September 3, 2025 • 43 mins
Delve into the eerie and enchanting world of Charles Dickens, a master storyteller with a fascination for the supernatural. In this collection, we present three of his captivating ghost stories, including the renowned The Signal Man. While these tales differ from his celebrated realistic and humorous novels, they offer a unique blend of Gothic atmosphere and intriguing characters, making them a must-listen for fans of the macabre. Summary by Vivian Chan.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section two a of three ghost Stories. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Recording by Marian Brown. Three ghost Stories by Charles Dickens.
(00:21):
The Haunted House, Chapter one. The mortals in the house
under none of the accredited ghostly circumstances, and environed by
none of the conventional ghostly surroundings. Did I first make
acquaintance with the house which is the subject of this
Christmas piece. I saw it in the daylight, with the
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sun upon it. There was no wind, no rain, no lightning,
no thunder, no awful or unwonted circumstance of any kind
to heighten its effect. More than that I had come
to it direct from a railway station. It was not
more than a mile distant from the railway station. And
as I stood outside the house, looking back upon the
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way I had come, I could see the Goods train
running smoothly along the embankment in the valley. I will
not say that everything was utterly commonplace, because I doubt
if anything can be that except to utterly commonplace people.
And there my vanity steps in. But I will take
it on myself to say that anybody might see the
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house as I saw it any fine autumn morning. The
manner of my lighting on it was this. I was
traveling towards London out of the north, intending to stop
by the way to look at the house. My health
required a temporary residence in the country, and a friend
of mine who knew that, and who had happened to
drive past the house, had written to me to suggest
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it as a likely place. I had got into the
train at midnight, and had fallen asleep, and had woke up,
and had sat looking out of the window at the
brilliant northern lights in the sky, and had fallen asleep again,
and had woke up again to find the night gone,
with the usual discontented conviction on me that I hadn't
been to sleep at all, upon which question, in the
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first imbecility of that condition, I am ashamed to believe
that I would have done wager by battle with the
man who sat opposite me that opposite man had had
through the night, as that opposite man always has several legs,
too many, and all of them too long. In addition
to this unreasonable conduct, which was only to be expected
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of him. He had had a pencil and a pocket book,
and had been perpetually listening and taking notes. It appeared
to me that these aggravating notes related to the jolts
and bumps of the carriage, and I should have resigned
myself to his taking them under a general supposition that
he was in the civil engineering way of life. If
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he had not sat staring straight over my head whenever
he listened. He was a goggle eyed gentleman of a
perplexed aspect, and his demeanor became unbearable. It was a cold,
dead morning, the sun not being up yet, and when
I had outwatched the paling light of the fires of
the Iron country, and the curtain of heavy smoke that
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hung at once between me and the stars and between
me and the day, I turned to my fellow traveler
and said, I beg your pardon, sir, but do you
observe anything particular in me? For really he appeared to
be taking down either my traveling cap or my hair
with a minuteness that was a liberty. The goggle eyed
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gentleman withdrew his eyes from behind me, as if the
back of the carriage were a hundred miles off, and said,
with a lofty look of compassion for my insignificance in you, sir,
b be sir said, I growing warm. I have nothing
to do with you, Sir, returned the gentleman, pray, let
me listen. Oh. He enunciated this vowl after a pause,
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and noted it down. At first, I was alarmed, for
an express lunatic, and no communication with the guard is
a serious position. The thought came to my relief that
the gentleman might be what is popularly called a wrapper,
one of a sect for some of whom I have
the highest respect, but whom I don't believe in. I
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was going to ask him the question when he took
the bread out of my mouth. You will excuse me,
said the gentleman contemptuously, if I am too much in
advance of common humanity to trouble myself at all about it.
I have passed the night, as indeed I passed the
whole of my time now in spiritual intercourse, Oh, said I,
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somewhat snappishly. The conferences of the night began, continued the gentleman,
turning several leaves of his note book with this message
evil communication corrupt good manners sound, said I, but absolutely
new new from spirits, returned the gentleman. I could only
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repeat my rather snappish oh, and ask if I might
be favored with the last communication. A bird in the hand,
said the gentleman, reading his last entry with great solemnity,
is worth two in the bosh. Truly, I am of
the same opinion, said I. But shouldn't it be bush?
It came to me bosh, returned the gentleman. The gentleman
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then informed me that the spirit of Socrates had delivered
this special revelation in the course of the night. My friend,
I hope you are pretty well. There are two in
this railway carriage. How do you do There are seventeen thousand,
four hundred and seventy nine spirits here, but you cannot
see them. Pythagoras is here. He is not at liberty
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to mention it, but hopes you like traveling. Galileo likewise
had dropped in with this scientific intelligence. I am glad
to see you, Amiko Comista. Water will freeze when it
is cold enough, Adyo. In the course of the night,
also the following phenomena had occurred. Bishop Butler had insisted
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on spelling his name Bubler, for which offense against orthography
and good manners, he had been dismissed as out of temper.
John Milton, suspected of wilful mystification, had repudiated the authorship
of Paradise Lost, and had introduced as joint authors of
that poem two unknown gentlemen, respectively named Grungers and Scadding Tone.
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And Prince Arthur, nephew of King John of England, had
described himself as tolerably comfortable in the Seventh Circle, where
he was learning to paint on velvet, under the direction
of Missus Trimmer and Mary, Queen of Scots. If this
should meet the eye of the gentleman who favored me
with these disclosures, I trust he will excuse my confessing
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that the sight of the rising sun and the contemplation
of the magnificent order of the vast universe made me
impatient of them. In a word, I was so impatient
of them that I was mightily glad to get out
at the next station, and to exchange these clouds and
vapors for the free air of heaven. By that time
it was a beautiful morning. As I walked away among
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such leaves as had already fallen from the golden, brown
and russet trees, and as I looked around me on
the wonders of creation, and thought of the steady, unchanging
and harmonious laws by which they are sustained, the gentleman's
spiritual intercourse seemed to me as poor a piece of
journey work as ever this world saw, in which heathen
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state of mind. I came within view of the house
and stopped to examine it attentively. It was a solitary house,
standing in a sadly neglected garden, a pretty even square
of some two acres. It was a house of about
the time of George the Second, as stiff, as cold,
as formal, and in as bad taste as could possibly
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be desired by the most loyal admirer of the whole
quartet of George's. It was uninhabited, but had within a
year or two been cheaply repaired to render it habitable.
I say cheaply because the work had been done in
a surface manner and was already decaying as to the
paint and plaster, though the colors were fresh. A lopsided
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board drooped over the garden wall, announcing that it was
to let on very reasonable terms, well furnished, it was
much too closely and heavily shadowed by trees, and in
particular there were six tall poplars before the front windows,
which were excessively melancholy, and the sight of which had
been extremely ill chosen. It was easy to see that
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it was an avoided house, a house that was shunned
by the villa to which my eye was guided by
a church spire some half a mile off, a house
that nobody would take. And the natural interference was that
it had the reputation of being a haunted house. No
period within the four and twenty hours of day and
night is so solemn to me as the early morning
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in the summer time. I often rise very early and
repair to my room to do a day's work before breakfast,
and I am always, on those occasions deeply impressed by
the stillness and solitude around me. Besides that there is
something awful in the being surrounded by familiar faces, asleep
in the knowledge that those who are dearest to us
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and to whom we are dearest, are profoundly unconscious of
us in an impassive state. Anticipate of that mysterious condition,
to which we are all tending. The stopped life, the
broken threads of yesterday, the deserted seat, the closed book,
the unfinished but abandon and occupation, all are images of death.
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The tranquility of the hour is the tranquility of death.
The color and the chill have the same association. Even
a certain air that familiar household objects take upon themselves
when they first merge with the shadows of the night
into the morning, of being newer as they used to
be long ago, has its counterpart in the subsistence of
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the worn face of maturity or age in death, into
the old, youthful look. Moreover, I once saw the apparition
of my father at this hour. He was alive and well,
and nothing ever came of it. But I saw him
in the daylight, sitting with his back towards me, on
a seat that stood beside my bed. His head was
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resting on his hand, and whether he was slumbering or grieving,
I could not discern. Amazed to see him there, I
sat up, moved my position, leaned out of bed, and
watched him. As he did not move. I spoke to
him more than once. As he did not move. Then
I became alarmed and laid my hand upon his shoulder
as I thought, and there was no such thing. For
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all these reasons, and for others less easily and briefly statable,
I find the early morning to be my most ghostly time.
Any house would be more or less haunted to me
in the early morning, and a haunted house could scarcely
address me to greater advantage than then. I walked on
into the village with the desertion of this house upon
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my mind, and I found the landlord of the little
Inn standing his doorstep. I bespoke breakfast and broached the
subject of the house. Is it haunted? I asked? The
landlord looked at me, shook his head, and answered, I
say nothing. Then it is haunted, well, cried the landlord,
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in an outburst of frankness that had the appearance of desperation.
I wouldn't sleep in it. Why not? If I wanted
to have all the bells in a house ring with
nobody to ring him, and all the doors in a
house bang with nobody to bang him, and all sorts
of feet treading about with no feet there, why, then,
said the landlord, I'd sleep in that house? Is anything
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seen there? The landlord looked at me again, and then,
with his former appearance of desperation, called down his stable
yard for Ikey. The call produced a high shouldered young
fellow with a round red face, a short crop of
sandy hair, a very broad, humorous mouth, a turned up nose,
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and a great sleeved waistcoat of purple bars with mother
of pearl buttons that seemed to be growing upon him,
and to be in a fair way, if it were
not pruned of covering his head and overrunning his boots.
This gentleman wants to know, said the landlord. If anything
seen at the poplar's ooded woman with a howl, said Ikey,
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in a state of great freshness. Do you mean a cry?
I mean a bird, sir, A hooded woman with an owl?
Dear me, did you ever see her? I seen the howl?
Never the woman not so plain as the howl, But
they always keeps together. Has anybody ever seen the woman
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as plainly as the owl? Lord? Bless you, sir lots?
Who Lord, bless you, sir lots. The general dealer opposite,
for instance, who is opening his shop? Perkins? Bless you?
Perkins wouldn't go anigh the place? No observed the young
man with considerable feeling. He ain't over wise, ain't Perkins,
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but he ain't such a fool as that. Here the
landlord murmured his confidence in Perkins knowing better who is
or who was the hooded woman with the owl. Do
you know, well, said Ikey, holding up his cap with
one hand while he scratched his head with the other.
They say in general that she was murdered, and the
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howl he ooded the while his very concise summary of
the facts was all I could learn, except that a
young man as hearty and as likely a young man
as ever I see, had been took with fits and
held down in him after seeing the hooded woman. Also
that a personage dimly described as an old chap, a
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sort of one eyed tramp answering to the name of
Joby unless you challenged him as Greenwood. And then he said,
why not, And even if so, mind your own business.
Had encountered the hooded woman a matter of five or
six times. But I was not materially assisted by these witnesses,
inasmuch as the first was in California and the last
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was as ike said, and he was confirmed by the
landlord anywheres. Now, although I regard with the hushed and
solemn fear the mysteries between which and this state of
existence is interposed the barrier of the great trial and
change that fall on all the things that live. And
although I have not the audacity to pretend that I
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know anything of them, I can no more reconcile the
mere banging of doors, ringing of bells, creaking of boards,
and suchlike insignificances with the majestic beauty and pervading analogy
of all the divine rules that I am permitted to understand,
that I have been able a little while before to
yoke the spiritual intercourse of my fellow traveler in the
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chariot of the rising Sun. Moreover, I had lived in
two haunted houses, both abroad. In one of these, an
old Italian palace, which bore the reputation of being very
badly haunted, indeed, and which had recently been twice abandoned.
On that account, I lived eight months most tranquility and pleasantly,
notwithstanding that the house had a score of mysterious bedrooms
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which were never used, and possessed in one large room
in which I sat reading times out of number at
all hours, and next to which I slept a haunted
chamber of the first pretensions. I gently hinted these considerations
to the landlord, and to this particular house having a
bad name. I reasoned with him, why how many things
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had bad names undeservedly, and how easy it was to
give bad names? And did he not think that if
he and I were persistently to whisper in the village,
that any weird looking, old drunken tinker of the neighborhood
had sold himself to the devil, he would come in
time to be suspected of that commercial venture. All this
wise talk was perfectly ineffective with the landlord, I am
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bound to confess, and was as dead a failure as
ever I made in my life to cut this part
of the story short. I was piqued about the haunted
house and was already half resolved to take it, So
after breakfast I got the keys from Perkins's brother in law,
a whip and harness maker who keeps the post office
and is under submission to a most rigorous wife of
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the doubly seceding little immanual persuasion, and went up to
the house, attended by my landlord, and by Ikey. Within
I found it as I had expected, transcendently dismal. The
slowly changing shadows waved on it from the heavy trees
were doleful in the last degree. The house was ill placed,
ill built, ill planned, and ill fitted. It was damp,
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It was not free from dry rot, and there was
a flavor of rats in it. And it was the
gloomy victim of that indescribable decay which settles on all
the work of man's hands whenever it's not turned to
man's account. The kitchens and offices were too large and
too remote from each other. Above stairs and below waste
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tracts of passage intervened between patches of fertility represented by rooms.
And there was a moldy old well with a green
growth of hiding, like a murderous trap, near the bottom
of the back stairs, under the double row of bells.
One of these bells was labeled on a black ground
in faded white letters, Master B. This, they told me,
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was the bell that rang the most. Who was Master B?
I asked, is it known what he did? While the
owl hooted rang the bell? Said Ikey. I was rather
struck by the prompt dexterity with which this young man
pitched his fur cap at the bell and rang it himself.
It was a loud, unpleasant bell, and made a very
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disagreeable sound. The other bells were inscribed according to the
names of the rooms to which their wires were conducted,
as picture room, double room, clock room, and the like.
Following Master Bee's bell to its source, I found that
young gentleman to have had but indifferent third class accommodation
in a triangular cabin under the cock loft, with a
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corner fireplace which Master must have been exceedingly small if
he were ever to warm himself at, and a corner
chimney piece like a pyramidal staircase to the ceiling. For
tom thumb. The papering of one side of the room
had dropped down bodily, with fragments of plaster adhering to it,
and almost blocked up the door. It appeared that Master b,
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in his spiritual condition, always made a point of pulling
the paper down. Neither the landlord nor Ikey could suggest
why he made such a fool of himself, except that
the house had an immensely large rambling loft at top.
I made no other discoveries. It was moderately well furnished,
but sparely. Some of the furniture, say a third was
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as old as the house, and the rest was of
various periods within the last half century. I was referred
to a corn chandler in the market place of the
county town to treat for the house. I went that day,
and I took it for six months. It was just
the middle October when I moved in with my maiden sister.
I venture to call her eight and thirty. She is
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so very handsome, sensible and engaging. We took with us
a deaf stableman, my bloodhound Turk, two women servants, and
a young person called an odd girl. I have reason
to record of the attendant last enumerated, who was one
of the Saint Lawrence's Union female orphans, and that she
was a fatal mistake and a disastrous engagement. The year
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was dying early, the leaves were falling fast. It was
a raw cold day when we took possession, and the
gloom of the house was most depressing. The cook, an
amiable woman but of a weak turn of intellect, burst
into tears on beholding the kitchen, and requested that her
silver watch might be delivered over to her sister two
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Toppenstock's gardens, legs walk Clapham Rise. In the event of
anything happening to her from the damp streaker. The housemaid
fainted cheerfulness, but was the greater martyr. The odd girl,
who had never been in the country alone, was pleased
and made arrangements for sowing an acorn in the garden
outside the scullery window and rearing an oak. We went
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before dark through all the natural as opposed to supernatural
miseries incidental to our state. Dispiriting reports ascended like the
smoke from the basement in volumes, and descended from the
upper rooms. There was no rolling pin. There was no salamander,
which failed to surprise me, for I don't know what
it is. There was nothing in the house. What there
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was was broken. The last people must have lived like pigs.
What could the meaning of the landlord be through these distresses?
The odd girl was cheerful in exemplary, but within four
hours after dark we had got into a supernatural groove,
and the odd girl had seen eyes and was in hysterics.
