they became riveted upon a closet door, which I distinctly saw
open, and saw also the figure of a female attired in greyish
garments, with the head inclining downwards, and one hand
pressed upon the chest as if in pain, and the other--viz. the
right hand--extended towards the floor, with the index finger
pointing downward. It advanced with an apparently cautious
step across the floor towards me; immediately as it approached
my friend, who was slumbering, its right hand was extended
towards him; I then rushed at it, giving, as Mr Proctor states,
a most awful yell; but instead of grasping it I fell upon my
friend, and I recollected nothing distinctly for nearly three
hours afterwards. I have since learned that I was carried
downstairs in an agony of fear and terror.
* * * * *
"I hereby certify that the above account is strictly true and
correct in every respect.
"EDWARD DRURY."
So intolerable became life in this uncanny house that, in 1847, Joseph
Proctor and his family moved to South Shields. For the last night of
their residence was reserved a more than usually turbulent
demonstration. "There were," says Mr Edmund Proctor, "continuous noises
during the night, boxes being apparently dragged with heavy thuds down
the now carpetless stairs, non-human footsteps stumped on the floors,
doors were, or seemed to be, clashed, and impossible furniture corded
at random or dragged hither and thither by inscrutable agency; in short,
a pantomimic or spiritualistic repetition of all the noises incident to
a household flitting. A miserable night my father and mother had of it,
as I have often heard from their own lips; not so much from terror at
the unearthly noises, for to these they were habituated, as dread lest
this wretched fanfaronade might portend the contemporary flight of the
unwelcome visitors to the new abode. Fortunately for the family this
dread was not realised."
After undergoing various vicissitudes, the house was finally divided
into small tenements, in which condition it still remains. But of late
years nothing has been seen or heard of the ghostly visitors. Perhaps,
smitten with dismay by the deterioration of their former dwelling-place,
they have taken up their abode elsewhere. For Willingdon Mill, formerly
gay with flowers and creepers, is now a wreck of its former self. The
mill is used as a warehouse; the stables and outhouses have been pulled
down; while the house stands out gaunt and forbidding, a picture of
desolation and decay.
Mr W. T. Stead, in his "Real Ghost Stories," has given us many thrilling
examples of nocturnal apparitions, and of these the uncanny experience
of the Rev. H. Elwyn Thomas, of 35 Park Village East, N. W., is well
worth repeating.
Mr Thomas, after having conducted a service at the church at Llangynidr,
accompanied three young friends of his for about half-a-mile on their
homeward way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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