An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street - Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
An account of some disturbances in Augier Street. It is
not worth telling the story of mine, at least not
worth writing told indeed, as I have sometimes been called
upon to tell it to a circle of intelligent and
eager faces, lighted up by a good after dinner fire
on a winter's evening, with a cold wind rising and

(00:21):
wailing outside, and all a snug and cozy within, it
has gone off, though I say it, who should not indifferent? Well,
but it is a venture to do as you would
have me. Pen Ink and paper are called vehicles for
the marvelous, and a reader decidedly a more critical animal
than a listener, if, however, you can induce your friends

(00:43):
to read it after nightfall and when the fireside talk
has run for a while on thrilling tales of shapeless terror.
In short, if you will secure me the Molia tempora
FUNDI I will go to my work and say my say.
But better heart, well, then these conditions, I suppose I
shall waste no more words, but tell you simply how

(01:03):
it all happened. My cousin Tom Ludlow and I studied
medicine together. I think he would have succeeded had he
stuck to the profession, but he preferred the church were
a fellow, and died early, a sacrifice to contagion, contracted
in the noble discharge of his duties. For my present purpose,
I say enough of his character when I mentioned that

(01:23):
he was of a sedate, but frank and cheerful nature,
very exact in its observance of truth, and not by
any means, like myself, of an excitable or nervous temperament.
My uncle Ludlow, Tom's father, while we were attending lectures,
purchased three or four old houses in Aungier Street, one
of which was unoccupied. He resided in the country, and

(01:44):
Tom proposed that we should take up our abode in
the untenanted house, so long as it should continue unlet,
a move which would accomplish the double end of settling
us nearer alike to our lecture rooms and to our amusements,
and of relieving us from the weekly charge of rent
for our lodgings. Our furniture was very scant, our whole
equipage remarkably modest and primitive, and in short, our arrangements

(02:07):
pretty nearly as simple as those of a bivouac. Our
new plan was therefore executed almost as soon as conceived.
The front drawing room was our sitting room. I had
the bedroom over it, and torned the back bedroom on
the same floor, which nothing could have induced me to occupied.
The house to begin with was a very old one.
It had been, I believe, newly fronted about fifty years before,

(02:31):
but this exception, it had nothing modern about it. The
agent who bought it and looked into the titles for
my uncle told me that it was sold, along with
much other forfeited property at Chichester House I think, in
seventeen o two, and had belonged to Sir Thomas Hackett,
who was Lord Mayor of Dublin in James the Second's time.
How old it was then I can't say, but at

(02:53):
all events it had seen years and changes enough to
have contracted all that mysterious and saddened air, once exciting
and depressing, which belongs to most old mansions. There had
been very little done in the way of modernizing details,
and perhaps it was better so, for there was something
queer and by gone in the very walls and ceilings,

(03:14):
in the shape of doors and windows, in the odd
diagonal sight of the chimney pieces, in the beams and
ponderous cornices, not to mention the singular solidity of all
the woodwork, from the banisters to the window frames, which
hopelessly defied disguise and would have emphatically proclaimed their antiquity
through any conceivable amount of modern finery and varnish. An

(03:36):
effort had indeed been made to the extent of papering
the drawing rooms, but somehow the paper looked raw and
out of keeping. And the old woman who kept a
little dirt pie of a shop in the lane, and
whose daughter, a girl of two and fifty, was our
solitary handmaid, coming in at sunrise and chastily receding again
as soon as she had made already for tea in

(03:57):
our state apartment. This woman, i say, remembered it to
when old Judge Horrocks, who having earned the reputation of
a particularly hanging judge, ended by hanging himself, as the
coroner's jury found under an impulse of temporary insanity, with
a child skipping rope over the massive old banisters, resided there,
entertaining good company with fine venison and rare old port.

(04:21):
In those halcyon days the drawing rooms were hung with
gilded leather, and I dare say cut a good figure,
for they were really spacious rooms. The bedrooms were reined scutted,
but the front room was not gloomy, and in it
the coziness of antiquity quite overcome its somber associations. But
the back bedroom, with its two queerly placed melancholy windows,

(04:42):
staring vacantly at the foot of the bed, and with
a shadowy recess to be found in most old houses
in Dublin, like a large ghostly closet, which, from congeniality
of temperament, had amalgamated with the bedchamber and dissolved the
partition at night time. This alcove, as our maid was
wont to call it, had in my eyes a specially

(05:02):
sinister and suggestive character. Tom's distant and solitary candle glimmered
vainly into its darkness. There it was always overlooking him,
always itself impenetrable. But this was only part of the effect.
The whole room was. I can't tell how repulsive to
me there was. I suppose in its proportions and features

(05:23):
a latent discord, a certain mysterious and indescribable relation which
jarred indistinctly upon some secret sense of the fitting and
the safe, and raised indefinable suspicions and apprehensions of the
imagination on the whole. As I began by saying, nothing
could have induced me to pass the night alone in it,
I had never pretended to conceal from poor Tom my

(05:45):
superstitious weakness, and he, on the other hand, most unaffectedly
ridiculed my tremors. The skeptic was, however, destined to receive
a lesson. As you shan hear, we had not been
very long in occupation of our respective dormitories when I
began to complain of uneasy nights and disturbed sleep. I was,
I suppose, the more impatient under dis annoyance, as I

(06:07):
was usually a sound sleeper and by no means prone
to nightmares. It was, now, however, my destiny. Instead of
enjoying my customary repose every night to supper full of
horrors after a preliminary course of disagreeable and frightful dreams,
my troubles took a definite form, and the same vision,
without an appreciable variation in a single detail, visited me

(06:30):
at least on an average every second night in the week. Now,
this dream, nightmare, or infernal illusion, which you please, of
which I was a miserable sport, was on this wise
I saw, or thought I saw, with the most abominable distinctness,
although at the time in profound darkness, every article of
furniture and accidental arrangement of the chamber in which I lay, this,

(06:53):
as you know, is incidental to ordinary nightmare. Well, while
in this clairvoyant condition, which seemed by the lighting up
of the theater in which was to be exhibited the
monotonous tableau of horror which made my nights insupportable, my
attention invariably became, I know not why, fixed upon the
windows opposite the foot of my bed, and uniformly with

(07:15):
the same effect, a sense of dreadful anticipation always took
slow but sure possession of me. I became somewhow conscious
of a sort of horrid but undefined preparation going forward
in some unknown quarter and by some unknown agency, for
my torment. And after an interval which always seemed to
me at the same length, a picture suddenly flew up

(07:35):
to the window, where it remained fixed, as if by
an electrical attraction, and my discipline of horror then commenced
to last, perhaps for hours. The picture, thus mysteriously glued
to the window panes was the portrait of an old
man in a crimson flowered silk dressing gown, the folds
of which I could now describe, with a countenance embodying
a strange mixture of intellect, sensuality, and power, but withal

(07:58):
a sinister and full of malignant omen His nose was
hooked like the beak of a vulture, his eyes large,
gray and prominent, and lighted up with a more than
mortal cruelty and coldness. These features were surmounted by a
crimson velvet cap, the hair that peeped from under which
was white with age, while the eyebrows retained their original blackness.

(08:20):
Well I remember every line, hew and shadow of that
stony countenance, And well I may the gaze of this
hellish visage was fixed upon me, and mine returned it
with the inexplicable fascination of nightmare. For what appeared to
me to be hours of agony. At last, the cock
he grew away, then flew the fiend who had enslaved

(08:41):
me through the awful watches of the night, and harassed
and nervous, I rose to the duties of the day
I had. I can't see exactly why, but it may
have been from the exquisite anguish and profound impressions of
unearthly horror with which the strange phantasmagoria was associated an
insurmountable antipathy to describing the exact nature of my knightly

(09:02):
troubles to my friend and comrade generally, however, I told
him that I was haunted by abominable dreams, and true
to the imputed materialism of medicine, we put our heads
together to dispel my horrors, not by exorcism, but by
a tonic I will do this tonic justice, and frankly
admit that the accursed portrait began to intermit its visits

(09:23):
under its influence. What of that? Was this singular apparition,
as full of character as of terror. Therefore the creature
of my fancy or the invention of my poor stomach?
Was it, in short subjective to borrow the technical slang
of the day, and not the palpable aggression and intrusion
of an external agent. That good friend, as we will
both admit, by no means, follows the evil spirit who

(09:46):
enthralled my senses in the shape of that portrait may
have been just as near me, just as energetic, just
as malignant. Though I saw him not what means the
whole moral code of revealed religion regarding the due keeping
of our bodies, soberness, temperance, et cetera. Here is an
obvious connection between the material and the invisible. The healthy
tone of the system and its unimpaired energy may for

(10:10):
aughto we can tell guards against influences which would otherwise
render life itself terrific. The mesmerist and the electro biologist
will fail upon an average with nine patients out of ten,
So may the able spirit. Special conditions of the corporeal
system are indispensable to the production of certain spiritual phenomena.
The operation succeeds, sometimes sometimes fails. That is all. I

(10:34):
found afterwards that my would be skeptical companion had his
troubles too, but of these I knew nothing Yet. One night,
for a wonder, I was sleeping soundly when I was
roused by a step on the lobby outside by room,
followed by the loud clang of what turned out to
be a large brass candlestick flung with all his force
by poor Tom Ludlow over the banisters and rattling with

(10:56):
a rebound down the second flight of stairs, and almost
concurrently with them, Tom burst open my door and bounced
into my room backwards in a state of extraordinary agitation.
I had jumped out of bed and clutched him by
the arm before I had any distinct idea of my own.
Whereabouts There we were, in our shirt, standing before the
open door, staring through the great old banister opposite at

(11:17):
the lobby window, through which the sickly light of a
clouded moon was gleaming. What's the matter, Tom, what's the
matter with you? What the devil's the matter with you? Tom?
I demanded, shaking him with nervous impatience. He took a
long breath before he answered me. And then it was
not very coherently. It's nothing, nothing at all? Did I speak?