My sister and I had agreed to keep the haunting
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strictly to ourselves. And my impression was, and still is,
that I had not left Ike when he helped to unload
the cart alone with the women, or any of them
for one minute. Nevertheless, as I say, the odd girl
had seen eyes, no other explanation could ever be drawn
from her before nine, and by ten o'clock had had
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as much vintage applied to her as would pickle a
handsome salmon. I leave a discerning public to judge of
my feelings when under these untoward circumstances. At about half
past ten o'clock, Master B's bell began to ring in
a most infuriated manner, and Turk howled until the house
resounded with his lamentations. I hope I may never again
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be in a state of mind so unchristian as the
mental frame in which I lived for some weeks respecting
the memory of Master B. Whether his bell was rung
by rats or mice, or bats, or wind, or what
other accidental vibration, or sometimes by one cause, sometimes another,
and sometimes by collusion, I don't know, but certain it
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is that it did ring two nights out of three
until I conceived the happy idea of twisting Master Bee's
neck in other words, breaking his bell off short and
silencing that young gentleman, as to my experience and belief forever.
But by that time the odd girl had developed such
improving powers of catalepsy that she had become a shining
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example of that very inconvenient disorder. She would stiffen like
a guy fox endowed with unreason. On the most irrelevant occasions,
I would address the servants in a lucid manner, pointing
out to them that I had painted Master Bee's room
and balk the paper, and taken Master Bee's bell away,
and balk the ringing. And if they could suppose that
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that confounded boy had lived and died to clothe himself
with no better behavior than would most unquestionably have brought him,
with the sharpest particles of a birch broom, into close
acquaintance in the present imperfect state of existence, Could they
also suppose a mere poor human being such as I
was capable of these contemptible means of counteracting and limiting
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the powers of the disembodied spirits of the dead, or
of any spirits. I say, I would become emphatic and cogant,
not to say, rather complaisant, in such an address, when
it would all go for nothing by reason of the
odd girl suddenly stiffening from the toes upward and glaring
among us like a parochial petrifaction streaker. The housemaid, too
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had an attribute of a most discomfiting nature. I am
unable to say whether she was of an unusually lymphatic temperament,
or what else was the matter with her, But this
young woman became a mere distillery for the production of
the largest and most transparent tears I have ever met with.
Combined with these characteristics was a peculiar tenacity of hold
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in these specimens, so that they didn't fall, but hung
upon her face and nose in this condition, and mildly
and deplorably shaking her head. Her silence would throw me
more heavily than the admirable Crichton could have done in
a verbal disputation for a purse of money. Cook likewise
always covered me with confusion, as with a garment, by
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neatly winding up the session with the protest that the
ouse was wearing her out, and by meekly repeating her
last wishes regarding her silver watch. As to our nightly life,
the contagion of suspicion and fear was among us. There
is no such contagion under the sky hooded woman. According
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to the accounts, we were in a perfect convent of
hooded women noises with that contagion downstairs. I myself have
sat in the dismal parlor listening until I have heard
so many and such strange noises that they would have
chilled my blood if I had not been warned by
dashing out to make discoveries. Try this in bed in
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the dead of the night. Try this at your own
comfortable fireside, in the life of the night. You can
fill any house with noises if you will, until you
have a noise for every nerve in your nervous system.
I repeat, the contagion of suspicion and fear was among us,
and there is no such contagion under the sky. The women,
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their noses in a chronic state of excoriation from smelling salts,
were always primed and loaded for a swoon, and ready
to go off with hair triggers. The two elder detached
the odd girl on all expeditions that were considered doubly hazardous,
and she always established the reputation of such adventures by
coming back cataleptic. If Cook or Streaker went overhead after dark,
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we knew we should presently hear a bump on the ceiling.
And this took place so constantly that it was as
if a fighting man were engaged to go about the
house administering a touch of his art, which I believe
is called the auctioneer, to every domestic he met with.
It was in vain to do anything. It was in
vain to be frightened for the moment in one's own
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person by a real owl, and then to show the owl.
It was in vain to discover, by striking as accidental
discord on the piano, that turk always howled at particular
notes and combinations. It was in vain to be a
rhadamanthus with the bells, and if an unfortunate bell rang
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without leave, to have it down inexorably and silence it.
It was in vain to fire up chimneys, let torches
down the well, charge furiously into suspected rooms and recesses.
We changed servants, and dejectedly said to my sister, we
changed servants, and it was no better. The new set
ran away, and a third set came, and it was
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no better. At last, our comfortable housekeeping got to be
so disorganized and wretched that I one night dejectedly said
to my sister Patty, I begin to despair of our
getting people to go on with us here. I think
we must give this up. My sister, who is a
woman of immense spirit, replied, no, John, don't give it up.
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Don't be beaten, John. There is another way. And what
is that? Said I, John, returned my sister. If we
are not to be driven out of this house, and
that for no reason whatever that is apparent to you
or me, we must help ourselves and take the house
wholly and solely into our own hands. But the servants said,
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I have no servants, said my sister boldly. Like most
people in my gradive life, I had never thought of
the possibility of going on without these faithful obstructions. The
notion was so new to me. When suggested that, I
looked very doubtful. We know they come here to be
frightened and infect one another, and we know they are
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frightened and do infect one another, said my sister. With
the exception of bottles, I observed in a meditative tone,
the deaf stable man I kept him in my service
and still keep him as a phenomenon of moroseness not
to be matched in England. To be sure, John assented
my sister, Except Bottles, and what does that go to prove?
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Bottles talks to nobody. And here's nobody unless he is
absolutely roared at. And what alarm has Bottles ever given
or taken? None? This was perfectly true, the individual in question,
having retired every night at ten o'clock to his bed
over the coach house with no other company than a
pitchfork and a pail of water. That the pail of
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water would have been over me, and the pitchfork threw
me if I had put myself without announcement in Bottles
way after that minute, I had deposited in my own
mind as a fact worth remembering. Neither had Bottles ever
taken the least notice of any of our many uproars.
An imperturbable and speechless man. He had sat at his
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supper with Streaker present in a swoon and the old
girl marble, and had only put another potato in his cheek,
or profited by the general misery to help himself to
beefsteak pie. And so continued my sister, I exempt bottles, and,
considering John that the house is too large and perhaps
too lonely to be well kept in hand by bottles,
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you and me, I propose that we cast about among
our friends for a certain selected number of the most
reliable and willing form a society here for three months,
wait upon ourselves and one another, live cheerfully and socially,
and see what happens. I was so charmed with my
sister that I embraced her on the spot and went
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into her plan with the greatest ardor We were then
in the third week of November, but we took our
measures so vigorously, and were so well seconded by the
friends in whom we confided, that there was still a
week of the month unexpired. When our party all came
down to get other merrily and mustered in the haunted house.
I will mention in this place two small changes that
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I made while my sister and I were yet alone.
It occurring to me as not improbable that Turk howled
in the house at night, partly because he wanted to
get out of it. I stationed him in his kennel outside,
but unchained, and I seriously warned the village that any
man who came in his way must not be expected
to leave him without a rip in his own throat.
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I then casually asked Ike if he were a judge
of a gun, on his saying yes, Sir, I knows
a good gun. When I sees her, I beg the
favor of his stepping up to the house and looking
at mine. She's a true one, Sir, said Ike, after
inspecting a double barreled rifle that I had bought in
New York a few years ago. No mistake about her,
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Sir Ike said, I don't mention it. I have seen
something in this house. No, sir, he whispered, greedily, opening
his eyes. Ooorded lady, Sir, don't be frightened, said I.
It was a figure rather like you, Lord, sir, Ike
said I, shaking hands with him warmly, as I may
(32:09):
say affectionately. If there is any truth in these ghost stories,
the greatest service I can do you is to fire
at that figure, and I promise you, by Heaven and Earth,
I will do it with this gun if I see
it again. The young man thanked me and took his
leave with some little precipitation. After declining a glass of liquor.
(32:29):
I imparted my secret to him because I had never
quite forgotten his throwing his cap at the bell, because
I had, on another occasion, noticed something very like a
fur cap lying not far from the bell one night
when it had burst out ringing, And because I had
remarked that we were at our ghostliest whenever he came
up in the evening to comfort the servants, let me
(32:51):
do ikey no injustice. He was afraid of the house
and believed in its being haunted, and yet he would
play false on the haunting side, so surely as he
got an opportunity. The odd Girl's case was exactly similar.
