
life (fifteen days) would be allowed to a prisoner who
had been sentenced on Saturday.
[76]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
companied by a strict injunction that no
public account should be given of the inter-
view.
"At least," said the Colonial Secretary, "not
at present. The trial has been so sensational,
the crimes traced home to this unhappy man
so atrocious, that popular feeling has risen to
such a pitch as to make it desirable to add
thereto no new occasion of excitement. More-
over, I have refused many requests similar to
yours from the local newspapers; you may
imagine the position I should find myself in if
it became known that I had discriminated in
favor of a foreign journalist therefore I rely
upon your discretion."
Thus the Colonial Secretary in considera-
tion of whose injunction I made no professional
use of my opportunity at the time, and report
upon it now only because of its relation to this
present record of events. Not that I asseverate
the existence of such a relation, or theorize upon
it even if it were, for the sake of argument,
accepted as containing the nucleus of a mystery
that, after many years of consideration, re-
mains a mystery still.
I was not alone in my visit to the condemned
cell in which, heavily ironed and guarded day
and night by the death-watch, Frederick Bailey
[77]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
Deeming awaited his doom.* My wife, who
was included in the warrant from the Colonial
Secretary, accompanied me; she who had been
my companion in journeys that had taken me
twice around the glohe, and who had shared
with me many of the inexplicable experiences
to which I have alluded in my "Preface;" and
who, seeming throughout her life more sensitive
than most of us to occult forces that at times
appear to be in operation about us, has since
crossed the frontier of the Undiscovered Coun-
try, there to find, perhaps, solution of some of
the riddles that have perplexed both her and
me. Intensely human as she was, and in all
things womanly, her susceptibility to weird and
uncomprehended influences must always seem
a contradiction and the more so since they
always came upon her not only without invita-
tion, but even in opposition to a will of unusual
force and sanity, which, until the incidents oc-
curred that I am about to relate, kept them
measurably in control.
*This was the murderer's real name, as disclosed by
investigations in England among relatives and acquaint-
ances living there. His execution was, as the warrant
for it recited, "upon the body of Albert Williams," this
being the O/MW under which he came to Australia, as
described later.
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
A memento of my interview with the mur-
derer stands before me on the table as I write :
a memento also of my wife's skill in model-
ing, on account of which I had with difficulty
induced her to be my companion on my sinister
errand an impression in plaster of his right
hand; the hand against which had been proved
the "deep damnation of the taking-off" of two
women and four children, and in whose lines
thus preserved those learned in such matters
profess to discern the record of other like
crimes that have been suspected of him, but
could not be confirmed. I will not weary the
reader with the histories that have been read
to me from this grisly document, and no one
now may ever know whether they be true or
false: at all events the hand that made this
impress was duly found guilty of the atrocities
I have recorded against it, and the price that
was exacted for them will seem to none ex-
cessive, and to some a world too small.
I remember being much struck at the time
with the interest which the condemned man
manifested in assisting me to secure the record.
My warrant from the Colonial Secretary in-
cluded permission to obtain it, and the consent
of the prisoner followed promptly on the ask-
ing. It came, in fact, with a sort of feverish
[79]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
readiness, and I fancied that his mind found in
the operation some brief respite from the
thoughts that his position, and the swift ap-
proach of his fate, forced upon him. He
regarded with intentness the moistening of the
plaster, and its manipulation into the proper
degree of consistency; followed intelligently
the instruction to lay his hand with even pres-
sure upon the yielding mass, and when the cast
had hardened, and was passed through the bars
for his inspection, he examined it with an ap-
pearance of the liveliest satisfaction.
"Do those lines mean anything?" he asked.
"Many think so," I replied, "and even pro-
fess to read a record from them. For myself,
I am ignorant of the art."
"I have heard of that," he returned. "They
call it 'palmistry,' don't they? I wish you could
find out whether they are going to hang me next
Monday. But they'll do that, right enough.
I'm thirty-nine now, and my mother always said
I would die before forty. She died a good
while ago but she keeps coming back. She
comes every night, and of late she comes in
the daytime, too. What does she bother me
so for? Why can't she leave me alone?"
(glancing over his shoulder.) "She's here now
over there in the corner. You can't see her?
[go]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
That's queer. Can't you see her?" address-
ing the governor of the jail, who accompanied
me, and who shook his head to the question.
"I thought perhaps you could. But you don't
miss much. She ain't pretty to look at, crying
all the time and wringing her hands, and saying
I'm bound to be hanged! I don't mind her so
much in the daylight, but coming every night
at two o'clock, and waking me up and torment-
ing me ! that's what I can't stand."
"Is this insanity?" I asked the governor as
I came away.
"I don't know what it is," he replied. "We
all thought at first it was shamming crazy, and
the government sent in a lot of doctors to
examine him; but he seemed sane enough when
they talked with him the only thing out about
him was when he complained of his mother's
visits; just as he did to you. And it is cer-
tainly true that he has a sort of fit about two
o'clock every morning, and wakes up screaming
and crying out that his mother is in the cell
with him; and talks in a frightful, blood-
curdling way to someone that nobody can see,
and scares the death-watch half out of their
wits. Insanity, hallucination, or an uneasy
conscience it might be any of them; I can't
say. Whatever it is, it seems strange that he
[81]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
always talks about visitations from his mother,
who, as far as I can learn, died quietly in her
bed, and never of apparitions of his two wives
and four children whose throats he cut with a
knife held in the hand whose print you've got
there under your arm. Perhaps you won't mind
my saying it but it strikes me you've got a
queer taste for curiosities. I wouldn't be able
to sleep with that thing in the house."
I laughed at the worthy governor's com-
ment; yet, as it turned out, his words were preg-
nant with prophecy.
[82]
CHAPTER II
THE CRIME
IN the month of March, eighteen hundred
and ninety-two, the people of Melbourne were
startled by glaring headlines in the morning
newspapers announcing the discovery of a mur-
der in the suburb of Windsor.
During the historic "boom" that started into
life all manner of activities in and about the
Victorian capital during the middle and later
"eighties," a great stimulus to building opera-
tions had been felt, not only in the city itself,
but also through all the extensive district out-
lying it. The suburb of Windsor enjoyed its
share in this evidence of prosperity, and san-
guine speculators, viewing through the glasses
of a happy optimism a rush of new inhabitants
to the fortunate city, erected in gleeful haste
a multitude of dwellings for their purchase and
occupancy. New streets were laid out across
the former barren stretches of the suburb, and
lined on either side by "semi-detached villas"
imposing as to name, but generally more or
less "jerry-built," and exceedingly modest in
[83]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
their aspect.* These structures were of what
we might now call a standardized pattern
housing two families side by side with a divid-
ing partition between them, and of a single
story, with an attic above. Between each two
connected dwellings (which were fronted by a
shallow veranda, and contained three or four
rooms for each resident family) ran a narrow
alley, hardly wide enough for a real separation
between one building and the next, but suffi-
ciently so to justify the description of "semi-
detached" which their inventor, by a happy in-
spiration, had applied to them.
The "Great Melbourne Boom" as I believe
it is still referred to as distinguishing it from
all other "booms," of various dimensions, which
preceded or have followed it spent its force,
*This activity in building (which is still seen in con-
crete form in the palatial Parliament Buildings and other
costly structures of Melbourne) was largely inspired by
the published calculations of an enthusiastic statistician
on the future growth of the Colonies : which were, in
effect, that by 1951 their population would be thirty-two
millions, and by 2001, one hundred and eighty-nine mil-
lions! some eighty per cent in excess of that of the
United States at present. It speaks loudly for Australian
enterprise that these Windsor builders, as well as many
others, took such prompt measures to provide for this
increase.
[84]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
unfortunately, before the hopes of the specu-
lators who had ridden into Windsor on its
flood had been realized; and amid the wreck
and flotsam that remained to mark its ebb,
some mournful miles of these "semi-detached
villas" were conspicuous.
So complete was the disaster that many of
the owners of these properties paid no further
heed to them: and it was with an emotion
akin to surprise that, on a day in the month
and year above mentioned, the agent of a cer-
tain house in Andrew street received a visit
from a woman with a view to renting it. Why
the prospective tenant should have selected this
particular "villa" out of the scores of others
precisely like it that lined both sides of this
street, is not known nor might she herself
have had any definite reason for her choice.
Perhaps it was Chance; perhaps Providence
the terms are possibly synonymous : but at all
events her action proved to be the first and
most important of the threads that wove them-
selves together in a net to entrap, and bring
to justice, one of the craftiest and most relent-
less murderers of the age.
The agent, apprised by his visitor of her
desire to examine the house, eagerly prepared
to accompany her, but could not find the key.
[85]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
A search among his records followed; from
which the fact resulted that, in the previous
December, he had rented the house to a gen-
tlemanly stranger, who, in lieu of affording
references, had established confidence by pay-
ing three months' rent in advance. In the
prevailing depression of the local real estate
business the agent had given so little attention
to his lines of empty properties that he had not
since even visited the house in question the
more so as the period for which payment had
been made was not yet expired. Assured by
his visitor, however, that the house was cer-
tainly unoccupied, he went with her to the door,
which he opened with a master-key with which
he had equipped himself.
The house was in good order throughout
in fact it seemed never to have been occupied.
The prospective tenant inspected it carefully
and with approval, and could discover but one
objection; she was sure she noticed a disagree-
able odor in the parlor. Her companion (as is
natural to agents with a house to dispose of)
failed to detect this : if it existed it was doubt-
less due to the fact that the house had been
closed for some time; he would have it thor-
oughly aired and overhaul the drains after
which she could call again. This she agreed to
[86]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
do, gave the agent her name and address, and
departed.
Left to himself, the agent began an investiga-
tion. With senses quickened, perhaps, by the
favorable prospect of business, he became aware
that the atmosphere of the parlor was un-
doubtedly oppressive; and as he moved about
in search of the cause he observed that near
the open fire-place it was positively sickening.
Examining this feature of the room more care-
fully, he discovered that the hearth-stone had
been forced up at one end, cracking and
crumbling the cement in which it had been set,
and from the inch-wide aperture thus formed
came forth a stench so overpowering that he
recoiled in horror, and gasping and strangling,
staggered into the open air.
The police authorities were notified, and a
mason was sent for with his tools. The hearth-
stone was wrenched from its place, and in the
hollow space beneath, encased in cement, knees
trussed up to chin and bound with cords, lay the
body of a young woman nude save for the
mantle of luxuriant dark hair that partly
shrouded her, and with her throat cut from
ear to ear.
About a week before Christmas of the pre-
[87]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
vious year, the North German Lloyd S. S.
"Kaiser Wilhelm II." from Bremen to Ply-
mouth via the Suez Canal and Colombo, de-
barked its passengers at the port of Melbourne.
Among the second-class contingent who had
taken ship at Plymouth were "Albert Williams"
and his wife Emily. They had not been long
married, and their destination was understood
by their fellow-passengers to be Colombo; but
on reaching that port they remained on board
and continued to Melbourne. It was remarked
that Mrs. Williams, who up to that time had
been the life of the company, fell thereafter
under increasing fits of uneasiness and melan-
choly until, at the time of arrival at Mel-
bourne, she had drawn so far aloof from her
former friends of the passage that none con-
cerned themselves regarding her plans, or even
final destination, in the new land.*
* This woman (nee Emily Lydia Mather) was the
daughter of John and Dove Mather, respected residents
of Rainhill, a small town near Liverpool, England. To
this town came Deeming, under his alias of "Williams,"
representing himself as an officer in the Indian army who
had been sent to England to purchase supplies therefor.
This claim he strengthened by occasionally appearing in
a resplendent uniform which seems to have been of his
own invention and reciting his many exploits "in the
imminent deadly breach ;" confirming also his free asser-
[88]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
tions of the possession of large wealth of his own by
liberal expenditures in all directions. No such splendid
personage had ever before been seen in quiet Rainhill,
and the whole town succumbed to the glamor of it in-
cluding Miss Mather and her parents, whose acquaintance
the fascinating officer somehow made, and followed up
by a respectful but ardent courtship of the daughter. An
engagement between the pair was soon announced and
a valuable diamond ring, as well as other gifts of jewelry
and rich attire, was bestowed by the prospective bride-
groom upon the bride-to-be: and although the celebra-
tion of the wedding was announced for so early a date
as to cause some unfavorable gossip, the fact was con-
doned in view of the military necessity of a speedy
return to India.
At this point Williams to use the name by which he
was then known encountered what to any less bold and
unscrupulous villain would have been a decided check:
this in the form of a letter from his then living legal
wife, whom, with his four children by her, he had some
time before deserted, and who in some manner unknown
had now traced him to Rainhill. This letter, it is
believed, announced her intention of descending upon him :
at any rate, with characteristic audacity, he gave out
the information that his sister and her children were
coming to live in Rainhill, and that he had received a
letter asking him to rent a house for them. He secured
a house accordingly; but expressed dissatisfaction with
the somewhat worn wooden floor of the kitchen and as
the owner demurred to undertake the expense of a cement
floor, Williams said he knew about such things, and
would do the job himself, and ordered the necessary ma-
terials and tools. When, and by what means, the woman
and children arrived in Rainhill, seems to be somewhat
of a mystery: that they did arrive is shown by the fact
that after the Windsor murder had come to light, and
[89]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
the identity of the victim was discovered by a curious
chain of circumstances too long to find place in this nar-
rative, the skilfully-laid cement floor with which the old
wooden floor had been replaced was torn up, and the
half-decapitated bodies of the five were found embedded
in it. Those who are curious in such matters may see
this tragedy depicted at Madame Toussaud's, London.
No such change, however, was noted in the
demeanor of her husband. He was well to
the fore in all the interests and amusements
that offer themselves on shipboard, rallied his
wife in no very refined or considerate terms
upon her growing depression, and devoted most
of his spare time to a pet canary, which he had
brought aboard in an elaborate gilt cage; keep-
ing it constantly near him on deck by day, and
at night sharing with it his stateroom.*
A month's association with him had not in-
creased the liking of his fellow- voyagers. The
compulsory intimacies engendered by a long
journey by sea afford a trying test of character,
and to it the temperament of the so-called
*This detail of a murderer carrying about with him
a canary as a companion is effectively employed by the
late Frank Norris in his California novel, "McTeague."
As that story was published in 1903. eleven years after
the execution of Deeming, he, like McTeague, a wife-
murderer, the source of Norris' idea would seem
obvious.
[90]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
Albert Williams failed satisfactorily to respond.
Strange and contradictory moods were noticed
in him. At times he was morose and "grouchy,"
at times feverishly jovial and even hilarious,
and the transition from one to the other of
these states of mind was often startlingly
abrupt. He seems, indeed, to have "got on the
nerves" of all his associates on the voyage
and so at length it happened that when he went
ashore, carrying the cage and canary solicitously
in his hand and followed by his silent and sad-
faced wife, both passengers and officers were at
one in the aspiration that they might never see
his sort again.
Repairing to a "Coffee-Palace" by which
sounding title temperance hotels in Australia
are identified the couple spent some days in
its respectable retirement; then their belongings
were entrusted to a carrying-company, and were
by it conveyed to the "semi-detached villa" in
Windsor. The canary, chirping and fluttering
joyously in its cage, which was promptly hung
in the veranda, excited for several days the mild
interest of the neighbors and a few casual
passers-by but of the people in the house very
little was seen. Now and then a gentleman in
smoking-jacket and embroidered velvet cap was
observed in the veranda, feeding and chirruping
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
to the canary, but his companion seems to have
kept herself in complete seclusion. Her mur-
der may, indeed, have followed swiftly upon
her entrance into the house; however that may
be, some ten days later the canary was no longer
seen in the veranda, a carrier came with his
cart and took away a quantity of trunks and
boxes, and as he deliberately drove away his
employer kept pace with him on the sidewalk,
jauntily swinging the cage with its feathered
occupant in his hand.
The trunks and boxes were taken to an auc-
tion-room in Melbourne, where, after due ad-
vertisement, their contents were offered for
public sale; women's garments and jewelry, for
the most part, and heterogeneous odds and
ends. The owner of these properties was pres-
ent when the sale took place, and seemed much
interested in their disposition: but when the
canary and its cage were offered he suddenly
declared that he would not sell them, and when
the auction closed took them away with him.
