The Death-Mask and Other Ghosts ~ Mrs H. D. Everett

Mrs Henrietta Dorothy Everett (1851~1923), who wrote under the nom de plume 'Theo Douglas', began her writing career at the age of forty-four. During the next twenty-five years, from 1896 to 1920, twenty-two books appeared bearing the name Theo Douglas, published by seventeen different publishers. Her true identity wasn't revealed until 1910.

The Death-Mask and Other Ghosts was first published in 1920 by Philip Allan & Co., and it is one of Mrs Everett's only books to omit the name ‘Theo Douglas’. It is an extremely rare book, and I've never seen a copy, let alone been given the chance to buy one. Two stories from the book were republished by Philip Allan in 1932: 'The Death-Mask' in Shivers, and 'The Crimson Blind' in Shudders. Both were also included in Philip Allan's Creeps Omnibus in 1935. However, most of Mrs Everett's tales then remained out of print until the complete collection was republished by the Ghost Story Press in 1995 (see the cover image on the right).

In the first story of the collection, 'The Death-Mask', Tom Enderby is asked by his dying wife, Gloriana, to make her a promise: once she is dead, he must cover her face with a particular handkerchief. A few days after her death, just prior to the undertaker's closing her coffin, Enderby carries out his wife's wishes.

'I spread it out and laid it over the dead face; and then what happened was rather curious. It seemed to draw down over the features and cling to them, to nose and mouth and forehead and the shut eyes, till it became a perfect mask. My nerves were shaken, I suppose; I was seized with horror, and flung back the covering sheet, hastily quitting the room. And the coffin was closed that night.'

As poor Enderby soon discovers, Gloriana, a rather severe woman who dominated her household when alive, has found a sinister way to make sure that her husband lives as she expects him to, despite the fact that she is dead and buried.

In 'The Crimson Blind', sixteen-year-old Ronald McEwan goes to stay at the home of his uncle, Reverend Sylvanus Applegarth, in Swanmere. His two cousins, poking fun at his Highland roots and belief in ghosts, take him to visit a neglected house that is said to be haunted. A large flat window on the first floor, overlooking the garden, is completely screened by a wide blind of faded red, and that is where the ghost is said to appear. Intending to play a prank on Ronald, the two cousins persuade him to return there after dark. Aware that he is to be the butt of some joke, Ronald agrees, with the condition that his cousins accompany him. Returning after midnight, all three boys get more than they bargained for.

'Fingers of a Hand' is a lighthearted tale about two unmarried aunts, Sara and Grace, who take their young charges, Dick and Nancy, on a seaside holiday to Cove while their father is in India. The group have been in their seaside lodgings for two weeks when Grace discovers a message scrawled on a piece of sketching paper: 'GO - by itself at the top of the sheet; and the same words repeated twice below, followed by GET OUT AT ONCE.' More messages appear as the days pass, and Grace sets out to discover their true meaning.

In 'A Water Witch', Robert Larcomb's sisters are disappointed when he marries Frederica - a woman of little fortune, 'a delicate little shrinking thing well matched to her fanciful name'. Freda gives birth to a baby boy, who does not survive, and she suffers a severe illness, so convalescence in Roscawen is decided upon. Mary, the narrator of the story, grudgingly agrees to stay with Freda, while Robert goes off to shoot things in Shepstow. In his absence, the two women are subjected to strange drippings, and poor neglected Freda's nerves are unsettled by news of a recently drowned cow, an overly amorous doctor and a local legend about a white woman who was buried at a nearby crossroads (which may sound a mishmash of ingredients, but it all comes together in the story).

Although set predominantly at the beginning of the twentieth century, Mrs Everett's stories are closer in style to those of the great lady writers of the Victorian period, such as Amelia B. Edwards, Mrs J. H. Riddell and Mary Elizabeth Braddon. To my mind, 'The Death Mask' and 'The Crimson Blind' are the best tales of the collection. I'm going to type up 'The Death Mask' and post it here in the next few days.

As I said before, this book is extremely rare. I've never seen one for sale, so I have no idea what the cost of a first edition would be. The Ghost Story Press edition, which added two further stories to the collection - 'The Whispering Wall’ and 'The Pipers of Mallory’, which originally appeared in Novel Magazine, in February 1916 and May 1917 - goes for about a hundred pounds (that's about $160 at the moment) in fine condition, but it's not a terrible common book. There is, however, a Wordsworth paperback, entitled The Crimson Blind and Other Ghost Stories, that includes the same stories as the Ghost Story Press edition, and it is available for only a few pounds.