She went about the house in a state of real terror,
and yet lied monstrously and wilfully, and invented many of
(33:12):
the alarms she spread, and made many of the sounds
we heard. I had had my eye on the two,
and I know it. It is not necessary for me
here to account for this preposterous state of mind. I
content myself with remarking that it is familiarly known to
every intelligent one who has had fair, medical, legal, or
(33:32):
other watchful experience, that it is as well established and
as common a state of mind as any with which
observers are acquainted, and that it is one of the
first elements above all others, rationally to be suspected in
and strictly looked for and separated from any question of
this kind. To return to our party, the first thing
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we did when we were all assembled was to draw
lots for bedrooms. That done, and every bedroom, and indeed
the whole house, having been minutely examined by the whole body,
we allotted the various household duties as if we had
been on a gipsy party, or a yachting party, or
a hunting party, or shipwrecked. I then recounted the floating
(34:15):
rumors concerning the hooded Lady, the owl, and master b
with others still more filmy, which had floated about during
our occupation, relative to some ridiculous old ghost of the
female gender who went up and down carrying the ghost
of a round table, and also to an impalatable jackass,
whom nobody was ever able to catch. Some of these ideas,
(34:38):
I really believe our people below had communicated to one
another in some diseased way, without conveying them in words.
We then gravely called one another to witness that we
were not there to be deceived or to deceive, which
we'd considered pretty much the same thing, and that with
a serious sense of responsibility, we would be strictly true
(34:58):
to one another and would strictly follow out the truth.
The understanding was established that any one who heard unusual
noises in the night, and who wished to trace them,
should knock at my door. Lastly, that on twelfth night,
the last night of Holy Christmas, all our individual experiences
since that then present hour of our coming together in
(35:21):
the Haunted House, should be brought to light for the
good of all, And that we would hold our peace
on the subject till then unless on some remarkable provocation
to break silence. We were in number and in character
as follows. First, to get my sister and myself out
of the way, there were we two in the drawing
(35:42):
of lots. My sister drew her own room, and I
drew Master B's. Next, there was our first cousin, John Herschel,
so called after the great astronomer than whom I suppose
a better man at a telescope does not breathe. With
him was his wife, a charming creature to whom he
had been married in the previous spring. I thought it,
(36:04):
under the circumstances, rather imprudent to bring her, because there
is no knowing what even a false alarm may do
at such a time. But I suppose he knew his
own business best, and I must say that if she
had been my wife, I never could have left her
endearing and bright face behind. They drew the clock room.
(36:25):
Alfred's darling, an uncommonly agreeable young fellow of eight and twenty,
through whom I have the greatest liking, was in the
double room mine usually, and designated by that name, from
having a dressing room within it, with two large and
cumbersome windows, which no wedge's I was ever able to
(36:46):
make would keep from shaking in any weather wind or no.
Alfred is a young fellow who pretends to be fast
another word for loose, as I understand the term, but
who is much too good and sensible for that non,
and who would have distinguished himself before now if his
father had not unfortunately left him a small independence of
(37:08):
two hundred a year, on the strength of which his
only occupation in life has been to spend six. I
am in hopes, however, that his banker may break or
that he may enter into some speculation guaranteed to pay
twenty percent. For I am convinced that if he could
only be ruined, his fortune is made. Belinda Bates Bosom,
(37:29):
friend of my sister, and a most intellectual, amiable, and
delightful girl, got the picture room. She has a fine
genius for poetry combined with real business earnestness, and goes
in to use an expression of Alfred's for women's mission,
women's rights, women's wrongs, and everything that is woman's with
(37:49):
a capital W or is not and ought to be,
or is and ought not to be. Most praiseworthy, my
dear and heaven prosper you, I whispered to her on
the first night of my taking leave of her at
the picture room door. But don't overdo it, and in
respect of the great necessity there is, my darling, for
(38:09):
more employments being within the reach of women than our
civilization has as yet assigned to her. Don't fly at
the unfortunate men, even those men who are at first
sight in your way, as if they were the real
oppressors of your sex. For trust me, Belinda, they do
sometimes spend their wages among wives and daughters, sisters, mothers,
(38:29):
aunts and grandmothers. And the play is really not all
Wolf in Red riding Hood, but has other parts in it. However,
I digress, Belinda. As I have mentioned, occupied the picture room,
we had but three other chambers, the corner room, the
cupboard room, and the garden room. My old friend Jack Governor,
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slung his hammock, as he called it, in the corner room.
I have always regarded Jack as the finest looking sailor
that ever sailed. He is gray now, but as handsome
as he was a quarter of a century ago, nay handsomer.
A portly, cheery, well built figure of a broad shouldered man,
with a frank smile, a brilliant dark eye, and a
(39:12):
rich dark eyebrow. I remember those under darker hair, and
they look all the better for their silver setting. He
has been wherever his union namesake flies has. Jack and
I have met old shipmates of his away in the
Mediterranean and on the other side of the Atlantic, who
have beamed and brightened at the casual mention of his name,
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and have cried, you know Jack, guv'nor, then you know
a prince of men that he is, and so unmistakably
a naval officer that if you were to meet him
coming out of an Eskimo snow hut in a seal skin,
you would be vaguely persuaded he was in full naval uniform.
Jack once had that bright, clear eye of his on
(39:54):
my sister, but it fell out that he married another
lady and took her to South America, where she died.
This was a dozen years ago or more. He brought
down with him to our haunted house a little cask
of salt beef, for he is always convinced that all
salt beef, not of his own pickling, is mere carrion,
and invariably when he goes to London packs a piece
(40:16):
in his portmanteau. He had also volunteered to bring with
him one Nat Beaver, an old comrade of his captain,
of a merchantman. Mister Beaver, with a thick set, wooden
face and figure, and apparently as hard as a block
all over, proved to be an intelligent man, with a
world of watery experiences in him and great practical knowledge.
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At times there was a curious nervousness about him, apparently
the lingering result of some old illness, but it seldom
lasted many minutes. He got the cupboard room and lay
there next to mister Underrea, my friend and solicitor, who
came down in an amateur capacity to go through with
it as he said, and who plays whist better than
(41:02):
the whole law list. From the red cover at the
beginning to the red cover at the end, I never
was happier in my life, and I believe it was
the universal feeling among us. Jack Governor, always a man
of wonderful resources, was chief cook and made some of
the best dishes I ever ate, including unapproachable curries. My
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sister was pastry cook and confectioner Starling and I were
Cook's mate turn and turn about, and on special occasions
the chief cook pressed mister Beaver. We had a great
deal of outdoor sport and exercise, but nothing was neglected within,
and there was no ill humor or misunderstanding among us,
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and our evenings were so delightful that we had at
least one good reason for being reluctant to go to bed.
We had a few night alarms in the beginning. On
the first night I was knocked up by Jack with
a most wonderful ship's land in his hand, like the
gills of some monster of the deep, who informed me
that he was going aloft to the main truck to
(42:07):
have the weather cock down. It was a stormy night,
and I remonstrated, but Jack called my attention to its
making a sound like a cry of despair, and said
somebody would be hailing a ghost presently if it wasn't done.
So up to the top of the house, where I
could hardly stand for the wind we went, accompanied by
mister Beaver, and there Jack Lantern and all with mister
(42:30):
Beaver after him, swarmed up to the top of a
cupola some two dozen feet above the chimneys, and stood
upon nothing particular, coolly knocking the weather cock off, until
they both got into such good spirits with the wind
and the height that I thought they would never come down.
Another night they turned out again and had a chimney
(42:50):
cowl off. Another night they cut a sobbing and gulping
water pipe away. Another night they found out something else.
On several occasions they both, in the coolest manner, simultaneously
dropped out of their respective bedroom windows hand overhand by
their counterpanes to overhaul something mysterious in the garden. The
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engagement among us was faithfully kept and nobody revealed anything.
All we knew was if anyone's room were haunted, no
one looked the worse for it. End of Section two
A
Section two a of three ghost Stories. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Recording by Marian Brown. Three ghost Stories by Charles Dickens.
