Technical form of apparitions: Phantasms of the deadSource of authenticity: Copies almostad verbumfrom the MS. lent me by Mrs. Browne, February 1908.Cause of haunting: Vice and Premature Burial
Technical form of apparitions: Phantasms of the dead
Source of authenticity: Copies almostad verbumfrom the MS. lent me by Mrs. Browne, February 1908.
Cause of haunting: Vice and Premature Burial
Myname is Elizabeth Rita Browne; I am a native of Birmingham and my husband, John Alexander is the rector of a small parish near Wolverhampton.
In the summer of 1900 my husband, who had long been ailing, never having properly recovered from an attack of typhoid, was obliged to take a holiday, engaging a locum to do his work.
Like the majority of clergymen, his stipend was not very large and we could not, consequently, afford to go to any expensive place. An advertisement in a well-known fashion gazette attracting our attention, we at once made inquiries, with the result that Wolsey Abbey became ours for three months at a practically nominal rent.
Of course it was in an extremely out-of-the-way spot; there was no railway within six miles and theneighbourhood was dull, flat and uninteresting; still we might have marvelled at getting it so absurdly cheap, had we not heard that money was of no object to the owner, who was a semi-millionaire.
We arrived early one evening in July; the sun was yet visible in the sky and its dying efforts would have enhanced the meanest rural beauty.
I cannot say we were comfortably impressed with the building; it was of course simply colossal compared with our own little home, but so grim and grey, so forlorn and forbidding, and withal so inhospitable, that a momentary fear seized me lest its leaden hued and crumbling walls should prove our winding-sheets.
The grounds, overgrown with every imaginable kind of weed that here attained Brobdingnagian dimensions, gently shelved down to the house, which lay in a minute valley, dank, damp and dismal; the funereal aspect being further augmented by clumps of giant pines and elms, the shadows from which were already beginning to wave phantastically on both walls and gables.
To our right, almost hidden by the thick foliage of the trees and luxuriant herbage, we espied the twinkling surface of a sheet of water which we subsequently learned was a tarn or lake of almost unfathomable depth and darkness.
The principal feature of the mansion seemed to be that of antiquity, of excessive antiquity, more particularly the Gothic monastic dome which, resting on Norman columns, formed the termination of the left wing, the right and central portion of the housedating back I believe to Henry VIIth’s reign—though of this I have no positive proof.
The lapse of ages had wrought much discolouration, added to which was the disfigurement caused by lichens and minute fungi that, spreading over the whole exterior, hung in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. But apart from this there were no very great dilapidations, the masonry remaining intact, whilst the woodwork, save for a few deep rents and indentures, seemed to be in an extraordinarily good state of repair.
The hand of nature had apparently been peremptorily and mysteriously arrested in its work of dissolution and decay.
The inside of the house, though not belying the mournful expectations we had formed from the exterior, drew from us all exclamations of wonder and admiration—never had we seen such magnificent oak panelling, nor such exquisitely carved ceilings, nor such vast stretches of tapestry (worn and faded though it was), whilst the ebon blackness of the floors, and the size and massiveness of the furniture, were what we had hitherto only associated with the grandeur of a palace or castle.
My daughters Mary and Eunice were charmed and impressed, and both my husband and I felt our misgivings rapidly diminish when a few minutes later we were enjoying a dainty and well-cooked supper in one of the large and stately reception rooms.
The first days of our sojourn there passed with the pleasant monotony of well-earned rest; werambled through the long and straggling and seemingly interminable corridors of the house, and about the grounds and gardens, finding much to marvel at, much to envy.
In the day time the sun struggling feebly through the trellised panes of glass filled the rooms and passages with a crimson glow—a glow both warming and enriching, but at various times and in certain places startlingly and horribly suggestive of blood; the analogy struck me the more forcibly each day I observed it, so much so that I grew afraid to ascend the staircases—ALONE.
Mary and Eunice laughed at my misgivings; to them the house and surroundings were the quintessence of mediæval splendour and romance; they revelled in the grandeur of the interior trappings, in the freedom of the vast park and gardens; it was only after the third week that they, too, suddenly grewAFRAID.
But whereas my fears had been prompted by a comparison, a comparison which, however near and repellent, still remained aCOMPARISON, theirs were generated by something which, although scarcely more tangible, was unmistakablyREAL.
They were constantly assailed by aSMELL—a cold, icy cold, pungent, beastly smell, that would on some occasions approach them along a corridor or staircase, and at others steal surreptitiously behind them from some obscure nook or cranny.
It was foul, pestilential, inexplicable; they had never smelt anything like it before; it was nothing recognisable; it neither emanated from drainagenor from dead animals behind the skirting-boards; it was nauseous, suffocating, freezing—and—as if it lived—itMOVED.
From the moment they first became aware of its presence, their pleasure in the house ceased; all their time was now spent in the garden, but in that part of the garden only whence no view of the tarn could be obtained and where there were no trees.
Neither my husband nor I had encountered the Smell, but it was not very long before the servants did—and—one by one theyLEFT, nor could we find any that were willing to take their place, the Abbey bearing a very evil reputation in the neighbourhood.
