A TERRIBLE EXAMPLE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXI, Issue 49, 6 April 1894, Page 6

A TERRIBLE EXAMPLE.

THI3 is the only ghost story that I know. It is a true story, and I have never seen it in print, and never heard it explained away ; for though the ghoet is never seen now-a-days, for good reason, the evidence that it was seen once is almost incoate 3 table. But here is the story as I heard it :— It is a Brasenose ghost, and it was seen in the early part of the cantury, at a time when the Brasenoae undergraduates were conspicuous among their fellows for profane iniquity. Tbe mo.t audaciously iniqaitous of them had bandeJ themselves together into a club. The name of the society was tbe Hell Fire Club and its avowed purpose was the promotion of all manner of wickedness by means of song and jest and story. Tbe club met in the rooms of the different members in mm, and a notable feature of its gatherings was that there was no chairman. At the head of the table stood a vacant chair, and the theory wae that it was occupied by our ghostly enemy, tbe invisible Prince of Darkness. The dons knew something about the club, but not enough to warrant their interference with its proceedings. But one night the truth was repealed, suddenly trag:cally, and eupernaturallv, to the pxincipal. It happened in this way. The principal had been dining at the adjacent college of Exeter The hospitality of the Exeter common room is agreeable, and he had lingered late ; but about midnight he started on his homeward way His route lay down a narrow thoroughfare called Brasenose lane, which separates Brasenose from Exeter. The ground floor windows, looking out upon the lane, are barred, so that undergraduates may not ißsae through them upon prohibited nocturnal rambles ; and as the principal of Brasenose pursued his path along the lane, a str.nge thing happened and a strange sight appeared to him. The college clock solemnly struck 12, and while the air was still vibrating with its tones, a sudden flieh of lurid light il uminated one of the ground floor windows The principal looked, and an awful vision met his eyes ; for first a weird and fea ful figure— a figure with horns and hoofs and a girdle of fire-tbe figure of one he recognised s Apollyon, tbe enemy of man. And then he saw that Apollyon had hold of an undergraduate— an undergraduate wh .m he knew~and was dragging him violently through the window bars. Then suddenly as it had come, the vision hud passed, and Brasenose lane was once more in darkness. Bat the e.incipal had the vague sense thst something horrible bad happened and he hurried on to the college gate and rarg the bell. The porter opened to him, and as he Btepped inside he heard the Bound of many footsteps streaming down the corridor. He questioned the men, and by degrees they stammered out their story. There had been, it seemed, that very night » meeting of the Hell Fire Club in the rooms from the window of whici the principal had seen his vision. Tbey had sung their blasphemous songs and told their ribald stories ; then an undergraduate -the undergraduate wbose face the principal had recognised -bad stood up in their midst to make a parade of special blasphemy, and as he blasphemed -like Ansnias as he lied— he had suddeuly been struck down dead. That is the ghost story, and there is a woahh of evidence testifying to its truth. For myself, I had it from an old man-, clergy man— who was in residence at the college at the time. He told me of what tbe man had died ; but it is something too horrible to write down here. " And I remember something else," he added. " I remember how the coffin was laid out before the funeral in the college hall and all of us undergraduates were assembled there to look at it, and to find warning for our own lives io the horrible fate that hid overtaken our contemporary."— •• Lyric " in the Sun.