(00:21):
The Haunted House, Chapter one. The mortals in the house
under none of the accredited ghostly circumstances, and environed by
none of the conventional ghostly surroundings. Did I first make
acquaintance with the house which is the subject of this
Christmas piece. I saw it in the daylight, with the
(00:42):
sun upon it. There was no wind, no rain, no lightning,
no thunder, no awful or unwonted circumstance of any kind
to heighten its effect. More than that I had come
to it direct from a railway station. It was not
more than a mile distant from the railway station. And
as I stood outside the house, looking back upon the
(01:04):
way I had come, I could see the Goods train
running smoothly along the embankment in the valley. I will
not say that everything was utterly commonplace, because I doubt
if anything can be that except to utterly commonplace people.
And there my vanity steps in. But I will take
it on myself to say that anybody might see the
(01:25):
house as I saw it any fine autumn morning. The
manner of my lighting on it was this. I was
traveling towards London out of the north, intending to stop
by the way to look at the house. My health
required a temporary residence in the country, and a friend
of mine who knew that, and who had happened to
drive past the house, had written to me to suggest
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it as a likely place. I had got into the
train at midnight, and had fallen asleep, and had woke up,
and had sat looking out of the window at the
brilliant northern lights in the sky, and had fallen asleep again,
and had woke up again to find the night gone,
with the usual discontented conviction on me that I hadn't
been to sleep at all, upon which question, in the
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first imbecility of that condition, I am ashamed to believe
that I would have done wager by battle with the
man who sat opposite me that opposite man had had
through the night, as that opposite man always has several legs,
too many, and all of them too long. In addition
to this unreasonable conduct, which was only to be expected
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of him. He had had a pencil and a pocket book,
and had been perpetually listening and taking notes. It appeared
to me that these aggravating notes related to the jolts
and bumps of the carriage, and I should have resigned
myself to his taking them under a general supposition that
he was in the civil engineering way of life. If
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he had not sat staring straight over my head whenever
he listened. He was a goggle eyed gentleman of a
perplexed aspect, and his demeanor became unbearable. It was a cold,
dead morning, the sun not being up yet, and when
I had outwatched the paling light of the fires of
the Iron country, and the curtain of heavy smoke that
(03:17):
hung at once between me and the stars and between
me and the day, I turned to my fellow traveler
and said, I beg your pardon, sir, but do you
observe anything particular in me? For really he appeared to
be taking down either my traveling cap or my hair
with a minuteness that was a liberty. The goggle eyed
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gentleman withdrew his eyes from behind me, as if the
back of the carriage were a hundred miles off, and said,
with a lofty look of compassion for my insignificance in you, sir,
b be sir said, I growing warm. I have nothing
to do with you, Sir, returned the gentleman, pray, let
me listen. Oh. He enunciated this vowl after a pause,
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and noted it down. At first, I was alarmed, for
an express lunatic, and no communication with the guard is
a serious position. The thought came to my relief that
the gentleman might be what is popularly called a wrapper,
one of a sect for some of whom I have
the highest respect, but whom I don't believe in. I
(04:25):
was going to ask him the question when he took
the bread out of my mouth. You will excuse me,
said the gentleman contemptuously, if I am too much in
advance of common humanity to trouble myself at all about it.
I have passed the night, as indeed I passed the
whole of my time now in spiritual intercourse, Oh, said I,
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somewhat snappishly. The conferences of the night began, continued the gentleman,
turning several leaves of his note book with this message
evil communication corrupt good manners sound, said I, but absolutely
new new from spirits, returned the gentleman. I could only
(05:08):
repeat my rather snappish oh, and ask if I might
be favored with the last communication. A bird in the hand,
said the gentleman, reading his last entry with great solemnity,
is worth two in the bosh. Truly, I am of
the same opinion, said I. But shouldn't it be bush?
It came to me bosh, returned the gentleman. The gentleman
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then informed me that the spirit of Socrates had delivered
this special revelation in the course of the night. My friend,
I hope you are pretty well. There are two in
this railway carriage. How do you do There are seventeen thousand,
four hundred and seventy nine spirits here, but you cannot
see them. Pythagoras is here. He is not at liberty
(05:54):
to mention it, but hopes you like traveling. Galileo likewise
had dropped in with this scientific intelligence. I am glad
to see you, Amiko Comista. Water will freeze when it
is cold enough, Adyo. In the course of the night,
also the following phenomena had occurred. Bishop Butler had insisted
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on spelling his name Bubler, for which offense against orthography
and good manners, he had been dismissed as out of temper.
John Milton, suspected of wilful mystification, had repudiated the authorship
of Paradise Lost, and had introduced as joint authors of
that poem two unknown gentlemen, respectively named Grungers and Scadding Tone.
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And Prince Arthur, nephew of King John of England, had
described himself as tolerably comfortable in the Seventh Circle, where
he was learning to paint on velvet, under the direction
of Missus Trimmer and Mary, Queen of Scots. If this
should meet the eye of the gentleman who favored me
with these disclosures, I trust he will excuse my confessing
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that the sight of the rising sun and the contemplation
of the magnificent order of the vast universe made me
impatient of them. In a word, I was so impatient
of them that I was mightily glad to get out
at the next station, and to exchange these clouds and
vapors for the free air of heaven. By that time
it was a beautiful morning. As I walked away among
(07:27):
such leaves as had already fallen from the golden, brown
and russet trees, and as I looked around me on
the wonders of creation, and thought of the steady, unchanging
and harmonious laws by which they are sustained, the gentleman's
spiritual intercourse seemed to me as poor a piece of
journey work as ever this world saw, in which heathen
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state of mind. I came within view of the house
and stopped to examine it attentively. It was a solitary house,
standing in a sadly neglected garden, a pretty even square
of some two acres. It was a house of about
the time of George the Second, as stiff, as cold,
as formal, and in as bad taste as could possibly
(08:11):
be desired by the most loyal admirer of the whole
quartet of George's. It was uninhabited, but had within a
year or two been cheaply repaired to render it habitable.
I say cheaply because the work had been done in
a surface manner and was already decaying as to the
paint and plaster, though the colors were fresh. A lopsided
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board drooped over the garden wall, announcing that it was
to let on very reasonable terms, well furnished, it was
much too closely and heavily shadowed by trees, and in
particular there were six tall poplars before the front windows,
which were excessively melancholy, and the sight of which had
been extremely ill chosen. It was easy to see that
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it was an avoided house, a house that was shunned
by the villa to which my eye was guided by
a church spire some half a mile off, a house
that nobody would take. And the natural interference was that
it had the reputation of being a haunted house. No
period within the four and twenty hours of day and
night is so solemn to me as the early morning
(09:19):
in the summer time. I often rise very early and
repair to my room to do a day's work before breakfast,
and I am always, on those occasions deeply impressed by
the stillness and solitude around me. Besides that there is
something awful in the being surrounded by familiar faces, asleep
in the knowledge that those who are dearest to us
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and to whom we are dearest, are profoundly unconscious of
us in an impassive state. Anticipate of that mysterious condition,
to which we are all tending. The stopped life, the
broken threads of yesterday, the deserted seat, the closed book,
the unfinished but abandon and occupation, all are images of death.
(10:04):
The tranquility of the hour is the tranquility of death.
The color and the chill have the same association. Even
a certain air that familiar household objects take upon themselves
when they first merge with the shadows of the night
into the morning, of being newer as they used to
be long ago, has its counterpart in the subsistence of
(10:26):
the worn face of maturity or age in death, into
the old, youthful look. Moreover, I once saw the apparition
of my father at this hour. He was alive and well,
and nothing ever came of it. But I saw him
in the daylight, sitting with his back towards me, on
a seat that stood beside my bed. His head was
(10:48):
resting on his hand, and whether he was slumbering or grieving,
I could not discern. Amazed to see him there, I
sat up, moved my position, leaned out of bed, and
watched him. As he did not move. I spoke to
him more than once. As he did not move. Then
I became alarmed and laid my hand upon his shoulder
as I thought, and there was no such thing. For
(11:13):
all these reasons, and for others less easily and briefly statable,
I find the early morning to be my most ghostly time.
Any house would be more or less haunted to me
in the early morning, and a haunted house could scarcely
address me to greater advantage than then. I walked on
into the village with the desertion of this house upon
(11:34):
my mind, and I found the landlord of the little
Inn standing his doorstep. I bespoke breakfast and broached the
subject of the house. Is it haunted? I asked? The
landlord looked at me, shook his head, and answered, I
say nothing. Then it is haunted, well, cried the landlord,
(11:55):
in an outburst of frankness that had the appearance of desperation.
