STORY OF A HAUNTED HOUSE.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XLI, Issue 2210, 29 August 1910, Page 7

STORY OF A HAUNTED HOUSE.

i Many years ago there was a large i old mansion on an Irish estate where I there was a long minority in the J ownership, during which the gardner ! and his wife lived in the mansion as ' caretakers, receiving a weekly wage, and having a very comfortable billet, and a large garden, the bulk of the produce of which they no doubt plundered. The estate was the property of a young lady who was living in a garrison town many miles away from it. During some of the years of her minority the house had been at different times rented by people who entirely disappeared ; and the country { being at that period in a disturbed ! state, as, alas ! Ireland had so often j been, the matter did not receive that attention which would have been the I case with the present improved police arrangements. It so happened about the time of the coming of age of the young lady ' that a fine, powerful young officer of | the Royal Horse Artillery was quarI tered in the garrison town, and fell I in love with this lady, and his affec- ! tions being reciprocated, they were married. The stories of the old mansion being haunted having been circulated for years, and the fact that those who had gone there to reside had so often disappeared, nothing would induce her to go and live there. Her gallant husband, however, rode over to the place, armed as a soldier, with sword and pistols. He carried a small quantity of food, and ordered the caretaker's wife to prepare it for his dinner.

Having gone over the place, he sat down to dinner, and while eating it a large white object of peculiar appearance and rude shape entered the room and approached him. The officer called out, "Halt ! or I fire ;" but the object continued to advance, and he fired, the ball passing through the advancing substance. Ke fired again, with the same result, the balls passing through the right and left sides of the advancing apparition. The advance continuing, the officer saw that both shots had passed outside the body, which he was, of course,, satisfied was concealed within.

Having discharged both his pistols, he had only his sword remaining, so he quickly decided to choke the person ; fortunately, calculating correctly where the neck would be, and the white cover yielding sufficiently, he tightly grasped the throat, and, throwing himself on the body, brought it under him to the ground. He succeeded in strangling the gardener, who was well armed, and had been about to commit another of the many murders of which the reader will presently see he had been guilty. While he was examining the body another person dressed in male attire entered the room. Seizing his sword, the officer attacked and quickly disarmed the new-comer, who proved to be the gardener's wife in a suit of his clothes. Begging for quarter, the woman said that if the officer would spare her life she would confess the truth, and show him where the bodies of the persons that her husband had murdered at different times were buried.

This she did, and the bodies of the different victims were exhumed from a pit in which they had been thrown. —Extracted from "Memories of Mr. Llewelyn Turner."