(11:38):
What did I say? Where's a candle? Wretched? It's dark?
I I had a candle, Yes, dark enough, I said,
But what's the matter? What is it? Why don't you speak? Tom?
Have you lost your wits? What's the matter? The matter? Oh,
it is all over? It must have been a dream,

(11:59):
nothing at all, but a dream. Don't you think so?
It could not be anything more than a dream, of course,
said I, feeling uncommonly nervous. It was a dream, I thought,
He said, there was a man in my room, and
and I jumped out of bed. And where's a candle
in your room? Most likely? I said, Shall I go

(12:21):
and bring it? No, stay here, don't go. It's no matter.
Don't I tell you it was all a dream, bolted
old Dick. I'll stay here with you. I feel nervous,
So Dick, like a good fellow, light your candle and
open the window. I'm in a shocking state. I did
as he asked me, and roving himself like grenoy in

(12:42):
one of my blankets, he seated himself close beside my bed.
Every one knows how contagious his fear of all sorts,
but more especially that particular kind of fear under which
poor Tom was at that moment laboring. I would not
have heard, nor I believe, would he have recapitulated, just
at that moment, for half the world, the details of
the hideous vision which it so unmanned him. Don't mind

(13:04):
telling me anything about your nonsensical dream, Tom said, I
affecting contempt. Really in a panic. Let us talk about
something else. But it is quite plain that this dirty
old house disagrees with his boat and hang me if
I stay here longer to be pestered with indigestion and
bad nights. So we may as well look out for lodgings,

(13:24):
don't you think so? At once Tom agreed, and after
an interval, said, I have been thinking, Richard, that it
is a long time since I saw my father, and
I have made up my mind to go down to
morrow and return in a day or two, and you
can take rooms for us in the meantime. I fancy
that this resolution, obviously the result of the vision which

(13:44):
had so profoundly scared him, would probably vanish next morning
with the dams and shadows of night. But I was
mistaken off, and Tom had people's day to the country.
Having agreed that so soon as I had secured suitable lodgings,
I was to recall him by letter from his visit
to my uncle l Low. Now anxious as I was
to change my quarters. It so happened, owing to a

(14:05):
series of petty procrastinations and accidents, that nearly a week
elapsed before my bargain was made, and my letter of
recall on the wing to tom. And in the meantime
a trifling adventure or two had occurred to your humble servant, which,
absurd as they now appear, diminished by distance, did certainly
at the time serve to wet my appetite for change considerably.

(14:26):
A night or two after the departure of my comrade,
I was sitting by my bedroom fire, the door locked,
and the ingredients of a tumbler of hot whiskey punch
upon the crazy spider table, for as the best mode
of keeping the black spirits white and blue spirits in gray,
with which I was environed at Bay. I had adopted
the practice recommended by the wisdom of my ancestors, and

(14:46):
kept my spirits up by pouring spirits down. I had
thrown aside my volume of Anatomy, and was treating myself
by way of a tonic preparatory to my punch, and
bed to a half dozen pages of the Spectator, when
I heard a step on the flight of stairs descending
from the attics. It was two o'clock, and the streets
were as silent as a churchyard. The sounds were therefore

(15:07):
perfectly distinct. There was a slow, heavy tread, characterized by
the emphasis and deliberation of age, descending by the narrow
staircase from above, and what made the sound most singular,
it was plain that the feet which produced it were
perfectly bare, measuring the descent with something between a pound
and a flop, very ugly to hear. I knew well
that my attendant had gone away many hours before, and

(15:29):
that nobody but myself had any business in the house.
It was quite plain also that the person who was
coming downstairs had no intention whatever of concealing his movements,
but on the contrary, appeared disposed to make even more
noise and proceed even more deliberately than was at all necessary.
When the step reached the foot of the stairs outside
my room, it seemed to stop, and I expected every

(15:51):
moment to see my door open spontaneously and give admission
to the original of my detested portrait. I was, however,
relieved in a few seconds by hearing the descent renewed,
just in the same manner upon the staircase leading down
to the drawing rooms, and thence after another pause, down
the next flight, and so on to the hall. Whence
I heard no more Now by the time the sound

(16:12):
had ceased, I was wound up, as they say, to
a very unpleasant pitch of excitement. I listened, but there
was not a stir. I screwed up my courage to
ad the size of experiment, opened my door, and in
a sentorian voice, boiled over the banisters. Oose. There there's
no answer but the ringing of my own voice to
the empty old house, no renewal of movement, nothing, in short,

(16:34):
to give my unpleasant sensations a definite direction. There is,
I think, something most disagreeably disenchanting in the sound of
one's own voice. Under such circumstances, exerted in solitude and
in vain, it redoubled my sense of isolation, and my
misgivings increased. In perceiving that the door, which I certainly
thought I had left open, was closed behind me. In

(16:54):
a vague alarm lest my retreat should be cut off,
I got again into my room as quickly as I could,
where I remained in a state of imaginary blockade and
very uncomfortable. Indeed, till morning next night brought no return
of my barefooted fellow lodger, But the night following, being
in my bed and in the dark somewhere, I suppose,
about the same hour as before, I distinctly heard the

(17:16):
old fellow again descending from the garrets. This time I
had had my punch, and the morale of the garrison
was consequently excellent. Jumped out of bed, clutched the poker
as I passed the expiring fire, and in a moment
was upon the lobby. The sound had ceased. By this
time the dark and chill were discouraging. And guess my
horror when I saw or thought I saw a black monster,

