Told After SupperJerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka)
General
Told After Supper
Jerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka)
Ghost stories, English; Short stories
There is also the plucky guest, who sees a ghost, and knows it is a
ghost, and watches it, as it comes into the room and disappears
through the wainscot, after which, as the ghost does not seem to be
coming back, and there is nothing, consequently, to be gained by
stopping awake, he goes to sleep.
He does not mention having seen the ghost to anybody, for fear of
frightening them--some people are so nervous about ghosts,--but
determines to wait for the next night, and see if the apparition
appears again.
It does appear again, and, this time, he gets out of bed, dresses
himself and does his hair, and follows it; and then discovers a
secret passage leading from the bedroom down into the beer-cellar,-
-a passage which, no doubt, was not unfrequently made use of in the
bad old days of yore.
After him comes the young man who woke up with a strange sensation
in the middle of the night, and found his rich bachelor uncle
standing by his bedside. The rich uncle smiled a weird sort of
smile and vanished. The young man immediately got up and looked at
his watch. It had stopped at half-past four, he having forgotten
to wind it.
He made inquiries the next day, and found that, strangely enough,
his rich uncle, whose only nephew he was, had married a widow with
eleven children at exactly a quarter to twelve, only two days ago,
The young man does not attempt to explain the circumstance. All he
does is to vouch for the truth of his narrative.
And, to mention another case, there is the gentleman who is
returning home late at night, from a Freemasons' dinner, and who,
noticing a light issuing from a ruined abbey, creeps up, and looks
through the keyhole. He sees the ghost of a 'grey sister' kissing
the ghost of a brown monk, and is so inexpressibly shocked and
frightened that he faints on the spot, and is discovered there the
next morning, lying in a heap against the door, still speechless,
and with his faithful latch-key clasped tightly in his hand.
All these things happen on Christmas Eve, they are all told of on
Christmas Eve. For ghost stories to be told on any other evening
than the evening of the twenty-fourth of December would be
impossible in English society as at present regulated. Therefore,
in introducing the sad but authentic ghost stories that follow
hereafter, I feel that it is unnecessary to inform the student of
Anglo-Saxon literature that the date on which they were told and on
which the incidents took place was--Christmas Eve.
Nevertheless, I do so.
NOW THE STORIES CAME TO BE TOLD
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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