The Dread of the Supernatural

THE DREAD OF THE SUPERNATURAL

The Spectator ~ 7th of August 1897.

WE wish the Psychical Society would one day attempt an analysis of what, for want of a better word, we must call the dread of the supernatural. Both those who believe and those who disbelieve in the notion that the veil between this world and the other is capable of being lifted agree in one thing. They all recognise the fact that most people feel fear, or something akin to fear, at what they believe to be the occurrence of supernatural phenomena. There is here, therefore, a piece of ground which may be explored without any begging of the question as to whether the fear is caused by real ghosts or by trickery, by rats and water-pipes, or by genuine glimpses of the people of another world. One would like to know whether the fear felt is akin to that experienced when a man is frightened by a runaway horse or a fire or any other imminent risk of life, or whether it is something different in kind. Speaking broadly and without any minute consideration of the facts, one would say that ghost-fright did differ in kind from the fright that comes from active danger. Most people have, we imagine, at some time or other in their lives experienced that eerie, uncanny, creepy feeling which is associated with the possibility of contact with the supernatural. Yet few would declare that it was in any sense connected with the dread of loss of life or limb. The man or woman who wakes up in the middle of the night and hears strange noises - thumps, raps, clangs, and creakings - or sees or feels the touch of unseen hands, is probably very frightened, but the sense of bodily fear is not present. There is no dread of being killed. People in the agony of terror caused by dangerous accidents constantly call out that they are going to be killed, but we doubt if that is ever the case in fright caused by haunted houses. Possibly this difference may be said to be due to the fact that the dread of the supernatural is not nearly so acute as that caused by the imminent risk of death, People, it may be argued, only imagine themselves to be frightened of ghosts as women pretend to be frightened of mice. In neither case is the fright quite genuine. It is only want of self-control, and could be mastered in an instant if the will-power were in proper order. Unfortunately for those who argue thus there is plenty of evidence to show that occasionally the dread of the supernatural produces very serious results. On the whole, we should say that more people had been frightened out of their wits by what they believed to be supernatural phenomena than by accidents involving great risk to life. It is not often that one hears of insanity caused even by the prolonged agony of shipwreck. The fear caused by what is supposed to be a supernatural agency seems, then, to have in it some element not found in ordinary fear. If and when the haunting phenomena cause fear they seem to give a shock of quite special keenness.

Another strange thing about the dread of the supernatural is its greater power of transmission. One may, no doubt, read about hairbreadth escapes with a pleasing thrill of danger, and very sensitive people may find it "trying" to hear how the hero of a mountain climb crawled along a ledge of rotten rock with a two thousand feet drop below and a sheer wall of cliff above, but no one is really terrified by this in the way that sensitive people are terrified by reading or hearing ghost-stories. People susceptible to such impressions not unfrequently find themselves in the position of Sir Walter Scott and Hannah More, who sat up telling ghost-stories till they were both afraid to go to bed. Unquestionably the fear which we call "creepiness" is much more easily kindled at second hand than the good honest dread of having one's skull split. Yet another curious fact about the form of fear we are discussing is its admitted unreasonableness and want of sufficient cause apparent to account for it. If a man is asked why he is afraid of standing in the line of fire when soldiers are shooting, or of doing any other dangerous thing, there is no sort of mystery about his answer. He tells you at once, 'I am afraid of doing this or that because I don't want to be killed.' If you ask him why he is afraid of sleeping in a haunted room, as in many cases he undoubtedly will be, even though perfectly sane and sufficiently brave, he will be unable to tell you. He will probably declare that he does not believe in ghosts, and does not believe, indeed, in any supernatural phenomena being permitted. Yet he will, if he is honest, add that there is no sort of uncertainty about his objection to sleeping in a room believed to be haunted. He may say, of course, that he could force himself on good grounds to submit to being frightened, but he will not deny the fright. If you ask him, further, what are the consequences of which he is afraid, he will, as we have said, be unable to tell you. He will admit that there is no fear of the figure said to haunt the room injuring him in any possible way, and he will laugh at the notion of low voices, or loud explosive raps, or touches from cold fingers doing him bodily damage. In the end, indeed, he will be forced to admit that what he is really afraid of is being frightened. 'Experience tells us that these things, whatever they are, cause a very unpleasant form of terror in the human mind, and experience is backed up by a strong instinctive feeling in most men's minds. I don't know in the least why these things should cause alarm, but as they do I intend to avoid them.' - An adequate explanation, if you will, for avoiding haunted rooms, but clearly a very different reason from that which makes a bad rider avoid getting on the back of a buck-jumper. His dread is fundamentally the dread of physical injury.