He subsequently appeared in the town of Sale,
several hundred miles away, and at other remote
localities perhaps with the idea of misleading
possible pursuit or for some other purpose un-
known: but in all his wanderings he took the
canary with him, and by his devotion to it at-
[92]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
tracted an attention to himself which had much
to do with his identification when he was finally
apprehended.
Returning to Melbourne, where he had
before assumed the new alias of "Baron Swan-
ston," he finally disposed of the cage and the
canary to the auctioneer of his former acquaint-
ance. Then he disappeared as completely as
though the earth had opened and engulfed him
his crime successfully committed and unsus-
pected, his very name unknown, his tracks as
completely covered as was the nearly decapi-
tated body of his victim beneath the cemented
hearthstone of the house at Windsor.
But even then the mysterious power of
Chance or Providence was at work to his
undoing. A peculiarity of many Australian
dwellings a peculiarity which the hastily-con-
structed "villas" in Windsor shared is found
in the fact that they have no cellars. This
assists the work of rapid building, so important
when a "boom" is on: so the ground upon
their sites had simply been levelled, a surface
of cement laid, and the buildings set above it
upon a layer of beams and brickwork. Nothing
could be easier, under such a principle of con-
struction, than to remove the hearth-stone, dig
a grave under it through the thin layer of
[93]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
cement and into the soil below, conceal the
body therein, restore the earth to its place,
and fix the stone in position again.
What emotion the murderer may have felt
when, after excavating under the cement to the
depth of about eighteen inches, his tools struck
upon solid rock, and he could dig no further,
may be left to the imagination. Perhaps he
felt no emotion whatever, not appreciating the
fatal nature of this check to his plans. At all
events he had no choice but to accept the situa-
tion, crowd the body into the shallow space,
and by pouring cement about it and the cover-
ing hearth-stone insure the lasting secrecy of
the crime. He may have been ignorant, too, of
the enormous expansive power of the gases
released by decomposition, which under ordi-
nary conditions might have been absorbed by
the covering and underlying soil : here, how-
ever, with solid rock below, they struggled in
their close confinement until their barrier at
its weakest point gave way, and forcing up the
hearth-stone disclosed to the world the horror
that it had concealed.
And here is the strangest circumstance of
all. Although it had been known to a few sur-
veyors and builders, and to certain owners of
buildings that had been erected, that a large
[94]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
part of the land on which the suburb was built
rested upon a rock formation, examinations
that were made subsequent to the discovery of
the murder showed that at no point did this
impenetrable foundation approach nearly to the
surface of the soil, save under this particular
house of the tragedy! Ages ago this flat table
of stone had been laid down and to the dwell-
ing fortuitously built upon it, with hundreds of
others lying empty about it for him to choose,
the murderer had been guided across fifteen
thousand miles of sea, there to prepare for him-
self detection not only for one crime, but for
the other even more heinous which had so
briefly preceded it.
[951
CHAPTER III
THE FLIGHT AND CAPTURE
PROMINENT among the many commonplaces
current among men is the one that "truth is
stranger than fiction," and the other that Life,
in building up her dreams, employs "situations"
which the boldest playwright would hesitate to
present upon the stage. Yet the lines that Life
lays down for her productions are, in the main,
closely followed by those who are ranked as
among the world's greatest dramatists. She,
like them, leads up to a climax by a mass of
incidents that may severally be trivial, but com-
bine together with tremendous weight; she fol-
lows farce with tragedy, and lightens tragedy
with comedy; she brings her heroes in touch
with clowns, her lovers with old women and
comic countrymen and in the complexities of
her plots mingles them together so bewilder-
ingly that the wonder and interest of the audi-
ence are kept vigorously alive until the curtain's
fall.
So in this sordid Windsor tragedy she intro-
duces between the first and third acts a second,
[96]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
where the tension is relaxed and the milder
interest of Romance appears.
It was not the purpose of the murderer to
remain near the scene, or even in the country,
of his crime : he was a shrewd as well as
merciless villain, and he turned his face towards
Sydney, evidently with the intention of taking
a steamer then about to sail for San Francisco,
and sinking his identity in the vast areas and
amid the swarming millions of the United
States.
Nemesis accompanied him, but in the disguise
of Cupid. On the coastwise steamer by which
he traveled to Sydney was a young woman by
the name of Rounsfell, who was returning to
her home in the interior of New South Wales
from a visit to her brother near the border-line
between Victoria and South Australia. She
was about eighteen years of age, and from an
interview I later had with her I estimated her
as an attractive and modest girl, not strikingly
intellectual, but of kindly disposition and af-
fectionate nature. To her the fugitive, intro-
ducing himself by his latest-assumed name, paid
regardful court, and relieved the tedium of the
voyage by devoted attentions; and when the
boat arrived at Sydney, where she was to re-
[97]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
main a few days, he escorted her to one hotel
and saw to her satisfactory accommodation,
while he himself, with admirable delicacy, took
up quarters at another. During her stay he
continued his attentions with equal respect and
assiduity; his attitude,, as she told me after-
ward, was more like that of an elder brother
than a lover this attitude being confirmed by
judicious advice and counsel, and even by moral
admonition: as when he gently chided her for
her confessed fondness for dancing, sagely im-
plying that he regarded this form of amuse-
ment as one of the most insidious wiles of the
Adversary.
It was at Coogee, on the shores of the beau-
tiful harbor of Sydney, that this chaste and im-
proving courtship culminated in his asking her
to marry him. He was a man of wealth, he
told her, a mining engineer by profession, and
with several lucrative positions in Australia at
the moment waiting upon his selection. To
these practical considerations he added the plea
of his devotion. He had "lately lost his wife"
(delicate euphemism!) he said, and stirred her
sympathies by eloquent and tearful descrip-
tions of the lonely and unsatisfactory life he
led in consequence of this bereavement the
hollowness of which life he felt more acutely
[98]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
than ever now that she had crossed his path.
She was, as I have said, a tender-hearted girl,
and what more natural than that she should
willingly incline her ear to words which every
woman loves to hear? the more so when they
were uttered by a man whose history indicates
him to have inherited all the persuasiveness of
the original Serpent in dealings with the sex,
and who, as my interview with him in the con-
demned cell caused me to remark, possessed one
of the sweetest and most sympathetic voices I
ever heard in human throat.
It would be no discredit to Miss Rounsfell
if she had accepted him then and there; but it
speaks well for her prudence and self-command
that she asked for delay in giving her answer
until she could lay the matter before her
parents. To this he promptly assented, adding
the suggestion that he should accompany her
to her home, and give her friends an oppor-
tunity to become acquainted with him. This
plan was carried out, and the successful con-
quest of the daughter was completed by the
capitulation of the family; the engagement was
formally announced, and the joyful contract
sealed by the installation upon the hand of the
fiancee of the costly diamond ring so lately
worn by the woman whose mutilated body was
[99]
at the moment mouldering under the hearth-
stone at Windsor.
The ecstasy of the betrothal inspired a con-
sideration of ways and means to hasten the
wedding. The ardent lover pleaded for the
celebration of the nuptials without further ado;
but his more prudent mistress urged the pos-
session of a home, and definite employment as
surety of maintaining it. This point conceded,
the question arose as to what particular sec-
tion of the Colonies seemed to offer the most
attractive opportunities. The bride-elect ob-
jected to New South Wales as being too near
home (she had always been a home-body, and
wished to see the world) ; Victoria, also, was
not to her taste for some other feminine but
conclusive reason; Western Australia had just
begun to come into notice as likely to become
one of the world's greatest gold-producers
there, it seemed to her, was the land of
promise for a young and experienced mining-
engineer.
This opinion prevailed, and the fugitive,
abandoning any idea he may have had of
escaping to America, set out for the new El
Dorado; and in a few weeks his fiancee was
cheered by a letter giving news of his arrival
[100]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
at Southern Cross a mining-camp some Hun-
dred and fifty miles in the interior where he
had secured the post of manager for a com-
pany which owned a rich deposit, and where
he was already preparing for her coming. Thus
some weeks passed, until another letter came
informing her that a house had been secured
and fitted up for her, and enclosing sufficient
funds for her journey. She replied, fixing the
date of her departure from Sydney, and on
the day appointed took train for Mel-
bourne, intending to continue thence to Albany
by sea.
Arriving at Melbourne the following morn-
ing where by chance she took a room in the
same "Coffee Palace" to which her prospective
bridegroom had resorted upon his arrival from
England she despatched a note to a young
man who was a long-time friend of her family,
and when he called in the evening went out
with him for a stroll through the city. As they
passed the office of The Age newspaper on
Collins street, they saw an excited crowd sur-
rounding the bulletin-board, and crossed the
roadway to read the announcement that it bore.
As her eyes rested upon it, Miss Rounsfell gave
a piercing shriek, and fell senseless upon the
ground.
[101]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
The announcement upon the board was
this:
BARON SWANSTON, THE WINDSOR MURDERER,
ARRESTED AT SOUTHERN CROSS."
Taken to her hotel and revived with diffi-
culty, she told her sensational story, with which
the newspapers of the whole country were filled
next day; then, broken and trembling, she re-
turned to her home, there to remain until sum-
moned again to Melbourne to give her testi-
mony at the trial which took place a month
later.
Most strangely had it happened that by her
unwitting influence the criminal career of
Frederick Bailey Deeming had been brought to
an end. Had she consented to live, after her
anticipated marriage, in New South Wales or
Victoria, he might never have been appre-
hended. In these two colonies except for the
seeming impossibility of the murdered body
being discovered he might have come and
gone without suspicion; his only peril being the
almost negligible one that some associate of his
voyage from England, or one of the very few
persons in Melbourne who had seen him with
his former wife, might encounter him and in-
[102]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
quire as to his changed name and partner:
but the extrication of himself from such an en-
tanglement would have been merely a stimu-
lating mental exercise to Deeming, whose
record, as searched after his latest crime was
known and the hue-and-cry was on his trail,
shows him to have been a most accomplished
swindler, and a man of singular address in all
forms of deceit.
In these comparatively populous sections, too,
the free and wide circulation of newspapers
would have brought immediate warning, by an-
nouncement of the discovery of the Windsor
murder, of the danger he was in, and thus have
aided his escape; for it was not until several
days after the body was found that its identity
was revealed, and many more before any clue
was found to Deeming's whereabouts. With
railways extending to ports in New South
Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Queens-
land, his opportunities for quitting the country
quickly and secretly were numerous; and once
away before the search for him had even been
started, the chance of capturing him would have
been poor indeed.
In Western Australia, whither Miss Rouns-
fell had been innocently instrumental in sending
him, the situation was entirely different. No
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
railways connect the colony with the others, and
ingress and egress are alike possible only by
sea. Moreover, being the latest of the Colonies
in which the old English system of penal-trans-
portation was abolished, and still harboring
many of the former subjects of that regime,
Western Australia at this time maintained
through its police a close system of espionage
over all who arrived or departed by the few
seaports of the district. Thus did the mur-
derer walk into a cul-de-sac; and when the pur-
suit (by an extraordinarily sagacious piece of
deductive work on the part of the Melbourne
detectives, which it would interfere with the
purpose of this narrative to describe) reached
Albany, the officers, armed with warrants for
his arrest and learning from the local police
records that a man such as they described had
"gone up country" and had not returned, had
only to endure the tedious desert journey to
Frazer's gold-mines at Southern Cross, and
apprehend him in the very house he had pre-
pared for his awaited bride.
[104]
CHAPTER IV
THE EXPIATION
RUN to earth, and captured like a rabbit at
the end of its burrow, the murderer was
brought to Albany, and shipped to Melbourne
by the liner "Ballaarat." As a relief from the
general lack of events of interest that marked
his return progress, it may be noted that the
train on which he traveled from Freemantle to
Albany, was stormed at York by an indignant
populace, who voiced the sentiment universally
pervading all the Colonies against his atrocities
by a determined effort to visit a rude, if origi-
nal, form of justice upon him by tearing him to
pieces between two bullock-teams, and were dis-
suaded with difficulty from this intention by a
display of revolvers by his guards. His feel-
ings were outraged also on the steamer, where
he expressed himself as much distressed by the
light and profane conversation of certain unre-
generate marines who were on their way to the
Australian station, and strongly rebuked them
therefor: thus illustrating anew the strange
contradiction in his nature which was before
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
shown in his reproach of Miss Rounsfell's fond-
ness for dancing. In fact, all who at various
times came in contact with him including and
ending with his guardians in the Melbourne
jail remarked upon his scrupulousness of lan-
guage and nicety of conduct.
I have gone thus at some length into a de-
scription of this monster and his crimes for two
reasons: in the first place because it seemed
essential to show the causes of the repulsion
and horror which his very name inspired, and
thus to place the reader in a position to ap-
preciate the effect upon the popular mind of
later incidents which I am about to record;
and, in the second place, because the close study
which I was able to give alike to the man and
his deeds convinced me that his case was one
possessing far more interest for the psychologist
than even the criminologist.
The ingenious Sir William S. Gilbert, in the
song of the sentimental police sergeant in "The
Pirates of Penzance," wherein it is recited that
"When the enterprizing burglar isn't burgling,
When the cutthroat isn't occupied with crime,
He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling,
And listens to the merry village chime"
[106]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
voiced a truth which has been marked in the
cases of many malefactors. It has been ob-
served of Deeming that, in the intervals of
swindling, lying and homicide by which his
career is chiefly remembered, he bristled like a
copybook with virtuous and noble sentiments
nor is his sincerity to be doubted in their ut-
terance. It is unquestionable that he was a man
of singular address and subtlety not only
among men skilled in business affairs and ex-
perienced in reading character. He was a
clever mechanic, and able to adapt himself
quickly and efficiently to any occupation : as is
shown by the fact that although there is nothing
in his history to indicate that he had had any
previous experience in mine-management, he
more than fulfilled all the requirements laid
upon him at Southern Cross, increased the out-
put of gold by ingenious inventions, and was
esteemed by the company as the most capable
manager it had ever had. He had a marked,
if imperfectly developed, fondness for music
and literature, and although his conversation
included many grammatical solecisms, it was
effective and often eloquent. His taste in dress,
although rather flamboyant in the matter of
jewelry, of which he always wore a profusion,
was noticeably correct the frock-coat, light
[107]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
trousers and perfectly-fitting patent-leather
shoes which he wore at his trial were evidently
from the hands of the best London outfitters,
and would have graced (as they doubtless had
done) the fashionable afternoon parade which
is a feature of Melbourne's Collins Street.
The anomaly that is suggested by these
established facts regarding him is of minor in-
terest, however, in comparison with more
striking contradictions that were remarked
after his capture. It was my fortune to have
a place near him at the inquest which resulted
in his commitment for trial, as well as at the
trial itself that duly followed. Popular feeling
against him was so intense and violent that the
authorities did not dare to land him at the
steamboat pier, but smuggled him aboard a tug
when the "Ballaarat" entered the harbor, and
brought him ashore at the suburb of St. Kilda,
whence he was hurried in a closed cab to the
Melbourne jail. Brought into the court where
the inquest was held, his appearance was so
brutal and revolting that a murmur of horror
and disgust arose at his entrance which the
judge and officers with difficulty quelled.
There was in his deeply-lined and saturnine
face no indication of an understanding of his
position. His lips were drawn in a sardonic
[108]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
sneer, and his eyes steely, evil and magnetic
glistened like those of the basilisk as he looked
boldly and with a sort of savage bravado at
the faces about him. He disdained to pay any
attention to the proceedings, and was seemingly
deaf to the testimony that was advanced against
him by more than thirty witnesses. Yet he
evinced a lively, if contemptuous, interest in
minor details, and audibly expressed his views
regarding them. When the canary that had
played so singular a part in his Australian ex-
periences was produced, still in its ornate gilded
cage, he cried out: "Hullo! here comes the
menagerie! Why don't the band play?" Of
a reporter taking notes at a table near him he
remarked that "he wrote like a hen," com-
mented upon the weak utterance of a certain
witness that "he had no more voice than a con-
sumptive shrimp," and interjected ribald criti-
cisms on the words of the judge that were fairly
shocking under the circumstances.
