THE HOSIER'S GHOST

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1136, 8 December 1893, Page 10

THE HOSIER'S GHOST

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We have become epicures in the supernatural. The respectable and conventional ghost and the haunted chamber of the old manor house no lohget serve our turn. A specter to command our respect must be, nowadays, of original habits, and so stand somewhat apart from the other members of his extensive clan.

I was therefore not a little pleased when, a few years ago, I succeeded in lighting upon a specter of somewhat unconventional type.

My treasure trove was acquired as follows:

I happened to be detained for a short time in a small and exceedingly tumbledown old town in the middle of the Black forest.

The place of which I speak is little better than a large village, though in deference to the feelings of its worthy inhabitants, who consider it no doubt as the “hub of the universe,” I have dignified it with the appellation of town, and it lies quite out of the ordinary run of tourists, high and dry above the restless ebb and flow of the great excursional ocean.

Let us call the old place by the name of “Diimmelsheim;” it will do as well as any other name, and will convey a delicate and not unmerited compliment to its respected inhabitants. Dummelsheim, then, lies in one of the loveliest of the many lovely green valleys which run like tongues of verdure between the pine clad heights and crags of the Black forest. It is set down on a small patch of tableland, above which rise some wonderful shapes of crag and pine forest, and below which a little mountain stream rushes frantically night and day, raging and tearing its little life out among the great bowlders and between the fern clad banks, yearning to obliterate itself in the nearest river that offers a refuge. I happened to be detained in this place on special business for a whole fortnight. A fortnight in Dummelsheim, with nothing to do, represents about five years of ordinary existence in length and tedium.

I explored the lovely valley, not without duly feeling the charm of its peace and isolation; I drank, as in duty bound, very many tumblers of the peculiarly nauseous spa water, of which the Dummelsheimers are so unreasonably proud; and then time began indeed to hang heavily on my hands. There was no gaming table, no theater, no concert hall; a few noisy Gasthauser in which German lieder made night and morning hideous, and where the lager beer was the worst that money could purchase, afforded the only amusement of which the stupid little place was capable.

To be sure there was “billiards.” Every one plays billiards in Dummelsheim, otherwise its folks could not exist. Even billiards, however, with cork pool and the fearful delight of overturning your opponent’s cork with its pile of silbergroschen, begins to pall upon one in time, and ere my fourteen days’ sojourn. drew to a close I became not only weary of poor little Dummelsheim, but began absolutely to loathe the place. I could not leave it however. A certain event had to happen, a letter to arrive, and before my time 1 could not stir. At last I discovered a diversion. It came in the shape of a compatriot, a resident compatriot. Not that in appearance or garb he was much of an Englishman. Twenty years’ residence in Dummelsheim had made him more German than the Germans, and had quite obliterated the handiwork of the good old land that gave him birth. He had all but forgotten his mother speech, and when he endeavored to use it his sentences were patched together by the Teutonic words and phrases which came most readily to his tongue. He was as regardless of his personal appearance as the most inborn of the Dummelsheimers and as devoted to the consumption of tobacco as the best of them.. It was supposed that he was_a

bachelor. At any rate, of “Womankind” he had none, and lived alorte With merely the intermittent aid of a supernaturally hideous frau at those times when scouring and cleansing became a bitter necessity. It was in a cafe that I first met with him. I thought when I first saw him, “What a dreadful shaggy old German that is; no one could mistake his nationality, at any rate,” He seemed to be a part and parcel of the green, moldy place, a sort of human lichen, an animated fungus, 'on two short and sturdy legs. And his smoking and spitting were an honor to his adopted country, and would have been creditable even in a citizen in San Francisco, or a dweller in “Poverty Flat.” However, a compatriot is a compatriot, and if one has to scrape the dirt from his cotinteiiarice in order to recognize him, the operation must be gon'O through for the sake of the dear land of our fathers.

My German Englishman proved, as a companion, decidedly better than none at all, and in his morning rambAea with me pointed out with great care what he knew of the antiquities of the little town; showed me a wood where one of the Dummelsheimers had once, in a fit of playfulness, applied a hatchet to the back hair of hiß betrothed, and also the jail in front of Which he Was afterward hattged as a punishment for his little estapade. . Many other spots of interest, where incidents of a less tragic though still striking character had occurred, were also designated by his kindly walking stick as we strolled along. After a day or so my newly found friend began to resume his native speech, so long disused, and by that time I also had learned to translate into ordinary English his quaint and puzzling Anglo-German expressions. So we managed to get on very well together, and I found him an interesting if a slightly dirty old man. The town, when' explained by such a cicerone, was invested with quite a new charm of interest. It was quaint enough without any extraneous help, and the houses, being for the most part ancient timbered edifices, and the gables leaning forward with age and hanging over the streets, one obtained every now and again a street vista of delicious picturesqueness, in which the ancient houses, nodding toward each other, seemed to be whispering forgotten and piquant scandal of the good old German days. There were at every turn and comer abundant “bits,” which an artist for an illustrated paper would have found very handy, and sketches of which he could have rapidly converted into current coin of the realm.

I am no artist, but to my great surprise I discovered that my dear and dirty new found acquaintance and countryman was. One day, having accompanied him to the queer and humble lodging which he inhabited, I found on the walls certain indubitable proofs of his artistic bent. There were many admirable sketches in chalk and sepia of striking points in the valley, and of certain buildings and objects in the town itself.

The fountain in the market place was there with its great St. Christopher as its center figure. There were the porch of St. Christopher’s church, the quaint turret at the angle of the town hall, and the crumbling ruins of an ancient fortress. on the Ganzberg. Among other things..l noticed a sketch of a certain picturesque old house which I had indeed seen, but the locality of which I did not remember at the time. I mentioned this fact. “Ach nein, I have not shown you him. He is in the Lederstrasse,” he replied. “We will see him together auf morgen.” On the morrow, accordingly, we walked together to the Lederstrasse. As we entered the dirty old street my companion remarked, “I have never been in this street for twenty years or more, and I never wish to enter it again.” My curiosity was roused. ’“Why?” I inquired. “I got so great a fright here once, and I was so much laughed at,” he answered. “Why, what is there about this street to frighten you? It is old enough, certainly, and quaint enough, and smells rather —palil” I exclaimed, as a full flavored German stench saluted my nostrils; “but nothing terrible, after all.” “Well, mein Herr, it is not the street; it is that house, and —the ghost in it,” the Anglo-German replied, with a. sort of shudder, so to speak, in his voice. “Oh, ohl then you have not lived long enough yet, and you are not quite a boy, to get rid of your superstitions, eh? You are still afraid of ghosts, are you?” “I was afraid of what I saw,” he replied, with a certain amount of dignity, as if hurt by my light manner and my tones of mockery. My curiosity was of course aroused, and I doubt not yours, reader, would have been by this speech, and I was about to question him further when, pointing with his stick, he said briefly: “That’s the house there.”

I looked and recognized in the ancient timbered edifice on the farther side of the street the original of the chalk sketch in his lodgings. It was a tumbledown pile, with overhanging stories and .^carved

board,” having, moreover, a curiously twisted chimney of ancient, ruddy brickwork, and certain obscure remains of armorial bearings over the door. There was a date which, however, I could only make out in its state of dilapidation to be fifteen —and something or other. The edifice seemed to have been long deserted, and the gtass was growing in tufts among the stones at the front doot as if the passers by had long been ftcettstomed to avoid a too near acquaintance with the old tenement.

Indeed, something about the building said as plainly as the German version of Tom Hood’s poem could have said: The house is haunted. Nay, the very street itself seemed to be haunted. It was in a great part deserted. The tumbledown buildings on either side of the picturesque house seemed to be devoid of occupants, and the few sordid and wretched houses in the street which appeared to enjoy the presence of tenants had, to my imagination, and in the gathering dusk of evening, a scared and terrified aspect. “Look well at that window,” said my conductor, pointing to a large, battered casement just above the door, “and when We go I will tell you what I know about it. That will do,” he continued, taking hold of my arm; “yOU have seen it, and it is not good to stay in the street; it chills the blood, I imagine.” “Indeed it does,” I replied, and we moved off, not, I fancy, without a thrill of pleasure at leaving behind us the ghostly atmosphere of the Lederstrasse. A few crows, fitting inhabitants of the desolate street, were wheeling about th roofs and chimneys of the house as we departed. 11. I went with my acquaintance back to his lodging, and there, over a plentiful supply of lager beer and. the smoke of two big pipes, he told me his experience of the house and street we had quitted. “Twenty years ago—l was rather younger then, I fancy; I mean not in years merely, but in life and hopes—l had recently come to this town, and before I was long in it I heard much talk about a queer ghost, quite unlike any ghost I had heard or read of, which wan said to haunt the Lederstrasse, and which the people of the town so much dreaded. “Hans Hubbler, down the Ganzstrasse, had seen it when a boy, and old Frau Hertzler had all but died from fright when she was sixteen years old in consequence of a mere glimpse of it. It was the celebrity of the little town as well as the bete noir of the little place.