(17:39):
whether in the shape of a man or a bear,
I could not say, standing with its back to the
wall on the lobby, facing me, with a pair of
great greenish eyes shining dimly out. Now I must be
frank and confessed that the cupboard which displayed out plates
and cups stood just there, though at the moment I
did not recollect it. At the same time, I must
honestly say that, making every other allowance for an excited imagination,

(18:02):
I never could satisfy myself that I was made the
dupe of my own fancy in this matter. For this apparition,
after one or two shiftings of shape, as if in
the act of incipient transformation began, as it seemed, on
second thoughts to advance upon me in its original form.
From an instinct of terror rather than of courage, I
hurled the poker with all my force at its head,

(18:25):
and to the music of a horrid crash, made my
way into my room and double locked the door. Then
in a minute more I heard the horrid bare feet
walk down the stairs till the sound ceased in the hall.
As on the former occasion, if the apparition of the
night before was an ocular delusion of my fancy sporting
with the dark outlines of our cupboard, and if its
horrid eyes were nothing but a pair of inverted teacups,

(18:48):
I had, at all events the satisfaction of having launched
the poker with admirable effect, and in true fancy phrase,
knocked its two daylights into one. As the commingled fragments
of my tea service testified. I did my best to
gather comfort and courage from these evidences, but it would
not do. And then what could I say of those
horrid bare feet and the regular tramp tramp tramp, which

(19:10):
measured the distance of the entire staircase through the solitude
of my haunted dwelling, and an hour when no good
influence was stirring, confound it. The whole affair was abominable.
I was out of spirits and dreaded the approach of night.
It came ushered ominously in with a thunder storm and
dull torrents of depressing rain. Earlier than usual. The streets

(19:32):
grew silent, and by twelve o'clock nothing but the comfortless
pattering of the rain was to be heard. I made
myself as snug as I could. I lighted two candles
instead of one. I forswore bed and held myself in
readiness for a sally candle in hand for kot Kirko.
I was resolved to see the being, if visible at all,

(19:52):
who troubled the nightly stillness of my mansion. I was
fidgety and nervous, and tried in vain to interest myself
at my I walked up and down my room, whistling
in turn martial and hilarious music, and listening, ever and
anon for the dreaded noise. I sat down and stared
at the square label, at the solemn and reserved looking
black bottle until Flanagan and Company's best old malt whiskey

(20:16):
grew into a sort of subdued accompaniment to all the
fantastic and horrible speculations which chased one another through my brain. Silence, meanwhile,
grew more silent, and darkness darker. I listened in vain
for the rumble of a vehicle or the dull clamor
of a distant trow. There was nothing but the sound
of a rising wind, which had succeeded the thunderstorm that

(20:36):
had traveled over the Dublin Mountains. Quite out of hearing
in the middle of this great city, I began to
feel myself alone with nature, and Heaven knows what beside
My courage was ebbing punch, however, which makes beasts of
so many, made a man of me again, just in
time to hear but tolerable nerve and firmness the lumpy, flabby,

(20:57):
naked feet. Deliberately descending the stairs again, I took a candle,
not without a tremor. As I crossed the floor. I
tried to extemporize a prayer, but stopped shot to listen,
and never finished it. The steps continued, I confess I
hesitated for some seconds at the door before I took
out of grace and opened it. When I peeped out,

(21:17):
the lobby was perfectly empty. There was no monster standing
on the staircase, And as the detested sounds ceased, I
was reassured enough to venture forward nearly to the banisters.
Horror of horrors. Within a stair or two beneath the
spot where I stood, the unearthly treads smote the floor.
My eye caught something in motion. It was about the

(21:37):
size of Goliad's foot. It was gray, heavy, and flapped
with a dead weight from one step to another. As
I am alive, it was the most monstrous gray rat
I ever beheld or imagined. Shakespeare says, some men here
cannot abide a gaping pig, and some that are mad
if they behold a cat. I went well nigh out

(21:58):
of my wits when I beheld this rat, for laugh
at me as you may. It fixed upon me, I thought,
a perfectly human expression of malice. And as it shuffled
about and looked up into my face almost from beneath
my feet, I saw I could swear it. I felt
it then and know it now, the infernal gaze in
the accursed countenance of my old friend in the potrait

(22:20):
transfused into the visage of the bloated vermin before me.
I bounced into my room again with a feeling of
loathing and horror I cannot describe, and locked and bolted
my door as if a lion had been at the
other side. Damn him or it, cursed the portrait and
its original I felt in my soul that the rat, yes,
the rat, the rat I had just seen, was that

(22:42):
evil being in masquerade and rambling through the house upon
some infernal night lark. Next morning, I was early trudging
to the Mirey streets, and among other transactions, boasted a
peremptory note recalling Tom. On my return, however, I found
a note from my absent chum announcing his intended return
next day. I was doubly rejoiced at this, because I

(23:04):
had succeeded in getting rooms, and because the change of
scene and return of my comrade were rendered specially pleasant
by the last night's half ridiculous, half horrible adventure. I
slept extemporaneously in my new quarters in Diggs's Street that night,
and next morning returned to breakfast to the haunted mansion,
where I was certain Tom would call immediately on his arrival.

(23:25):
I was quite right, came, and almost his first question
referred to the primary object of our change of residence.
Thank god, he said, But gentumine fervor. On hearing that
all was arranged on your account, I am delighted. As
to myself, I assure you that no earthly consideration could
have induced me, ever again, to pass a night in
this disastrous old house. Confound the house, I ejaculated with

(23:49):
a genuine mixture of fear and detestation. We have not
had a pleasant hour since we came to live here,
And so I went on and related, incidentally my adventure
with the plethoric old. Well, if that were all, said
my cousin, affecting to make light of the matter, I
don't think I should have minded it very much, Ay,

(24:09):
but it's I it's countenance, My dear Tom merged I.
If you had seen that, you would have felt it
might be anything but what it seemed. I inclined to
think the best conjurer in such a case would be
an able bodied cat, he said, with a provoking chuckle.
But let us hear of your own adventure, I said, tartly.

(24:30):
At this challenge. He looked uneasily round him, I had
pooked up a very unpleasant recollection. You shall hear it, Dick.
I'll tell it to you, he said. Begad, sir, I
should feel quite queer though telling it here, though we
are too strong a body for ghosts to meddle with.
Just now. Though he spoke this like a joke, I

(24:51):
think it was serious calculation. Our heap was in a
corner of the room, packing our cracked deaft tea and
dinner services in a basket. She soon suspended operations, and,
with mountain eyes wide open, became an absorbed listener. Tom's
experiences were told nearly in these words. I saw it
three times, Dick, three distinct times, and I am perfectly

(25:12):
certain it meant me some infernal harm. I was, I say,
in danger, an extreme danger, for if nothing else had happened,
my reason would both certainly have failed me unless I
had escaped so soon. Thank god I did escape. The
first night of this hateful Descendants, I was lying in
the attitude of sleep in that lumbering old bed. I

(25:32):
hate to think of it. I was really wide awake,
though I had put out my candle and was lying
as quietly as I had been asleep, And although accidentally restless,
my thoughts were running in a cheerful and agreeable channel.
I think it must have been two o'clock at least
when I thought I heard a sound in that that
odious dark recess at the far end of the bedroom.
It was as if some one was drawing a piece

(25:54):
of cord slowly along the floor, lifting it up and
dropping it softly down again in coils. I sat up
once or twice in my bed, but could see nothing,
so I concluded it must be mice in the wainscot.
I felt no emotion graver than curiosity, and after a
few minutes ceased to observe it. While lying in this state,
strange to say, without at first the suspicion of anything supernatural.

(26:17):
On a sudden I saw an old man, rather stout
and square, in a sort of rowan red dressing gown,
and with a black cap on his head, moving stiftly
and slowly in a diagonal direction from the recess across
the floor of the bedroom, passing my bed at the foot,
and entering the lumber closet at the left. He had
something under his arm, his head hung a little to

(26:39):
one side, and Merciful God, when I saw his face.
Tom stopped for a while, and then said that awful
countenance which living or dying, I never can forget, disclosed
what he was without turning to the right or left.
He passed beside me, then entered the closet by the
bed's head. While this fearful and indescribable type of death

(27:00):
and guilt but was passing. I felt that I had
no more power to speak astir than if I had
been myself a corpse. For hours after it had disappeared,
I was too terrified and weak to move. As soon
as daylight came, I took courage and examine the room,
and especially the course which the frightful intruder had seemed
to take. But there was not a vestige to indicate

(27:21):
anybody's having passed. There no signs of any disturbing agency
visible among the lumber that strewed the floor of the closet.
I now began to recover a little. I was fagged
and exhausted, and at last overpowered by a feverish sleep.
I came down late, and, finding you out of spirits
and account of your dreams about the portrait whose original

(27:41):
I am now certain, disclosed himself to me. I did
not care to talk about the infernal vision. In fact,
I was trying to persuade myself that the whole thing
was an illusion, and I did not like to revive
in their intensity the hated impressions of the past night,
or to risk the constancy of my skepticism by recounting
the tail of myself. It required some nerve. I can

(28:02):
tell you to go to my haunted chamber next night
and lie down quietly in the same bed, continued Tom.
I did so with a degree of trepidation, which I
am not ashamed to say. A very little matter would
have sufficed to stimulate the downright panic. This night, however,
passed off quietly enough, as also the next, and so
too did two or three more. I grew more confident,

(28:25):
and began to fancy that I believed in the theories
of spectral illusions with which I had first vainly tried
to impose upon my convictions. The apparition had been indeed
altogether anormalist. It had crossed your room without any recognition
of my presence. I had not disturbed it, and it
had no mission to mean. What then was the imaginable

(28:45):
use of its crossing The room in a visible shape
at all, of course, if it had been in the
closet instead of going there as easily as it introduced
itself into the recess without entering the chamber in a
shape discernible by the senses. Besides, how did deal had
I seen it? It was a dark night, I had
no candle, there was no fire, and yet I saw

