GHOSTS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8734, 16 May 1914, Page 10

GHOSTS

[Published by Special Ami ance went.]

Tsy Katharine Tynan,

(Copyright.) 1 mu one of thoso who havo never seen a ghost. Perhaps it is for the same reason that my father never saw a ghost. according to his ( grandmother. "Ah, child/' .she said, "they aro all around you. You don’t seo them boI cause you are not good enough." 1 have not had a single supernatural experience of my own. though I have heard of many, and I have an open mind as to anything that may or may not happen. Put the one nearest to mo has had tills, which is somewhat unusual, indeed one might say unique. in his student days, living at the very top of the ancient College of Queen Elizabeth, in a real eyrie which had an enclosed staircase leading only to itself, he was awakened at dead of night by someone walking about bis sitting-room. He shouted and there was no answer. He got up, lit a caudle, and looked about. There was no one there. His oak was sported as securely as ho had thought it to bo. He wont to bed again, and the nest morning discovered a visiting card which had been pushed under the door. It boro the name of a fellowstudent who had leit the day before foil a visit to the country. On it was written ; "Good-bye; just passing through." The first nows he met with when be wont out into the quad wag that this student who had left the day before for a carriage accident.

Most people who have had supernatural experiences do not bear any outward marks of them. But I once knew a man whose whole life was affected by a ghost ho had seen. He was a nervous wreck. When he had finished telling me his story his face was dripping with, sweat.

"I -was at Queen's, College," he said; "and not to put too fine a point on it, I wasn't a very good boy. Well I was going home one night from a card party, as lively ns you'd wish and whistling as I went alone It was a very dark night and as I was going down a narrow boroon (i.e., a’littlo lane) only thinking of the next pleasure to come, and my pleasures weren't good pleasures, I saw my brother’s ghost, 110 had been dead live years, and I wasn’t _ thinking of him- But there he was—his whit© face like a light in the darkness, and he look, ed at mo very sadly and e/terndy. The next il knew was that 1 had fallen through a cabin door and tumbled in, a dead faint on the floor. _ I went to; the Bishop next'day. He said he thought each apparitions might be permitted lor a warning. I mended my ways from that day; but, God help me. In alraid of the dark. I'm never out in the dark if I can help it; and people often think I'm an odd fish when I refuse to see ladies home from a dance. I don t mind when the lights and the people are about.” , , f said 1 had no supernatural experiences, but I have had a dream which was horrible enough. I used to bo a great deal at a house where a poor young follow was dying of rapid consumption, ft was so rapid tbat i one Wednesday I played cards with him and ho was quite in his usual health; fair-haired and ruddy. A week later he had a little cough. Within ton days of that game of cards the doctors had declared his case incurable. He used to spend the few days that were left to him in a bath chair in the garden. 1 I caught sight of him due© from a window and he had' a beard like an old man; 1 had known him with a clean, pink boyish face. Some months after he died I slept h night at the house. I manoeuvred sot that I should not sleep in the poor fellow's room and succeeded, as X thought., When 1 slept I had the most terrify-* ing dream. I was caught into the grips of some creature with a tremendous beard. It flowed’ all over mo, into my mouth and nose and eyes. It was about my throat strangling me. The whole weight of the world was on mo with that awful beard. At last I struggled out of the nightmare—one of those which leave their horror behind them long after they are over, and fled to my friend's room for company. The next day I was told that the poor fellow had died in the room I slept in, even on the bedstead, having been taken there for greater space and airiness just before he died.

A lady told me once of a time when she lived, in a delightful trellised, latticed house, with a lake at a little distance from it.

“When X was a girl my brother John was going to a horse fair and he discovered just before he went to bed that a strap was oil his saddle. As he would be starting at four in the morning 1 thought I'd stay up and mend it for him; and when that was done and I'd read a bit I thought I'd wait and see that the poor fellow got his hot cup of tea all right, for you can’t trust a man to look after himself. I was sitting -by the fire reading a story of Miss Braddon's when I heard a noise like something dripping, and at the same minute. Vixen, my little dog, growled, and her hair stood up in a ridge along her spine. The sound of dripping came nearer and the door opened; and Vixen retreated under the sofa uttering short yelps of hysterical terror. There looked in a young woman with the face of a sleepwalker. Her eyes were wide open but unseeing; sbo advanced into the room plainly seeing nothing. She was wearing the dress of thirty 'years ago, a quilted petticoat and a pannicred sacque; and sho was bung with slimy waterweeds from head to foot, and the drip, drip was the water that fell from her clothing. I sat paralysed while she looked about the room as though there was something she expected to see and did not; and' yet, by her eyes, you could tell that she was not seeing at all. "She stood looking in for I don't know how long; and then she turned and went out, closing the doer behind her. It was a bright moonlight night; and the moon was on the lake. From wTiore I was sitting I saw something cross the lawn; a shadow which hardly came, between the moonlight and me. And it passed away round the end of the lake.

“Then I remembered an aunt of onra who had disappeared in the seventies, and, poor soul, as the mystery Was not cleared up, people began to think she had gone away with a iovor. a not very respectable one who went to America about that time, “I hadn't strength left to run upstairs to" John, who was kind and would have comforted me. the poor fellow. I was still sitting there when he came down carrying his boots in his hands, and he said the look of terror in my face os he opened the door put the heart across in him. Well, ho did not go to the fair till he had roused the servants and the daylight was coming in; morebetoken. he bought Colleen that day from a mountain farmer, and she was the luckiest mare ever ho had. The next day they began dragging the lake. Perhaps they never thought of doing it in the old davs. Somewiiero m the slush under the flaggers at the far corner they found—well Something; and that big gold locket you admired the other day and wondered at me for not wearing i suppose Aunt Sophia got tired at last of having lies told about her. I wonder why she was so long about it. ' She was silent for a few seconds; then she added. “Ghosts have queer ways. The water had really dnppod. The hall was dreeped in it!" \ gnost which is not seen but onlv felt haunts a Royal house in one of the Royal parks- There are two rooms which date back to Tudor days; the rest of the delightful house has grown bit by bit in succeeding centuries. The odd thing is that you cannot warm those rooms. On th? hottest day of summer they are stonecold. A roaring fire makes not the slightest pciTcpt ililc difference. Under the beautiful ru;;.-> and •nccrfnl ehintxcs of 1 lie lurnitum and kimiofs tucre is- a vault. Somethin? '..-.Mies "nm these rooms in twilight aTfO leans above you if you are

playingat the piano in a Blind Man's Holiday. There is a sigh at your oar; no more than that. An Irish servant told me of a ghoet in flames, a wicked ancestress, who was burned to death for her sins. She had an uncomfortable habit of appearing in flames at the foot of the staircase, the spot where she fell and was reduced to ashes. According to Mary this fearsome apparition was taken quite calmly by her descendants. “ 'Hun upstairs and fetch roy pipe,’ says the master to me one day. 'I wouldn't go for all ye could pay me, sir.’ says I. gbin' on wid polishin' the grate. ‘D’ye want me to meet the ghost f' says I. 'lsn't she standin’ out there like an ould pillar of fire?’ .Ho made a step to the dure, an' says he; 'Give over your tatterin' tearin’, your Fcreachin' an' annoyin' Christian people. Burn where ye burnt before.' “I heard tell," said Marv reflectively, “that she was never seen in it again alter Pal her Peter MeShane blessed th« bouse. He was a beautiful man. JJ« tied her up fast enough from the people."