“Well, mein Herr, I laughed at all of the stories, and grew very courageous over the matter in my cafe when the night grew late and the bottle was low. Some of the fellows there tried to chaff me on the score of my nationality. ‘Em Englander,’ they said, ‘always asserts that he will brave anything —dog or fiend or fraulein —but let him be set to the test and he is not always so brave as a lion.’ Then one of them said:

“This Herr Englander here, he has heard enough and is brave, but let him face a test we will give him if he be a brave Englander, and we shall see.’ “So one night in the Restaurant Kloppart, in the milk market—l remember well that night. Ach, mein Herr, is that door fast? So! 1 remember that night. I was fired with courage, and I said, when they spoke of the ghost, that I would face it, come what might.

“A grin of incredulity passed over the countenances of my listeners, and they puffed away at their pipes in contemptuous silence. At last big boned Krantz Hubscher, the butcher, made me a bet that I would not sleep for one night in the old house in the Lederstrasse alone. “ ‘Done!’ I cried, and the money was staked; not much, a few silbergroschen, and I was pledged to an adventure.

“It struck me afterward that a great number of the ghost stories I had myself read turned upon some unused house or room and an undertaking to sleep there; but further than this, as you will see, my case had little resemblance to any other spectral adventure. Nor did this render my case less real or less terrifying. “ ‘What sort of a ghost is it?’ I asked; ‘tell me just that, so that I may know what kind of an appearance I am about to face.’ ‘Ach nein!’ they said, ‘mein Herr must just see him as he is, and enjoy him as he will.’ “So the night was fixed upon and the key of the ancient house procured. A mattress and _some candles, and also_a

pistol at my request, were taken into the biggest and best room, that one just over the doorway. A good bottle of Zeltinger and a supper for me were got ready, and a roaring fire of big logs was built Up in the afternoon in the fireplace there.

“The people living in the Lederstrasse Were much astonished ’and a good deal interested at the unwonted glare in the ■windows of the haunted house;'and, When they were informed of the reason of the illuminatioft!' expressed a good deal Of pity fdr the triad Englishman whose craze liad tempted him to brave the ghost of the locality. • xr . * “Night came—a dark night it was in November, with windy gusts every novv and again Sweeping down the street and among the crazy old chimneys. There was a pale, gibbous moon that showed itself at intervals from between the drifting clouds, in a very weird and uncanny fashion. ‘Just the night for a ghost story,’ I said to myself, and thought, as I felt a little thrill come over me, ‘Shall I pay the small bet and have done with the matter? Shall I cry off and smoko my pipe at home and turn into my bed at my usual hour in peace?’ No! I decided, after a bit of consideration, I will go through with my undertaking now, come w]iat may, and show these Germans what an Englishman can do, and will do, at need. “So I made all my preparations for my adventure, and about ten o’clock entered the house with two or three friends, who had resolved to accompany me in order that they might see me comfortably disposed of. “The crazy old stairs creaked a good deal as we went np them, but the room looked exceedingly cozy, for the great logs were smoldering in the chimney, and cast out an agreeable heat. In all the corners and hanging from the beams were many dingy cobwebs, the work of generations of spiders, undeterred from their work by the house’s evil reputation. Save these cobwebs, my mattress, .a couple of chairs and a small round table, upon Which stood my supper and the good bottle of Zeltinger, the room was unfurnished.

“As a further aid to courage 1 had provided myself with a flask of eau de vie, and of course had my pipe.

“My friends, having cast an approving glance around the room, sat down smoking for a few minutes, then bade me ! guten abend and gute nacht, and left me to my meditations. ; “I listened to their heavy boots as they went stump, stump, stump down the stairs, and to the street door as it shut to with a bang.

I “I was alone in the house of evil repute. “ ‘Stay a bit,’ I said to myself; ‘this is perhaps a joke, a trick, and it will be with the living Germans that I may have ito deal. Well, the pistol will give an jaccount of them; but I will make myself aasafe as I can.’ \ “So I took from my pocket a screwdriver and a paper of big screws, and with a quiet smile at my own cunning —for of these screws I had said nothing to any one—proceeded forthwith to screw up the door. “The door made fast, I walked round the room and carefully took stock of it. There was a small corner cupboard. I opened this; nothing there but spiders, their webs and the carcasses of their victims.

