J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan
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J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2
Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan
Ghost stories
One day, when the children were playing in the back garden, I asked them
to point out to me the spot where they were accustomed to see the woman
who occasionally showed herself as I have described, near the stable
wall. There was no division of opinion as to this precise point, which
they indicated in the most distinct and confident way. I suggested that,
perhaps, something might be hidden there in the ground; and advised them
digging a hole there with their little spades, to try for it.
Accordingly, to work they went, and by my return in the evening they had
grubbed up a piece of a jawbone, with several teeth in it. The bone was
very much decayed, and ready to crumble to pieces, but the teeth were
quite sound. I could not tell whether they were human grinders; but I
showed the fossil to one of the physicians I have mentioned, who came
out the next evening, and he pronounced them human teeth. The same
conclusion was come to a day or two later by the other medical man. It
appears to me now, on reviewing the whole matter, almost unaccountable
that, with such evidence before me, I should not have got in a labourer,
and had the spot effectually dug and searched. I can only say, that so
it was. I was quite satisfied of the moral truth of every word that had
been related to me, and which I have here set down with scrupulous
accuracy. But I experienced an apathy, for which neither then nor
afterwards did I quite know how to account. I had a vague, but immovable
impression that the whole affair was referable to natural agencies. It
was not until some time after we had left the house, which, by-the-by,
we afterwards found had had the reputation of being haunted before we
had come to live in it, that on reconsideration I discovered the serious
difficulty of accounting satisfactorily for all that had occurred upon
ordinary principles. A great deal we might arbitrarily set down to
imagination. But even in so doing there was, _in limine_, the oddity,
not to say improbability, of so many different persons having nearly
simultaneously suffered from different spectral and other illusions
during the short period for which we had occupied that house, who never
before, nor so far as we learned, afterwards were troubled by any fears
or fancies of the sort. There were other things, too, not to be so
accounted for. The odd knockings in the roof I frequently heard myself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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