(29:06):
it as distinctly and coloring an outline as ever I
beheld a human form. A cataleptic dream would explain it all,
and I was determined that a dream it should be.
One of the most remarkable phenomena connected with the practice
of mendacity is the vast number of deliberate lies we
tell ourselves, whom of all persons we can least expect
to deceive. In all this, I need hardly tell you, Dick,

(29:29):
I was simply lying to myself and did not believe
one word of the wretched humbug. Yet I went on
as men will do, like persevering charlatans and impostors, who
tire a people into credulity by the mere force of reiteration.
So I hoped to win myself over at last to
a comfortable skepticism about the ghost. Had he not appeared

(29:49):
a second time? That certainly was a comfort. And what,
after all did I care for him and his queer,
old tuggery and strange looks. Not a fag. I was
nothing the worse for having seen him, and a good
story the better. So I tumbled into bed, put out
my candle, and, cheered by a loud, drunken quarrel in
the back lane, went fast asleep. From this slumber, I

(30:11):
awoke with a start. I knew I had had a
horrible dream, but what it was I could not remember.
My heart was thumping furiously. I felt bewildered and feverish.
I sat up in the bed and looked about the room.
A broad flood of moonlight came in through the curtainless window.
Everything was as I had last seen it, And though

(30:31):
the domestic squabble in the back lane was unhappily for
me allied. I Yet could hear a pleasant fellow singing
on his way home the then popular comic did he
called Murphy Delaney. Taking advantage of this diversion, I lay
down again, with my face towards the fireplace, and closing
my eyes, did my best to think of nothing else
but the song, which was every moment growing fainter in

(30:54):
the distance towards Murphy Delaney, so funny and frisky stepped
into a shaven to get a skinful. He reeled out again,
pretty well lined with whiskey, as fresh as a shamrock,
as blind as a bull. A singer whose condition I
daresay resemble that of as hero, was soon too far
off to regale my ears any more, and as his

(31:15):
music died away, I myself sank into a doze, neither
sound nor refreshing. Somehow the song had gotten into my head,
and I went meandering on through the adventures of my
respectable fellow countryman, who, on emerging from the she bean shop,
fell into a river, from which he was fished up
to be sat upon by a coroner's jury, who, having

(31:36):
learned from a horse doctor that he was dead as
a door nail so there was no end, returned their
verdict accordingly, just as he returned to his senses, when
an angry altercation and a pitched battle between the body
and the coroner winds up the lay with due spirit
and pleasantry. Through this ballad, I continued, with a weary
monotony to plod down to the very last line, and

(31:58):
then da capo and so on. In my uncomfortable half
sleep for how long I can't conjecture. I found myself
at last, however, muttering dead as a door nail. So
there was an end, and something like another voice within
me seemed to say, very faintly, but sharply dead, dead dead,

(32:18):
and made the Lord a mercy on your soul. And
instantaneously I was wide awake and staring right before me
from the pillow. Now will you believe it, Dick, I
saw the same, a cursed figure standing full front and
gazing at me with its stony and fiendish countenance. Not
two yards from the bedside. Tom stopped here and wiped
the perspiration from his face. I felt very queer. The

(32:42):
girl was as pale as Tom, and assembled as we
were in the very scene of these adventures. We were all,
I dare say, equally grateful for the clear daylight in
the resuming bustle out of doors. For about three seconds
only I saw it plainly. Then it grew indistinct. But
for a long time there was something like a column
of dark vapor where it had been, standing between me

(33:03):
and the wall, and I felt sure that he was
still there. After a good while this appearance went to
I took my clothes downstairs to the hall and dressed
there with the door half open. Then went out into
the street and walked about the town till morning, when
I came back in a miserable state of nervousness and exhaustion.
I was such a fool, Dick, as to be ashamed

(33:24):
to tell you how I came to be so upset.
I thought you would laugh at me, especially as I
had always talked philosophy and treated your ghosts with contempt.
I concluded you would give me no quarter, so kept
the tale of horror to myself. Now, Dick, you will
hardly believe me when I assure you that from many
nights after this last experience, I did not go to

(33:47):
my room at all. I used to sit up for
a while in the drawing room after you had gone
to your bed, and then steal down softly to the
hall door, let myself out and sit in the robin
Hood tavern until the last guest went off, And then
I got through the night like a sentry, pacing the
streets till morning. For more than a week I never
slept in bed. I sometimes had a snooze on a

(34:09):
form in the robin hood, and sometimes a nap in
a chair during the day, but regular sleep I had
absolutely none. I was quite resolved that we should get
into another house, but I could not bring myself to
tell you the reason. I somehow put it off from
day to day, although my life was during every hour
of this procrastination rendered as miserable as that of a felon,

(34:31):
but the constables on a track. I was growing absolutely
ill from this wretched mode of life. One afternoon I
determined to enjoy an hour's sleep upon your bed. I
hated mine so that I had never, except in a
stealthy visit every day to unmake it, lest Martha should
discover the secret of my nightly absence. Enter the ill
omened chamber. As in luck would have it, you had

