The Alleged Haunting of B---- House, - [best historical fiction books of all time TXT] 📗

called out to two other maids to listen, and all three heard it. She felt sure it was not the wind or the pipes. Both the gardener and the gamekeeper say it was a very quiet night.

March 28th, Sunday.—As it had been suggested that practical joking or malicious mischief were in question, we were a good deal on the qui vive to-night, being alone. I watched from behind the curtain at an open window from 10.30 p.m. till after midnight, and again from 4.30 a.m. to 6 a.m. The night was windy and there was a good deal of noise, but very different in kind from any of our usual phenomena. We found that there were people moving about till after midnight, but we did not attach much importance to this, as the gardeners may have been to the stoves (the night was frosty), and there is a right-of-way through the grounds.

No phenomena.

The servants, we find, are alive to the fact that some one prowls about at night. The footman, who sleeps downstairs, says they have tried to frighten him, and things have been thrown at the kitchen windows. I found it out by the fact that I was seized by the butler and footman when I went out "prowling" on Sunday night, fancying I had heard footsteps. They were on the same errand, and caught me in the dark!

March 29th, Monday.—To-day Miss Langton and I have been very busy writing in the library, both silent and occupied. Again and again have we heard footsteps overhead in No. 8, at intervals between ten a.m. and one, and again in the evening between six and seven. No rooms are in use on that side of the house—6, 7, and 8 are all empty. The rooms below are locked up and shuttered. At 11.30 we both heard some one moving about outside on the gravel, but it was too dark a night to see any one.

[Friday, April 2nd—An unpleasant light has (possibly) been thrown on these movements. We find to-day that some one has killed a sheep in the garden, in a retired spot, taking away the skin and the meat.]

March 30th, Tuesday.—No phenomena, except the sound of steps overhead above the library. For this reason, Miss Langton is going to sleep in No. 8, where the steps occur.

Mr. and Mrs. M—— came.

[We were particularly glad to welcome Mrs. M—— for other reasons than the pleasure of her society. She is of Spanish origin, and a Roman Catholic, and according to previous evidence, so were other persons upon whom specially interesting phenomena had been bestowed.]

Mr. B. S—— and Miss V. S——, brother and sister of the owner, dined with us.

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March 31st, Wednesday.—Mr. and Mrs M—— were put into No. 1. Both complain of a very sleepless night.

Miss Langton in No. 8 heard sounds after daylight—footsteps shuffling round the bed, and a knock near the wardrobe. No one is overhead nor in No. 7, the next room.

Mrs. M—— spent two hours alone in the drawing-room. She asked me just before lunch what guns those were she had heard. I suggested "The keeper?" and she said, "No, it is like the gun you hear at Edinburgh at one o'clock a long way off," which is a good description of the familiar detonating sound (cf. under date, February 8).

Her own account of the day is as follows:—

"B—— House.

"I arrived here last evening, Tuesday, 30th of March, about six o'clock. It was a nice bright evening, but cold. I was received by Miss Freer, who gave me some tea, and then I was taken to my bedroom by Miss Langton, of whom I asked if my room was haunted. She said it had 'a reputation', but somehow or another it did not seem to impress me much. That night Miss S—— and her brother dined here; they were very pleasant, and talked away hard, and we played card games, such as 'Old Maid' and 'Muggins.' We went to bed feeling quite happy, saying we had never been in such an unghostly house before. The bed was quite comfortable, and we lay talking quite happily, but could not sleep, and were not in the least bit restless. About two o'clock we dozed off, and a few minutes to four a.m. we were both suddenly awoke by a terrific noise, which sounded to me like the lid of the coal-scuttle having caught in a woman's gown. We then lay awake until about 6.30, and in that interval we heard a few noises, what I cannot exactly describe, as they were very ordinary sounds one might hear in any not very solidly built house. We came down to breakfast feeling we had passed a sleepless night, but otherwise quite happy. After breakfast I went into the smoking-room in the new wing, where my husband was writing letters. I sat there a good time, and he was in and out of the room. All the time I heard tramping up above as if the housemaid was doing the room. Not knowing the geography of the house I took it for No. 8. and thought what very noisy servants these were. I then went into the drawing-room to write my own letters, and Miss Freer came and spoke to me there. While she was with me there, I heard a distant cannon, exactly like the one o'clock gun in Edinburgh, and the whole morning a ceaseless chatter, which I put down to Miss Freer and Miss Langton in the room next door (cf. under date, March 23rd).