There is yet another very curious fact connected with the dread of the supernatural. It often seems as if people were afraid of ghosts in an inverse ratio to their belief in their existence. The convinced spiritualist sees no difficulty in believing that ghosts and haunted houses are true, and feels little fear at the thought of encountering them. The man who disbelieves wholly in ghosts, and sincerely thinks that everything can be explained by the operation of natural laws, will, on the other hand, frankly admit that he is so foolish as not to care about sitting alone at night in a haunted room about which he has heard "some very curious things indeed." Though they are no doubt things which he believes can be explained, he confesses to be unwilling to try his nerves gratuitously. On the other hand, it not unfrequently happens that people who are not disposed to be satisfied with the materialistic explanation of what are called psychical phenomena, and who even lean to a supernatural solution, are by no means easily frightened by hauntings, either visual or audible. A curious example of this well-ascertained fact may be seen in Miss Freer's paper in this month's Nineteenth Century. We have dealt with that paper elsewhere, and only wish to notice on the present occasion one point. Though she personally experienced, or thought she experienced, for we by no means regard the matter as proved, many most strange and weird phenomena - she not only heard but saw - she says with evident sincerity that she cannot understand how any sane person could object to go alone at any hour of the day or night into the so-called haunted portion of the house with which her article deals. How is this to be accounted for? How are we to explain the fact that people who see and hear, or fancy they see and hear, very strange and inexplicable sights and sounds, and who are not prepared to say they are natural and ordinary occurrences, are less disturbed than those who are convinced that there is nothing at all in the talk about supernatural phenomena? Possibly the answer should be something like that which Coleridge gave to the lady who asked him if he believed in ghosts, - "No, Madam. I have seen too many of them." It may be that people who habitually see and hear what they believe to be abnormal sights and sounds are not frightened because they have seen so many of them and so got accustomed to them. This explanation, of course, cuts both ways. The sceptic in matters psychical may fairly say:- 'These things are seen with perfect composure by persons who are subject to illusions because they have been accustomed for years by some accident of vision or temperament to hallucinations. When, however, a normally constitutes man is made subject to an illusion either by being influenced beforehand by thrilling accounts of what he is likely to see, or else by some curious set of accidents and coincidences, it is only natural that he should be much more disturbed in body and mind. He does not possess the tolerance for illusions which belongs to those who habitually experience them. Again, the perfectly healthy organisation abhors and resists illusions, and therefore when it is subject to them by some accident the reaction is very strongly marked.' On the other hand, it may be argued that seers and mediums, crystal-gazers and other "sensitives," have a natural faculty for experiencing psychical phenomena, and their imperviousness to fear may be put down to the fact that they are not subjected to what is, as far as they are concerned, an abnormal strain when they see and hear what Miss Freer tells us she saw and heard. Into the respective merits of these theories we could not attempt to enter even, which we doubt, were it likely that any result could be achieved by following either of them. Abstract speculation upon points of this kind is seldom, if ever, fruitful. There remains, however, the very curious fact of the dread inspired by phenomena believed to be supernatural, and this we hold to be worth investigating. It is certainly not a weakness of which mankind has any reason to be proud, and if it could be proved that men can overcome it by systematically accustoming themselves to it there would be reason for rejoicing. People thus trained would obviously be much better qualified to examine into psychical phenomena than those who are likely to be overcome by accesses of fear.