(34:54):
locked your bedroom and taken away the key. I went
into my own to unsettle the bedclothes as usual, in
give the bed the appearance of having been slept in.
Now a variety of circumstances occurred to bring about the
dreadful scene through which I was that night to pass.
In the first place, I was literally overpowered with fatigue
and longing for sleep In the next place, the effect

(35:15):
of this extreme exhaustion upon my nerves resembled that of
a narcotic and rendered me less susceptible than perhaps I should,
in any other condition have been, of the exciting fears
which had become habitual to me. Then again, a little
bit of the window was open, A pleasant freshness pervaded
the room, and to crown all the cheerful sun of
day was making the room quite pleasant. What was to

(35:37):
prevent my enjoying an hour's nap here? The whole air
was resonant with a cheerful hum of life, and the broad,
matter of fact light of day filled every corner of
the room. I yielded, stifling my quarms to the almost
overpowering temptation, and merely throwing off my coat and loosening
my cravat, I lay down, limiting myself to half an

(35:58):
hour's doze and the unwonted enjoyment of a feather bed,
a coverlet, and a bolster. It was horribly insiduous, and
the demon no doubt marked my infatuated preparations. Don't that
I was. I fancied with mind and body worn out
for want of sleep. And an arrear of a full
week's rest. To my credit that such measures as half

(36:20):
an hour's sleep in such a situation was possible. My
sleep was deadlike long and dreamless, without start or fearful
sensation of any kind. I waked gently but completely. It was,
as you have good reason to remember, long past midnight,
I believe, about two o'clock, when sleep had been deep

(36:41):
and long enough to satisfy nature thoroughly. One often wakens
in this way, suddenly tranquility and completely. There was a
figure seated in that lumbering old sofa chair near the fireplace.
Its back was rather towards me, but I could not
be mistaken. It turned slowly round in merciful heaven. There
was a stony face, with its infernal lineaments of malignity

(37:04):
and despair gloating on me. There was now no doubt
as to its consciousness of my presence and the hellish
malice with which it was animated. For it arose, then
drew close to the bedside. There was a rope about
its neck, and the other end coiled up it held
stiffly in its hand. My good Angel nerved me for

(37:24):
this horrible crisis. I remained for some seconds. Transfixed by
the gaze of this tremendous phantom, he came close to
the bed and appeared on the point of mounting upon it.
The next instant I was upon the floor at the
far side, and in a moment was I don't know
how upon the lobby. But a spell was not yet broken,

(37:45):
the valley of the shadow of death was not yet traversed.
The aboard phantom stood before me. There it was standing
near the banisters, stooping a little, and with one end
of the rope round its neck, was poising a noose
at the other, as if to throw it over mine.
And while engaged in this baleful pantomime, it wore a
smile so sensual, so unspeakably dreadful, that my senses were

(38:07):
nearly overpowered. I saw and remember nothing more until I
found myself in your room. I had a wonderful escape, Dick.
There is no disputing that, an escape for which while
I live, I shall bless the mercy of heaven. No
one can conceive or imagine what it is for flesh
and blood to stand in the presence of such a thing,

(38:29):
but one who has had the terrific experience Dick. Dick
A shadow has passed over me, A chill has crossed
my blood and marrow, and I will never be the
same again, Never, Dick. Never. Our handmaid, a mature girl
of two and fifty, as I have said, stayed her
hand as Tom's story proceeded, and by little and little

(38:50):
drew near to us with open mouth, and her brows
contracted over her little beady black eyes, till stealing a
glance over her shoulder. Now and then she established as
close behind us. During the relation, she had made various
earnest comments in an undertone. But these and her ejaculations,
for the sake of brevity and simplicity, I have omitted
in my narration. It's often I heard tell of it,

(39:15):
she now said, But I never believed it rightly till now,
though indeed why should not. I does not my mother
down here in the lane, no queer stories. God bless
us beyond telling about it. But you ought not to
have slept in the back room. She was low to
let me be going in and out of that room
even in the daytime, let alone for any Christian to

(39:38):
spend the night in it. For sure, she says, it
was his own bedroom. Whose own bedroom? We asked in
a breath, why he's the old judges judge Horrocks, to
be sure, God rest his soul, And she looked fearfully round. Amen,
I muttered, but did he die there? Die there? No? Oh,

(40:00):
not quite there, she said, sure? Was it not over
the banister as he hung himself the old sinner? God
be merciful to us all, And was not it? In
the orcive they found the handles of the skipping rope
cut off, and the knife very was settling the court,
God bless us to hang himself with. It was his
housekeeper's daughter owned the rope, my mother often told me,

(40:21):
And the child never throve after. And he used to
be starting up out of his sleep and screeching in
the night time with DRAMs and frights that come on her.
And they said how it was the spirit of the
old judge that was torment in her. And she used
to be roaring and yelling out to hold back the
big old fellow with the crooked neck. And then she'd screeched, oh,

(40:41):
the master, the Master, he's damping at me and beckoning
to me, mother, darling, don't let me go. And so
the poor creature died at last, and the doctor said
it was rather on the brain, for it was all
they could say. How long ago was all this? I asked, Oh,
then how would I know? She answered, But it must

