Ghosts I Have Met and Some OthersBangs, John Kendrick
General
Ghosts I Have Met and Some Others
Bangs, John Kendrick
Ghost stories, American; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
What his first words were I shall not repeat. They fairly seethed
out of his turned and twisted soul, hissing like the escape-valve of
an ocean steamer, and his eyes, as they fell upon mine, actually
burned me.
"This settles it," he hissed, venomously. "I had intended letting
you off with one more shove, but now, after your dastardly attempt
to rend me apart with your damned hot-air furnace, I shall haunt you
to your dying day; I shall haunt you so terribly that years before
your final exit from this world you will pray for death. As a shover
you have found me equal to everything, but since you prefer
twisting, twisting be it. You shall hear from me again!"
He vanished, and, I must confess it, I threw myself upon my couch,
weeping hot tears of despair.
Peters's scheme had failed, and I was in a far worse position than
ever. Shoving I can stand, but the brief exhibition of twisting that
I had had in watching his struggles with that awful cyclonic blast
from below convinced me that there was something in life even more
to be dreaded than the shoving he and I had been indulging in.
But there was a postscript, and now all is well again, because--but
let us reserve the wherefore of the postscript for another,
concluding chapter.
V--POSTSCRIPT
So hopeless was my estate now become that, dreading more than ever
that which the inscrutable future held for me, I sat down and framed
an advertisement, which I contemplated putting in all the
newspapers, weeklies, and monthly periodicals, offering a handsome
reward for any suggestion which might result in ridding me of the
cockney ghost. The inventive mind of man has been able to cope
successfully with rats and mice and other household pests. Why,
then, should there not be somewhere in the world a person of
sufficient ingenuity to cope with an obnoxious spirit? If rat
-dynamite and rough on June-bugs were possible, why was it not likely
that some as yet unknown person had turned his attention to
spectrology, and evolved something in the nature of rough on ghosts,
spectremelinite, or something else of an effective nature, I asked
myself. It seemed reasonable to suppose that out of the millions of
people in the world there were others than Peters and myself who had
made a study of ghosts and methods of exorcising them, and if these
persons could only be reached I might yet escape. Accordingly, I
penned the advertisement about as follows:
WANTED, by a young and rising author,
who is pursued by a vindictive spirit,
A GHOST CURE.
A liberal reward will be paid to any wizard,
recognized or unrecognized, who will, before
February I, 1898, send to me a detailed statement
of a
GUARANTEED METHOD
of getting rid of
SPOOKS.
It is agreed that these communications shall
be regarded as strictly confidential until such
a time as through their medium the spirit is
effectually
LAID,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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