A MALAPODOROUS GHOST.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 129, 30 May 1908, Page 15

A MALAPODOROUS GHOST.

URRGH! LONDON. April IS. A correspondent of the London "Daily Chronicle" tells at length the story of a gruesome house haunting. He does not indicate the locality in which the house is situated, nor the names of its luckless inhabitants. He simply calls the place "Carmine Villa," and describes it as a very oldfashioned 8-roonied cottage in a village within 20 miles of Charing Cross. His reason for reticence as to names and places is the fact that it has been decided in the law courts that to say of any house that it is haunted by a ghost entitles the owner of that house to damages. The house, it appears, was taken by a lady friend of his two years ago on a long lease, and now she is anxious to quit it. And no wonder! According to the "Chronicle" correspondent, she shares the place with a peculiarly undesirable tenant —a ghost invisible, but by no means intangible or inaudible, and what is worse, most malodorous. Its speciality, indeed, is its smell, which is likened to that of a enamel house. This peculiar ghost does not roam about the house to an accompaniment of moans, shrieks, or jangling chains, but to sounds of laboured breathing and the paddaing of badly slippered feet carrying a he-ivy body, of a peculiarly noxious effluvia. It has also a nasty habit of attacking people in bed, by placing what is csderibed as a big, flabby hand over their mouths, and leaving their nostrils free to inhale the mephitic odour inseparable from Its presence. The Thing made its presence known, it seems, quite early in the lady_'s tenancy, but in his account of its doings the "Chronicle" narrator goes no further back than the present year. Hs says that his friend's daughter, a girl of 14, who knew nothing of the story of the antecedents of the house, occupied a spare bedroom near the roof. The girl had fallen asleep, when she was suddenly aroused by the consciousnes of the presence of someone standing by her bedside in the dark. She was about to cry out, when a flabby; large clammy hand was pressed firmly over her mouth. With an effort, she sat up in bed, trying to tear the hand from her mouth. To her horror, she found the hand forcing her back on to her pillow, and at the same time she was conscious of an Intolerable odour. Hastily, she pulled the bedclothes over her head, and, to her great relief and delight, the grasp of the hideous Invisible relaxed, and she went to sleep. In the morning she thought it might have been a nightmare, and said nothing about it. The next time, however, when she had to sleep In that room the same horrible haunting occurred. She screamed, jumped out of bed, and went down to her mother, declaring that nothing would Induce her to sleep in that room. Some time later a relative visited Carmine Villa, and spent three weeks in the house. She might have stayed longer, but on the twentieth night she had the same experience as the daughter of the house. She was awakened by the pressure of a hand upon her mouth. She shook herself clear and angrily addressed her visitor, but received no response. On the twenty-first night the same visitation occurred. This time the odour was so intolerable that she had to fly from the room, dreading suffocation. The next day she left the house. Another lady, not a relation, for three nights in succession, endured the haunting horror of the darkness, the phenomena in every case being the same. Unfortunately, thjs evil Thing from the beyond does not confine himself to the spare bedroom of Carmine Villa. Last Thursday, for instance, while the family were sitting at lunch, steps were heard descending the stairs from the haunted bedroom and tne Thing entered the diningroom. With it came the pestilential odour! They could see nothing, but heard the footsteps across the floor, and presently there was a sound as if someone had sat down heavily in one of tbe chairs at the table. They beard the chair creak, but saw no one. To finish the meal was out of the question. The room smelt like a pest-house. All the windows were opened, but the odour filled the nonse. The malodorous spectre is fitful in his habits. Of late he has developed a habit of passing from room to room, leaving behind him the odour of the charnel-house, and occasionally he persists in looking in at 5 o'clock tea. mc lady occupier, who must be a peculiarly strong-minded person, has been trying to reason with her invisible co-tenant. Believing that she is in the presence of a discarnate personality, who, for some strange and mysterious reason, is earthbound to Carmine Villa, she has sometimes followed "It" to the bedroom, and attempted la vain to get into communication with it Addressing it, she has pointed out the extreme inconvenience which his inconsiderate visits were occasioning to the ' family. She has begged it to inform her what it wanted, undertaking to do anything for it in reason to ease its disturbed spirit, U thereby she could but secure release from its destestable presence. To ail her adjurations and appeals there was only one reply—the continuous terrible odour. It only remains to add that the previous occupant of that house was an old imbecile, who had died in what is known as the haunted chamber. He was an enormously corpulent man, and it was some time before they could effect the structural alterations in the house necessary to remove his corpse, upon which decay had made great ravage before It was finally transferred to the ' grave. That is the story in the village. The narrator of this gruesome and Incredible tale has. it seems, given the editor of the "Chronicle" privately the name of the haunted house, its situation, and the names of all those who have experienced the ghost's attentions, and the dates of its visitations.