“On the other side of the fireplace was a very low door, about the height of my shoulder. Another cupboard, I thought, and endeavored, for a long time without success, to pry it open. When at last it yielded, I discovered, with some surprise, a step and another low door, evidently strongly nailed up, and which, from its appearance, had been for ages in the same condition.

“This discovery gave me fot the moment what the ladies describe as ‘a turn.’ ‘What a strange thing,’ I said to myselfi ‘a passage leading to somewhere; like these haunted chambers usually have. However, I will take good care that no one makes use of this passage tonight, at any rate.’ “And so closing the low door I proceeded to make it fast with some more of my great screws. As I did so and was driving the screws home I felt a queer sensation from ray right hand to my elbow, something like a faint electric shock; ‘pressed on the nerve somehow,’ I said, and continued my work. “This done, I had my supper, lit my pipe and drank the half of my wine. The chimes of St. Christopher’s tower startled me sounding the hour of eleven. I was, however, in a peaceful frame of mind, without the least fear of anything human or supernatural, and-I gazed placidly at the red smoldering logs and puffed my pipe in peace. “Suddenly, however, the fact that the hour of midnight would soon approach gave me just a little shiver. I quickly quenched the feeling with a drop of my eau de vie.

“Nevertheless, I thought, there is no use in sitting up thus. I may as well go to bed, then I shall, without doubt, fall asleep, know nothing till tomorrow morning and be able to go home with flying colors. “Accordingly I prepared for rest, and as I can never sleep well with my clothes on pulled off albmy attim witb. the e*~

ception of my shirt, took a final drink of the eau de vie, laid ready my pistol and lay down upon my mattress, drawing a single blanket over me. “I lay with my feet turned toward the glowing embers, which diffused grateful heat and gave sufficient light to enable me to discern the objects, such as they were, in the chamber after I had extinguished my candle. The feeling of security, born of the fact that I had securely screwed up the only two doors which opened into the room, did its work, and in a very little time I fell asleep. “I cannot tell how long I slept. All I know is that I seemed to wake up from a feeling of cold, as if some one were blowing upon me with a pair of bellows. I rubbed my eyes, remembered where I was, and experienced a slight feeling of unhappiness to find that the night had not passed over and that I was still in the haunted chamber. “The fire was all but dead, the moon, as I could see through the uncurtained window, seemed to be plunging her way among great banks and masses of cloud, the room was fitfully lighted here and there with a strange twilight of moon and fire. * . “Somehow my eyes fixed themselves on the low door by the side of the hearth. Could it be possible? Was that door opening? No; impossible! I had screwed it up far too tight for that.

‘•yet something strange was taking place.) Whether the door was opening or something was coming through it I could not tell; but I felt that a change was taking place, and sat up in my bed in silent terror, with that peculiar sensation in my body which persons of an imaginative disposition are pleased to call ‘gooseflesh.’ “Fixing my gaze firmly upon that mysterious door, I sat and watched it. Little, by little the aspect of the door changed. It became white, bleached as it were, and then, to my intense horror, a something seemed to pass through it and to stand in front of it. Yes; that something gradually assumed shape and proportion. I could see the head, the body, the arms, the form was that of a man. Then, while my hair stood upright upon my head with terror, I no-

ticed its stern, wan face, its costume of a long bygone age, its lean and withered arms and its attenuated legs. Could it be a man in the flesh? No, clearly no; for I could see through' it and discern that the little door at the back of it was fast screwed up as I had left it. This syas pff, paan in whom was the breath of life, a a form, a show, merely an image, and how inexpressibly ghastly and. terrific! When I had realized this fact I became a prey to the ject terror. It was true, then, about the < ghost! It was no trick, no joke, that I was to be subjected to, but before me was a supernatural shape for the first time in my life. I became seized with a species of fascination as well as by papror; I gazed fixedly at the appearance, .coyered as it was by a strange, unearthly wkifce fight. “It was the figure .of a tall, lean man, for it had by degrees risen above theheight of the low door from which it had emerged. “Its eyes were fixed upon me, and over pne of its arms it carried a number of 4Urk pfrjects, the shape of which I could p.p|t paakeput. “But horror of horrors! it was quietly pearing my bed. “I arose at once and stood erect, ,tremjbling ip every limb. In vain I tried iff epeakj my lips refused to utter a word. I could .only stare fixedly and in silence iat the strange, glittering figure. The form, doubtless it was, of some creature who had walked in the streets pf Dummelsheim in the flesh and lived in this house some two hundred and fifty y ear s ago, still haunting in its ancient shape the well known spot?^

