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

Tactile. The most important of these were the experiences of Miss "N." on the night of March 3rd, and of Miss "Duff" on the night of March 22nd, both in No. 3; and of a maid, Lizzie, on the night of March 23rd, in the room above No. 3, on the attic storey, who all testified to the sensation of the moving of the bed, or the handling of the bed-clothes. These were the only occasions during Colonel Taylor's tenancy, but the phenomenon is one often testified to by earlier witnesses, both during the H——s' tenancy and that of the family of the late Mr. S——.

It presents a peculiar difficulty in the way of the theory that all the phenomena at B—— were subjective hallucinations, and this is especially the case with regard to the evidence of a witness who has not been brought forward in the preceding pages, but whose account of a similar experience is reported by two first-hand witnesses. On one occasion he had the whole of the upper bed-clothes lifted from off him and thrown upon the floor, while a pile of wearing apparel, which was laid on a chair beside the bed, was thrown in his face.

It is of course conceivable that the whole of these experiences, including the last, were the result of an hallucination; but on the other hand, it would be very unwise, in the present state of our ignorance on the subject, to dogmatise as to the possible action of unseen forces upon what is commonly called matter. It is interesting to note that this senseless and childish trick coincides with what was said by Miss A—— as to the presence of mischievous elementals, and also what she says as to apports.[I]

1. The sensation of the movement of the bed itself, whether as being rocked, as in the experience of Miss "Duff" on March 22nd, and of Miss Langton on several occasions, and by guests of the H—— family, or of being lifted up, as in that of the maid Lizzie, is a phenomenon by no means uncommon, and if objective is of the nature of levitation; but we have unfortunately no evidence from a second person observing the phenomenon from outside. Whether it were actually moved it is impossible to say, but the sensation seems to have been more than subjective.

2. The sensation of struggling with something unseen, described by Miss "Duff," March 22nd, and of the sensation of an incumbent weight, as described by Miss "Duff" (same date) and Miss "N." on March 2nd. This coincides with the arrest of his hand experienced by Harold Sanders. These phenomena adapt themselves to the theory of subjectivity more easily than the foregoing, because they more closely resemble those of nightmare (familiar to most persons), although they occurred while the witnesses were awake.

3. The sensation of being pushed by a dog was experienced in two different rooms by Miss Freer and Miss Moore respectively. If Mr. "Endell" were touched by Ishbel on the evening of March 1st, as appeared to Miss Freer to be the case, he had no independent consciousness of the fact that might not have been referred to expectation, so that this cannot be regarded as evidential.

For lack of other classification, we mention under this heading of "tactile" the sensation of chill experienced by Mr. "Endell" and Mr. Q—— in No. 3, and which appears to be the same as that described by Harold Sanders as the sensation of "entering an ice-house."

The audile phenomena were so frequent and so various, that a conspectus of them is given in an appendix. Some of them appeared to be human in origin, such as voices, reading or speaking, footsteps, and, according to earlier witnesses, screams and moans. Others might have been caused by dogs, such as pattering footsteps, jumping and pouncing as in play, the wagging of a dog's tail against the door, and the sound as of a dog throwing itself against the lower panels. Other sounds have been differentiated, as the detonating or explosive noise; the clang sound, as of the striking of metal upon wood; the thud or heavy fall without resonance; and the crash, which was never better described than as if one of the beasts' heads on the staircase wall had fallen into the hall below. It very often, or almost always, seemed to occur under the glass dome which lighted the body of the house, and the falling object seemed to strike others in its descent, so that it was not ineffectively imitated by rolling a bowl along the stone floor of the hall, and allowing it to strike against the doors or pillars, when the peculiar echoing quality was fairly reproduced by the hollow domed roof and surrounding galleries.

The editors offer no conclusions. This volume has been put together, as the house at B—— was taken, not for the establishment of theories, but for the record of facts.