The story of the ghost, judging by the interest that is even now (1908)
taken in it, must have created a considerable sensation at the time--so
much so that I think a brief history of the crime--gruesome though it
be--will bear repeating.
Prior to doing so, however, I should like to relate a ghostly
experience that happened to me, Elliott O’Donnell, in the same
neighbourhood, August 1904.
The village of Guilsborough is on an eminence 10 miles N.W. by N. of
Northampton, 4 miles from the source of the Avon at Naseby, 10 miles
N.E. from Daventry, 11 miles from Lutterworth, 10 miles S.S.W. from
Market Harboro’, 12 miles E. from Rugby, and 76 miles from London.
The adjacent country, consisting of large stretches of smiling meadows,
dales, and table-lands, is very fair for the eye to dwell upon, and it
is only at night, when the shadows from the many spinneys are cast upon
the gleaming roads and silent tarns, or when the wind, rustling through
the elms and oaks, sound like the breaking and falling of surf on the
seashore--it is only then that the place presents an entirely different
aspect to the psychic mind and one conjures up--GHOSTS.
During the period of my early visits to Guilsborough, the history of
the village was unknown to me, nor did I for one moment associate it
with superphysical manifestations till I was staying at the hamlet of
Creaton, some three miles distant, and had to tramp home late at night.
I must confess, then, that I was unquestionably glad to leave the
crossroads at the top of Crow Hill and the lonely turnpike behind and
find myself snugly ensconced within the very material precincts of the
Cricketers’ Arms.
The route I took, led me past the long-disused burial-ground of some
Nonconformist Fraternity, a spot one never seemed to notice by day, but
which struck me as singularly eerie at night.
On this particular night in question, I did not leave my friend’s house
in Guilsborough till close on twelve, an hour when all village folk
are in bed and the place is wrapped in the most profound silence. The
sound of my footsteps, as I briskly pounded down the road, echoed
and re-echoed through the village. I welcomed the sound; it was nice
to have even that for a companion. I am not as a rule nervous, I have
been too much by myself in life to be an abject coward, yet I must
confess I never anticipated the walk from Guilsborough along the lonely
turnpike-road after nightfall without an uncomfortable itching in my
back.
I was just beginning to get that sensation when I arrived at the
rusty gates of the cemetery, and was confounded beyond measure on
seeing a curious, grotesque sort of creature climb over the iron bars
and confront me. The moonlight was so powerful that it left nothing
uncovered or concealed.
A frightful terror laid hold of me--what--what in the NAME OF HEAVEN
could it be?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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