When, at the termination of the proceedings,
the judge ordered his commitment for trial,
and stated that a rescript would be issued
against him for the wilful murder of his wife,
Emily Williams, he shouted, in a shrill, cack-
ling, strident sort of voice: "And when you
have got it, you can put it in your pipe and
[109]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
smoke it!" looking about with a demoniac
grin as if expecting applause for an effective bit
of repartee. As the constables seized him and
dragged him to the door, his eyes fell upon a
comely young woman standing on the edge of
the crowd, who regarded him with horrified
amazement. Breaking away from the officers,
he danced up to her, chucked her under the
chin, and with his leering face close to hers
ejaculated: "O, you ducky, ducky!" and
disappeared amid the cries of the scandalized
lookers-on.
I do not know what the emotions of other
attendants on the trial may have been, but I
remember my own mental attitude as one of
distaste that my duties as a correspondent re-
quired my presence. To see one weak human
being contending for his life against the or-
ganized and tremendous forces of the Law is
always a pitiful and moving spectacle; in this
case, with recollections of the repulsive inci-
dents of the inquest in mind, one nerved one-
self for some scene of desperation and horror.
The dock, surrounded by a spiked railing and
already guarded by a posse of white-helrneted
constables, stood in the centre of the court-
room, its platform, elevated some three feet
[no]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
from the floor, being furnished with a trap-
door that communicated with the cells below by
a spiral iron staircase, which the prisoner must
ascend. The audience watched this trap-door
In somewhat that state of hesitating eagerness
with which a child awaits the spring of a jack-
in-the-box, not knowing what grotesque or ter-
rifying thing may appear: and when it lifted,
and the murderer stepped to his place beneath
the thousand-eyed gaze that was fastened upon
him, a murmur in which amazement was the
dominant note ran through the room.
My own first feeling was that my eyesight
was playing me a trick ; my second, that by some
change of program of which I had not been
informed, the trial of Deeming had been post-
poned. In this frock-coated, well-groomed and
gentlemanly person in the dock there was no
trace whatever of the ruffian who had been the
central figure of the inquest. In age he seemed
to have dropped some twenty years; his man-
ner was perfect, showing no trace either of
apprehension or bravado: in short, the im-
pression he conveyed (as I described it in my
correspondence at the time) was of a young
clergyman of advanced views presenting him-
self to trial for heresy, rather than of one of
the most brutal murderers of his generation,
[in]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
This impression prevailed during the four days
his trial lasted; only once or twice could one
detect in his eye the former flash of implacable-
ness and ferocity. It was not as if he made
an effort to keep himself in control, but rather
as if he were a man with two strongly opposed
and antagonistic sides to his nature, of which
one or the other might manifest itself without
any conscious exercise of will.
It was also evident to anyone who could ob-
serve him dispassionately that the details of
the murder, as they were brought out in the
testimony, were all as news to him : and when,
in the address he made to the jury before it
retired to consider its verdict, he admitted
knowledge of the subsidiary facts brought out
(as to his acquaintance with Miss Rounsfell, for
example), but swore he was as innocent as he
was incapable of the murder of his wife, I, for
one, believed him sincere, although I could per-
ceive in the faces about me that I was alone
in that opinion. A suggestion that this man
might illustrate the phenomenon of "dual per-
sonality" and should be subjected to hypnotic
suggestion at the hands of qualified experts,
rather than have swift condemnation measured
out to him, would doubtless have been received
with derision by the hard-headed audience that
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
was the real jury 7n the case; but I felt at the
time, and feel now even more strongly, that if
Frederick Bailey Deeming had been tried in a
country where psychological aberrations have
been the subject of study, he would have been
committed, not to the hangman, but to a life-
long restraint wherein science might have
gained from his extraordinary personality
much valuable knowledge.
The man whose life was choked out of him
on the gallows three weeks later was the man
of the inquest, not the man of the trial and
in this fact is some occasion for satisfaction.
He was more subdued, as though he appreci-
ated as any other animal might do what the
sinister preparations for his ending meant:
but when, as he hung beneath the open trap, the
death-cap was lifted from his face, there were
plainly to be seen the hard and brutal lines
about his mouth, and the wolfish sneer upon
his lips, which one could not but feel, with some-
thing like a shudder, had distinguished his
features in the commission of the atrocities for
which at last he had paid such insufficient price
as society could exact.
The scaffold of the Melbourne jail is a per-
manent structure with several traps ; and across
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
and above it runs a heavy beam, its ends fixed
in the solid masonry of the walls, and the
greater part of its length scarred and grooved
by the chafing of the ropes which, from time
to time, have given despatch to the souls of
several hundred murderers. As I looked up
at this fearsome tally-stick, I turned to the
oldest warder of the jail, a man of nearly
seventy years, who had been present at my
interview with Deeming a few days before, and
who now stood beside me.
"I want to ask you a question," I said, "un-
less your official position may prevent your
answering it."
"What is it, sir?" he inquired.
"You have been for many years a warder
here, and must have seen many men under sen-
tence of death."
"Yes," he replied. "I was first here in the
bushranging days, and have been here ever
since. I fancy I have seen two hundred men
depart this life by the route of that gal-
lows."
"Then," said I, "you should be a good judge
of the character and mental state of a man who
is awaiting a death of that sort. Here is my
question: What is your opinion of Deem-
ing?"
["4]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
"Mad, sir," replied the warder. "Mad as a
March hare."
This verdict might be qualified, but I believe
it to be essentially just.
CHAPTER V
THE HOUSE ON THE HILL
IN beginning this chapter I find myself fac-
ing a dilemma one not so puzzling as that
which gave Hamlet pause, and evoked his
famous soliloquy, and yet like it, too, in that
it forces me to hesitate before the mystery of
the Unseen. Thus far my story has the support
of incontrovertible facts and permanent and
referable legal and criminal records; I must
now cut loose from these, and trust my weight
upon the assertion that the last half of my nar-
rative, which I now launch upon, is in every
detail and particular as true as the first. In
the stress of the responsibility thus assumed it
might seem natural to marshall about me such
facts and persons as I might invoke as cor-
roborative witnesses. Of these there are not
a few: but although there is (sometimes)
"wisdom in a multitude of counsellors," con-
viction in the actuality of truth in narrations
of so-called "supernatural" phenomena is as
likely as otherwise to be befogged in exact pro-
portion to the size of their "cloud of wit-
[116]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
nesses." Therefore I have, after reflection,
decided to "take the stand" myself and unsup-
ported, and to throw myself upon the mercy
of the court my readers in so doing.
Thus, then, I shall not reveal the exact loca-
tion of The House on the Hill, nor the name
of the owner, from whom, for a year, I rented
it. It is doubtful that he be now living, for he
was a man of advanced age when he left his
house in my hands, and departed with his two
unmarried daughters (themselves of mature
years) for a twelve-months' tour in Europe.
On his return I handed him the keys without
any reference to the strange occurrences that
had come to me from my bargaining with him :
nor do I know to this day whether he had
similar experiences after my departure, or even
whether they may have enlivened him and his
family prior to my tenancy. His evident anxiety
to lease the house for a time (I took it fur-
nished, and at a rental absurdly low in fact,
just one-half his original demand) may have
had no special significance, although I often
fancied afterwards that I had found a reason
for it: but on consideration I decided not to
refer to certain features of the house that he
had failed to enumerate as among its attrac-
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
tions, and to restore him without remark to
their renewal if he knew of them or to dis-
cover them for himself if he did not.
It is probable that few of my readers have
spent a year in a "haunted house" I use this
expression, although it defines nothmg, for want
of a better: but those who cherish such an
experience will understand why, on the one
hand, I did not wish to alarm an elderly gentle-
man and his amiable daughters, or "give a bad
name," as the saying is, to his property; and
why, on the other, I did not care to run the
risk of living in his recollection, and in the
minds of his neighbors to whom he might re-
late my story, as a person of feeble intellect,
if not a lunatic outright. But I would give a
good deal to know what he knew about that
house.
A circumstance that I took no note of at the
time, but which afterwards seemed to have a
possible significance, occurred at the house one
evening when I had called to complete negotia-
tions by signing the lease and going through
other formalities precedent to taking posses-
sion. The owner had told me that one of his
reasons for desiring a change of scene for a
time was that his wife had died three months
before after a lingering illness that had com-
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
pletely worn out his daughters as well as him-
self: and when the business of his final even-
ing was completed, the younger woman uttered
this strange remark: "Well, it will be a relief
not to see mother about all the time!" and
was immediately checked by her sister. I had
before noted her as a nervous-mannered, some-
what anaemic-looking person, and her observa-
tion touched my mind too lightly to leave any
impression upon it.
There was nothing at all peculiar in the ap-
pearance of the house. It stood upon a breezy
hill-top in the outskirts of one of Melbourne's
most attractive suburbs; the train from town
landed me, every evening, at the village sta-
tion, and a ten-minute walk up a rather steep
road brought me comfortably to home and
dinner. The house was a delightful one when
you got to it. It occupied a corner lot, and had
extensive grounds around it; there was a large
orchard at the rear, filled with grape-vines, and
pear, lemon, and fig trees although none of
them did much in the matter of bearing. There
were two trees in the front yard that gave pro-
fusely of pomegranates (a decorative fruit, but
one whose edible qualities always seemed to me
greatly overrated) ; there were spacious flower
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
beds on both sides of the building, and the
nearest neighbors were at least two hundred
yards away. On the other side of the street
which ran in front of the house was a large,
unimproved lot which gave a touch of the coun-
try by the presence in it of several ancient gum
trees, in which the "laughing jackasses" cackled
and vociferated both morning and evening:
and when my wife and I, and the gentleman of
Scottish ancestry and of advanced middle-age,
whom, as our best of friends, we had induced
to share the enterprise with us, looked about
upon these things on the first afternoon of our
occupancy, we pronounced them all "very
good."
The house was not a large one, comprising
six living-rooms and a kitchen, besides a bath
and a commodious storeroom and pantry. It
was of the bungalow pattern, a type which is
a favorite one in Australia, where the high
average temperature of the year makes cool-
ness and airiness prime essentials in a dwelling.
It had no cellar, but was raised above the
ground upon brickwork, thus forming a dry
air-chamber below, and above its single story
was a low, unfinished attic, which afforded an-
other air-space, and stretched without parti-
tions from front to back of the house. There
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THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
was no floor to this attic, and on the only occa-
sion when I explored it, I had to crawl from
beam to beam, the pointed roof being so low
that I could barely stand upright even under
its ridgepole. The only means of access to
this part of the house was a ladder, which
could be brought into the bathroom, and from
which could be raised a light trap-door in the
ceiling. A veranda ran along the front of the
house, and a wide hall extended, without turn
or obstruction, from front to back. On one
side of this hall beginning from the veranda
were the parlor, dining-room, bedroom, and
pantry; on the other, my wife's bedroom, the
bathroom, our friend's room, a "spare-room,"
and the kitchen : while a few yards behind the
house stood a one-story structure, fitted up as a
laundry. The "spare-room" here mentioned I
furnished as a smoking-room; and further
equipped it by building a bench across the space
before the single window, whereat I employed
myself now and then in preparing the skins of
birds of which I was making a collection, and
which I either shot myself in frequent excur-
sions into the country, or which were sent to
me by agents, both whites and "blackfellows,"
whom I employed in various parts of the
Colonies.
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
One, and perhaps the most peculiar, feature
of the bungalow remains to be described. This
was a small apartment, about five feet square,
between the bathroom and our friend's room
(but without any means of direct communica-
tion with either), and entered only by a nar-
row door which swung outward into the hall.
It was unlighted, and was provided with air
by a ventilator at the end of a shaft which was
carried through the ceiling into the attic and
ended in the roof. Its floor was of thickly-laid
concrete, and in its centre, and occupying nearly
the whole ground space, was a sunken portion
about two feet deep, and equipped with wooden
racks upon which boxes of butter, pans of milk,
and various receptacles containing similar
perishable articles of food were accommodated.
This chamber was of real use in a country where
at the time at least ice was scarce and ex-
pensive, and where summer temperatures of
a hundred and ten degrees in the shade might
be expected; since, being placed in a part of
the house which was wholly removed from the
direct rays of the sun, the air in it was always
cool and dry. I am particular in describing
this room because of a strange incident that
later occurred in it.
The house was well, almost luxuriously, fur-
[122]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
nished. The parlor contained a fine piano, and
several pictures of merit adorned the walls;
heat (seldom necessary in that mild climate ex-
cept on rainy days in autumn and winter) was
furnished to this and other rooms by open fire-
places, and vases and other bric-a-brac stood
upon the mantels; the bed and table linen was
all of excellent quality, there was a sufficiency
of crockery and glass and silverware and
culinary utensils : and as we sat down to our
inauguratory dinner, and contrasted our con-
dition with the three years' previous experience
of travel and steamer and hotel life in all parts
of Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania and the
Fiji Islands, we congratulated each other that
we had found a "home" indeed.
We set about forthwith to improve our tem-
porary property. On one side of the house,
and separated from it by a fence that inclosed
the lawn and flower gardens, was a grassy
"paddock" that might formerly have pastured
a horse or a cow. As we had no use for either
of these animals, we turned this space into a
poultry yard, and populated it with chickens,
ducks and geese which thrived amazingly, and
in due time furnished us all the eggs and
poultry required for our table. Our friend (by
nature and early training an ardent horticul-
[123]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
turist, but whose energies in that science had for
many years enjoyed no opportunity for exer-
cise in the soil of the Melbourne Stock Ex-
change, of which he was a member) joyously
took the flower gardens under his control, and
achieved miracles therein. It was delightful,
as I sat in the shady veranda on the hot Satur-
day afternoons, with a steamer chair to loll in,
and a pipe and cooling drink at hand, to con-
template his enthusiasm as he delved and
sweated to prepare new ground for the gor-
geous blooms which he coaxed from the willing
soil at the same time extolling my own sagacity
in asking him to share the place with us; to
which he would respond in appropriate lan-
guage. Our household was so small that we
were not exposed to the annoyances of the
"servant-girl" problem: our friend and I
lunched in town, and a capable woman who
lived nearby assisted my wife in cooking and
serving our dinners, and attended to the duties
of house-cleaning returning to her own home
when her work was accomplished, and leaving
us to ourselves in the evenings. We were near
enough to town to run in for theatres and con-
certs whenever we were so minded, and on Sun-
days did some modest entertaining: in short,
we settled into a phase of existence as nearly
[124]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
Arcadian as is often possible under modern
conditions of civilization, and although it
seemed likely to be commonplace and unevent-
ful, we were in mood to find it all the more
desirable and pleasant on that account. That
the most startling experiences of our lives were
soon to come upon us never entered our heads,
and for some six weeks we lived in serenity and
happiness amid surroundings that day by day
grew more attractive.
CHAPTER VI
ON THE WINGS OF THE STORM
MY interview with the murderer, as de-
scribed in the first chapter, took place upon a
Thursday. The next day was one of the gen-
eral holidays that are so profusely celebrated
in Australia : I do not remember the occasion,
but it is safe to assume that some important
horse race was to be run at Flemington the
Epsom of the Antipodes. At all events, I took
advantage of the opportunity to go into the
country with my gun on a collecting trip,
and returned at night with a fine as-
sortment of cockatoos, parrots and other
brilliantly plumaged or curious birds which
make the Colonies a paradise for the orni-
thologist.
The day following Saturday opened with
a heavy ram, and a strong wind off the sea. I
had no particular business to call me to town,
and, anyhow, all activities and occupations
would cease at noon in deference to the usual
weekly half-holiday. Moreover, I had several
[126]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
hours' work before me in removing and pre-
serving the skins of the birds I had shot; so
I suppressed the faint voice of duty that sug-
gested that I might find something of im-
portance awaiting me in Melbourne, and after
breakfast sat down to the congenial labor of
my taxidermist's bench. Our friend departed
for the Stock Exchange, and my wife and I
were left alone in the house.
I had no more than made the preliminary
incision in the breast of a purple lorrikeet when
the doorbell rang. Answering the summons I
found in the veranda' a black-haired, sallow-
faced individual, his garments sodden with rain,
who offered for my purchase and perusal "The
History and Last Confession of Frederick
Bailey Deeming," for "the small price of six-
pence." More in commiseration for the
wretched and bedraggled appearance of the
vendor than from any other motive (for I was
already acquainted with the "History," and
gave no credence to any announcement that a
"Confession" had been made) I bought the
pamphlet and returned to my room. Finding,
as I had suspected, that this piece of literature
contained no new facts whatever, and was
totally lacking in anything even the most re-
motely suggesting confession, I threw it into the
[127]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
fire that blazed on the hearth and took up my
interrupted work.*
The incident of the water-soaked vendor and
his pamphlet had had the effect, however, of
turning my reflections into a very unpleasant
channel. In spite of all efforts to apply myself
to the task in hand, the thought of the despair-
ing man in the condemned cell, my visit to him
two days before, and my anticipated presence
at his execution within forty-eight hours, pressed
upon my spirit with a weight which I found it
impossible to lift. An incident which had oc-
curred on the previous day had also added a
certain element of pathos to the situation.