There is yet another explanation of the mystery surrounding this dread of the supernatural which may be worth considering. It may be that man has been endowed with this almost universal horror of the supernatural because he was not meant to peep behind the veil. It can hardly be doubted that mankind is general would not be doing their true work if they were perpetually engaged in efforts to lift the veil. For what purpose was the veil interposed if not to prevent such prying? But granted that it would be a hindrance to man's development to traffic with the other world, or to learn too much about it first hand, would not man be very likely to have developed a keen instinctive horror of any contact with the unseen world, just as many animals have an instinctive horror of plants that will injure them? Be that as it may, it is at any rate certain that man's fear of the supernatural has prevented him from dealing with the unseen world as he would have dealt with it under other conditions. Had not the fears and the doubts born of fear which gather round what we call the supernatural prevailed to distract, and even to prohibit, his attention, can we doubt that something would have been settled one way or another as to the intellectually irritating and degrading phenomena of haunting, and as to "the mutterings and peepings" of the sensitives who have been at work since the world began? Unquestionably the dread of lifting the veil has enormously hampered investigation. It has tended to put everything on a wrong footing. There would have been very little progress in botany if nine hundred and ninety-nine botanists in every thousand associated the sense of fear and dread with the phenomena of their science. The question that remains over is, of course, the question, - Ought we to take this instinctive dread as a warning, and ought we therefore to turn our heads resolutely away from all investigation? On the whole we think not. It is a warning, but a warning to investigate coolly, wisely, prudently, and sparingly, rather than not to investigate at all. It is quite possible that in the end the modern forms of investigation will prove as futile as the old, and that we shall only arrive at the well-worn conclusion that there is a residuum of the unexplainable below a great deal of ignorance and imposture; but it is also certain that man will continue to insist upon investigating every dark place in his prison-house. That being so, the investigation had better be as thorough and as little prejudiced as possible. Besides, knowledge enters by a hundred unexpected doors. Who knows but that the Psychical Society, while it is looking for ghosts, may not discover some new law of acoustics or of motion, or find some physical explanation for the fact that if a man sees a figure at his bed's head, and knows it to be a man, he is not frightened, while if he really thinks it is not a man but a ghost, he is as likely as not to be terrified out of his wits? Why so many of us should be afraid of things which we know will, under no circumstances, do us bodily harm, and which most of us sincerely believe have no existence whatsoever, is in any case a very curious problem.

A College Mystery ~ A. P. Baker

Arthur Ponsford Baker was born on the 6th of September 1873, at Algoa Bay, Cape Colony. He was educated at Haldon House, Cheltenham, and Bristol, before going up to Christ's College in 1892. A serious accident on the football field in 1895 left him crippled for life, forcing him to leave college. He returned in 1903, and subsequently became a lecturer in history, and a valued 'coach', specialising in Medieval Italian history. He was a frequent contributor to the College Magazine and to the Cambridge Review. He passed away at the terribly young age of forty-five on the 20th of March 1919.* Baker produced only two books, University Olympians: Or Sketches of Academic Dignitaries and A College Mystery, both of which were published shortly before his death.

A College Mystery was first published by W. Heffer & Sons Ltd. in 1919, with illustrations by F. H. Round. The book must have done quite well, as the publisher issued a second edition (which is the edition pictured here), with a doubled print run, in 1923.

In the preface, the author tells us that the story was first read aloud to friends in his rooms in February 1918. And he thanks 'the Provost of Eton [M. R. James] for reading through the manuscript of this little book and for kindly comment'.

Baker's ingenious little book purports to be a true account of the events which resulted in there being a ghost in the Fellows' Garden at Christ's College, based largely on the papers of Simon Goodridge, which had come into his possession. The book is separated into sections, the first of which deals with eye witness accounts of the apparition, 'a tall, heavy, elderly man, dressed in black, with a swallow-tailed coat and high collar and stock,' who walked the garden 'slowly and deliberately, with bent head,' before eventually disappearing. Baker then writes:

'Was the figure they alleged that they saw the ghost of Christopher Round? Does he still take the walk which his record tells us he used to take in his lifetime? Does his uneasy spirit dwell upon his deed as in the days of his life here?
    This puzzle is not for me to solve. Like Simon Goodridge, I leave it to the reader, who must judge for himself.
    Here is the record and the evidence.'

The second section of the book is 'The Record of Christopher Round', an account written by Round himself as he approached his seventieth year, taken from Goodridge's papers. He tells us that he was the son of a rector, and was educated at home before going up to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he met Philip Collier, a scholar of St John's College. During the following years, every contest Round entered, Collier beat him by a slight margin, and Round had to make do with being honourably mentioned, which gave rise to considerable ill will on his part. Eventually, Collier left Cambridge and spent some time in Italy, so Round no longer considered him a threat and his feelings of resentment disappeared. But following Round's appointment as a lecturer at Christ's College, where he began his duties 'with great pleasure', he learned that Collier, recently returned from Italy, was to become a fellow lecturer. 'Thus began that rivalry of nearly ten years which spoiled my early life here, and ended in the tragedy which has haunted it ever since.'

Having already had his academic ambitions thwarted at every turn by Collier (though, the competitiveness that Round felt doesn't appear to have been shared by his nemesis), Round was later thwarted in love by the same man. Having fallen in love with Lady Mary Clifford, he discovered that she, like everyone else, preferred his rival. And if that wasn't bad enough, Collier had begun to behave oddly, apparently under the influence of spirits (the alcoholic type, not the supernatural variety), so Lady Mary had been won over by a drunk! Round was so distressed by these developments that his work suffered.

