Haunted Houses
Not long ago a number of the daily papers contained, throughout several consecutive weeks, an advertisement offering for sale an ancient Gothic Mansion, known as Beckington Castle, ten miles from Bath and two from Frome"; and the writer of this advertisement after expatiating on the noble scenery around Beckington, and the rare architectural beauty of the house itself, proceeded to say that the place was the more desirable because it was reported to be haunted! No doubt there are people who long for a house containing a bona fide ghost, and it is sometimes said that the rich tradesman, anxious to turn himself into a squire, invariably looks out for a haunted manor, while some waggish writers have declared, indeed, that nowadays ghosts are to be bought at Whitely's, and that the demand for them among American millionaires is stupendous. And, if the purchaser of Beckington Castle had to pay an additionally high price because the place rejoiced in a veritable ghost, in reality anything of this sort usually makes a house almost unsaleable. At Lossiemouth, for example, on the east coast of Scotland, a fine old mansion stood untenanted for years, and was eventually sold for a merely nominal sum; and the reason was, simply, that according to popular tradition the building was paraded nightly by a female figure draped in white, her throat bearing an ugly scar, and her hands tied behind her back with chains. Nor is it merely concerning old Manors in the country that stories of this nature are current, and, even in many densely-populated towns there exist to this day houses reputed to be haunted, which are quite unsaleable.
It would seem that royal palaces, closely watched and guarded as they are nowadays, and invariably have been, are not altogether destitute of such inhabitants. For a legend contends that Windsor Castle is frequently visited by the ghost of Sir George Villiers, and it is said, moreover, that once, in the reign of Charles I., this ghost appeared to one of the king's gentlemen-in-waiting, and informed him that the Duke of Buckingham would shortly fall by the hand of an assassin-a prophecy which was duly fulfilled soon after, as all readers of Les Trois Mousquetaires will doubtless remember, the incident figuring in that immortal story. Then at Hackwood House, near Basingstoke, there is a room in which no one dares to sleep, all dreading the grey woman" supposed to appear there nightly; ; while Wyecoller Hall, near Colne, boasts a spectre horseman who visits the place onec a year, and rides at full. speed through the garden. Very different is the legend attached to Dilston, in Tyneside, where a bygone Lady Windermere is said to appear from time to time, and indulge in loud lamentations for her unfortunate husband, who was executed for his share in the Jacobite rising of 1715; while at Salmesbury Hall, Blackburn, there is a ghost of yet another kind, the people of the neighbourhood affirming that periodically they see a weird lady and her knight promenading the grounds of the Hall, indulging the while in silken dalliance. It need hardly be said, perhaps, that ghosts of this particular nature are remarkably common, and bulk largely in the spiritual lore of nearly every county; but the more gruesome apparitions predominate withal, and among these is the ghost of Amy Robsart, which still haunts the manor of Cumnor, in Oxfordshire. For it must be borne in mind that Amy was a real woman, and not a mere creation of Sir Walter Scott's brain. She was married in 1550 to the Earl of Leicester, and her tragic death is commonly laid to his charge; but a tradition exists to the effect that Queen Elizabeth was really the responsible person, and recalling an authentic portrait of Amy, which bespeaks her a woman of charm and of no ordinary beauty, it is easy to believe that the ill-favoured queen hated her and took strong measures to get her out of the way.
Numerous rectories rejoice in the ghost of a clergyman, erstwhile murdered by his infuriated parishioners; and there are several haunted monasteries and convents, while at Holy Trinity Church at York a phantom nun appears occasionally on winter evenings, and walks about muttering paternosters. The story concerning her is that, on one occasion, during a period of civil-war, a band of soldiers were minded to sack the edifice in question, and on approaching it with this intention they were confronted by an abbess, who bade them beware of the divine wrath they would surely incur if they committed an act of sacrilege. They laughed at her piety, and, never thinking she would offer any resistance, they tried to march en masse into the building, but, hardly had they commenced the assault, ere their opponent snatched a sword from one of them, and stood bravely on the defensive. A fierce battle ensued, the abbess proving herself a veritable amazon, and slaying a host of her foes; yet she lost her life ultimately, and her ghost it is which still frequents the church she sought to defend. 60 There are few parts of England so rich in romance as Sherwood Forest, once the scene of Robin Hood's exploits; and there is at least one place in this region which claims a number of ghosts, Newstead Abbey, the seat of Lord Byron's ancestors. A part of the garden there is popularly known as the devil's wood," a name which points to the place having been infested once by minions of the foul fiend, while one of the rooms in the house is haunted by a certain Sir John Byron, the little, of the grey beard," who presumably ended his days in some uncanny fashion. His portrait hangs over the hall in the dining-room, and a young lady, staying at Newstead about the middle of last century, contended stoutly that once she had entered this room to find the portrait gone, and its subject seated by the fireside reading a black-letter folio! The poet Byron himself cherished very fondly all the ghostly traditions which clung round his home, and it is recorded that, on his learning that there were stone coffins underneath the house, he straightway had one of them dug up and then opened. He used some of its gruesome contents to "decorate" his own library, while he had the coffin itself placed in the great hall, through which thereafter the servants were afraid to pass by night. He also utilised the supernatural lore of Newstead in one of his poems, and from this we learn that a spectre friar was wont to parade the mansion whenever some important event was wont to befall its owners :- "When an heir is born he is heard to mourn, And when ought is to befall That ancient line, in the pale moonshine He walks from hall to hall.