“The specter advanced and I retreated before it, holding out my arms as if to ward it from me. “I neven thought of using my pistol save at one moment, but the fact that the figure was transparent at once convinced me that to fire at it would be of no avail. “Still the terrible shape approached with a silent, noiseless stride, then on reaching the middle of the room it seemed to motion me with one of its arms toward the chair, .q - - v v Mtli btfuiitated.;; JtSEaPjioSi) becftnae^iia-

Once seated, the specter, which appeared to have acquired a perfect control over my paralyzed senses, took something from over its left arm, and signed to me to stretch out my leg. I did so mechanically—and then —bow can -I convey to you the feeling that came over me as it proceeded to pull what seemed to be a stocking of ice upon my left leg? ' I can even now at times feel the horrible icy coldness of that spectral hose. It was a stocking that the figure was pulling upon my bare leg and foot. I was chilled to the very bone, my hair bristled, my head swam, my heart ceased to beat for a moment; higher and higher crept the ice cold stocking upon my leg. The stocking was on. This accomplished, the specter motioned me to stretch out the other leg. “My horror now fairly broke the spell that chained me. I fled to the door, the specter glided after me smoothly and silently as a fate. I seized the handle of the door—miserable! I remembered that I had fastened myself in with the ghost! My reason seemed to he escaping me. The steel-like glitter of the specter’s eyes was fixed upon me. Like a hunted and doomed animal I fled round the apartment. I leaped at the window, crashed through it, and fell into the street below.

“I must have lost consciousness at once, for the next thing I remember was lying on my bed in my own lodgings, with my good landlady and the acquaintances who had dared me to the terrible trial standing around my bed.

“It was said for some time after that the poor Englander was going mad, as all the others who had seen the ghost of the Lederstrasse had done. I cheated them however. My head was too strong, I suppose, for I got over my fright, and after my broken leg had been set, could listen to their recital of what had taken place. I learned that those who had' set themselves to watch in the street had heard first a strange, low, grinding sound —my screws no doubt —theu after a long interval my frantic screams, a crash and the clatter of broken glass, and bad seen me fall as a lifeless lump upon the street pavement. “They picked jpe up, and one of them described that as they did so lie chanced to look upward and saw at the broken window above, shining in the jnqonljght, a pale, shadowy face and the gjitfcer of two bright eyes. “It is not strange to say my right leg was broken by the fall; but it is, I think, somewhat strange to relate that my left was blackened to the knee as if scorched; nay, it is so to this day—see!” My friend showed me his blackened leg. “And that is all?” I asked. “All, lieber Himmel! Is not that enough? Can you wonder after what I have told you that I don’t like the Lederptrasse?” " opdpr; not I! I would not go near the place again ' after sark for a grand duke’s ransom. But \yhp dp pfyey say the specter was?” “I do not quite know. There is a legend of some hosier who once lived in that house and was rich, who fell into some disgrace, and the reigning duke of Saxe-Dummelsheim seized upon him, and with a refinement in cruelty, in order to extort from him his money, caused him to be put to a torture something in planner of our ancient machine called 'the boot,’ which crushed the leg of the victim. In this case the instrument was a hose of steel, which was at the onset icy cold and was then heated by fire to almost a red heat. The poor Rosier sank under the dreadful torture. “It js said that his ghost now seeks to avenge itself upon all who approach his ancienf jlhode, and that he tries on then), his ghastly hose; if lie succeeds in getting both hose on their legs £hey die and Ifis spirit is released from its wanderings.” Such was the case of the .queey old Anglo-German. J. went to my inn and to bed; .there J. lay and pondered long upon the strange story I had heard. My aleep, when sleep .came, was not of the best. Every now and again I awoke with a start and a shudder, and fancied that a ghostly. hosier was. pulling, upon my own legs the spectral hose of the story.

A day or two passed by, and one night, as I was packing my portmanteau for my homeward journey on the morrow, I was startled by a great yellow light in the sky. Soon after I heard the hoarse and blatant voice of the alarm bell. I dressed and went put, and found the

in one direction. I followed the stream of folk. It was a fire, some one told me, in the Lederstrasse; the haunted house was burning down. We arrived in the ancient narrow street; the . sight was magnificent; the whole dwelling was eu veloped in flames. No one took the slightest trouble or endeavored to get the flames under control. All were staring and gaping in idle curiosity. “It was a bad place,” some one said, “and they were well content to see it perish.” How or by whom the fire was kindled I never knew^