“April 10, 11 P.M. On going up to bed, we find room No. 4 aglow with
a pale green light and filled with a faint sickly odour, which we at
once recognised as identical with that smelt there at the time of my
mother’s decease and which we considered was peculiar to her disease.
“I must mention that after her death, the room had been thoroughly
renovated, the old flooring replaced by new, the walls repapered and
everywhere well disinfected with the strongest carbolic. My mother had
died at 11 P.M.
“April 12, 13, 14, 15; 11 P.M. The same light and smell.
“April 20. Joan fell over some large obstacle in the hall, hurting
herself badly. She could see nothing, but was half suffocated with a
stench similar to the one already described.
“April 30, 2.20 A.M. Both my wife and I distinctly felt something brush
across our faces. We lit a candle and perceived to our horror two long
black antennæ (like the antennæ of a monstrous beetle) waving to and
fro on our pillow.
“We spent the rest of the night on the drawing-room chairs and sofa.
“May 1. Shut up the house.”
NOTE.--An attempt to solve the mystery surrounding these hauntings
will appear in a subsequent volume.
THE WAY MEADOW, SOMERSET
THE INVISIBLE HORROR
Technical form of haunting: Unknown
Source of authenticity: Personal and other experiences
Cause of haunting: Unknown
In my boyhood days I was very fond of making long excursions on foot,
my peregrinations taking me many miles from Bristol, which was at that
time my home. On one of these occasions I took a route that led me past
Bath, and eventually arrived at a village that particularly fascinated
me.
Lying in a hollow by the side of a sluggish river, or stream, it
presented an exceedingly attractive appearance to my somewhat romantic
eyes. I especially liked the whitewashed cottages, with their thatched
roofs, diamond-fashioned window-panes, walls and trellised arches
covered with jasmine and Virginian creepers; their tiny gardens
crowded with foxgloves and roses, and their quaint, their very quaint
chimney-pots, from which arose spiral columns of fleecy-looking smoke.
It was a pretty village, a pre-eminently peaceful village; a village
that was rendered almost fantastic by the close proximity of a queerly
constructed water-mill; it was a sunny village, remarkably hot in
summer, but intensely cold in winter.
The stream to which I have alluded ran its tortuous course through a
succession of open meadows. In the corner of one was a pond, a deep
and silent piece of water that was supposed to be connected in some
way with the miniature river. It struck me as a very proper place for
a bathe, the weeping willows that fringed its margins affording an
effectual screen to the prying eyes of children; whilst the gently
sloping banks of spongy grass were softer to the tread than any towel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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