A distinction must be drawn between the so-called _Headless_ Coach,
which portends death, and the _Phantom_ Coach, which appears to be a
harmless sort of vehicle. With regard to the latter we give two tales
below, the first of which was sent by a lady whose father was a
clergyman, and a gold medalist of Trinity College, Dublin.
"Some years ago my family lived in County Down. Our house was some way
out of a fair-sized manufacturing town, and had a short avenue which
ended in a gravel sweep in front of the hall door. One winter's evening,
when my father was returning from a sick call, a carriage going at a
sharp pace passed him on the avenue. He hurried on, thinking it was some
particular friends, but when he reached the door no carriage was to be
seen, so he concluded it must have gone round to the stables. The
servant who answered his ring said that no visitors had been there, and
he, feeling certain that the girl had made some mistake, or that some
one else had answered the door, came into the drawing-room to make
further inquiries. No visitors had come, however, though those sitting
in the drawing-room had also heard the carriage drive up.
"My father was most positive as to what he had seen, viz. a closed
carriage with lamps lit; and let me say at once that he was a clergyman
who was known throughout the whole of the north of Ireland as a most
level-headed man, and yet to the day of his death he would insist that
he met that carriage on our avenue.
"One day in July one of our servants was given leave to go home for the
day, but was told she must return by a certain train. For some reason
she did not come by it, but by a much later one, and rushed into the
kitchen in a most penitent frame of mind. 'I am so sorry to be late,'
she told the cook, 'especially as there were visitors. I suppose they
stayed to supper, as they were so late going away, for I met the
carriage on the avenue.' The cook thereupon told her that no one had
been at the house, and hinted that she must have seen the
ghost-carriage, a statement that alarmed her very much, as the story was
well known in the town, and car-drivers used to whip up their horses as
they passed our gate, while pedestrians refused to go at all except in
numbers. We have often heard the carriage, but these are the only two
occasions on which I can positively assert that it was seen."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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