'I tramped the country roads and took my lonely perambulations in the garden, thinking all the while of Collier's victory and horrified at the idea of its coming to a man addicted, as I knew him to be, to secret drunkenness.'

Not wanting to spoil the enjoyment of anyone who hasn't read this book yet, I shan't go into any further detail about the storyline. It can come as no surprise, however, that the constant bitter rivalry between Round and Collier, though entirely one-sided, led to tragedy. The third section of the book is an extract from the Isle of Ely and Cambridgeshire Gazette, and is the record of an inquest. The fourth concerns the deceased's will, and is an extract from the East Anglian Times. The fifth section contains the recollections of Simon Goodridge, friend of Christopher Round and owner of the papers that make up most of this little volume, which is finished off with a brief postscript.

A College Mystery is a work of fiction, but Baker did such a skilful job of putting his book together, adding weight to his story by creating newspaper articles that read as utterly genuine and adding footnotes, that his account of the Fellows' Garden ghost has been accepted by many over the years as true. However, there were no Fellows by the names of Christopher Round and Philip Collier at Christ's during the period in which the story is set.

One of the witnesses at the inquest, James Young Simpson (1811~1870), was certainly a real person, though; he was an Edinburgh obstetrician and an important figure in the history of medicine. Dr Simpson was a strong advocate of the use of ether, but he recognised its disadvantages and sought to discover an alternative anaesthetic. In order to do so, he and his assistants, Dr James Mathews Duncan and Dr Thomas Keith, took to sniffing various chemicals after dinner at his Edinburgh home. On the evening of the 4th of November, 1847, the three men tested chloroform for the first time together. All three ended up lying on the dining room floor unconscious; Duncan snoring loudly beneath a chair and Keith kicking at the legs of the dining table.**

I found Baker's linking of a fictional story with elements of the actual history of medicine to be very interesting indeed. I took a history of medicine module as part of my history BA and developed an interest in the early use of anaesthesia and attitudes towards the use of pain relief, so this really appealed to me. I thoroughly enjoyed this clever little book. It's quite an achievement, to write a detailed story so convincing that it's accepted as truth, and in less than eighty pages too!

A nice copy of the first edition of A College Mystery, without the rare dust jacket, costs around fifty pounds at the moment (about eighty dollars). I've yet to find a fine copy with the jacket, so I've no idea how much one would cost. The second edition seems to go for about the same price.

In 2004 a paperback facsimile edition was published by Back-in-Print Books, which includes an article previously published in Christ's College Magazine in 1998, by Michael Wyatt, entitled 'A College Mystery - A Further Mystery'. It describes events that took place in the late 1920s or early 1930s, when Wyatt's uncle Sam was put up in the rooms that were once occupied, according to Arthur Baker, by Christopher Round. This paperback seems to be harder to find than the first edition. At this moment in time, I cannot find a copy listed for sale at Amazon, Abe, Biblio, ebay, or any of the usual places. And there doesn't seem to be a single ebook version out there.

*   Biographical information thanks to A Cambridge Alumni Database.
** Blessed Days of Anaesthesia: How anaesthetics changed the world, Stephanie J. Snow, OUP 2009.

Can You Explain It? True Stories of the Ghost World

The Harmsworth Magazine, the first issue of which was published in July 1898 and sold for threepence, contained historical fiction, tales set in exotic places, romances and adventure stories, and ghost stories. It was an overnight success; the first issue sold in the region of 800,000 copies. It attracted writers such as O. Henry, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack London, Rudyard Kipling, Edith Nesbit, H.G. Wells and P.G. Wodehouse. It was later renamed The Harmsworth London Magazine and then The London Magazine.

William James Wintle, author of Ghost Gleams, who I shall be writing more about very soon, had an article published in The Harmsworth London Magazine in 1903 entitled 'Can You Explain It? True Stories of the Ghost World'. A few weeks back, I came across a couple of bound volumes of the magazine, and it just so happened that one of them was volume ten, which contains Wintle's article, so I thought I would type it up to make it available here.

CAN YOU EXPLAIN IT?

TRUE STORIES OF THE GHOST WORLD

By W. J. Wintle

The Harmsworth London Magazine, Vol. 10

February to July 1903, pp.355~358

IT is the fashion nowadays to be sceptical of everything that does not exactly fit in with the experiences of practical every-day life. Ghosts are at a discount, and the very existence of an unknown world, peopled by activities as real as our own, is questioned and even laughed at. We venture to say that this attitude of mind is as unscientific as it is unwise.

