One can quite imagine my feelings as I clung to the gate, not knowing whether to go forward or back to the house. I learned afterwards that this conveyance had been seen several years before by some of the old servants. London CRYPTS have always held a strange fascination for me. Although a staunch sceptic, I am deeply interested in psychical research, and I have systematically sought out crypts on the supposition that if there are such things as ghosts they would surely prefer to manifest themselves in those creepy vaults. But only once has a ghost appeared to me, and that was in the crypt of a hoary old church in Lincolnshire. I was quite alone; the verger was away from home, and I had to borrow the keys from the rector. It was late on a September afternoon and the light, even with the aid of my bicycle lamp, was very dim. I wandered around, examining dates on tombs until, passing behind a pillar, I was scared to see a man dressed in black leaning against the recumbent effigy of some medieval worthy. “That must be the verger, after all,” I thought; “but how strange! He must have duplicate keys.” So I approached him—cautiously, I admit—and, as I did so, he rose slowly, raised a deprecating hand, as though to stop my advance, and then gradually vanished into space! The dark eeriness of the place rather got on my nerves, and I slipped out quickly to tell the rector of my experience. “Ah!” said he, “you've evidently seen Black Robert the Monk. There's a legend here that in the fifteenth century the poor fellow was locked in the crypt for some offence; but they forgot all about him for a time and when they went to release him, he was stark dead. His ghost appears occasionally, and the visitation, strange to say, is said to bring the church good luck. One would have expected him to cherish a grudge. Anyhow, last time, a wealthy patron gave £100 to our fund. This time—er—” “It will be only half a crown,” I responded. An Unwelcome Travelling Companion