* I had good personal reasons for discrediting any
rumor that Deeming had made confession, for the reason
that, with the sanction of the authorities in his case,
and assisted by his own counsel, I had made every effort
to secure it myself and had failed. When the matter
was suggested to Deeming, and he was assured that the
money that was offered to him for his memoirs would
be paid to Miss Rounsfell as some slight recognition of
the wrong he had done her, he eagerly assented; and
being supplied with pens (quill for not the least article
in steel was allowed him) he went to work, and in a
few days had turned out a large amount of manu-
script. Examination of it, however, was disappointing.
It began encouragingly, and there were lucid passages
in it; but as a whole it was utterly incoherent and to
those who had dispassionately studied the man, an un
doubted proof of his insanity.
[128]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
During my absence a letter had come to my
wife through the morning mail, which, to her
astonishment and disquiet, proved to have been
written by the murderer. It ran as follows :
"H. M. Gaol
"Melbourne
"18-5-92
"DEAR MADAM:
"I beg to tender you my sincere thanks
for your extreme kindness on my behalf,
in trying to get Miss Rounsefell to come
and see me. I assure you that if she had
come I could have died happy, as it is I
shall die most unhappy. I am very sorry
indeed that you did not find her as kind
and as Christian like as yourself. Again
thanking you,
"I beg to remain
"Most respectfully yours
"B. SWANSTON.
"you may show Miss Rounsefell this if
you wish. B. S."
This remarkable document, from a man at
the moment standing on the brink of eternity,
greatly disturbed (as I have said) its re-
[129]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
cipient; but she did not hesitate. As the letter
intimates, she had already, in pursuance of a
promise she was almost compelled to make
through the earnest plea of the murderer when
she saw him in the condemned cell, seen Miss
Rounsfell (this is the correct spelling of the
name, not that used by the writer of the above
letter) with the lack of success that the letter
suggests. Now, however, she determined to
see the girl again: and showing her the letter,
she urged her to see the man or at the least
write to him and grant her pardon to a dying
creature who seemed to have no hope of pardon
elsewhere, either here or hereafter. The inter-
view was a touching one : Miss Rounsfell was
deeply affected, and (greatly to her credit, I
think) consented to undertake in person the
charitable mission that she had been asked to
perform. But her brother so strenuously op-
posed the idea even to the minor extent of
writing that she was compelled to abandon
it; and Deeming went to his death without the
consolation that he had so simply and eloquently
craved.
Thus in many ways I had been brought into
this tragical affair much more intimately than
I liked, and I could not keep my mind away
from it. The day itself added to the gloom
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
that fell upon me. The storm had steadily
increased in violence since early morning; rain
fell in torrents, and the wind roared and
whined alternately about the house; the heavy
clouds that passed close overhead cast upon the
earth a series of shifting shadows as their sub-
stance thickened or thinned under the rending
force of the gale if the Powers of Darkness
ever walk abroad by day, they could hardly
find an occasion more eerie and fitting than
this. Yet no such suggestion occurred to me:
I could hear the rattle of dishes in the kitchen
and the voice of my wife in song as she attended
to her household duties; I lighted my pipe as
another means of affording the companion-
ship that I somehow craved, and for an hour
or so applied myself assiduously to the task in
hand.
I was seated facing the window, my back
to the open door that led into the hall. Sud-
denly, and without the slightest warning, I
heard behind me a long and dismal groan.
"A-a-ah!" thus it came; a woman's voice,
apparently, and with an indescribable but cer-
tain accent in it of mental or physical pain.
It is no exaggeration to say that this awful and
ghastly sound froze me where I sat; I could
feel my hair move upon my scalp, and a chill,
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
as though I had been dashed with ice-water,
ran up and down my spine. For a moment an
inexpressible horror possessed me then I felt
my blood, which seemed on the instant to have
stopped in its course, flow again in my veins,
and with a mighty effort I arose and faced the
open door. There was nothing there nor in
the dim hall, into which I shortly ventured:
I removed my slippers and silently explored
every room; still nothing to be seen, and the
only sound the splash of rain, and of the wind
that sobbed and muttered around the house. I
crept to the kitchen and peeped in cautiously:
my wife was quietly engaged in her work,
and I was glad to think that she had heard
nothing. Indeed, her undisturbed demeanor en-
couraged the opinion I had begun to form,
that some peculiar effect of the wind in the
open fireplace or the chimney of my room was
responsible for the sound I had heard.
Yet I was by no means satisfied with this
explanation: the cry was too human, the dis-
tress it evidenced too poignant, to be thus
counterfeited, and as I returned to my bench,
it was with full expectation that I should hear
it again. I was not disappointed. In a few
moments it came, more distinct and lugubrious
than before, and seemingly within the very room
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
itself; and as I whirled about to confront I
knew not what, the groan was repeated, coming
from the empty air before me and dying away
in an unutterably sad and plaintive sigh.
I made another swift and noiseless survey of
the house, but it was as resultless as before,
and regained my room much shaken, I will con-
fess, but still unwilling to admit that the sounds
could not be referred to natural causes. But I
found no solution that convinced me. I might
have attributed their first occurrence to hal-
lucination, but the second hearing weakened
that hypothesis the groan and the following
sigh were inimitably those of an old woman,
who was either at the point of death or over-
whelmed with distress of mind and body. This
resemblance was absolute, and I sat for some
time revolving the strange thing in my mind.
I thought of relating my experience to my wife,
but feared to alarm her, and finally went back
to my birds.
Almost immediately there came for the third
time that ghastly wail and sigh so close to
my ear that, had any living person uttered
them, his face must almost have touched my
own. I am not ashamed to say that the effect
upon me was so unmanning and terrible that I
uttered a cry of horror and fell backward with
[133]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
the chair I sat in, and lay sprawling on the floor.
At the same instant I heard my wife scream
from the kitchen; and as I gathered myself
up and ran to her, I saw her standing with
her back against the wall, staring with horrified
eyes, and with a look of repulsion and fear upon
her face, at something invisible to me, on the
other side of the room. I rushed to her and
grasped her hands: they were cold as ice, and
her fixed and rigid gaze into what to me was
emptiness, frightened me beyond measure.
"In heaven's name," I cried, "what is it?"
"It is Deeming's mother," she answered, in
a whisper I could hardly hear.
"Deeming's mother!" I echoed her words:
"How do you know it is Deeming's mother?"
"I saw her with him in his cell at the jail,"
she replied.
"Then what he said was true, that his mother
comes back to trouble him?"
"Yes, it was true; and now she comes to
me! Go away I" she cried, addressing some-
thing 7 could not see. "I cannot help you; why
do you torment me! Ah!" with a sigh of
relief "she has gone !" and she sank exhausted
into a chair.
We had a long and memorable talk after
that, which I will briefly summarize. My wife
[134]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
had not heard the groans that had been audible
to me until their second repetition; then the
sound that had seemed beside my ear came at
the same instant close to hers, and her cry that
joined with mine had been wrung from her by
the sight of the apparition which on the instant
presented itself to her. This was not the first
time, however, that it had appeared: it had
closely followed upon the receipt of Deeming's
letter the day before, and its cries of distress
and appeals for help had been so agonizing that
it was as much on that account as because of the
plea of the murderer himself that she had de-
cided to see Miss Rounsfell again.
The apparition did not reappear that day,
and there was no recurrence of the wailing
lamentations but we were soon to have further
experience of them for all that.
The storm spent itself during the late after-
noon, and was succeeded by a beautiful even-
ing. The wind was still high, and the sky filled
with broken masses of clouds, through which
the full moon waded heavily: and as my wife
and I descended the hill, soon after dinner, to
the railway station on our way to keep an en-
gagement to call upon the Consul-General of
the United States at his residence at St. Kilda,
we agreed that the night was just such a one
[135]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
as might inspire Dore in some one of his fan-
tastic compositions. After the day's gruesome
events we had hesitated about leaving our friend
alone during our absence; but we finally united
upon the opinion which my wife advanced, that
as she seemed to be the sole object of the ap-
parition's visit, he was not likely to be molested.
So we left him (albeit with some misgiving)
comfortably seated before the dining-room fire
in a large easy-chair, and with his pipe and a
new novel for company, and took our de-
parture.
It was after midnight when we returned.
The gale had blown itself out, and the moon
looked down upon a world that seemed resting
in sleep after the turmoil of the day. My wife
went at once to her room to lay aside her outer
garments and I repaired, with much curiosity
and a little apprehension stirring me, to the
dining-room.
I found our friend as we had left him, book
in hand and with his smoked-out pipe lying on
a table beside him. He was not alone, how-
ever our two dogs a wire-haired Scotch
terrier and a fox-terrier which I had as usual
chained up for the night in their kennels at the
back of the house, were dozing together on the
hearth-rug.
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
"Hullo!" I exclaimed; "what are those dogs
doing here? You know they are never allowed
to come into the house."
"Well," our friend replied. "I felt lonely,
and so I brought them in to keep me company."
"That's an odd idea," I rejoined. "I thought
your book and pipe would be society enough.
Besides, there is plenty of 'Scotch' and soda on
the sideboard."
"I tried that, too," he confessed. "But, do
you know? this has been the most infernally
unpleasant evening I ever spent in my life. The
wind has been making the most uncanny noises
I would swear there were people moving all
over the house if I did not know I was the only
person in it. I have been all over the place
a dozen times, but could find nothing. At last
I couldn't stand it; so I unchained and brought
in the dogs. Somehow they didn't seem to have
much use for the place I had to drag them in
by their collars."
"They knew they had no right to be here,"
I commented. "The matter with you is, you've
been smoking too much, and got your nerves
on edge. Come and help me put up the dogs
before my wife sees them, or you'll 'get what
for,' as your English expression is."
This office performed, we returned to the
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TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
dining-room, where I suggested a "Scotch-and-
soda" before retiring for the night, and to-
gether at the sideboard we prepared each a
modest potion. As we touched glasses to a
good sleep and happy awakening, there sounded
from the air behind us that weird and terrible
cry! My friend's face turned ashen on the
instant and his glass fell from his hand and
lay shattered on the hardwood floor.
"My God!" he cried; "did you hear that?"
I was startled, of course, but the morning's
experience, reinforced by anticipation of some
such happening, had steeled my nerves.
"Did I hear what?" I asked. "Look here,
old man, you are certainly in a queer way to-
night. What should I hear? everything is
as quiet as death."
"Do you mean to tell me," he demanded,
looking at me incredulously and with alarm
still in his face, "that you did not hear that
awful groan?" but meanwhile I had filled an-
other tumbler for him, which he hastily
emptied, although the glass rattled against his
teeth as he drank.
"Come, come!" I said; "go to bed, and you
will be all right in the morning;" but the
words had but left my lips when, right between
us as it seemed, there swelled again upon the
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
air that utterance of anguish, followed by the
dying cadence of a sigh.
"There! there! there!" stammered my
companion: "did you hear it then?"
"Yes, I did," I replied; "and the first time
as well. Is that what has disturbed you to-
night?"
"No, not exactly that nothing so awful;
but all sorts of strange noises; I can't describe
them. I say what kind of a house is this? I
have always believed the stories of haunted
houses were bally nonsense; but in heaven's
name what does all this mean?"
I was unable to enlighten him: and al-
though I called my wife from her room and
described to him our morning's experience with
the voices, I thought it best to keep the feature
of the apparition a secret. In fact, he never
did learn of it, or of many other things that
did not come directly to his personal appre-
hension. What he did see and hear, in the
months that followed, was bad enough, God
knows! and I am convinced that one of the
reasons (and that not the least considerable)
which prevented him from leaving us on any
one of a dozen different occasions, and our-
selves from abandoning the house outright, was
the consideration (on his part) that it would
[139]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
be unseemly for one of his nation to confess
himself inferior in pluck to an American, and
(on ours) that we should be untrue to all our
country's traditions if we permitted a Britisher
to see us in retreat.
This reason may seem extreme, and even
fantastical; but it has its weight in explaining
why at the outset, at least we held our
ground. In the long discussion which followed,
that night, it was evident that each party was
urgent that the other should suggest abandon-
ment of the premises. Neither, however, would
broach the subject, and we separated for bed
at last with the implied understanding that we
were to remain.
[140]
CHAPTER VII
A GHOSTLY CO-TENANCY
SUCH was the first manifestation of a Pos-
session which held the house for more than nine
months. That we endured it is to me now
sufficient cause for wonder, and the reasons why
we did so (reasons which presented them-
selves by degrees) may require some explana-
tion. It must be said that with the exception
of a few visitations which I shall duly describe,
there were no occasions so terrifying as those
which happened on the day of the storm.
Moreover, as my wife and I had made ac-
quaintance in former years with many inex-
plicable things and had never seen any serious
results come from them, our attitude toward
these new phenomena was one compact more
of curiosity than anything else. The experi-
ence could hardly be called agreeable, but it
was strange and unusual, and we wanted to find
o'lt what it all meant. We never did find out,
by the way, but the anticipation (which was con-
stant) that we should, kept us interested.
The amiable reader may be disposed to
credit us with unusual courage, but we never
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
looked at the matter in that light. Besides the
influence of national pride which I have men-
tioned as supporting both our friend and our-
selves, there was also the consideration that we
had covenanted for the hopse for a year, and
had paid the first six-months' rent in advance
and Yankee and Scottish thrift alike moved
us to desire our money's worth; and although
we might hope to annul our bargain if we could
plead that the dwelling was infested with rats,
we had doubts as to our standing in court in
case we should set up a defense that it was
overrun with ghosts. Moreover, we liked our
quarters so well that we could not make up our
minds to leave them merely because an unseen
co-tenantry insisted on sharing them with us;
therefore we remained, and in time even man-
aged to extract some entertainment from the
quips and cranks that were more or less con-
stantly going on.
A saving feature of the situation was the
fact that the manifestations were not continu-
ous, and rarely occurred until near the end of
our term at night. This, I think, must be
set down as an unusual circumstance, but it was
one that brought us considerable relief. It need
not be pointed out, for example, how much less
terrifying it is to hear muffled footsteps and the
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
rustle of women's garments up and down the
hall by daylight than in darkness, and to see,
under the same conditions, chairs and light
tables shifted about in apparent accordance
with some invisible person's notion of their
proper arrangement. It is somewhat disquiet-
ing, to be sure, when walking through the hall,
to hear the bell above one's head break out in
rattling clangor, and, looking chrough the wide-
open front door, to perceive that no visible visit-
or was at the other end of the wire: and in
spite of many former experiences, we could not
restrain ourselves from jumping in our seats
when, at dinner, all the doors in the house
would slam in rapid succession with a violence
that set the dishes dancing on the board. And
the singular thing about this performance was
that although the sound was unmistakably that
of banging doors, the doors themselves seemed
to have no part in it. More than once we ar-
ranged them in anticipation of this manifesta-
tion, leaving some closed, some wide open, and
some ajar at various angles which we carefully
noted. Presently would come the expected
thunderous reverberations and running from
the dining-room we would find every door pre-
cisely as we had left it.
Occasionally, what seemed like a rushing
[143]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
wind would sweep through the hall between the
wire-screened doors at either end of the house,
although a glance out of the window showed
that the leaves of the trees in the yard were
pendent and lifeless in an utter calm: and this
circumstance reminds me of a curious thing that
was several times repeated.