(41:02):
be a wonderful long time ago. For the housekeeper was
an old woman with a pipe in her mouth and
not a tooth left. Had better not eighty years old
when my mother was first married, and they said she
was a real box and fine dress woman. When the
old judge come to his end, and indeed, my mother's
not far from eighty years old herself this day. And
what made it worse for the unnatural old villain god

(41:24):
dress his soul to frighten the little girl out of
the world. The way he did was what was mostly
thought and believed by every one. My mother says, how
the poor little creature was his own child, for he was,
by all accounts an old villain every way. And the
hanging is judge that ever was known in Ireland's ground
for what he is said about the danger of sleeping

(41:45):
in that room, said I I suppose there were stories
about the ghost having appeared there to others. Well, there
was things and queer things, surely, she answered, as it seemed,
But some reluctance, and why would not there? Sure was
it not up in that same room he slept more
than twenty years? And was it not in the alcove
he got the rope ready, that done his own business

(42:05):
at last, the way he done many a batterman in
his lifetime. And was not the body lying in the
same bed after death, and put in the coffin there too,
and carried out to his grave from it in Peter's
judge y out after the coroner was done. But they
were queer stories. My mother has them, all about how
one Nicholas Pate got into trouble on the head of it.

(42:26):
And what did they say of the Sniggler's pad, I asked, Oh,
for that matter, it soon told, she answered, And she
certainly did relate a very strange story, which so piqued
my curiosity that I took occasion to visit the ancient lady,
her mother, from whom I learned many very curious particulars. Indeed,
I was tempted to tell the tale, but my fingers

(42:48):
are weary, and I must defer it. But if you
wish to hear it another time, I shall do my best.
When we had heard the strange tale I have not
told you. We put one or two further questions to
her about the alleged spectral visitations to which the house
had ever since the death of the wicked old Judge
been subjected. No one ever had luck in it, she

(43:09):
told us there was always cross accidents, sudden debts, and
short times in it. They first took it was a family.
I forget their name, but at any rate, there were
two young ladies and their papa. He was about sixty
and a stout, healthy gentleman as you'd wish to see
at that age. Well, he slept in that unlucky back
bedroom and got between us and harm. Sure enough, he

(43:32):
was found dead one morning, half out of his bed,
with his head as black as a shoe and swelled
like a puddon hanging down near the floor. It was
a fit, they said. He was as dead as a mackerel,
and so he could not say what it was. But
the old people were all sure that it was nothing
at all. But the old judge, God bless us, that
frightened him out of his senses and his life together.

(43:54):
Some time after there was a rich old maiden lady
took the house. I don't know which room she slept,
but she lived alone, and at any rate, one morning
the servants, going down early to their work, found us
sitting on the passage stairs, shivering and talking to herself,
quite mad. And never a word more could any of
them of her friends get from her ever afterwards. But

(44:14):
don't ask me the girl, for I promise to wait
for him. They never made out from her who it
was she meant by him. But of course those that
knew all about the old house were at no loss
for the meaning of all that happened to her. Then afterwards,
when the house was let out in lodgings, there was
Mickey Byrne that took the same room with his wife
and three children. And sure I heard missus Burne myself

(44:37):
telling how the children used to be lifted up in
the bed at night. She could not see by what means,
and how they were starting and screeching every hour, just
all as one as the housekeeper's little girl that died
till at last one night, poor Micky had a drop
in him the way he used now and again, And
what do you think in the middle of the night,
she thought he heard a noise on the stairs, and

(44:58):
being in liquor, nothing less I do him, but out
he must go himself to see what was wrong. Well,
after that, all she ever heard of him was him saying,
oh God, and a tumble that shook the very house.
And they're sure enough. He was lying in the lower
stairs under the lobby, with his neck smashed double under him,
where he was flung over the bannistairs. Then the handmaiden added,

(45:21):
I'll go down to the lane and send up Joe
Grvey to pack up the rest of the tay things,
and bring all the things across to your new lodgings.
And so we sallied out together, each of us breathing
more freely. I have no doubt as we crossed that
ill omened threshold for the last time. Now, I may
add thus much, in compliance with the immemorial usage of
the realm of fiction, which sees a hero not only

(45:44):
through his adventures, but fairly out of the world. You
must have perceived that what the flesh, blood and bone
hero of Romance proper is to the regular compounder of fiction,
this old house of brick wood and motar is to
the humble recorder of this true tale. I a ferefore
relate as his duty bound the catastrophe which ultimately befel at,
which was simply this that about two years subsequently to

(46:07):
my story, it was taken by a quack doctor who
called himself Baron Dulstf, and filled the parlor windows with
bottles of indescribable horrors preserved in brandy, and the newspapers
with the usual grand, eloquent and mendacious advertisements. This gentleman,
among his virtues, did not reckon sopriety, and one night,
being overcome with much wine, he set fire to his curtains,

(46:30):
partially burned himself, and totally consumed the house. It was
afterwards rebuilt, and for a time an undertaker established himself
in the premises. I have now told you my own
and Tom's adventures, together with some valuable collateral particulars, and
having acquitted myself of my engagement, I wish you a
very good night and pleasant dreams. End off. An account

(46:52):
of some strange disturbances in Augier Street by Joseph Sheridan
Le'thannau