One day, as I was leaving the bath-room, a gleam of winter sunshine revealed an opening in the panelling opposite. On looking I saw a stair and a tray at the bottom with the remains of a meal. I immediately brought my sister. To say we were amazed is putting it mildly, after our landlady’s denial of an attic. We felt this had been the repast of our nightly disturber, but did not mention it to the landlady. A few nights after, there was a singular happening. I awoke in the early hours to find my sister sitting up in bed. I drowsily asked her if she was ill, but she answered rather abruptly and told me to go to sleep. I was roused by her manner and sat up trying to peer into her face. After much questioning, she said: “There has been a man in this room.” Although I was terrified, I tried to laugh and say “That is impossible as our door is locked and bolted.” My thoughts had gone to the occupant of the attic. She said: “This was no human visitor; he went over to the chest and examined the papers, and then came and leaned over the bed in a grief-stricken attitude.” She was so calm whilst telling it and described the man as very tall and slightly bent, with a sad face and iron-grey hair. Needless to add, we prayed for daylight and got to school as early as possible, where our ghost caused great excitement, the other teachers giving credence to the story, coming from my sister and not my imaginative self. On returning to our rooms for lunch, the landlady came in with a newspaper and pointed out a paragraph giving an account of a man being cut to pieces on the railway just at the back of the house. She said, “He had your rooms Miss, and those were his papers.” My sister said he was a tall man and went on to give the landlady a description of our midnight visitor. She said: “Why, Miss, did you know him,” and then my sister told her the story. She said it was an exact likeness of the man who had always promised to return for the papers. That explains our ghostly visitor. We made a hasty exit that same day. Weeks after, we heard of the police raiding the house and capturing an escaped prisoner. It was the landlady’s husband, and she had had him in hiding all those weeks. That explained the tread on the stairs and the raking of the fire when the prisoner escaped from his attic hiding. OTHER STORIES OF HAUNTED HOUSES A MAGISTRATE’S STORY THIS comes from a Justice of the Peace in the Western Counties: