Ghosts in the Great War, and true tales of haunted houses : $b Thrilling experience of "Daily News" readers
Religion
Ghosts in the Great War, and true tales of haunted houses : $b Thrilling experience of "Daily News" readers
Ghost stories
ONE morning, during the War, I had a most vivid dream of being chased
by two Germans with fixed bayonets, and I'd almost reached safety
when one of them stabbed me in the right shoulder. The shock woke me,
and, on looking at the clock, I found it was about 6:45 a.m. When I
got downstairs I remarked that something had happened to my husband
and related my dream, only to be laughed at. I heard nothing at all
from, or of, my husband for fifteen days; then I had the usual
official notification, saying that he was in hospital with severe
gun-shot wounds to the head and left shoulder. Some few weeks later I
went to see him in hospital and found that it was his right shoulder
that was in bandages, and, of course, told him my dream. He looked at
me in such a queer way that I asked him what was the matter, and this
is what he told me: The morning he was wounded, they were ordered to
attack at 6:30, and they hadn't got very far from their trenches when
he was hit in the right shoulder with a piece of shell which sent him
spinning into a shell hole, where he lay unconscious for two or three
hours. When he recovered consciousness he saw me standing on the edge
of the shell hole, beckoning him, and, with great difficulty (for his
right arm was quite useless) managed to scramble out and follow me. He
was joined by two wounded Germans. When I'd gone some distance, I
stopped, so did he and one of the Germans; the other one went on and
was blown to bits by a shell which exploded just in front of us. Then
I went on and took him safely to the dressing-station, where he
collapsed. To this day he declares I saved his life.
The Shell-wrecked Church
THE experience I shall never forget happened to me while serving with
the Dublin Fusiliers in France. My battalion had just come out of the
trenches and we were billeted in different villages near at hand—my
company in the village of Courcelles. In this village was a
shell-wrecked church, and my billet was a broken-down cottage just
opposite. One evening I took a stroll through this church and, to my
amazement, I heard the sound of deep and heavy breathing. Thinking
someone was asleep, I had a good look round but found nothing.
Looking across the road I saw my chum talking to an officer and I
went over and asked them to come over and listen. When they heard the
noise my chum turned deathly white, and they asked me what it was or
who it was. I was just as wise as they were. We searched about the
church, even to moving about the stones and bricks, but found
nothing. The same night, when asleep in the ruined cottage opposite,
my chum woke me up with a startled cry, “Cyril, look quick, the
Virgin Mary!” Looking up, I was astonished to see a white figure
gliding through the room and out of the broken window across to the
church and into it. We went all about the church the next morning but
all was quiet. What could it have been?
Vision of Brother
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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