We rarely used the parlor, which, as I have
said, was on the right of the hall as one entered
the house, with windows giving upon the
veranda. To the decorations of this room which
hadbeen left by our landlord, we had made some
considerable additions photographs of New
Zealand scenery, curios and wall hangings from
Fiji, and other such matters. Now and then
would break out in that room a racket as though
a dozen devils were dancing the tarantelle, ac-
companied by a sound as of a maelstrom of
wind whirling in it. We never had courage to
enter while the disturbance was in progress
in fact we had no time to do so, as it always
ended within a few minutes ; but when we opened
the door after the noise had subsided, we in-
variably found the same condition of affairs
every article in the room that belonged to us
piled in a heap on the floor, and all the pos-
sessions of the absent family standing or hang-
ing undisturbed in their usual places. We were
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
disposed to regard this demonstration as a
gentle hint that our continuation in the house
was not desired, and that the "spooks," as we
came familiarly to call them, had in furtherance
of this idea gathered together such of our be-
longings as they could reach in order to facili-
tate our packing up for departure. But we
paid no heed to the implied suggestion, restored
the room to its former condition, and in a short
time this particular form of annoyance was dis-
continued.
These were minor occurrences, ana I am not
relating them with any reference to the order
in which they came. As they seem to belong
to the general run of phenomena that have been
frequently noticed in accounts of "haunted
houses" so called I will not dwell upon
them; merely observing that the effort to pro-
duce them was entirely misplaced if its purpose
was to frighten us, and in any case unworthy
of any intelligent source. I more than once an-
nounced this opinion in a loud tone of voice
when the rustlings and footfalls, and their often
accompanying groans and sighs became too per-
sistent, or wearisome in their lack of variety
and it was curious to see how effective this
remonstrance always was. A dead silence
would immediately ensue, and for hours, and
[145]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
sometimes even for days, the house would be
as orderly and commonplace as possible.
It is my recollection that the mother of
Deeming (if, indeed, she it were) made no fur-
ther appearance after her son's execution. She
seems to have expressed herself in one supreme
and futile appeal for help, and then to have
gone to her place. Several others followed
her, whom I could hear from time to time as
they moved about, and whom my wife, whose
clearness of sight in these matters I never
shared, described as an old woman, another
much younger, and a girl-child some four or
five years of age. They never attempted any
communication with us; in fact, they seemed
quite unaware of our presence; and were evi-
dently not concerned in any of the bizarre and
seemingly meaningless manifestations that were
continually going on. We fancied that the
shade of the elder woman was that of the
former mistress of the house, whose death, as
I have already noted, had occurred therein some
three months before we took possession: but
as she ignored us entirely, we respected her
seeming disinclination to a mutual introduction,
and left her to go to and fro in the way she
preferred. This way was not altogether a
pleasant one. She wore a black gown, my wife
[146]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
said, with a neckerchief of some white material
the rustle of her gown, which I could plainly
hear, indicated that it was of silk; she seemed
unhappy (we thought it might be that she did
not understand the absence of her husband and
daughters) and was forever sighing softly and
wringing her hands. The younger woman (the
two never seemed to be conscious of each others'
existence if that is the right word) was in a
state of evident discomfort also, although she
was always silent, and appeared to be con-
stantly in search of something she could not
find.
Altogether we found these shadowy guests
of ours a rather cheerless company; but as we
had had no voice in inviting them, and feared
that their departure (if they should accept any
intimation from us that it was desired) might
make room for others even more objectionable,
we were fain to adapt ourselves to the situa-
tion that was forced upon us. The child-ghost,
however, was of quite different disposition.
She had something with her that seemed to take
the place of a doll, and would sit with it by the
hour in a corner of the room where we all
were, at times crooning to it in a queer, far-
away, but still quite audible voice. It was a
"creepy" thing to hear, but strangely sweet and
[147]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
musical, for all that. On rarer occasions she
would sing to herself a song, but one in which
no words could be distinguished; in all her ut-
terances, indeed, there was never anything that
sounded like speech. She was not quite sure of
Herself in this song. Now and then she would
strike a wrong note; then silence for a moment,
and she would begin the song again. As she
reached the note at which she had before
stumbled, she would pause, then take the note
correctly, give a pleased little laugh, and go
on successfully to the end.
This extraordinary performance was re-
peated on many occasions. One bright Sunday
afternoon I was sitting in talk with my wife in
her room, when this weird chant started up in
the farthest corner. I listened through the
whole of the usual rendition the beginning,
the false note, the return for a new trial, the
note rightly struck, the satisfied laugh, and so
on to the conclusion. Then the thing began all
over again.
I said, rather impatiently: "Don't sing that
again ! Can't you see that we want to talk?"
"Oh, you shouldn't have said that!" re-
monstrated my wife. "She has gone away"
and in fact the song had stopped, and it was
many days before we heard it again.
[148]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
I have not particularly mentioned our friend
in this recital of minor happenings, although
he had his share in most of them, and carried
himself throughout in a plucky and admirable
manner. We were very fond of him, as he evi-
dently was of us to endure adventures with us
which he must have found uncongenial, to say
the least he being a man of quiet tastes, and
one not prone to go out of his way in search
for excitement. An incident that happened one
night, however, came very near to ending his
residence with us.
At about eight o'clock of an evening in June
(the time of year when the days are at their
shortest in that latitude), he and I were smok-
ing and chatting in my "den," my wife being
in her own room at the front of the house. All
at once the two dogs who were chained in the
back yard broke out in a terrific chorus of bark-
ing. They were ordinarily very quiet animals,
and whenever they gave tongue (which was
only when some tradesman or other person
came upon the premises by the back gate) it
was merely by a yelp or two to inform us that
they were attending to their duty as guardians.
On this occasion, however, one might have
thought there were a dozen dogs behind the
house instead of two: they seemed fairly
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
frantic, and there was a strange note in their
voices such as I had never heard before.
"What on earth is the matter with those
dogs?" I exclaimed. "One might think they
were being murdered."
"They are certainly tremendously excited
about something," my companion rejoined:
"let's go out and see what the trouble is" and
he was out of the room, and unlocking the back
door, before I could leave my easy-chair to
accompany him. As I reached the hall I was
just in time to see the large pane of ground-
glass with which the upper half of the outside
door was fitted, fly inward shattered into a
thousand pieces by a jagged fragment of rock
as large as my fist, which whizzed by my
friend's head with such force that it went by
me also, and brought up against the front door
at the other end of the hall. My companion,
who had escaped death or a serious injury by
the smallest possible margin, fell back against
the wall with his hands over his face, which had
been cut in several places by the flying glass;
but he quickly recovered himself, and when I
had hastened back to my room and provided
myself with a revolver, we rushed together into
the open air. Nothing was to be seen, nor could
we hear a sound. We went into the street,
[I JO]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
which was lighted by scattered gas lamps, and
listened for retreating footsteps, but the street
was vacant as far as we could see in both direc-
tions, and the silence of the night was like that
of the grave. We dragged the dogs out of the
kennels to which they had retreated, and turned
them loose in the hope that their peculiar in-
telligence would enable them to guide us to
some lurking miscreant in the shrubbery about
the yard or amid the trees and vines in the ob-
scurity of the orchard: but they were tremb-
ling as if in abject fear, we could get no help
from them, and when released they bolted into
their kennels again and hid themselves in the
straw at the farthest corners. It was evident
that they had seen something that terrified them
greatly, but what it was we could only surmise.
The Scotch terrier was a gentle creature, and
his evident alarm did not so much surprise me.
The fox-terrier, on the other hand, was full of
"bounce" and confidence, and nothing in canine
or human shape had any terrors for him.
When it came to devils, that might be another
matter an idea that passed through my mind
at the time, but did not then find lodgment. It
was strengthened in view of another incident
which occurred later, and which I shall describe
in a subsequent chapter.
CHAPTER VIII
THE DEAD WALKS
THE incident of the flying stone and the
broken glass much disquieted us, and furnished
matter of anxious discussion for several days.
It gave us the first hint we had received that
the influences that seemed to be busy about us
included any of a malign or violent nature, and
inspired a lively apprehension of other sinister
happenings of which it might be the forerunner.
There was, of course, the doubt as to whether
the affair might not be due to human agency;
had it stood by itself, no other idea would have
occurred to us : but although we tried to
satisfy ourselves that some reckless or malicious
person was the culprit, the attendant circum-
stances seemed to point away from that opinion.
The force with which the missile was hurled in-
dicated that no mischievous boy could have
aimed it, while it appeared incredible that any
man would take the risk of passing the clamor-
ous dogs and crossing the wide yard to take a
point-blank shot at the door as the direct
course of the stone showed had been done.
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
Nor could it have been thrown from any con-
siderable distance: the laundry outhouse be-
fore mentioned, was not more than thirty feet
from the door and protected it from any attack
outside that limit. It was the behavior of the
dogs, however, that puzzled us the most. In-
stead of welcoming our coming, as would
naturally have been the case, they shrunk from
the touch of our hands and gave no heed to
our voices, but shook and shivered as if in an
ague fit.
In spite of these facts, the event so much
smacked of the material, and was so opposed
in its nature to anything else that had happened,
that we hesitated to attribute it to the agency
of unseen powers; and as the week that fol-
lowed was free of any alarming incident we
decided to keep it out of the debit column of
our account with the "spooks," and give them
the credit of having had no part in it.
It was, I think (although I am uncertain
about the exact date) about a fortnight after
the stone-throwing episode, that I came home
one afternoon much earlier than usual; and as
my wife met me at the door I saw at once that
look upon her face which had on several occa-
sions advised me that something quite out of
[153]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
the ordinary had happened during my absence.
It is hardly necessary for me to mention, in
view of the record already made of the ex-
perience she had shared with me in that ill-
omened house, that among her notable charac-
teristics were high courage and self-control.
On this occasion, however, her appearance
alarmed me greatly. There was a presence of
fear upon her; she was distraite and nervous,
despite her evident effort to appear uncon-
cerned; and the strange expression which I had
often seen when her gaze seemed to follow the
movements of shapes invisible to my grosser
sense, still clouded her eyes.
I did not at once question her, although I
was consumed with curiosity, and tried to quiet
her evident, although suppressed, excitement by
talking of the commonplace incidents of my
day in town. But it was apparent that she did
not hear a word I said: indeed, her attitude
and manner were as of one who listened to
another voice than mine; and I soon lapsed
into silence and sat watching her with a grow-
ing anxiety.
Suddenly the obsession with which she
seemed to be contending passed away: she
turned impulsively to me and cried :
"We must leave this house ! I have endured
[IJ4]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
all I can ! I will not remain here another day!"
"I knew that something was wrong the
moment I saw you," I said. "Something very
bad has happened do you want to tell me what
it is?"
"Oh, I cannot, I cannot!" she exclaimed.
"It is too horrible; it would frighten you to
death if I should tell you!"
"Anything that you have gone through, I
ought to be able to hear of," I replied. "I
think you had better tell me your story, and get
it off your mind, before our friend comes
home."
"Oh, he must never know it!" she cried.
"Promise me that you will not tell him!"
"Of course I will not tell him, if you do not
wish it," I assented. "And now let me know
what has alarmed you."
During our conversation I had imagined all
sorts of terrifying incidents as having occurred
but my wife's next words sent a shiver
through me.
"Deeming has been here," she said.
"Deeming!" I exclaimed; "that devil!"
"Yes," she replied. "He did not try to harm
me, but if there is a Hell he came from it. Oh,
he is so wretched and unhappy! In spite of the
horror of seeing him, I was never so sorry for
[155]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
any creature in all my life. Just to look at him
was enough to make me know what is meant
by 'the torments of the damned' such awful
suffering! I shall never get his sad and fright-
ful face out of my mind!" and she covered
her face with her hands, as if still seeing the
terrific vision that she had described.
When she had partially recovered her com-
posure, she began at the beginning and told me
the whole story. It so impressed me that, even
at this distance of time, I remember perfectly
every detail of the narration, and almost its
every word, and with this recollection I set it
down.
"It was about an hour before you came
home," she began, and I was sewing at the
front window of my room, when I heard the
latch of the gate click. I looked up, and saw
that someone was coming into the yard. It was
a man a peddler, I thought and I went to
the door to tell him that I did not wish to buy
anything. The door was open, although the
outside screen door was shut and bolted. I had
no idea at all that it was not a living human
being; but when I got to the door and looked
at the figure, which was standing just inside the
gate and facing the house, I knew it was nothing
that belonged to 'this world. It was misty and
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
indistinct, and I could not make out any de-
tails of face or costume, except that the clothes
seemed mean and cheap.
"I don't know how long I stood there," she
continued, after a pause; "but by-and-by the
Thing began to come toward me up the walk.
It didn't seem exactly to walk it just moved,
I cannot tell you how; and as it got nearer, al-
though I couldn't distinguish the features, I
began to see the clothes quite clearly."
"What were the clothes like?" I here inter-
rupted.
"They were the strangest-looking things I
ever saw on anybody," she replied. "There
was no style or fit to them, and they seemed
more like clothes made of flour sacks than any-
thing else very coarse and ungainly. And an
odd thing about them was that they had queer
triangular black designs on them here and there.
But the cap the figure wore was the strangest
thing of all : it was of dingy white cloth and
fitted close to the head, and it had a sort of
flap hanging down behind almost to the shoul-
ders: what did you say?" for I had uttered
a sudden ejaculation.
"Nothing," I replied: "please go on."
"Well," she continued, "the figure came up
to the two steps leading to the veranda, and I
[157]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
think it would have come up to the door; but
I said, 'Stop!' and it stood still where it was.
It was still indistinct, and I felt as though it
strained my eyes to see it; the face was vague,
and did not seem like any face I had ever seen
before.
"I said: 'Who are you, and what do you
want?'
"The Thing held out something it had in its
hand, but I couldn't make out what it was, and
made the strangest reply. It said: 'Madame,
do you want to buy some soap?' '
"Gracious powers!" I exclaimed: "It was
Deeming? and he asked you to buy soap?"
"I did not know it was Deeming until later,"
replied my wife; "but I have told you what he
said in his exact words. What could he mean
by offering to sell me soap?"
"I have an idea about that which I will tell
you of presently. But first let me hear the rest
of the story."
"Well," she went on, "I told him I did not
want any soap. 'But,' he said, 'I must sell some,
and I beg of you to buy it' and when I again
refused, his voice took on the saddest, most
pathetic tone, and he said: 'I thought you
would. You were kinder to me when you saw
me in the jail.' 'I never saw you before in my
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
life!' I said for truly I did not recognize
him even then ; but he said : 'Oh, yes, you have,
and you tried to get Miss Rounsfell to come
and see me.' 'What!' I cried; 'are you Deem-
ing?' and he said: 'Yes, madame, I am that
unfortunate man.'
"I don't quite know what I said after that.
I felt as though I should die of fright, and I
think I screamed to him to go away, that the
thought of his dreadful crimes horrified me so
that I could not look at him, and that he must
never come to me again. He looked at me re-
proachfully and turned away. I watched him
go to the gate, open it as anyone might have
done, and close it after him then he vanished
instantly, the moment he had got into the
street. But I know he'll be back! He is suf-
fering, and I am the only one he can reach. I
don't know what he wants, but I cannot see
him again. It will kill me or drive me mad
if we stay here !"
I certainly felt that I had parted with my
own wits by the time this astounding tale was
concluded. It was so awful in its facts and in
its suggestions, its details combined in such a
mixture of the hideous and the grotesque, that
I looked anxiously at my wife in the fear that
[159]
what I personally knew to have taken place in
the house had upset her mind, and produced
this dreadful hallucination. But how to attri-
bute to hallucination certain items in the story
which referred to facts with which 7 was ac-
quainted, but of which she was ignorant until
her experience of the afternoon had revealed
them to her?
At her express desire I had told her nothing
of the execution which I had witnessed, and
she had strictly refrained from reading about
it in the newspapers : yet she had described
accurately, and in all its details, the garb he
wore on the scaffold the uncouth trousers and
jacket of sacking, stamped with the "Broad
Arrow" that marked both it and its wearer to
be the property of the Crown, and the ghastly
"death cap," with its pendent flap behind which
was pulled forward and dropped over his face
just before the trap was sprung!
And the soap! that, as I explained to her,
seemed the most gruesome feature of all. My
theory regarding it may have been fanciful:
yet what was this poor bedeviled ghost more
likely to have with him than a sample of the
material that had been used upon the rope
that hung him, to make it smooth and pliant,
and swift of action in the noose?
[i 60]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
But why had he wished to sell it, and what
help could he hope to gain thereby? He had
evidently come, not to frighten, but to crave
relief from some distressed condition, and
when he failed to gain it he had gone away
disappointed, but in sorrow rather than in
anger.