I wouldn't sleep in it. Why not? If I wanted
to have all the bells in a house ring with
nobody to ring him, and all the doors in a
house bang with nobody to bang him, and all sorts
of feet treading about with no feet there, why, then,
said the landlord, I'd sleep in that house? Is anything
(12:19):
seen there? The landlord looked at me again, and then,
with his former appearance of desperation, called down his stable
yard for Ikey. The call produced a high shouldered young
fellow with a round red face, a short crop of
sandy hair, a very broad, humorous mouth, a turned up nose,
(12:39):
and a great sleeved waistcoat of purple bars with mother
of pearl buttons that seemed to be growing upon him,
and to be in a fair way, if it were
not pruned of covering his head and overrunning his boots.
This gentleman wants to know, said the landlord. If anything
seen at the poplar's ooded woman with a howl, said Ikey,
(13:02):
in a state of great freshness. Do you mean a cry?
I mean a bird, sir, A hooded woman with an owl?
Dear me, did you ever see her? I seen the howl?
Never the woman not so plain as the howl, But
they always keeps together. Has anybody ever seen the woman
(13:24):
as plainly as the owl? Lord? Bless you, sir lots?
Who Lord, bless you, sir lots. The general dealer opposite,
for instance, who is opening his shop? Perkins? Bless you?
Perkins wouldn't go anigh the place? No observed the young
man with considerable feeling. He ain't over wise, ain't Perkins,
(13:46):
but he ain't such a fool as that. Here the
landlord murmured his confidence in Perkins knowing better who is
or who was the hooded woman with the owl. Do
you know, well, said Ikey, holding up his cap with
one hand while he scratched his head with the other.
They say in general that she was murdered, and the
(14:06):
howl he ooded the while his very concise summary of
the facts was all I could learn, except that a
young man as hearty and as likely a young man
as ever I see, had been took with fits and
held down in him after seeing the hooded woman. Also
that a personage dimly described as an old chap, a
(14:27):
sort of one eyed tramp answering to the name of
Joby unless you challenged him as Greenwood. And then he said,
why not, And even if so, mind your own business.
Had encountered the hooded woman a matter of five or
six times. But I was not materially assisted by these witnesses,
inasmuch as the first was in California and the last
(14:50):
was as ike said, and he was confirmed by the
landlord anywheres. Now, although I regard with the hushed and
solemn fear the mysteries between which and this state of
existence is interposed the barrier of the great trial and
change that fall on all the things that live. And
although I have not the audacity to pretend that I
(15:13):
know anything of them, I can no more reconcile the
mere banging of doors, ringing of bells, creaking of boards,
and suchlike insignificances with the majestic beauty and pervading analogy
of all the divine rules that I am permitted to understand,
that I have been able a little while before to
yoke the spiritual intercourse of my fellow traveler in the
(15:36):
chariot of the rising Sun. Moreover, I had lived in
two haunted houses, both abroad. In one of these, an
old Italian palace, which bore the reputation of being very
badly haunted, indeed, and which had recently been twice abandoned.
On that account, I lived eight months most tranquility and pleasantly,
notwithstanding that the house had a score of mysterious bedrooms
(16:00):
which were never used, and possessed in one large room
in which I sat reading times out of number at
all hours, and next to which I slept a haunted
chamber of the first pretensions. I gently hinted these considerations
to the landlord, and to this particular house having a
bad name. I reasoned with him, why how many things
(16:21):
had bad names undeservedly, and how easy it was to
give bad names? And did he not think that if
he and I were persistently to whisper in the village,
that any weird looking, old drunken tinker of the neighborhood
had sold himself to the devil, he would come in
time to be suspected of that commercial venture. All this
wise talk was perfectly ineffective with the landlord, I am
(16:44):
bound to confess, and was as dead a failure as
ever I made in my life to cut this part
of the story short. I was piqued about the haunted
house and was already half resolved to take it, So
after breakfast I got the keys from Perkins's brother in law,
a whip and harness maker who keeps the post office
and is under submission to a most rigorous wife of
(17:06):
the doubly seceding little immanual persuasion, and went up to
the house, attended by my landlord, and by Ikey. Within
I found it as I had expected, transcendently dismal. The
slowly changing shadows waved on it from the heavy trees
were doleful in the last degree. The house was ill placed,
ill built, ill planned, and ill fitted. It was damp,
(17:30):
It was not free from dry rot, and there was
a flavor of rats in it. And it was the
gloomy victim of that indescribable decay which settles on all
the work of man's hands whenever it's not turned to
man's account. The kitchens and offices were too large and
too remote from each other. Above stairs and below waste
(17:50):
tracts of passage intervened between patches of fertility represented by rooms.
And there was a moldy old well with a green
growth of hiding, like a murderous trap, near the bottom
of the back stairs, under the double row of bells.
One of these bells was labeled on a black ground
in faded white letters, Master B. This, they told me,
(18:14):
was the bell that rang the most. Who was Master B?
I asked, is it known what he did? While the
owl hooted rang the bell? Said Ikey. I was rather
struck by the prompt dexterity with which this young man
pitched his fur cap at the bell and rang it himself.
It was a loud, unpleasant bell, and made a very
(18:35):
disagreeable sound. The other bells were inscribed according to the
names of the rooms to which their wires were conducted,
as picture room, double room, clock room, and the like.
Following Master Bee's bell to its source, I found that
young gentleman to have had but indifferent third class accommodation
in a triangular cabin under the cock loft, with a
(18:58):
corner fireplace which Master must have been exceedingly small if
he were ever to warm himself at, and a corner
chimney piece like a pyramidal staircase to the ceiling. For
tom thumb. The papering of one side of the room
had dropped down bodily, with fragments of plaster adhering to it,
and almost blocked up the door. It appeared that Master b,
(19:21):
in his spiritual condition, always made a point of pulling
the paper down. Neither the landlord nor Ikey could suggest
why he made such a fool of himself, except that
the house had an immensely large rambling loft at top.
I made no other discoveries. It was moderately well furnished,
but sparely. Some of the furniture, say a third was
(19:43):
as old as the house, and the rest was of
various periods within the last half century. I was referred
to a corn chandler in the market place of the
county town to treat for the house. I went that day,
and I took it for six months. It was just
the middle October when I moved in with my maiden sister.
I venture to call her eight and thirty. She is
(20:05):
so very handsome, sensible and engaging. We took with us
a deaf stableman, my bloodhound Turk, two women servants, and
a young person called an odd girl. I have reason
to record of the attendant last enumerated, who was one
of the Saint Lawrence's Union female orphans, and that she
was a fatal mistake and a disastrous engagement. The year
(20:30):
was dying early, the leaves were falling fast. It was
a raw cold day when we took possession, and the
gloom of the house was most depressing. The cook, an
amiable woman but of a weak turn of intellect, burst
into tears on beholding the kitchen, and requested that her
silver watch might be delivered over to her sister two
(20:50):
Toppenstock's gardens, legs walk Clapham Rise. In the event of
anything happening to her from the damp streaker. The housemaid
fainted cheerfulness, but was the greater martyr. The odd girl,
who had never been in the country alone, was pleased
and made arrangements for sowing an acorn in the garden
outside the scullery window and rearing an oak. We went
(21:13):
before dark through all the natural as opposed to supernatural
miseries incidental to our state. Dispiriting reports ascended like the
smoke from the basement in volumes, and descended from the
upper rooms. There was no rolling pin. There was no salamander,
which failed to surprise me, for I don't know what
it is. There was nothing in the house. What there
(21:36):
was was broken. The last people must have lived like pigs.
What could the meaning of the landlord be through these distresses?
The odd girl was cheerful in exemplary, but within four
hours after dark we had got into a supernatural groove,
and the odd girl had seen eyes and was in hysterics.
