TWO THRILLING GHOST STORIES

Sun (Christchurch), Volume III, Issue 857, 8 November 1916, Page 3

TWO THRILLING GHOST STORIES

A DISPLEASED SPIRIT. A few years ago I knew a young woman who lived with her mother In an old fashioned basement house. The front part, being under ground, was used as a cellar and the back served as kitchen. The foundation of the house being very wide, it left a projecting wall of about a fool or more on which the occupants sometimes sat. Shortly after Mrs. Y.'s criticism of spiritualists and spiritualism she was seated in the kitchen one day, when suddenly she saw her mother, mother-in-law and uncle sealed upon the kitchen wall, and they were looking very cross. Mrs. X. asked her daughter, who came into the kitchen, whether she saw anything unusual upon the wall. The daughter laughed mid said:— "Why, yes, mother. I see Grandma X., Grandma P., and uncle seated there." Her mother was very much frightened, as she had n son who was sent to the country for his health, ai.d she feared he might die. Mrs. X. related her experience to my landlady, who was an intimate friend, and my landlady, in turn, told me the circumstances and asked what my impressions would be if 1 saw a vision like that. I said:—"Well, if I saw them 1 should believe they were actually there." Every day at a certain time the trio would sit upon the wall. Mrs. X. whitewashed the kitchen and they appeared more plainly than ever. When my landlady told me that they were looking cross 1 suggested that perhaps Mrs. X. contemplated doing something displeasing to her mother, who had but recently passed away, and she said that was the ease, as Mrs. X. Intended using some of the money left by her mother in a way the mother had expressly staled in her will it should not be used. She was also very anxious thai her husband should sell the house in which they lived, ae.d his mother had requested them to keep it until afler her son's death. The uncle seemed to Imvo ceine as an escort to the two aged ladies, and after the various properties were disposed of as directed in the will the trio took their departure and have not appeared since. L. A.

WAS IT COINCIDENCE? Several years ago I was living in a pretty little old fashioned house with my aunt, of whom I was very fond; her daughter, Mary, and granddaughter, Alice. Mary and little Alice went away to the seashore for several weeks that summer, and about two weeks be. fore they intended returning Mary wrote my aunt to join her, leaving me free to accept an invitation from an old school friend to spend the fortnight with her. So the house was closed and away we went. About ten days later I received a letter saying that Mary and Alice were coming sooner than they had expected and that auntie was intending to stop over on the way home to visit an old friend. On the Wednesday appointed for Mary's return [ went home, about an hour's journey, flung open the doors and windows, for if. was a beautiful, balmy September day; picked a big bunch of flowers for the supper table and was singing at the top of my voice and feeling as happy as a lark. Suddenly a cold blast seemed to strike me and I was (hired to the very marrow of my bones. A feeling of intense depression seized me, a feeling of coming evil —almost horror. I walked up and down the floor wiingiug my hands and trying to fight off the awful feeling of suffocation and fa in tn ess. I staggered to the garden door and threw it open to get more air, although all the windows were wide open. Then 1 suddenly screamed and jumped back, for directly in the doorway stood tny grandmother, of whom J. had been very fond and who had been dead for several years. She was enveloped from head to foot in floating gray thin stuff, but 1 saw her face distinctly. Bursting into a paroxysm of (ears, I staggered back and dropped on a couch. As I did so the big clock In the "jail eUinud ,'or (ho half hour after five. When my cousin arrived a few hours later she said that 1 was the most doleful thing she had ever seen. She attributed my looks to my annoyance at having to break up my lovely visit and come home sooner than I had expected. I made no explanation, for I feared that she would laugh at me for "letting my imagination run away with me," as she would probably have said. A few hours later a telephone message came telling us that dear aunt had been killed instantly at a railroad crossing al half-past five I'. M. S.