When morning came, after a night of which
we spent the greater part in discussion of this
new and disconcerting development, my wife
surprised me by saying that she had changed
her mind about leaving the house, and had de-
cided to remain. I strongly remonstrated
against her exposing herself to a more than
possible danger, but she continued firm in her
resolution said she was convinced that the
apparition had no purpose to harm or even
alarm her, and that it might be her duty, as
it would certainly be her effort, if it came again,
to ascertain the cause of its disquiet, and, if
possible, remove it.
This decision caused me great uneasiness for
several days : but as the spectre did not return
I began to think that its first visit was also its
last, and began to interest myself anew in the
cantrips with which the house goblins continued
to amuse themselves and mystify us.
[161]
CHAPTER IX
THE GOBLINS OF THE KITCHEN
AMONG the things that impressed us amid
the general goings-on about the house was the
evidence of a certain sort of humor in the make-
up of the influences that were seemingly respon-
sible for them. That this humor did not
particularly appeal to our taste, I must admit;
it seemed distinctly lacking in subtlety, and sug-
gested that its authors might be the spirits of
certain disembodied low comedians of the
bladder-and-slapstick variety. To some such
agency, at least, we came to attribute the phe-
nomena of the slamming doors, jingling door
bell, and occasional upsetting of the parlor;
and from time to time other things occurred to
break this monotony of elfish sprightliness, and
to show us that our spookish friends were not
mere creatures of routine, but were full of
waggish resource. The indoor incidents that I
have already narrated may seem to have borne
the ancient ghostly or "poltergeistic" trade-
mark, and to have been contrived and employed
after a conventional and long-approved plan :
[162]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
but if there is anywhere a Shadowland Patent
Office, the originators of the pranks I am about
to describe should be enjoying its protection
for their ingenious inventions.
I was sitting in my room at about noon, one
day, awaiting a call to the luncheon which my
wife was preparing. Suddenly I heard her call
out from the front hall: "Come here, quick!
I have something queer to show you !" I went
out at once, and found her standing at the door
of the dark chamber I have previously de-
scribed, wherein we were accustomed to keep
milk, butter, and other such provisions, for the
sake of coolness.
"Look in there," said my wife and I looked
in accordingly; but I observed nothing unusual,
and so reported.
"Look up," she said again. I did so, and
saw a large milk pan resting motionless in the
air just under the ceiling several feet above my
head and just beneath the perforated opening
of the ventilator. I naturally inquired how it
had got there.
"I hardly know," replied my wife; "the thing
was done so quickly. The pan is full of milk,
and was resting on the floor of the hollow space
when I came to get some of the milk for our
lunch. I had taken up the pan, when it was
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
snatched from my hands and floated up to the
place where you now see it."
"This is something new," I remarked, "and
rather interesting. I hope the spooks are not
drinking the milk" and as I spoke, the pan
began deliberately to descend. When it was
within reach I caught hold of the handle on
each side, and tried to accelerate its motion.
It stopped immediately, and although I em-
ployed considerable force I could not budge it.
(The effect was not at all as if I were pulling
against a physical force like my own; the pan
was as immovable and inert as though it were
a component part of the masonry of the
chamber about it.) I stood aside, therefore;
whereupon it began to float down again, and
shortly settled in its former place on the floor,
touching it so lightly that the contact did not
cause even a ripple upon the surface of the
milk. We tasted that milk very carefully
before venturing to use it for our repast, but
found nothing wrong with it.
A few evenings after the episode of the
levitating milk pan, we all three went into Mel-
bourne after dinner to attend the theatre. After
the performance and while on the way to our
train we passed a cook-shop, in whose window
r 164]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
was displayed a quantity of roasted duck and
teal, the game season then being at its height.
They looked so appetizing that I was moved to
go in and purchase a pair of teal for a shilling
or two (these birds were astonishingly plenti-
ful, and correspondingly cheap in Australia at
the time), had them put into a paper box, and
carried them home with the view to a light sup-
per before we should go to bed. As it seemed
hardly worth while to use the dining-room, we
went into the kitchen; where I put the teal on
a platter and prepared to carve them while my
wife was arranging the plates and necessary
cutlery. The carving knife was in, its usual
place in the knife-box, but I could not find the
fork that went with it, and so remarked.
"Why," said my wife, "it's there with the
knife, of course." She spoke with conviction
and authority, for among her conspicuous traits
was a love for orderliness in all things pertain-
ing to the household.
Nevertheless, the fork was not there; nor
could we find it, although we overhauled every-
thing in the cupboard in search for it. Mean-
while our friend, actuated by the laudable pur-
pose of keeping out of the way of our prepa-
rations, was standing near the door, with his
hands in his pockets.
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
"I see it!" he suddenly exclaimed, and with-
drawing one hand from its confinement, he
pointed upward. My eye followed the direc-
tion thus indicated, and I also saw the missing
utensil : it was stuck into the upper part of the
window casing, just under the ceiling, and a
folded paper was impaled upon its tines. I got
upon the table and took the fork from its posi-
tion. It required considerable force to do so,
for the tines were deeply imbedded in the wood-
work. Then I unfolded the paper. It was
about four inches square, and drawn upon it,
with much spirit and a strict adherence to the
principles of realism in art, were a skull and
crossbones. These were done in a red medium
which at first we thought was blood, but which
we finally decided to be ink, since it retained its
color for weeks, and did not darken, as blood
would have done. There was no writing what-
ever on the sheet; therefore we had no reason
to regard it as an attention from the "Bllack
Hand" another reason being that we had
never heard of the "Black Hand" at that time.
We had no red ink in the house, nor any paper
like that upon which the design was drawn
and nothing ever occurred to throw any light
on the matter.
This incident like that of the hurled stone
[166]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
seemed so palpably referable to human
agency that it revived the rather feeble hope
we had from time to time entertained that we
might, after all, be the victims of some in-
genious trickery. Therefore our friend and I
devoted one afternoon to a close search of the
house, outhouse, and the premises generally,
particularly exploring the dusty attic for con-
cealed machinery in short, for anything that
might give a clue to the mystery. We emerged
from the attic looking like a couple of sweeps,
but this was the only result achieved; nor did
we accomplish anything else in all our investiga-
tions. As for the attic, nobody could get into
it otherwise than by bringing the ladder into
the house from the outhouse and raising it to
the trap-door in the ceiling of the bathroom.
As to outside origin of the various pranks that
had been played upon us, we could see no way
in which they could be performed in view of
the fact that we had every facility to observe the
approach of any mischief-maker: since we
had a wide street on two sides of us, and the
houses on each of the other two sides were at
least a hundred yards away. The fact that
most of the "manifestations" with which we
had been favored had occurred in the daytime
added to the puzzle; the only two things that
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
we could explain as perhaps the work of beings
like ourselves (the episodes of the thrown
stone and of the fork) had occurred under the
cover of darkness: therefore, hoping that,
with these data to go upon, we might get to the
cause of our annoyances, we set a trap with the
hope that if any practical joker were at work,
he might walk into it.
In furtherance of this purpose I sent my wife
and our friend to the theatre, a few evenings
later, accompanying them to the railway station
after extinguishing all the lights in the house in
order to create the impression in the mind of
any possible watcher of our movements that we
were all three equally on pleasure bent in town,
and returning by a devious route which finally
brought me by a scramble over the orchard
fence to the back door. I quietly let myself
into the house, arranged an easy chair at a
point where I could command the hall in both
directions, and sat down amid utter darkness,
with my revolver in my jacket pocket and my
shot gun, heavily charged in both barrels, across
my knees. I was fully determined to test the
materiality or otherwise of any shape that
might present itself, by turning my artillery
loose thereon without any preliminary word of
challenge; but although my vigil lasted until
[168]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
midnight, I was oBliged to report to my return-
ing companions that nothing whatever had hap-
pened.
I may add that that evening was the longest
and least agreeable I ever experienced.
It may be that the incident with which I shall
close this rather rambling chapter was promoted
by the same humorists who devised the conceit
of the floating milk pan, and was employed as
a means of enabling us to recognize therein the
authors of the former whimsicality. The two
pleasantries seemed, at all events, to have been
conceived in the same spirit, and although both
were equally odd and purposeless, the superior
elaborateness of the second distinctly showed
an advance over the first, and gained our ap-
plause accordingly. There was no connection
between these episodes in point of time; in
fact, the second occurred several months after
the first, in the hottest part of the year.
Our friend being a Briton by birth and an
Australian by adoption, he had enjoyed rather
a narrow experience in dietetics, particularly in
the vegetable line. During the early part of
our housekeeping we had found much difficulty
in securing for our table any garden delicacies
outside the conventional list of potatoes, "vege-
[169]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
table marrow," and cauliflower until Provi-
dence brought to our back door an amiable
Chinese huckster, who, with several com-
patriots, had established a small truck-farm in
the neighborhood. Earnest representations re-
garding our vegetableless conditions inspired
his interest, and the promise of good prices
awakened his cupidity; and as a result of the
agreement of these motives it was not long
before our table greatly improved.
And I cannot help saying although this is
a digression that our often-expressed words
of satisfaction to our purveyor stimulated him
to produce and bring to us everything of the
best that he could raise. In his way he was an
artist, with an artist's craving for praise so
that now and then he would appear with a gift
of some new product for us to try, and occa-
sionally with a small packet of choice tea or
some other Celestial delicacy, for which he
would invariably refuse payment.
"You should not bring me these things," my
wife said to him one day. "You can't afford
them."
"Me likee bling 'em," he replied. "An' me
likee you. You no ploud. Mos' lady too
ploud" and swinging his baskets to his shoul-
der he departed.
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
It was my wife's delight to tempt our friend's
appetite with all sorts of culinary novelties,
which the new and more liberal order of things
allowed her to prepare. With true British con-
servatism he would venture gingerly upon an
unfamiliar dish, admit it "wasn't half bad,"
and end by eating as much of it as both of us
others together. It was finally discovered that
a particularly effective way of appeal to his
nature was through the medium of baked
stuffed tomatoes : of these he seemed never to
have enough, and, as a consequence, they were
frequently upon our bill-of-fare during the
summer. It seems incredible and lamentable
that a man should have got well into the
fifties without ever having eaten a baked stuffed
tomato: such, however, was our friend's un-
happy case, and my wife made strenuous efforts
to ameliorate it.
"I have a treat for you to-night," she said
to our friend. "Guess what it is."
"Baked stuffed tomatoes," he responded
promptly and baked stuffed tomatoes it was.
"Now," continued my wife, "you two men
must eat your dinner in the kitchen to-night.
The woman who cooks for me is ill to-day, and
you will have to take pot-luck. I have let the
fire in the stove go out, and have been using
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
the gas range; so you will find the kitchen
cooler than the dining-room, and by eating there
you will save me work, besides."
So we went into the kitchen, where we found
the table already laid for us.
"Before we sit down," said my wife, turning
smilingly to our friend, "I am going to show
you the treat you were so clever in guessing.
But you are not to have it at once; that will
come after the cold meat. The tomatoes are
nice and hot, and I have put them in here to
keep them from cooling too fast:" and with
these words she kneeled upon the floor and
opened the iron door which shut in a wide but
shallow cavity in the masonry that formed the
base of the open fireplace.
This fireplace was an unusual feature in a
modern kitchen, and we, at least, had never
put it to any use. It projected slightly into the
room, and on the sides of it, and against the
wall in each case, were, respectively, the cook
stove and gas range. Under its hearth, and but
a few inches above the level of the room, was
the hollow space I have mentioned I believe
it was what is sometimes called a "Dutch
oven" eight inches high, perhaps, two feet
wide, and eighteen inches deep. From this
space my wife partly drew out for our inspec-
[172]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
tion an iron baking pan, in which an even dozen
of deliciously cooked, golden-and-red, crumb-
stuffed tomatoes were sociably shouldering each
other: then, after hearing our expressions of
satisfaction with their appearance, she pushed
the pan back again, closed the iron door, and
sat down with us to dinner.
The table stood against the wall, directly
under the window. My wife was seated at the
end next to the fireplace, I was opposite her,
and our friend was at the side, his back to the
hall door and his face to the window. Thus he
and my wife were each within two feet of the
fireplace and the chamber under it, and the iron
door guarding our treasure was in direct range
of my own eyes from the position I occupied.
Having despatched the earlier portions of
the repast, my wife arose, removed the used
dishes to a side table, set others in their places,
and with the remark: "Now for the to-
matoes !" swung open the iron door under the
fireplace. The interior, however, was abso-
lutely empty: the tomatoes, and the heavy
baking pan that had held them, had disap-
peared 1
Our friend and I sprang from our chairs in
astonishment and incredulity but the fact was
undoubted; the treat which had been so much
[173]
TRUE TALES OF THE' WEIRD
anticipated had been snatched, as it were, 'from
our very lips. Our friend turned from one to
the other of us a face so comically set between
wonder and disappointment that I burst out
laughing in spite of myself. But my ill-timed
levity was promptly checked by my wife, who
was at the moment giving a competent imita-
tion of a lioness robbed of her whelps.
"Oh!" she cried, seemingly addressing noth-
ing in particular, although she might have felt
as I did that she was speaking to a derisive
audience; "that is too bad of you! To steal
my tomatoes, when I worked over them so
long! Bring them back instantly!" But they
remained invisible, and over all a sarcastic
silence brooded. Then she turned upon us un-
fortunate men.
"Have you been playing me a trick?" she
demanded. "Do you know what has become
of those tomatoes?" "Certainly not" this to
both questions. Neither of us had moved from
his chair since we sat down to dinner and she
had shown us the pan and its contents. Nor
had she, for that matter, except when she had
risen to change the dishes, and even then she
had not left the room.
All that could be said was that the tomatoes
had been exhibited, and then had been shut up
[174]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
again behind the door. There was no possible
doubt about that it was equally certain that
they had vanished. Very well, then let us
search for them ! This we did, and with great
thoroughness, all over the house, and in every
part of the grounds; the outhouse at the back
was also carefully inspected. I even got the
ladder and went, in turn, upon the roofs of
both structures, looked down the chimneys:
"nothing doing" (to employ an Oriental ex-
pression not then, unhappily, in use) ; nowhere
any trace of the missing pan or of the tomatoes.
We gave it up finally, and went back to our
dessert and coffee. My wife refused to be
satisfied that the tomatoes were actually gone.
She was constantly getting up to open the iron
door and view the emptiness behind it as if
she expected the apparent dematerialization of
the pan and tomatoes to be reversed, while
our friend looked on with an aspect of forced
resignation.
I left them after a time, and went out for an
after-dinner smoke on the back doorstep. I
had hardly lighted my pipe when I heard a cry
blended of two voices in the kitchen a shriek
from my wife, and a mildly profane ejaculation
from our friend. Rushing in, I saw an aston-
ishing sight our friend, with staring eyes and
[175]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
blanched face, supporting himself against the
table as if staggered by a blow, my wife kneel-
ing in front of the open iron door beneath the
fireplace, and the baking pan and its dozen
tomatoes lying before her on the floor!
It was some time before I could get a co-
herent account of what had happened. It was
finally developed, however, that after I had left
the room the conversation continued on the
inexplicable conduct of the tomatoes. "I can't
believe they are not there !" my wife asserted,
and, for the dozenth time or so, she again knelt
on the floor and again opened the door.
"I was standing right behind her," said our
friend, "and saw her swing the door open, but
there was nothing inside. At the same instant
I heard a thump on the floor, and there the
whole outfit was, just in front of her. I don't
know where the things came from perhaps
down the chimney: at any rate, one moment
there was nothing there ; the next, the pan and
the tomatoes were on the floor."
After we had regained our composure we
considered what we should do with the to-
matoes. Our friend said he didn't think he
wanted any of them, and I confessed to an
equal indifference so capricious, and often in-
fluenced by slight circumstances, is the appetite !
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
My wife, as usual, settled the matter. "Take
them away!" she said. "Throw them into the
garbage barrel I" which was accordingly done ;
melancholy end of a culinary triumph ! Yet we
ought at least to have tasted those tomatoes:
under the title "tomato a la diable" they might
have found a place in the cook books.