My sister and I had agreed to keep the haunting
(21:58):
strictly to ourselves. And my impression was, and still is,
that I had not left Ike when he helped to unload
the cart alone with the women, or any of them
for one minute. Nevertheless, as I say, the odd girl
had seen eyes, no other explanation could ever be drawn
from her before nine, and by ten o'clock had had
(22:19):
as much vintage applied to her as would pickle a
handsome salmon. I leave a discerning public to judge of
my feelings when under these untoward circumstances. At about half
past ten o'clock, Master B's bell began to ring in
a most infuriated manner, and Turk howled until the house
resounded with his lamentations. I hope I may never again
(22:41):
be in a state of mind so unchristian as the
mental frame in which I lived for some weeks respecting
the memory of Master B. Whether his bell was rung
by rats or mice, or bats, or wind, or what
other accidental vibration, or sometimes by one cause, sometimes another,
and sometimes by collusion, I don't know, but certain it
(23:03):
is that it did ring two nights out of three
until I conceived the happy idea of twisting Master Bee's
neck in other words, breaking his bell off short and
silencing that young gentleman, as to my experience and belief forever.
But by that time the odd girl had developed such
improving powers of catalepsy that she had become a shining
(23:25):
example of that very inconvenient disorder. She would stiffen like
a guy fox endowed with unreason. On the most irrelevant occasions,
I would address the servants in a lucid manner, pointing
out to them that I had painted Master Bee's room
and balk the paper, and taken Master Bee's bell away,
and balk the ringing. And if they could suppose that
(23:47):
that confounded boy had lived and died to clothe himself
with no better behavior than would most unquestionably have brought him,
with the sharpest particles of a birch broom, into close
acquaintance in the present imperfect state of existence, Could they
also suppose a mere poor human being such as I
was capable of these contemptible means of counteracting and limiting
(24:11):
the powers of the disembodied spirits of the dead, or
of any spirits. I say, I would become emphatic and cogant,
not to say, rather complaisant, in such an address, when
it would all go for nothing by reason of the
odd girl suddenly stiffening from the toes upward and glaring
among us like a parochial petrifaction streaker. The housemaid, too
(24:35):
had an attribute of a most discomfiting nature. I am
unable to say whether she was of an unusually lymphatic temperament,
or what else was the matter with her, But this
young woman became a mere distillery for the production of
the largest and most transparent tears I have ever met with.
Combined with these characteristics was a peculiar tenacity of hold
(24:56):
in these specimens, so that they didn't fall, but hung
upon her face and nose in this condition, and mildly
and deplorably shaking her head. Her silence would throw me
more heavily than the admirable Crichton could have done in
a verbal disputation for a purse of money. Cook likewise
always covered me with confusion, as with a garment, by
(25:19):
neatly winding up the session with the protest that the
ouse was wearing her out, and by meekly repeating her
last wishes regarding her silver watch. As to our nightly life,
the contagion of suspicion and fear was among us. There
is no such contagion under the sky hooded woman. According
(25:39):
to the accounts, we were in a perfect convent of
hooded women noises with that contagion downstairs. I myself have
sat in the dismal parlor listening until I have heard
so many and such strange noises that they would have
chilled my blood if I had not been warned by
dashing out to make discoveries. Try this in bed in
(26:00):
the dead of the night. Try this at your own
comfortable fireside, in the life of the night. You can
fill any house with noises if you will, until you
have a noise for every nerve in your nervous system.
I repeat, the contagion of suspicion and fear was among us,
and there is no such contagion under the sky. The women,
(26:21):
their noses in a chronic state of excoriation from smelling salts,
were always primed and loaded for a swoon, and ready
to go off with hair triggers. The two elder detached
the odd girl on all expeditions that were considered doubly hazardous,
and she always established the reputation of such adventures by
coming back cataleptic. If Cook or Streaker went overhead after dark,
(26:45):
we knew we should presently hear a bump on the ceiling.
And this took place so constantly that it was as
if a fighting man were engaged to go about the
house administering a touch of his art, which I believe
is called the auctioneer, to every domestic he met with.
It was in vain to do anything. It was in
vain to be frightened for the moment in one's own
(27:08):
person by a real owl, and then to show the owl.
It was in vain to discover, by striking as accidental
discord on the piano, that turk always howled at particular
notes and combinations. It was in vain to be a
rhadamanthus with the bells, and if an unfortunate bell rang
(27:28):
without leave, to have it down inexorably and silence it.
It was in vain to fire up chimneys, let torches
down the well, charge furiously into suspected rooms and recesses.
We changed servants, and dejectedly said to my sister, we
changed servants, and it was no better. The new set
ran away, and a third set came, and it was
(27:51):
no better. At last, our comfortable housekeeping got to be
so disorganized and wretched that I one night dejectedly said
to my sister Patty, I begin to despair of our
getting people to go on with us here. I think
we must give this up. My sister, who is a
woman of immense spirit, replied, no, John, don't give it up.
(28:13):
Don't be beaten, John. There is another way. And what
is that? Said I, John, returned my sister. If we
are not to be driven out of this house, and
that for no reason whatever that is apparent to you
or me, we must help ourselves and take the house
wholly and solely into our own hands. But the servants said,
(28:34):
I have no servants, said my sister boldly. Like most
people in my gradive life, I had never thought of
the possibility of going on without these faithful obstructions. The
notion was so new to me. When suggested that, I
looked very doubtful. We know they come here to be
frightened and infect one another, and we know they are
(28:55):
frightened and do infect one another, said my sister. With
the exception of bottles, I observed in a meditative tone,
the deaf stable man I kept him in my service
and still keep him as a phenomenon of moroseness not
to be matched in England. To be sure, John assented
my sister, Except Bottles, and what does that go to prove?
(29:17):
Bottles talks to nobody. And here's nobody unless he is
absolutely roared at. And what alarm has Bottles ever given
or taken? None? This was perfectly true, the individual in question,
having retired every night at ten o'clock to his bed
over the coach house with no other company than a
pitchfork and a pail of water. That the pail of
(29:40):
water would have been over me, and the pitchfork threw
me if I had put myself without announcement in Bottles
way after that minute, I had deposited in my own
mind as a fact worth remembering. Neither had Bottles ever
taken the least notice of any of our many uproars.
An imperturbable and speechless man. He had sat at his
(30:00):
supper with Streaker present in a swoon and the old
girl marble, and had only put another potato in his cheek,
or profited by the general misery to help himself to
beefsteak pie. And so continued my sister, I exempt bottles, and,
considering John that the house is too large and perhaps
too lonely to be well kept in hand by bottles,
(30:23):
you and me, I propose that we cast about among
our friends for a certain selected number of the most
reliable and willing form a society here for three months,
wait upon ourselves and one another, live cheerfully and socially,
and see what happens. I was so charmed with my
sister that I embraced her on the spot and went
(30:44):
into her plan with the greatest ardor We were then
in the third week of November, but we took our
measures so vigorously, and were so well seconded by the
friends in whom we confided, that there was still a
week of the month unexpired. When our party all came
down to get other merrily and mustered in the haunted house.
I will mention in this place two small changes that
(31:05):
I made while my sister and I were yet alone.
It occurring to me as not improbable that Turk howled
in the house at night, partly because he wanted to
get out of it. I stationed him in his kennel outside,
but unchained, and I seriously warned the village that any
man who came in his way must not be expected
to leave him without a rip in his own throat.
(31:27):
I then casually asked Ike if he were a judge
of a gun, on his saying yes, Sir, I knows
a good gun. When I sees her, I beg the
favor of his stepping up to the house and looking
at mine. She's a true one, Sir, said Ike, after
inspecting a double barreled rifle that I had bought in
New York a few years ago. No mistake about her,
(31:48):
Sir Ike said, I don't mention it. I have seen
something in this house. No, sir, he whispered, greedily, opening
his eyes. Ooorded lady, Sir, don't be frightened, said I.
It was a figure rather like you, Lord, sir, Ike
said I, shaking hands with him warmly, as I may
(32:09):
say affectionately. If there is any truth in these ghost stories,
the greatest service I can do you is to fire
at that figure, and I promise you, by Heaven and Earth,
I will do it with this gun if I see
it again. The young man thanked me and took his
leave with some little precipitation. After declining a glass of liquor.
(32:29):
I imparted my secret to him because I had never
quite forgotten his throwing his cap at the bell, because
I had, on another occasion, noticed something very like a
fur cap lying not far from the bell one night
when it had burst out ringing, And because I had
remarked that we were at our ghostliest whenever he came
up in the evening to comfort the servants, let me
(32:51):
do ikey no injustice. He was afraid of the house
and believed in its being haunted, and yet he would
play false on the haunting side, so surely as he
got an opportunity. The odd Girl's case was exactly similar.