Haunted Houses His form you may trace, but not his face, 'Tis shadowed by his cowl; But his eyes may be seen from the folds between, And they seem of a parted soul.
Say nought to him as he walks the hall, And he'll say nought to you:
He sweeps along in his dusky pall, As o'er the grass the dew.
Then, gramercy! for the black friar; Heaven sain him, fair or foul, And whatsoe'er may be his prayer, Let ours be for his soul."
Passing from England to Ireland we find many haunted houses; for instance, Dunseverick in Antrim, where dwells still the soul of a bygone chief, so wicked in his lifetime that even hell's gates are closed to him. And passing from Ireland to Scotland we find numerous haunted buildings too, notably Holyrood Palace and the castles of Hermitage and Glamis. It is the ghost of the murdered Rizzio which frequents Holyrood, yet it should be added that the vision is seldom seen nowadays; and mayhap the fates, aware that the Italian minstrel was shamefully treated, have at length accorded his soul a resting-place more cosy than the dismal Edinburgh Palace. But the ghost of Hermitage, on the contrary, is still considerably addicted to exercise, and in truth his story marks him as having been a man of rare activity and ambition. Lord Soulis was his name, and, possibly after hearing of Faustus' exploits, he vowed that he too would exorcise the devil, who generously made his appearance betimes. Vast power will be yours on earth," said the evil one to Soulis " if you will but barter your soul therefor"; so his lordship signed the requisite compact with his life's blood, and thenceforth his days were given over to the enjoyment of every conceivable pleasure. Anon, however, he felt that his end was near, and calling some of his vassals around him he told them of the awful fate awaiting him after death. Thunderstruck they were, but soon after Soulis was gone it occurred to them that, could they but destroy his mortal remains completely, they might save his soul from the clutches of Beelzebub. So having sheathed the corpse in lead they flung it into a burning fiery furnace, and manifestly this cremation saved his lordship from the nether regions, for had he gone there his soul would not have been active still at Hermitage. 66 The ghost-story associated with Glamis Castle, the family seat of the Earl of Strathmore, is quite different from the rank and file of supernatural tales, and bears a more naked semblance of veracity than pertains to any of these. It is a matter of common knowledge that there is a secret chamber at Glamis, a chamber which enshrines a mystery known only to a few members of the Strathmore family, and three or four generations ago a lady, staying as a visitor at Glamis, vowed she would solve the riddle. Her first difficulty was to locate the actual room, but one afternoon, when all the rest of the household were going out, she feigned a headache and thus contrived to be left completely alone. Her next move was to go from room to room, putting a handkerchief in the window of each, and having done this she went outside and walked round the castle to see whether any room had evaded her search. Very soon she observed a window which had no handkerchief in it, so she hastened indoors again, thinking that her quest was about to be rewarded. But try as she might she could not find the missing room; and while she was searching the other guests returned to the house, along with them being the then Lord Strathmore. He was fiercely incensed on learning what had been going forward, and that night shrieks were heard in a long corridor in the castle. The guests ran out of their rooms to find out what was wrong, and in the dim light they perceived a curious creature with an inhuman head, wrestling with an aged mnservant who eventually contrived to carry the monster away. There the story ends, but as remarked before it bears a semblance of truth, the probability being that some scion of the Glamis castle family was mad or hideously deformed, and was accordingly incarcerated in a room to which access was difficult and secret. And no doubt endless other ghost-stories rest on some basis of this sort, for, while the diverting practice of showing freaks in public is a comparatively new one, freaks themselves are among the world's most ancient institutions, perhaps almost as ancient as spectres and visions. It is impossible in this place to allude to the host of less famous haunted residences, an allusion to which their owners might take strong exception. W.B.G.M.
Hayden, Mrs. : The first spiritualistic medium to visit England. Mrs. Hayden was the wife of W. B. Hayden, editor of the Star Spangled Banner. Her séance phenomena consisted mainly of raps, by means of which communication with the spirits was established. Her supernormal faculties were testified to by Professor de Morgan in a letter dated July, 1853, and by Robert Chambers in Chambers' Journal, May, 1853.