THE GHOSTS
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This the story of a personal experience with ghosts. The man and his brother have been arguing about the existence of ghosts in this seventeenth century built mansion they were staying in for the night. They decided to stay up all night to see if the ghosts were real. Around midnight they find out...
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THE
GHOSTS
Lord Dunsany
The argument that I had with my brother in his great
lonely house will scarcely interest my readers. Not those, at least, whom I
hope may be attracted by the experiment that I undertook, and by the strange
things that befell me in that hazardous region into which so lightly and so
ignorantly I allowed my fancy to enter. It was at Oneleigh that I had visited
him.
Now Oneleigh stands in a wide isolation, in the
midst of a dark gathering of old whispering cedars. They nod their heads
together when the North Wind comes, and nod again and agree, and furtively grow
still again, and say no more awhile. The North Wind is to them like a nice
problem among wise old men; they nod their heads over it, and mutter about it
all together. They know much, those cedars, they have been there so long. Their
grandsires knew Lebanon, and the grandsires of these were the servants of the
King of Tyre and came to Solomon's court. And amidst these black-haired
children of grey-headed Time stood the old house of Oneleigh. I know not how
many centuries had lashed against it their evanescent foam of years; but it was
still unshattered, and all about it were the things of long ago, as cling
strange growths to some sea-defying rock. Here, like the shells of long-dead
limpets, was armour that men encased themselves in long ago; here, too, were
tapestries of many colours, beautiful as seaweed; no modern flotsam ever
drifted hither, no early Victorian furniture, no electric light. The great
trade routes that littered the years with empty meat tins and cheap novels were
far from here. Well, well, the centuries will shatter it and drive its
fragments on to distant shores. Meanwhile, while it yet stood, I went on a
visit there to my brother, and we argued about ghosts. My brother's
intelligence on this subject seemed to me to be in need of correction. He
mistook things imagined for things having an actual existence; he argued that
second-hand evidence of persons having seen ghosts proved ghosts to exist. I
said that even if they had seen ghosts, this was no proof at all; nobody
believes that there are red rats, though there is plenty of first-hand evidence
of men having seen them in delirium. Finally, I said I would see ghosts myself,
and continue to argue against their actual existence. So I collected a handful
of cigars and drank several cups of very strong tea, and went without my
dinner, and retired into a room where there was dark oak and all the chairs
were covered with tapestry; and my brother went to bed bored with our argument,
and trying hard to dissuade me from making myself uncomfortable. All the way up
the old stairs as I stood at the bottom of them, and as his candle went winding
up and up, I heard him still trying to persuade me to have supper and go to
bed.
It was a windy winter, and outside the cedars were
muttering I know not what about; but I think that they were Tories of a school
long dead, and were troubled about something new. Within, a great damp log upon
the fireplace began to squeak and sing, and struck up a whining tune, and a
tall flame stood up over it and beat time, and all the shadows crowded round
and began to dance. In distant corners old masses of darkness sat still like
chaperones and never moved. Over there, in the darkest part of the room, stood
a door that was always locked. It led into the hall, but no one ever used it;
near that door something had happened once of which the family are not proud.
We do not speak of it. There in the firelight stood the venerable forms of the
old chairs; the hands that had made their tapestries lay far beneath the soil,
the needles with which they wrought were many separate flakes of rust. No one
wove now in that old room—no one but the assiduous ancient spiders who,
watching by the deathbed of things of yore, worked shrouds to hold their dust.
In shrouds about the cornices already lay the heart of the oak wainscot that
the worm had eaten out.
Surely at such an hour, in such a room, a fancy
already excited by hunger and strong tea might see the ghosts of former
occupants. I expected nothing less. The fire flickered and the shadows danced,
memories of strange historic things rose vividly in my mind; but midnight
chimed solemnly from a seven-foot clock, and nothing happened. My imagination
would not be hurried, and the chill that is with the small hours had come upon
me, and I had nearly abandoned myself to sleep, when in the hall adjoining
there arose the rustling of silk dresses that I had waited for and expected.
Then there entered two by two the high-born ladies and their gallants of Jacobean
times. They were little more than shadows—very dignified shadows, and almost
indistinct; but you have all read ghost stories before, you have all seen in
museums the dresses of those times—there is little need to describe them; they
entered, several of them, and sat down on the old chairs, perhaps a little
carelessly considering the value of the tapestries. Then the rustling of their
dresses ceased.
Well—I had seen ghosts, and was neither frightened
nor convinced that ghosts existed. I was about to get up out of my chair and go
to bed, when there came a sound of pattering in the hall, a sound of bare feet
coming over the polished floor, and every now and then a foot would slip and I
heard claws scratching along the wood as some four-footed thing lost and
regained its balance. I was not frightened, but uneasy. The pattering came
straight towards the room that I was in, then I heard the sniffing of expectant
nostrils; perhaps "uneasy" was not the most suitable word to describe
my feelings then. Suddenly a herd of black creatures larger than bloodhounds
came galloping in; they had large pendulous ears, their noses were to the
ground sniffing, they went up to the lords and ladies of long ago and fawned
about them disgustingly. Their eyes were horribly bright, and ran down to great
depths. When I looked into them I knew suddenly what these creatures were, and
I was afraid. They were the sins, the filthy, immortal sins of those courtly
men and women.
How demure she was, the lady that sat near me on an
old-world chair—how demure she was, and how fair, to have beside her with its
jowl upon her lap a sin with such cavernous red eyes, a clear case of murder.
And you, yonder lady with the golden hair, surely not you—and yet that fearful
beast with the yellow eyes slinks from you to yonder courtier there, and
whenever one drives it away it slinks back to the other. Over there a lady
tries to smile as she strokes the loathsome furry head of another's sin, but
one of her own is jealous and intrudes itself under her hand. Here sits an old
nobleman with his grandson on his knee, and one of the great black sins of the
grandfather is licking the child's face and has made the child its own.
Sometimes a ghost would move and seek another chair, but always his pack of
sins would move behind him. Poor ghosts, poor ghosts! How many flights they
must have attempted for two hundred years from their hated sins, how many
excuses they must have given for their presence, and the sins were with them
still—and still unexplained. Suddenly one of them seemed to scent my living
blood, and bayed horribly, and all the others left their ghosts at once and
dashed up to the sin that had given tongue. The brute had picked up my scent
near the door by which I had entered, and they moved slowly nearer to me
sniffing along the floor, and uttering every now and then their fearful cry. I
saw that the whole thing had gone too far. But now they had seen me, now they
were all about me, they sprang up trying to reach my throat; and whenever their
claws touched me, horrible thoughts came into my mind and unutterable desires
dominated my heart. I planned bestial things as these creatures leaped around
me, and planned them with a masterly cunning. A great red-eyed murder was among
the foremost of those furry things from whom I feebly strove to defend my
throat. Suddenly it seemed to me good that I should kill my brother. It seemed
important to me that I should not risk being punished. I knew where a revolver
was kept; after I had shot him, I would dress the body up and put flour on the
face like a man that had been acting as a ghost. It would be very simple. I
would say that he had frightened me—and the servants had heard us talking about
ghosts. There were one or two trivialities that would have to be arranged, but
nothing escaped my mind. Yes, it seemed to me very good that I should kill my
brother as I looked into the red depths of this creature's eyes.
I moved towards the
door to get the revolver; a hideous exultation arose among the beasts…
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