No thoughtful person would wish to put the clock back and revive the superstitious ignorance which prevailed in centuries long gone by, when everything not clearly understood was at once put down to the supernatural or miraculous. We have travelled far since those days, and the progress of science has taught us that many things hitherto mysterious are capable of rational explanation, and are simply the working out of laws which are now well understood. But we have still more to learn even about natural science, and the recent development of wireless telegraphy, for example, has shown us that it is possible for physical forces to act at a distance and through a medium hitherto supposed insufficient.

It is not unreasonable to apply this principle to the unseen or spirit world, about which we know so little. It may well be that there are forces at work - perhaps after all only different forms of those natural forces with which we are familiar - and that the operation of these forces may produce phenomena at present hard to explain, but which are none the less genuine for all that. With the further advance of knowledge, we shall probably come to understand more about such matters, but at present the attitude of the thoughtful person should be neither one of credulity nor scepticism, but simply one of open-minded enquiry.

The strange happenings described in this present article have, all of them, come within the immediate knowledge of the writer, who is able to vouch for their general accuracy. They have occurred either to himself or to his personal friends, though, for obvious reasons, names and places have, in most cases, been suppressed; indeed, it is only subject to this condition that he is at liberty to describe several incidents which have never been made public before.

It is natural to begin with apparitions of departed persons. Everybody has heard of ghost stories, and it must be frankly confessed that a large percentage of these tales have no better foundation than that of a too vivid imagination, or a lack of sober investigation. There remain, however, an abundance of cases of the appearance of departed persons to the living, which rest upon unquestionable evidence, and which can only be explained away by imputing deliberate lying to persons of known veracity. To this latter category the following examples belong.

It has been known for generations past that that portion of the north wing of Windsor Castle which is occupied by the Royal Library is the occasional scene of the apparition of Queen Elizabeth, who at one time occupied those apartments. Many people connected with the Court have, at one time or another, seen the shade of the famous monarch walking in the evening through the rooms she occupied so long. The apparition usually comes in through the end of the library next to the corridor, passes along in front of the magnificent Elizabethan fireplace, and turns into a kind of alcove which formerly led to a flight of stone steps connecting it with the north terrace. Down these steps the Queen was in the habit of going when she took exercise.

Amongst other persons who, at one time or another, witnessed the apparition was the Empress Frederick; and in the spring of 1897, the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, Lieutenant Glyn, of the Grenadiers, was sitting one day in the library turning over a volume of prints, and certainly not thinking about ghosts, when he happened to look up, and distinctly saw the spectral Queen approaching from the other end of the library. She passed near him and then turned the corner into the usual alcove. He at once rose and followed the figure, but it had disappeared.

The fact of this apparition is so well known that the librarian, Mr. Holmes, has frequently spent whole evenings in the library watching for it. But, unfortunately, ghosts do not usually appear when you look for them. It is right to add that a certain amount of difference of opinion exists as to the identification of this mysterious figure with Queen Elizabeth, but the fact of the apparition itself is unquestionable.

One of the Canon's houses within the precincts of Windsor Castle is the occasional scene of visits of an apparition commonly thought to be that of King Charles I. It only appears at long intervals, and is more often heard in the form of footsteps passing by than actually seen. One of its most recent appearances was to the wife of a well-known English bishop, who happened to be staying at Windsor at the time.

All the historic royal palaces have the reputation of being haunted. One of the best-known cases is that of the gallery leading to the royal pew at Hampton Court, along which the ghost of Anne Boleyn has often been heard to pass uttering piteous cries, as she did in her lifetime when she ran to implore mercy from Henry VIII, who was hearing Mass in the chapel, but was forcibly repulsed by the guard.

A more recent instance occurred at another of the royal palaces, where a visitor, walking down the corridor one evening, saw the figure of a very beautiful young lady in evening dress passing  in a faint luminous light through a room where the lights were turned down low. The visitor was in the company of a member of the Royal Family, who, strangely enough, saw nothing of the apparition, although he was aware that one was seen from time to time.

Leaving the royal palaces, we have now to record a curious phenomenon that is sometimes observed in the chapel of a large convent in North London. It happened that a good many years ago one of the nuns broke her vows, and returned to the world, where, after an unhappy career, she died. Soon afterwards the inmates of the convent were startled to see the form of their lost sister, in her religious habit, kneeling in the outer chapel in an attitude of the deepest sorrow and despair.