She went about the house in a state of real terror,
and yet lied monstrously and wilfully, and invented many of
(33:12):
the alarms she spread, and made many of the sounds
we heard. I had had my eye on the two,
and I know it. It is not necessary for me
here to account for this preposterous state of mind. I
content myself with remarking that it is familiarly known to
every intelligent one who has had fair, medical, legal, or
(33:32):
other watchful experience, that it is as well established and
as common a state of mind as any with which
observers are acquainted, and that it is one of the
first elements above all others, rationally to be suspected in
and strictly looked for and separated from any question of
this kind. To return to our party, the first thing
(33:55):
we did when we were all assembled was to draw
lots for bedrooms. That done, and every bedroom, and indeed
the whole house, having been minutely examined by the whole body,
we allotted the various household duties as if we had
been on a gipsy party, or a yachting party, or
a hunting party, or shipwrecked. I then recounted the floating
(34:15):
rumors concerning the hooded Lady, the owl, and master b
with others still more filmy, which had floated about during
our occupation, relative to some ridiculous old ghost of the
female gender who went up and down carrying the ghost
of a round table, and also to an impalatable jackass,
whom nobody was ever able to catch. Some of these ideas,
(34:38):
I really believe our people below had communicated to one
another in some diseased way, without conveying them in words.
We then gravely called one another to witness that we
were not there to be deceived or to deceive, which
we'd considered pretty much the same thing, and that with
a serious sense of responsibility, we would be strictly true
(34:58):
to one another and would strictly follow out the truth.
The understanding was established that any one who heard unusual
noises in the night, and who wished to trace them,
should knock at my door. Lastly, that on twelfth night,
the last night of Holy Christmas, all our individual experiences
since that then present hour of our coming together in
(35:21):
the Haunted House, should be brought to light for the
good of all, And that we would hold our peace
on the subject till then unless on some remarkable provocation
to break silence. We were in number and in character
as follows. First, to get my sister and myself out
of the way, there were we two in the drawing
(35:42):
of lots. My sister drew her own room, and I
drew Master B's. Next, there was our first cousin, John Herschel,
so called after the great astronomer than whom I suppose
a better man at a telescope does not breathe. With
him was his wife, a charming creature to whom he
had been married in the previous spring. I thought it,
(36:04):
under the circumstances, rather imprudent to bring her, because there
is no knowing what even a false alarm may do
at such a time. But I suppose he knew his
own business best, and I must say that if she
had been my wife, I never could have left her
endearing and bright face behind. They drew the clock room.
(36:25):
Alfred's darling, an uncommonly agreeable young fellow of eight and twenty,
through whom I have the greatest liking, was in the
double room mine usually, and designated by that name, from
having a dressing room within it, with two large and
cumbersome windows, which no wedge's I was ever able to
(36:46):
make would keep from shaking in any weather wind or no.
Alfred is a young fellow who pretends to be fast
another word for loose, as I understand the term, but
who is much too good and sensible for that non,
and who would have distinguished himself before now if his
father had not unfortunately left him a small independence of
(37:08):
two hundred a year, on the strength of which his
only occupation in life has been to spend six. I
am in hopes, however, that his banker may break or
that he may enter into some speculation guaranteed to pay
twenty percent. For I am convinced that if he could
only be ruined, his fortune is made. Belinda Bates Bosom,
(37:29):
friend of my sister, and a most intellectual, amiable, and
delightful girl, got the picture room. She has a fine
genius for poetry combined with real business earnestness, and goes
in to use an expression of Alfred's for women's mission,
women's rights, women's wrongs, and everything that is woman's with
(37:49):
a capital W or is not and ought to be,
or is and ought not to be. Most praiseworthy, my
dear and heaven prosper you, I whispered to her on
the first night of my taking leave of her at
the picture room door. But don't overdo it, and in
respect of the great necessity there is, my darling, for
(38:09):
more employments being within the reach of women than our
civilization has as yet assigned to her. Don't fly at
the unfortunate men, even those men who are at first
sight in your way, as if they were the real
oppressors of your sex. For trust me, Belinda, they do
sometimes spend their wages among wives and daughters, sisters, mothers,
(38:29):
aunts and grandmothers. And the play is really not all
Wolf in Red riding Hood, but has other parts in it. However,
I digress, Belinda. As I have mentioned, occupied the picture room,
we had but three other chambers, the corner room, the
cupboard room, and the garden room. My old friend Jack Governor,
(38:51):
slung his hammock, as he called it, in the corner room.
I have always regarded Jack as the finest looking sailor
that ever sailed. He is gray now, but as handsome
as he was a quarter of a century ago, nay handsomer.
A portly, cheery, well built figure of a broad shouldered man,
with a frank smile, a brilliant dark eye, and a
(39:12):
rich dark eyebrow. I remember those under darker hair, and
they look all the better for their silver setting. He
has been wherever his union namesake flies has. Jack and
I have met old shipmates of his away in the
Mediterranean and on the other side of the Atlantic, who
have beamed and brightened at the casual mention of his name,
(39:33):
and have cried, you know Jack, guv'nor, then you know
a prince of men that he is, and so unmistakably
a naval officer that if you were to meet him
coming out of an Eskimo snow hut in a seal skin,
you would be vaguely persuaded he was in full naval uniform.
Jack once had that bright, clear eye of his on
(39:54):
my sister, but it fell out that he married another
lady and took her to South America, where she died.
This was a dozen years ago or more. He brought
down with him to our haunted house a little cask
of salt beef, for he is always convinced that all
salt beef, not of his own pickling, is mere carrion,
and invariably when he goes to London packs a piece
(40:16):
in his portmanteau. He had also volunteered to bring with
him one Nat Beaver, an old comrade of his captain,
of a merchantman. Mister Beaver, with a thick set, wooden
face and figure, and apparently as hard as a block
all over, proved to be an intelligent man, with a
world of watery experiences in him and great practical knowledge.
(40:40):
At times there was a curious nervousness about him, apparently
the lingering result of some old illness, but it seldom
lasted many minutes. He got the cupboard room and lay
there next to mister Underrea, my friend and solicitor, who
came down in an amateur capacity to go through with
it as he said, and who plays whist better than
(41:02):
the whole law list. From the red cover at the
beginning to the red cover at the end, I never
was happier in my life, and I believe it was
the universal feeling among us. Jack Governor, always a man
of wonderful resources, was chief cook and made some of
the best dishes I ever ate, including unapproachable curries. My
(41:24):
sister was pastry cook and confectioner Starling and I were
Cook's mate turn and turn about, and on special occasions
the chief cook pressed mister Beaver. We had a great
deal of outdoor sport and exercise, but nothing was neglected within,
and there was no ill humor or misunderstanding among us,
(41:46):
and our evenings were so delightful that we had at
least one good reason for being reluctant to go to bed.
We had a few night alarms in the beginning. On
the first night I was knocked up by Jack with
a most wonderful ship's land in his hand, like the
gills of some monster of the deep, who informed me
that he was going aloft to the main truck to
(42:07):
have the weather cock down. It was a stormy night,
and I remonstrated, but Jack called my attention to its
making a sound like a cry of despair, and said
somebody would be hailing a ghost presently if it wasn't done.
So up to the top of the house, where I
could hardly stand for the wind we went, accompanied by
mister Beaver, and there Jack Lantern and all with mister
(42:30):
Beaver after him, swarmed up to the top of a
cupola some two dozen feet above the chimneys, and stood
upon nothing particular, coolly knocking the weather cock off, until
they both got into such good spirits with the wind
and the height that I thought they would never come down.
Another night they turned out again and had a chimney
(42:50):
cowl off. Another night they cut a sobbing and gulping
water pipe away. Another night they found out something else.
On several occasions they both, in the coolest manner, simultaneously
dropped out of their respective bedroom windows hand overhand by
their counterpanes to overhaul something mysterious in the garden. The
(43:12):
engagement among us was faithfully kept and nobody revealed anything.
All we knew was if anyone's room were haunted, no
one looked the worse for it. End of Section two
A
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