April 1st, Thursday.—This is Mrs. M——'s account of last night. "Last evening we were late for dinner, as Mr. M—— and I had been out to see the nun by the burn, but had seen nothing. The whole evening I had a sort of half consciously disagreeable feeling, and when I went to my room it was some time before I could make up my mind to get into bed. The servants very much annoyed me; they were making such a needless amount of noise in running about the room overhead. [The room overhead was empty. Since their adventure of March 23rd, the servants had slept on the other side of the house.] At last I got into bed, and I may say I hardly slept a wink the whole night. I simply lay in terror, of what I cannot say, but I had the feeling of some very disagreeable sensation in the air, but we did not hear a sound all night from the time we got into bed until we got up next morning at 8.30.

"I spent the whole of the morning in the drawing-room writing letters and reading, and from time to time I went up to No. 1 to get books and different things, and each time was a little surprised to find the room empty, as there had been a ceaseless noise of housemaids, and very noisy ones too. I also heard what I had described before as the cannon. After luncheon Miss Freer and Miss Langton and I went out walking, and just as we were coming in to tea we all three heard the cannon, and then I said that is the noise I heard every morning, and sometimes in the evening, in the drawing-room."

This afternoon we were having tea in the drawing-room at 4.30, Mrs. M——, Miss Langton, and myself. We heard some one walking overhead in No. 1, a sound we have heard often before, when we knew the room to be empty above. Mrs. M—— remarked that it was just the sound she had heard, again and again, when sitting alone in the drawing-room.

It was so exactly the heavy, heelless steps we had heard before, that Miss L—— ran upstairs softly to see if any one was there, but found no one about. Next we heard a loud bang—not of a door—in the hall, and she went out again to ascertain the cause, and met the butler on the same errand. We could find nothing to account for it. It was like the noise before described, of something dropped heavily into the hall from the gallery above.

There had been so much trouble of ascertaining whether the noises were caused by doors banging, that since the warmer weather set in, ever since our return on March 20th, in fact, we have had every passage-door opening into the hall and into the gallery upstairs fixed open with wedges.

We had scarcely settled to our tea again before we again heard the footsteps overhead, and again Miss Langton went up and found the room empty. She walked across the room, and we heard her do so, but the sound was quite different. She did it noisily on purpose, but though she is very big and tall, she didn't sound heavy enough.

Mrs. M—— remarks, on hearing this read over, that the sound was different in character as well as in volume—that the footsteps she (and we) heard were "between a run and a walk." My phrase was, and has always been, "as of the quick, heavy steps of a person whose foot-gear didn't match." We called it, when we first heard it in No. 8, a "shuffling step."

After she came down the servants' tea-bell rang, and we at once said, "Now we shall know where they all are." The hall is under the wing, at the other end of the house, and we knew that the room underneath us was empty, and the shutters up, and that all who were in the house were either in the drawing-room or the servants' hall.

In a few minutes we again heard the pacing footsteps, up and down, up and down; we heard them at intervals during half-an-hour. We also heard voices as of a man and woman talking. I went to the foot of the stairs, just below the door of No. 1, and heard them plain. Mrs. M—— is not quick of hearing, but she heard them distinctly several times. At 5.20 we heard the maids go up the stone staircase, coming away from their tea, and though we listened till after six, the other sounds did not occur again.

April 2nd, Friday.

[Mr. M—— left early, Mrs. M—— remaining till a later train.]

At 11.15 Miss Langton and I were in the library at two different tables writing. The room was silent. Suddenly we heard a heavy blow struck on a third table, ten feet at least away from either of us. I instantly fetched Mrs. M——, and in her hearing Miss Langton imitated the sound on the same table, by hitting with her fist as heavily as possible. There is a drawer in the table, empty, which added to the vibration, and also pendent brass handles. I tried, but could not make noise enough. We kept watch in the room till lunch, Mrs. M—— keeping guard when we were obliged to leave, but nothing happened till, when we were sitting at luncheon (there is only a single door and a curtain between the two rooms), we heard it again as above described.

One of the informants, who described the scene which occurred the day the late Mr. S—— left this house for the last time, said "a very heavy blow like a man's fist came on the table between them." This is the same room.

The same sound occurred again while we were at lunch in the dining-room just now. The first time Miss Langton rushed to the library and found a housemaid there at the stove, so we agreed it should not count. It occurred again in