This apparition is still seen from time to time, and has been witnessed by the sisters, and also by the children of the convent school, who naturally have been greatly alarmed by it. It is quite a common thing for the good sisters, at service time, to have to hurriedly withdraw the children, when the form of the lost nun is seen passing through the outer chapel or kneeling outside the screen.

A somewhat gruesome incident took place quite lately in London, where a number of young people were present. A youth was sitting chatting to a young woman when he saw standing behind her a young sailor whom he had not previously noticed in the room. A few moments later he asked her, "Who was that sailor standing behind you just now?" She was startled, and he proceeded to describe him, whereupon she turned deadly pale and fainted.

The youth subsequently learnt that the figure he had seen was that of a young man whom the girl had jilted, and who had committed suicide in consequence. The girl was for some weeks afterwards in a state of great distress, fearing that she was haunted by the spirit of her rejected lover; but happily, nothing more was seen of the apparition, and she has now quite recovered her usual good spirits.

A London journalist of fairly matter-of-fact and unimaginative disposition, was sitting in the train at a large midland station, when he saw upon the platform an old acquaintance - whom we may call Mr. Hilton - standing somewhat apart on the platform. There was nothing whatever ghostly about his appearance, for he was a portly old gentleman wearing the conventional silk hat and black frock coat, and carrying the sample bag which he used in connection with his business as traveller for a large firm of tea dealers.

The passenger tried to attract his friend's attention, but without success, and the train immediately afterwards moved off. A few days later the journalist was again in that city, and took luncheon with a relative who lived there. During the course of the meal he remarked, "I saw old Hilton last Saturday, on the platform, as I passed through"; to which his cousin replied, "You mean young Hilton, don't you?" "No, it was old Hilton, not his son, that I saw." "I hardly think so," said the cousin. "But I am sure of it," persisted the journalist; whereupon he received the startling reply, "Well, all I can say is that I attended old Hilton's funeral a fortnight ago."

Here was an example of an apparition of a dead person apparently without any purpose or object. Can you explain it?

Many cases are on record of apparitions of living persons being seen. A friend of the writer, now a priest in the north of England, was, at one time, a novice in a Benedictine monastery, and it was his duty to take an hour's watch before the Blessed Sacrament in the abbey church every morning from seven till eight o'clock Sad to say, his devotion used sometimes to flag, and his thoughts wandered. Frequently these vagrant thoughts betook themselves to his youngest sister, to whom he was deeply attached, and he used to fancy that he was with her in her room. So vivid was the impression that he was often able to clearly recollect the conversation which he fancied had taken place between them.

After a time, finding that he had no real vocation for the religious life, he left the monastery and returned to his home. He had not been there long before his sister said to him, "While you were at the monastery, I used often to fancy that you came into my room in your monk's dress, between seven and eight in the morning, before I was up, and that we had some jolly little talks together." He enquired if she could remember any of the conversation, whereupon she repeated to him the very things that he had imagined himself saying to her while kneeling alone in the monastic choir!

Can this be a case of telepathy operating over a distance of more than one hundred miles, or how is it to be accounted for? Certainly it would appear that under some circumstances of intense emotion or ardent affection it is possible for the minds of persons far apart from one another to enter into some kind of communication. If it be true that nervous action is near akin to electric force, then it is possible that the discovery of wireless telegraphy is a step in the direction of explaining such phenomena as the one just related, and that which follows.

A  father, somewhat advanced in years, was deeply attached to his grown-up daughter, who was the sole companion of his declining days. One night, feeling unwell, he left his bedroom and knocked at the door of his daughter's, forgetting for the moment that she was staying for the night with some friends at a distance.

The daughter, who, of course, did not think that her father was likely to be taken ill, was suddenly aroused from sleep by a loud knocking at her bedroom door. She hastily rose and opened it, but found no one there, and, on making enquiry in the morning, could not obtain any explanation. On returning home she found her father ill, and ascertained that the time she was aroused from her slumbers exactly corresponded with the moment that her father had knocked at her bedroom door.

A sound of knocking seems to be one of the commonest of occult manifestations, without taking into consideration the phenomena - whether real or fraudulent - connected with spiritual séances. Various cases have come under the personal observation of the writer, especially at a house in Devonshire where he stayed, and where such occurrences were so common that little notice was taken of them. Still more mysterious manifestations used to occur at the house in question, of which the following may serve as an example.