The question of our daughters’ health began to cause us some anxiety; were we doing right in remaining in the house and exposing them to the danger of some serious malady? for although the origin of the Smell was a mystery, the effect of so horrible a stench could not prove otherwise than injurious.
We decided, therefore, to give up our tenancy at the expiration of another week, the idea of quitting such palatial quarters and retiring to the meanness of some petty villa or four-room cottage not disturbing us half so much as our inability to arrive at the cause of that Smell.
In the silence of the night, when no other sounds were to be heard, save the gentle beating of the branches against our window and the occasional hooting of an owl, we lay awake and wondered,wondered why it never came to us, but always to Mary and Eunice.
The house, I have said, was liberally furnished; both rooms and passages were covered with soft if somewhat faded carpets; there was no lack of tables, couches, chairs, &c., whilst the walls were adorned with pictures which, though darkened by dust and blistered by the sun, revealed the art of old and well-known masters; but it was the library that attracted and pleased us most.
There arranged methodically in the ample bookcases were volumes of every description; books of ancient lore,Spectators,Tatlers, Richardson’s “Pamela,” Defoe’s “Moll of Flanders,” Tyndale’s Bible, Dryden’s and Gifford’s Translations from the Classics, the Mysticisms of Swedenborg, Behmen and Plotinus and countless others, many, even of greater rarity and value, bound uniformly in those covers of rich Moroccan leather so characteristic of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
One among all others had riveted our attention from the very first. I have already alluded to the peculiar and ghastly phenomenon produced by the sun’s rays penetrating the coloured glass in the corridors and on the staircases; here it was even more pronounced though only very locally, the full force of the rays being focussed in the most startling manner on the metal clasp of a volume of stupendous size and apparently vast antiquity; the result being that whereas the entire book was bathed in a bloody halo, the others were left in a comparatively clear and normal light.
Appalled yet fascinated by this unaccountable anomaly, we had several times attempted to remove the volume in order to pry into its contents but we were unable to do so, owing, we imagined, to its having stuck or being fastened in some peculiar manner to the shelf—and we were afraid to use any great force for fear of damaging the cover; consequently our curiosity had to remain unsatisfied.
The night, however, preceding our departure from the Abbey (August 11) my husband had already left by a mid-day train, I was whiling away the few remaining hours in the study—Mary and Eunice being as I thought, engaged in packing—when—suddenly—I heard some one approach the door as if on tiptoe. The next moment there came a loud knock and the sonorous sound of the grandfather clock in the alcove beside me commencing to strike seven, the two noises were almost simultaneous.
Wondering who my visitor could be—our only servant, a woman from the nearest village, having left an hour ago—I smoothed my gown and walking hastily to the door threw it open.
As I did so a current of cold air, tainted with the most disgusting and detestable stench conceivable, sent me half staggering, half choking backwards, and I perceived standing on the threshold, not ten paces from me two figures of hellish horror. Featureless, fleshless, foul, clad in the tattered, rotted garments of a monk and nun, they confronted me motionless, silent, and then the voice of my Eunice attracting their attention, they slowly wheeled round and glided ghoulishly along the passage.
I gave one shriek of warning to Eunice as she hove in sight, carrying in her arms a tray of odds and ends for me to sort.
For a second or so she stood too petrified to move—and—then—as theTHINGSappeared on the verge of touching her with their long, outstretched arms, she dropped the tray and, uttering a kind of terrified gasp, fled precipitately.
They did not pursue her, but gliding onward with the same mechanical movements, suddenly vanished on reaching the wall at the end of the corridor; nor did we, I am thankful to say see them again.
TheSMELLhad explained itself.
Anxious to get to Eunice and fearsome lest she should have fainted, I was about to quit the study, when my eyes were attracted to an object on the floor. It was the mysterious volume which, loosened from the shelf in some miraculous fashion, had fallen to the ground, and now lay open, its ponderous, gilded clasps undone and limp.
The fading sunlight concentrating its rays on the pages of the book in a final and prodigiously bloody effort, enabled me to read the following extract: “and for this great and unpardonable sin of the Abbess Hilda and the Monk Nicholas, we—the Saintly and Beloved Abbot Matthew, the learned Franciscan brother Raymond, the laymen and labourers, Barber and Brooks together with I, Sir John Hickson Leigh, Knight did entomb them alive, clasped in each other’s arms, cursing man and blaspheming heaven, on the eve of the 11th day ofAugust, 1521. And of the exact spot in the Abbey of Wolsey wherein they be buried, no man—save we who placed them there—knoweth, nor shall any discover the same until the day cometh when the secrets of all flesh shall be revealed.”
This much I read and no more for the light proving too strong for me, I was compelled to remove my gaze and when I opened my eyes and saw again the volume it had gone, and lo! to my intense and unfeigned amazement it was back again in its customary place on the shelf, nor could the united efforts of myself and daughters remove it from that spot.
Regarding this extraordinary incident, as the only feasible explanation of the phenomena Eunice and I had seen, we could arrive at no other conclusion than that the house (once Wolsey Abbey) was haunted by the phantasms of the Abbess Hilda and the Monk Nicholas; and with such an explanation we have had to be content.