CHAPTER X
A SPECTRAL BURGLARY
I CANNOT but consider it an interesting cir-
cumstance that the varied happenings in the
House on the Hill seemed to arrange them-
selves into two rather strictly defined classes
the sportive and the terrible and that the
respective influences responsible for them ap-
peared carefully to refrain from interfering
with each others' functions or prerogatives. As
among our earthly acquaintances we number
some who are entirely deficient in appreciation
of the ridiculous, and others so flippant as to
have no sense of the serious, so, it seemed to
us, the unseen friends who so diversely made
their presence known were in like manner to
be differentiated.
In this connection another singular fact is
to be noted. While the clownish performers in
the juggling of the milk pan, the prestidigita-
tion of the baked stuffed tomatoes, and other
such specialties, always remained invisible, even
to my wife, what I may call the more dramatic
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
manifestations were accompanied by appari-
tions that were the evident actors in them. It
also occurred to us that if the "acts" that were
staged for our benefit were to be regarded as
presenting what passed for entertainment in
the Dark World, there must be drawn there,
as here, a sharp line of distinction between
vaudeville and "the legitimate;" incidentally,
too, it would seem that ghostly audiences were
like many in the flesh in their capacity for
being easily entertained.
However that may be, we somehow came to
the opinion that while the more impressive of
the phenomena with which we were favored
appeared to be due to the action of beings that
had aforetime been upon the earth for in
every such case the attending spectres were to
be identified as simulacra of persons whose pre-
vious existence was known to some one (and
generally all) of us, the tricksy antics that
seemed to come from Nowhere might find their
impulse in elementary entities or forces which
had not yet exercised their activities upon the
earth plane (and, indeed, might never be in-
tended to do so), and thus had never assumed
a material form. I do not put this forward as
a theory, but simply as a passing impression
that lightly brushed our minds: and to repel
[179]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
the temptation of being led into the seductive
regions of speculation, I will re-assume my role
as a mere narrator of facts and describe a quite
inexplicable affair that occurred near the close
of our tenancy.
The bedroom which I have before described
as being at the front of the house, with two win-
dows overlooking the veranda, was occupied
at night by my wife and myself. Between the
windows was a ponderous mahogany dressing
table, surmounted by a large mirror. This
article of furniture was so broad that it ex-
tended on either side beyond the inner casing
of the windows, and so heavy that it required
the united strength of both of us to move it
as, during the cleaning of the room, we some-
times had to do. The windows were pro-
tected by wire screens, secured by stout bolts
which were shot into sockets in the woodwork,
and fitted flush with the surface of the outer
window casing. In February the time of
which I am writing the weather was at its
hottest, and we slept at night with the windows
open, trusting our security to the strong wire
screens.
One morning, after an untroubled night's
sleep, I awoke soon after sunrise, and from my
[180]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
place in bed, nearest the window, looked lazily
out upon the day. Still half-asleep, I lay for
some time without noting anything unusual;
but as my sensibilities revived I observed that
the screen was missing from the left-hand win-
dow, and that the dressing table, instead of
standing in its usual place against the wall, was
turned half-way around, and projected at right
angles into the room. I was out of bed in an
instant, and at the window looking out of
which I saw the screen lying flat on the floor
of the veranda. I went out and examined it.
It was uninjured, and the bolts still projected
from either side to show that they had not been
drawn; but two deep grooves in the woodwork
of the casing indicated that the screen had
been dragged outward from its place. How
this damage could have been done to the stout
casing, without marring in the least the com-
paratively light frame of the screen, I could by
no means understand particularly as there
was no possible way by which one could get a
hold upon the outside of the screen except by
the use of screws or gimlets to act as holds for
one's hands; and of these there were no marks
whatever.
I had made this examination so quietly that
I had not awakened my wife : now, however,
[181]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
I returned to the bedroom and aroused her.
Her first thought, on seeing the condition of
affairs, was that burglars had visited us: my
idea had been the same until I had observed the
peculiar facts that I have just noted. Tacitly
accepting this theory for the moment, I
assisted her in making an inventory of our
portable valuables. While I satisfied myself
that my purse and watch were safe, my wife
took her keys from under the pillow (where
she always kept them at night) and went to the
dressing table, in one of whose drawers was
her jewel box. The drawer was locked, and
so was the jewel box, and the latter, on being
opened, seemed to hold all its usual contents
intact.
"No," she 'said, after mentally checking off
the various articles; "everything is here; noth-
ing has been taken. Wait! I am wrong; one
thing is missing. Do you remember that
rhinestone brooch in the shape of a butterfly
you bought for me one evening in Paris, four
years ago?"
"Why, yes," I replied; "I got it in a shop
under the arcades on the Rue de Rivoli, and
paid five francs for it. You don't mean to say
that the thieves, or our friends the 'spooks,' or
whoever it may be, have taken that trifle and
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
left your diamond rings and other things really
valuable untouched!"
Yet such appeared to be the case the cheap
and unimportant brooch was the only thing
unaccounted for, nor had anything else been dis-
turbed throughout the house. It seemed in-
credible that any burglar who had passed merely
the kindergarten stage of schooling in his pro-
fession could have been deceived into suppos-
ing that this commonplace article de Pans had
any value; besides, why should this have been
taken and the real jewelry that lay with it in
the same box have been left? And how had it
been extracted from the locked box inside the
locked dressing table? The keys of both were
on the same ring under my wife's pillow, and
although a robber might extract them without
awaking her, it seemed unreasonable to suppose
he would take the additional risk of replacing
them when he had completed his work. But
for these and other questions that presented
themselves we could find no satisfactory an-
swers.
We ate our breakfast in a state of mild ex-
pectation that the brooch might be returned as
mysteriously as it had been taken. The ad-
venture seemed to be constructed on lines
similar to those laid down in the affair of the
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
baked stuffed tomatoes, and we were disposed
to credit it to the same agency; but if the
sprites who were responsible for the former
prank had contrived this later one also, they
either intended to carry it no further, or were
preparing a different denouement. This last
conjecture proved to be the true one, but we
had to wait a long time for the fact to be de-
veloped.
We gave our "spooks" sufficient time to con-
summate their joke (if, indeed, they were re-
sponsible for it), and finally concluding that
they were not inclined to embrace the oppor-
tunity, we again took under consideration the
burglar theory, and I went to the local police
station to report the occurrence. Two heavy-
weight constables returned with me to the house
and gravely inspected the premises. Their
verdict was speedy and unanimous: "House-
breakers." There had been similar breakings-
and-enterings in the town recently therefore
the facts were obvious. I showed them the
drawer and jewel box, and described the sin-
gular and modest spoil of the supposed thieves;
I also exhibited the unmarred frame of the
screen and the scarred window casing, and
asked them how they explained that. This
puzzled them, but they fell back easily upon the
[184]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
obvious and practical. "Housebreakers," they
repeated. 'We shall make a report" and
marched away as ponderously as they had
come. I did not acquaint them with the goings-
on in that house for a year past: had I done
so. my prompt apprehension as a suspicious
character would doubtless have followed.
In July of the following year I went from
Philadelphia, where I was then living, to spend
a few days with my wife at Savin Rock (near
New Haven, Connecticut) , where I had rented
a cottage for the summer. The morning after
my arrival I was awakened by my wife, who
had risen but the moment before, and who, as
I opened my eyes, exclaimed excitedly: "Look!
Look at what is on the bureau!" Following
with my eyes the direction of her pointed finger,
I saw upon the bureau the pin-cushion into
which I had stuck my scarf pin the night before,
beside which, and in the centre of the cushion,
appeared the butterfly brooch which I had last
previously seen in Australia, sixteen months
before!
"Where did you find it?" I asked, forgetting
for the moment, and in my half-awake condi-
tion, the incident in which it had figured as
above described.
[185]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
"I didn't find it," my wife replied; "it is less
than a minute ago that I saw it. It was not on
the pin cushion last night; how in the world
did it come here?" "And from where?"
thus I completed the question.
Neither of us had any reply to this: so I
merely advanced the suggestion that it was
pleasant to think that our spookish friends had
not altogether forgotten us, although on our
part we had no desire to cultivate their better
acquaintance. This expression of sentiment
may have had its effect: at any rate, with the
return of the brooch came an end to the mys-
tery of "The House on the Hill."
[186]
CHAPTER XI
"REST, REST, PERTURBED SPIRIT!"
I THINK it was because such lighter incidents
as those that I have described in the two pre-
ceding chapters were freely introduced among
more weighty happenings, and thus gave a cer-
tain measure of relief from them, that we man-
aged to fill out our term in the House on the
Hill. Absurd and impish as the general run
of these performances was, there was still an
element of what I may almost call intimacy in
them a sort of appeal, as it were, to look
upon the whole thing as a joke; which, while
they caused us amazement, brought us no real
alarm. Much as has been attributed to the
influence of fear, I believe curiosity to be the
stronger passion; and few days passed without
a fillip being given to our interest by some new
absurdity, while events of graver suggestion
were few and far between.
I need not say that the affair which had been
most sinister and disquieting was the coming
to my wife of the evident apparition of Deem-
ing. This visitation had been so awful and un-
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
earthly that by tacit agreement we had not
spoken of it since the afternoon of its occur-
rence : yet I had never been able to get it out
of my mind, and every day I spent in town was
darkened by forebodings of what might happen
at home before my return. Each night as I
came in sight of the house I looked anxiously
for the figure of my wife standing on the
veranda to welcome me, and each night I drew
a breath of relief as I saw in her serene and
smiling face that my apprehensions had been
vain; and so I came by degrees to dismiss my
fears in the conviction that that uneasy spirit
had been laid at last.
But this comforting assurance suddenly
failed me, when, one evening about two weeks
after the ghost's first coming, I read in my
wife's eyes that it had appeared again. Yet,
greatly to my relief, I saw no fear in them, but,
rather, an expression of pity. Her manner was
quiet and composed, but I was sure she had
been weeping.
"Yes," she said, in reply to my anxious in-
quiries; "Deeming has been here, and I have
been crying. Oh, that poor tortured, despair-
ing soul! he is in Hell, and one infinitely
worse than that we were taught to believe in; a
Hell where conscience never sleeps, and where
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THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
he sees what he might have been and now
never can be ! He frightened me terribly at
first, but I know he tried not to do so, and now
I am glad he came, for I believe I have helped
him, although I cannot understand how. I feel
weak and faint, for I have been under a great
strain, but I shall be better now that you have
come home and I know, too, that I shall never
see him again. Come into my room, and I
will tell you all about it:" and when I had
done so, and had tried, with some success, to
quiet the agitation that, in spite of her words,
still possessed her, she told me the amazing
story of her experience.
"It was about eleven o'clock this forenoon,"
she began, "and I was alone in the house in
the kitchen. I had been airing the house, and
all the doors and windows were open, although
the screens were in place. All at once I heard
the back gate creak as it always does when it
opens, and 'Schneider' and 'Tokio' ' (such
were the names of our two dogs) "who were
loose in the yard, barking at somebody. I sup-
posed it was the butcher or the grocery man
and looked out the back door and just then
the dogs came tearing by with their tails be-
tween their legs, and disappeared around the
corner of the house. The next instant I saw
[189]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
a man standing just inside the gate. He was
not looking at me, but his eyes seemed to be
following the flight of the dogs; then they
turned to meet mine, and I saw that it was
Deeming. I shut the back door instantly and
locked it then ran to the front door and
fastened that; I wanted to close and bolt the
windows, too, but did not dare do so, for I was
afraid I might look out of any one of them
and see him. I prayed to God that he might
go away, but he did not. I stood in the hall
and saw him move by outside the window of
your room. By-and-by he passed the dining-
room window on the other side of me as I stood
there, having gone completely around the
house. But he did not look in.
"I did not see anything more of him for
some time, and I began to think that he had
given up trying to communicate with me, and
had gone away again. I finally went into the
bedroom and peeped out into the veranda. He
was there, standing near and facing the door!
He did not seem to notice me, and I watched
him for some time. He was dressed just as
he had been before, and looked the same; but
I could see him much more clearly than the first
time, and if I had not known who it was, I
should have thought it was a living man.
[190]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
"I don't know how it was, but as I stood
watching him I found that I wasn't afraid of
him at all. He looked so sad and pitiful, and
stood there so patiently, that I began to feel
as I might toward some poor beggar ; he seemed
just like one, waiting for something to eat.
Then I thought how he had pleaded the other
day for assistance, and how I had turned him
away and although it was like death to face
him again, I went into the hall and opened the
door.
"The screen door was closed and locked, and
we looked at each other through it. I could see
every detail of the figure's face and dress as it
stood there in the bright sunlight: it was
within three feet of me, and it was Deeming's
without a shadow of a doubt.
"I don't know how long I stood there. I
seemed to be in another world, and in a strange
atmosphere which he may have brought with
him. I had to make a strong effort, but finally
succeeded in seeing and thinking clearly, and as
he only looked appealingly at me and seemed
not to be able to say anything, I was the first
to speak.
" 'I know who you are, this time,' I said. 'I
told you never to come here again. Why have
you done so?'
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
" 'Madame,' he replied, 'I have come for
help/
" 'I told you the other day I could do nothing
for you,' I said.
" 'But you can, if you will,' he answered, 'and
there is nobody else I can reach. Don't be
afraid of me I won't hurt you. I need some
one to show me Christian charity, and I thought
you were kind and would help me.' '
"'Christian charity!' 1 I exclaimed, inter-
rupting the recital for the first time : "was that
what he said?"
"Those were his exact words," said my wife;
"and it seemed almost blasphemy for such a
creature t6 use them."
"They seem to me," I commented, "more
like one of those stock phrases of which nearly
every man has some, of one sort or another.
Do you remember, in the letter Deeming wrote
to you from the jail when you could not induce
Miss Rounsfell to come to see him, how he
said he was sorry you did not find her 'as Chris-
tianlike as yourself?' It may be a small point,
but this appeal to your 'Christian charity' seems
to confirm your belief that it was the apparition
of Deeming that made it to you to-day. But
what happened then?"
"Well," said she, taking up the thread of her
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THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
story, "while he was saying this he kept his
eyes on mine great, pleading eyes like those
of a dog: they made me think he was trying
to say things for which he could not find words,
and I don't know why I began to feel sorry
for him.
' 'I don't understand at all what you mean,'
I said. 'Your awful crimes horrify me, and I
can hardly bear to look at you. Why should
you distress me as you do?'
" 'I don't want to distress you,' he re-
plied, 'but I must get out of this horrible
place !'
1 'What do you mean by "this horrible
place"? I cannot understand you.'
" 'I can't make you understand,' he said.
'They won't let me.' I don't know what he
meant by 'they,' but I thought it was some
beings that controlled him, though I could see
nothing. Then he went on in a long, confused
talk which I could only partly follow.
"The substance of what he said was this, as
nearly as I could gather it. His body was
buried in quicklime in a criminal's unmarked
grave; I think he said under the wall of the
jail, but of this I am not sure and as long as
a trace of it remained he was tied down to the
scenes of his crime and punishment. If he could
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TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
only find some one who would pity him, and
show it by 'an act of Christian charity' he
used the expression again his term of suffer-
ing here would be shortened, and he could 'go
on;' that was the way he put it, although he
did not seem to know what it meant. His talk
was vague and rambling, and seemed to me
very incoherent; but his distress was plain
enough, and when he stopped speaking (which
was not for some time, for he kept going back
and repeating as if he were trying to make his
meaning clearer) I had lost all feeling except
that here was a creature in great trouble, and
that I ought to help him if I could.
"When he had finished I asked 'him how I
could show him the 'Christian charity' he had
spoken about.
1 'By giving me something,' he replied,
'and being sorry for me when you give it.'
1 'I am sorry for you,' I said. 'Isn't that
enough?'
'No,' he answered, 'that isn't enough. You
might have done it if you had bought the soap
from me the other day.'
' 'So it is money you want?' I asked.
" 'Yes,' he said, 'money will do, or anything
else that you value.'
'Will you stay where you are until I can get
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
some?' I asked: and he said, yes, he would
stay where he was.
"So I went into my room and took some
money from my purse, and went back and
showed it to him; there was a half-crown, a
shilling and some coppers there they are, on
the dressing table beside you."
"So you did not give them to him, after all?"
I inquired, taking up the coins and examining
them.
"Oh, yes, I did," replied my wife; "and that
is the strangest part of the whole thing.
"As I said, I showed him the money and
asked him if that would do; and he said it
would.
"Then I said: 'I am not going to open this
door. How can I give these coins to you?'
" 'You don't need to open it,' he answered.
