The Stoneground Ghost Tales: Compiled from the recollections of the Reverend Roland Batchel, Vicar of the parish.Swain, E. G. (Edmund Gill)
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The Stoneground Ghost Tales: Compiled from the recollections of the Reverend Roland Batchel, Vicar of the parish.
Swain, E. G. (Edmund Gill)
English fiction -- 20th century; Ghost stories, English
There was a man, a man with an indescribably horrible suffering face,
rolling the lawn with a large roller.
Mr. Groves retreated in amazement to where Mrs. Rumney had remained
standing. "Has anyone been in here?" he asked.
"Not a soul," was the reply, "I came in to make up the fire, and
turned to have another look at the picture, when I saw that dead-alive
face at the edge. It gave me the creeps," she said, "particularly from
not having noticed it before. If that's anyone in Stoneground, I said
to myself, I wonder the Vicar has him in the garden with that awful
face. It took that hold of me I thought I must come and look at it
again, and at five o'clock I brought your tea in. And then I saw him
moved along right in front, with a roller dragging behind him, like you
see."
Mr. Groves was greatly puzzled. Mrs. Rumney's story, of course, was
incredible, but this strange evil-faced man had appeared in the
photograph somehow. That he had not been there when the print was made
was quite certain.
The problem soon ceased to alarm Mr. Groves; in his mind it was
investing itself with a scientific interest. He began to think of
suspended chemical action, and other possible avenues of investigation.
At Mrs. Rumney's urgent entreaty, however, he turned the photograph
upon the easel, and with only its white back presented to the room, he
sat down and ordered tea to be brought in.
He did not look again at the picture. The face of the man had about it
something unnaturally painful: he could remember, and still see, as
it were, the drawn features, and the look of the man had unaccountably
distressed him.
He finished his slight meal, and having lit a pipe, began to brood over
the scientific possibilities of the problem. Had any other photograph
upon the original film become involved in the one he had enlarged? Had
the image of any other face, distorted by the enlarging lens, become
a part of this picture? For the space of two hours he debated this
possibility, and that, only to reject them all. His optical knowledge
told him that no conceivable accident could have brought into his
picture a man with a roller. No negative of his had ever contained such
a man; if it had, no natural causes would suffice to leave him, as it
were, hovering about the apparatus.
His repugnance to the actual thing had by this time lost its freshness,
and he determined to end his scientific musings with another inspection
of the object. So he approached the easel and turned the photograph
round again. His horror returned, and with good cause. The man with
the roller had now advanced to the middle of the lawn. The face was
stricken still with the same indescribable look of suffering. The man
seemed to be appealing to the spectator for some kind of help. Almost,
he spoke.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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