A TRUE GHOST STORY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 12602, 17 June 1904, Page 3 (Supplement)

A TRUE GHOST STORY.

EVENTS AT STELLENBOSCH DURING THE WAR. [BY B. IXETOHER BOBIXSON.] Did you ever meet a man who has soen a ghost ? Not often, I venture to think. There are scores of folk who know a man who had it from So-and-So that a strange experience had occurred to a friend of his in some place or other. Now that is rather vague, tending to produce disbelief in the hearer, and to makei the incredulous, scoff the more.

You would believe the Captain if you knew him. |jp is a quiet, thick-set, levelheaded man, witth a strong will, a clear eye, and enough practical common sense to run a morning paper. Alsq ho is very much in earnest about las experiences, which are indeed sufficiently remarkable. Stellenbosch is forgotten as a South African village; yet it gave our army a now verb during the war now happily deceased. It lies in a dip of the mountains to the north of, Capetown, with streets tree-shaded from the glare of the weary sky. -On the outskirts of the village stands a house which was the .scene of the Captain's adventure. It wasas ho described it to me—a long, low building, alter the Dutch style of two hundred years Ago. On three sides was a broad verandah— the customary "'stoop" of the country. The heavy wooden shutters were once green, but the rain and the sun had blistered and striped them into a faded and inconspicuous tint. Altogether, it was a melancholy place, ringed about with ancient trees that: whispered together in the evening gusts, that swept down the clefts in the mountain side. ~ v

The Captain—let me say at once that he had not been " Stellenbosched"—was' travelling to the village on Yeomanry affairs, when he met in the train three ladies coming south from Kim barley. The eldest had lost her husband in the fierce struggle by the M odder River, and with her daughter was returning from a visit to his grave. The third was the wife of.a Yeoman at the front. She had asked the widow and her-daughter to stay a few days in an old house- sae had taken at StellenbqHch. The Captain was invited to dine that evening.

AS OXD DUTCH MANOR. It was just before seven that the young officer drove up to tho old Dutch manor that I have already mentioned. The sun was setting and its level rays were dazzling to the eyes, but he distinctly affirms that he saw an old woman huddled on the verandah. It was only the glimpse of a moment, but she seemed to him to be dressed in faded green, with a long, yellowish face, thin lips, from which an overlapping tooth protruded, and sunken gray eyes. Ha blinked, and stared agajn; tut she was gone. The ladies received hini in a parlour of panelled oak, and after a few minutes* talk he turned to his Hostess with some casual reference to the curious figure he had seen on the- "stoop.' 1 There was no such person in her small establishment, she told him, with a look of anxious inquiry. He hastened to change tho iiubject. The diningroom was long and low, like the house itselif. Op the wall facing the windows, half »ihad«d, half revealed in the lamplight, hung the full-length portrait of a man. He had an appearance of refinement and gra\e intelligence. A short beard and moustache ihid lips and chin. His forehead 1*99 broad, and his eyes dark and piercing.' There was French Huguenot blood in his veins without a doubt, for such a countenance never cams from pure Dutch stock. A handsome fellow enough he must have been. Yet the general expression was oddly repulsive. So, at least, the Captain found it* as he glanced up at the portrait from timeito time while he Chatted, with the ladies. An hour of music, and then, at the suggestion'of his hostess, the Captain returned to the diningrcom for a whisky and soda before leaving. ■':-.

POBTHAIT TJUT MOVED. The bottle, with a syphon beside it, was standing on a little table by the window. The Captain walked across, selected a glass, and had begun to pom out a modest portion of whisky, when he experienced a curious sensation in the back of his neck like a gust of cold wind. Be turned smartly to' discover the cause. '■'.'. i At first he noticed nothing unusual; and then a slight movement upon the wall caught his attention. The portrait had begun to move, there was no doubt about it — a slow, deliberate swing from side to side, like a belated pendulum; arid the eyes of the man had become alive, and were watching him curiously. . r The Captain was badly frightened. He is quite plain on that point. Indeed, he had started {awards the door, when he was stopped by a more tangible, and in its appearance more terrible, apparition. The door had'been left ajar, and through the gap, clear against the dark panels, there craned the head of the old woman he had seen upon the verandah. She grinned with a broad, cynical parting of the lips that laid bare her ancient gums, and so was gone. The air grew still colder, with a wind coming in sudden gusts. It seemed to tho Captain that a fog or mist was rising, for the floor first vanished, though he remembers that the top of the tablo was for some time visible. It crept up and up till it reached his chin, and then, with a shiver of wild terror, he felt two hands fasten on his throat— with thin yet muscular fingers that clutched ever tighter, as if growing in strength as they materialised. And the man of the portrait, hanging clear of the gathering mist, still watched him with an evil leer.

CLUTCHED lit GHOSTLY PINCERS. ' It was as the pains of death. That is the Captain's own expression. Ho had stood motionless, unable to move, but now he made a last fierce effort at self-preservation. He tore at his throat, though his hands could not feel those devilish fingers, and staggered, struggling as with an enemy, to the door and out into the passage. As tie passed the lintel the fingers left their hold, and he saw and drew breath again. Such is the Story which this very sane, common-sense person, who is a most temperate liver, told to me a few nights ago. ' The sequel it, not uninteresting. The next morning the ladies loft the house. He met them as they drove to the station. They were in great agitation, the daughter stating that she had nearly been, strangled in the night. . He also discovered that the bouse had for some time been used as a temporary hospital, and that two .of tho sick who had been placed in the diningn.om had screamed for help during the night, imploring then attendants to take them away, as some one had tried to choke them. Lastly, from local inquiries, the Captain learned that tho amiable gentleman whoso portrait had brought him so strange an experience had hanged himself about lblO after strangling hi- youngest daughter in the diningroom. Von Holtz was his name, and the legend of the tragedy is still whispered in/the district. , It is a story to which the Captain rarely refers- But li you ask him whether he believes in ghosts, he says '"Yes 1" quite simply. ____————