Our host had a small room on the first-floor which he used as a private office. Sitting at his desk, with the door open, he commanded a full view of the staircase, being able to see downstairs to the hall, and up the next flight to the next floor above. One night, long after the household had retired to rest, he was seated in his office busily engaged in correspondence, when he heard footsteps in the hall below. He was naturally startled, and wondered who could be about. The steps crossed the hall and began to ascend the stairs. As the office door was standing wide open, he did not rise, but simply turned in his chair, and watched to see who was approaching. It should be noted that the gas on the staircase was alight, and that he had an uninterrupted view.

The footsteps came nearer and nearer, until they reached his door, passed it, and then proceeded up the next flight of stairs, and along the corridor overhead, when they ceased. He stared with straining eyes as the footsteps passed, and saw absolutely nothing. No sooner had the steps overhead ceased, than he sprang to his feet and ran upstairs after them. Nothing was to be seen, and he went the round of the whole house, entering each bedroom, and found every person sound asleep. It may be added that our host was not at all a man of vivid imagination, and that until he went to live in the house in question, he was an utter unbeliever in occult manifestations.

Many of the strangest phenomena of this character have been recorded in connection with deaths, the form of the dying person having been seen or his voice heard by friends at a distance, at the moment of his departure from the body. A strange case of this character occurred quite recently in the metropolis.

A priest who was greatly beloved lay dangerously ill, and had been unconscious for many days. A few doors off lived one of his most intimate friends, who was greatly distressed at the grave report of the doctors. One night he retired to rest at the usual time, and slept soundly; but about half-past three in the morning he suddenly started from sleep and sprang up in alarm, impressed with a sense that the priest needed his help. In a state of great perturbation he said the prayers for the dying, and, becoming calmer after awhile, he lay down and slept again. When he rose, some hours later, he learnt that his friend had passed away at the very moment he was so suddenly aroused from sleep.

The priest in question had been a frequent visitor at his friend's house, and had always occupied a certain chair in a corner of the study - a chair which was not very often used by anyone else. Since his death, when all has been quiet in the evening, a shadowy form has been seen several times occupying the chair just as he used to during his lifetime.

A few years ago, two men were sitting in a room in Kilburn, about eleven o'clock one evening. One was a doctor, and the other was a city man, both of them exceptionally level-headed and sober-minded individuals. They were sitting beside the fire chatting about various subjects before retiring to rest, when both simultaneously saw a face look in at the window. His appearance was such that they rushed out of the room in the utmost alarm. The master of the house ran in, and, being a man of action, immediately threw open the window and thrust his head out; but nothing was to be seen. Now the window in question was on the first floor, and looked out over a large garden. There was a sheer drop of about twenty feet from the window to the ground. There was no ladder, stack-pipe, trellis, or other means by which anyone could climb up to the window, nor was anyone found about the premises. Humanly speaking, it was impossible for anyone in the flesh to have looked in; and the appearance of the face, which both saw distinctly, remains a mystery to this day. Can you explain it?

An apparition of a far more shocking character took place some years ago in a country church. A well-known London clergyman, a personal friend of the present writer, and now rector of an important parish in South Africa, was conducting a mission. The mission services, which were largely attended, were held in the evenings, the usual Evensong being said in the afternoons, when few save the clergy were able to attend.

One afternoon the missioner was the only clergyman available for this service, and himself took the keys and opened the church for the purpose. It so happened that the congregation consisted of one person only, the wife of the vicar. The clergyman said the office, and at its close proceeded to the vestry, where he removed his surplice, and then came down the church to lock up. He noticed that the lady was still kneeling in her place, and, after a considerable time, he shook the keys by way of a gentle hint that he was waiting. She then rose and passed out of the church without speaking to him, but he saw that she looked greatly distressed.

On reaching the vicarage she sought an interview with him, and had an extraordinary tale to tell. In the midst of the prayers, she had chanced to look up and had been startled to see the form of a young man leaning against the choir screen immediately behind the clergyman, and watching him intently. The young man was of extraordinary beauty, but his expression was one of the utmost malignity and hatred - quite Mephistophelian, in fact. Greatly alarmed, she covered her face with her hands, but a few moments later looked up again and saw that the apparition was still there. She again closed her eyes, uttering a brief ejaculatory prayer, and on looking up once more, found that the figure had vanished.

It was certain that no one had entered or left the church, for neither the clergyman, who was close by, nor the lady had heard anything, nor was it possible for anyone to have left the church in the moment during which the lady's eyes were closed the second time. The only conclusion the clergyman could come to was that the apparition was a malignant device of the arch enemy of souls.

It is as true now as ever that there are many things, both in this world and in the mysterious spirit world that seems to surround us, which as yet are hardly dreamt of in our philosophy.