'There is a hat rack there behind you, with a
marble shelf in it put them on that shelf.'
"I stepped back to the hat rack and put the
money on the shelf, watching him all the time.
I glanced at the coins an instant as I laid them
down, and when I looked at the door again
there was nobody there. I instantly turned to
the hat rack again, but the shelf was bare the
coins had disappeared, too!
"I rushed to the door to unlock it and run
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
into the street, for I thought Deeming had got
into the house : but just as I had my hand on
the key I heard his voice in front of me.
1 'Don't be afraid,' the voice said. 'I haven't
moved.'
' 'But how did you get the money?' I asked.
'You wouldn't understand if I should tell
you,' replied the voice.
' 'But I can't see you!' I exclaimed.
1 'No,' said the voice, 'and you never will
again. I have gone on.'
1 'But you are not going away with my
money, are you?' I asked. 'Do you need it
now?'
1 'No,' the voice replied, 'I do not need it.
You gave it to me because you pitied me I
have no more use for it.'
" 'Can you give it back to me?' I asked.
" 'I have given it back,' said the voice.
'Look on the hat rack.'
"I heard something jingle behind me, and
as I turned around I saw the coins all lying on
the shelf again."
The conclusion of this prodigious history
found me in a state very nearly approaching
stupefaction. It was not so much the facts
themselves which it embodied as the sugges-
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THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
tions they inspired that appalled me, and the
glimpse they seemed to afford of mysteries the
human race has for ages shrinkingly guessed at,
chilled me to the marrow of my bones. "Can
such things be?" was the question I asked my-
self again and again as I struggled to regain
my composure: and although this experience
seemed a natural and fitting sequence in the
drama that had been enacted in that house
under my own eyes, I am free to say I could
not on the instant credit it.
My wife detected my hesitation at once, and
said:
"I see you cannot believe what I have told
you, and I do not wonder at it: but it is true,
for all that."
"I know you think so," I replied; "and in
view of the very many other strange events you
have taken part in and I with you in a num-
ber of them I ought to have no doubts. But
this is the most staggering thing I ever heard
of. Are you sure you were not dreaming?"
"Well," she said, with a laugh, "I am not
in the habit of dreaming at eleven o'clock on a
bright, sunny morning, and when I have the
care of the house on my hands. And then, the
dogs: do you think they were dreaming,
too?"
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TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
"Ah, yes!" I exclaimed; "what about the
dogs?"
"I told you," she replied, "how they ran to
the gate, barking, and then suddenly turned
tail and rushed away in a panic as soon as they
saw what was there. When Deeming had gone,
I went out to look after them, but for a long
time I could not find them. I called and I
coaxed, but to no purpose. Finally I dis-
covered them out in the farthest corner of the
paddock, under the thick bushes, crowded to-
gether in a heap, and trembling as though they
had been whipped. I had to crawl in and drag
them out, but I couldn't induce them to come
near the house; at last I had to carry them in,
and all the afternoon they have stuck close to
me as though they felt the need of protection.
It is only half an hour ago that I got them into
their kennels and chained them up. You had
better go out and see them."
I did so, and found one kennel empty, and
both dogs lying close together (as the length
of their chains allowed them to do) in the straw
of the other. I had never seen them do this
before, since each was very jealous of intrusion
by the other upon his quarters, and I was im-
pressed by the circumstance. The poor brutes
still showed unmistakable evidences of terror,
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THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
whimpered and whined and licked my hand as
I petted them, and set up a concerted and
agonized howl of protest when I left them.
There was no doubt whatever that they had
been horribly frightened if not by the ghost
of Deeming, by what? it was certainly no
merely physical agitation that their actions
showed.
[199]
CHAPTER XII
THE DEMONS OF THE DARK
TRUE to his promise, Deeming did not reap-
pear, nor was there any subsequent manifesta-
tion that seemed referable to him. To what
new plane he had "gone on," and whether to
one higher or lower, we could only guess; the
door that had closed upon his exit had evidently
shut in forever (as had been our experience in
certain other like cases) a mystery to which, for
a moment, we had almost felt we were about
to hold the key. Of the problem of the future
life we had a hint of the terms of the solu-
tion, but the answer vanished before we could
set it down below the ordered figures of the
sum. Such, I believe, has been, is, and will be
the constant fortune of all who venture far into
the penetralia of the unseen. Now and then
there seems to be an illumination but it is not
the radiance of discovered truth: it is the
lightning flash that warns away the profane in-
truder, and if defied it blasts him in body or in
mind.
It was because of this conviction that my wife
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THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
and I, although having experience during many
years of incomprehensible occurrences whose
narration, should I set it down, would fill many
books like this, steadfastly refrained from al-
lowing ourselves to assume a mental attitude
that might, so to speak, encourage them. Far
from finding the influences (whatever they
were and on this point we were careful to
make no inquiry, and never formulated any
theory) reluctant to invitation to display them-
selves, we were at times compelled to offer
strenuous opposition to their approach: even
a passive receptivity to strange phenomena was
not free from peril, and our previous knowl-
edge of the unbalancing of more than one in-
quiring mind that had pursued the subject of
the occult with too great a temerity had con-
vinced us that "that way danger lies" and a
very grave danger, too.
To that danger we ourselves, as I believe,
finally came to be exposed in our life in the
House on the Hill : not because we were lured
to seek out the origin and nature of the forces
about us, and thus gave ourselves up to their
influence, but because the more or less constant
exercise of that influence could not fail to have
that effect, in spite of ourselves: and it is to
show how, as it seemed, and why, this effect
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TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
at first unsuspected grew toward its sinister
culmination, that I undertake the writing of
this final chapter.
Meantime, I may say that the incidents at-
tending the two spectral appearances that I
have recorded, gave us occasion for much curi-
ous speculation, in which there was a certain
relief in indulging ourselves. The garments
from the wardrobe of the hangman; was the
murderer doomed to go through all Eternity in
this hideous attire? The offered sale of soap;
is the occupation of "drummer" or "bagman"
practiced beyond the Styx, and for what ghostly
manufacturers are orders solicited? Was the
soap a sample? Was it for the toilette or the
laundry? What was its price per cake, and
was there any discount by the box? Then the
shade's appeal for "Christian charity," and the
acceptance of it in the tangible form of coin of
the realm! The money was returned again,
but had it meanwhile been entered in some
misty ledger to the credit of its temporary
bearer? If deposits are made, and balance-
sheets issued in the Dark World, then might
Deeming's account seem to be heavily over-
drawn. Dealing in phantom money, and liqui-
dating of shadowy notes-of-hand ! do we carry
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THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
with us into the Beyond not only our characters
and personalities (as some believe) but also
our occupations and ways of doing business?
If Deeming's discarnated action was thus to be
explained, he must have been in Hell, in-
deed 1
Reflections such as these may strike the reader
as flippant, but they were among the natural
results of the circumstances. There was some-
thing so personal and intimate in these mid-day
visits of the apparition, it was itself so seem-
ingly tangible and even human, and in its ex-
pressions of thought and manifestations of emo-
tion seemed to have experienced so slight an
essential change from the conditions with which
the living man had been acquainted, that there
was little to excite horror in the event, after
all. If the phantom had imparted to us no in-
formation, it had at least given us a hint that
there was progress in the realms of the here-
after, and had awakened a vague belief that
at the end of all there might be pardon. This
suggestion was tenuous and elusive; but it was
afforded, nevertheless, and I still cling to the
hope that it inspired.
In writing this strange chronicle I have not
attempted to set down all our experiences in
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TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
that house of mystery, but only such as have
seemed to me unusual, or representative of the
manifestations as a whole. There were cer-
tain other phenomena so vague and evasive that
I am unable to find words whereby to describe
their nature or to convey the impression they
caused : all that I can say of them is that they
seemed to invite us to an inquiry into some
secret which the house contained, and to beckon
to the success of such an investigation. We
often discussed this apparent suggestion, but
never acted upon it: chiefly because, as I
think, we were not at all sure it was not of
subjective, rather than objective, origin the
natural result of the mental ferment which such
a protracted series of weird happenings might
be expected to cause. Moreover, as everything
that had so far occurred had been without any
conscious encouragement on our part, we felt
some fear (as I have intimated above) of what
might befall us if we endeavored to place our-
selves completely en rapport with the agencies
that seemed to be at work about us. There-
fore we maintained as well as we could our
isolated and non-conductive position, and re-
frained from all encouragement to the sugges-
tions that were more and more forcibly borne
in upon us that we should seek an understanding
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THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
of the meaning of the things that had so much
disturbed us.
Yet I cannot refrain from stating my convic-
tion that the phenomena which I have en-
deavored to describe in these pages had their
origin, not in any disturbed or morbid condition
of the mind in any of the three persons who
were affected by them, but in some undiscovered
cause local and peculiar to the place of their
occurrence. If this were not the case, it seems
singular that manifestations of a like nature
did not present themselves at other times and
in other places. Any such persistent and start-
ling incidents as those that were displayed In
the House on the Hill were, happily, foreign
elsewhere both to my wife's experience and to
my own such other influences as have seemed
to come about us having apparently been unaf-
fected by conditions of period and locality, and
being almost always of a mild and gentle nature.
Whether our tacit refusal to seek a solution
of the mystery that had so long brooded over
us had anything to do with the even more seri-
ous and startling events that occurred during
the final period of our residence, I cannot tell.
I have often thought so: at all events this
record would be incomplete without setting
them down.
[205]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
It is not to be denied that the adventures in
which we had participated for nearly a year,
came finally to have a serious effect upon us,
both physically and mentally. Our curiosity
and interest had long ago become sated, and of
late we had felt the slow but steady growth of
something like apprehension : an apprehension
even more acute than that which might be in-
spired by any definite occasion for fear, since
it looked forward to uncertainties for which
there seemed to be no definition. But the days
passed slowly by until only two weeks remained
before the expiration of our lease, and, since
the incident of the brooch which I have de-
scribed, nothing seriously untoward had oc-
curred.
Yet we had lately been conscious that the
character of the influence that had so long pos-
sessed our habitation seemed to be undergoing
a change. I cannot describe this change ex-
cept to say that it took the form of an ominous
quiescence. The elfish entities whose cantrips
had served more to amuse and mystify than to
annoy us, seemed suddenly to have abandoned
the premises as if retiring before some superior
approach, and the wraiths of the women and
the child were no more seen or heard about the
rooms or in the hall: instead of these, we
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THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
vaguely recognized the presence of a mighty
force, which made itself manifest neither to the
eye nor the ear, but was evident through some
latent or inner sense whose function was to
apprehend it. I cannot explain how the im-
pression was conveyed, but we somehow knew
that this presence was malignant and foreboded
harm; and a disturbing uneasiness grew upon
us rather than diminished as time elapsed, and
everything remained upon the surface serene
and calm.
While the familiar occurrences to which we
had been accustomed never lost their sense of
strangeness, the present cessation of them
seemed more uncanny still; we had an uneasy
and growing sense of something serious being
about to happen, and often expressed to each
other our common feeling of alarm. The cir-
cumstance that disquieted us most was that,
whereas nearly all the events in which we had
shared hitherto had taken place by day, this
new obsession was felt chiefly at night: it
seemed to enwrap the house in an equal degree
with the gathering darkness, and each evening
at sundown we lighted every gas-jet, and sat
or moved about together under the influence of
an urgent craving for companionship. We
were like spectators sitting in a theatre between
[207]
TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
two acts of a compelling performance; behind
the lowered curtain a situation was preparing
whose nature we could not guess; we appre-
hended rather than perceived that the stage was
being reset, the scenery shifted, a new develop-
ment provided for and we feared beyond
measure to see the curtain lift again, as we felt
assured it would.
The climax came at last, and in a sudden and
awful manner. Our nameless apprehension had
caused us, of late, to spend as many evenings
as possible abroad visiting friends and ac-
quaintances, or attending entertainments in the
city. Returning late one night from the theatre,
our friend and I went into the dining-room,
while my wife retired to her chamber to pre-
pare for bed. We had been chatting a few
moments when we heard a piercing shriek from
my wife's room; and rushing in we were hor-
rified to see her standing close against the wall,
her face white and drawn with terror, appar-
ently striving to free herself from some being
that held her firmly in its clutches. Her aspect
was so unearthly that we stood for a moment
literally frozen on the threshold: then she
seemed to be lifted up bodily and thrown across
the bed, where she lay with eyes protruding,
and hands frantically tearing at her throat as if
[208]
THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
trying to free herself from some powerful grip
that was choking her. We rushed to her and
raised her to a sitting position, but she was torn
from us again and again, and from the gasping
and throttled sounds that came from her throat
we felt that she was dying. We cried out in
incoherent frenzy to her unseen tormentors to
be gone, and struck wildly at the air as if there
were about her palpable objects of our blows.
This dreadful struggle lasted for several min-
utes; at times we apparently prevailed, again
we were overwhelmed: finally the influence
seemed to pass, and I laid her back upon the
pillows, still panting and trembling but no
longer suffocating, as she whispered: "Thank
God, they have gone!"
This experience had been so frightful, and
so foreign to all others that had befallen us,
that I found myself reluctant to refer it to un-
natural agencies, and tried to explain it as a
fit of some kind by which my wife had been
attacked although I knew that she had never
had such a seizure in all her life, and was in
perfect physical and mental health. Moreover,
when she soon complained of her throat hurting
her, I looked more closely, and with amaze-
ment saw upon both sides of her neck the marks
that no one could have mistaken as other than
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TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
those left by the fingers of a pair of powerful
hands I
At this sight the little courage that remained
to me abandoned me entirely, and I could see
that our friend was equally unmanned. "We
must leave this house!" we exclaimed in the
same breath: and as we spoke my wife cried
out: "Oh I they are here again!" and at once
the ghastly combat was renewed.
This time our friend and I made no effort to
fight against the demons if such they were; we
seized the half-conscious woman in our arms,
and partly carried, partly dragged her out of
the house. The Possession seemed to leave her
at the door, and the fresh air soon revived her.
But there was no going back for any of us that
night. It was late summer, and the air was
warm: so, bareheaded, and with my wife
guarded between her two male protectors, we
walked the deserted streets until the rising of
the sun gave us courage to return home.
I shall not forget those hours of midnight
and early morning: the serene and amethyst-
colored Australian sky strewn with star-dust
and set with twinkling constellations, and the
dark earth about us across which, as from
time to time we approached the house from
which we had been expelled, the light from its
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THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW
windows and from its open door gleamed bale-
fully. All was silent within, but we feared the
lurking presence and dared not enter, and after
one or two returns remained only within view
of it until daybreak was well advanced. Our
conversation throughout the vigil need not be
recorded, but the reader may guess its import:
the awful experience through which we had
passed had brought powerfully to our minds
the thought of Deeming in the feature of the
throttling hands, since in all his murders there
was evidence upon the throats of his victims
that strangulation had preceded the operation
of the knife. But my wife opposed this grisly
suggestion : it was not the shade of the mur-
derer, she affirmed, that had attacked her, al-
though she could give no description of her
assailants they were dark, formless shapes
resembling neither man nor beast; things more
felt than seen, even to her.
Yet in spite of this assurance, when I re-en-
tered the house and saw in its usual place above
my writing table the plaster mould which I had
carried from the murderer's cell in the Mel-
bourne jail, I recalled with a new appreciation
of their appositeness the words of the worthy
governor.
Whatever the influence was that had ap-
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TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD
palled us, we had not sufficient courage to
oppose it, and so hastened our preparations for
departure that we finally quitted the house a
week before our lease expired; and within a
month saw the shores of Australia fade behind
us as our steamer turned its prow toward Aden,
Suez, and Marseilles. There was one recur-
rence of the phenomenon I have just described
during the last few nights of our possession,
but we evaded it by taking to the street again,
and again passing the night therein.
It was on a sunny morning in early March
the month answering in the inverted seasons
of the Antipodes to September of northern lati-
tudes that we turned the key that locked us
out for the last time from that house of
shadows. As we reached the street we turned
with one accord to look back upon it: how in-
viting it appeared in the brilliant sunshine, amid
its attractive surroundings of grassy lawn set
with shrubs in flower, its smiling orchard and
garden! We looked into one another's faces,
and each saw therein the reflection of his own
thoughts: there was the relief such as they
feel who awake from an oppressive dream; yet
the place had been our home !
THE END
[212]
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