Jessie Adelaide Middleton - Another Grey Ghost Book

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Jessie Adelaide Middleton - Another Grey Ghost Book (Windwhistle, 2016; originally Eveleigh Nash, 1915)

Foreword

The Haunted House at Notting Hill Gate
The Mummy's Foot
Chelsea Ghosts—and Others
The Haymarket Theatre Ghost
Stranger than Fiction
The Vanishing Lady
The Ghost with Half a Face
The Ghost in the Argyle Rooms
The Field of Forty Footsteps
Black Magic
The Wicked Lady Ferrers
The Lady in Black
The Claw
Sarah Fletcher
The Haunted Vault
The Bloody Wynd and the Burgling Ghost
A Strange Experience
The Ghost in the Cedar Avenue
The Lady in the Lace Cap
At a Boer Farm
A Riverside Ghost
The Haunted Ship
From a Politician's Note-Book
The Two Brothers
The Ghost at Mannington Hall
At the Door
The Old Inn in Wiltshire
The Haunted Child
The Ghost in the Sealskin Coat
The Cathedral Ghost at Gloucester
The Echo of a Crime
The Little White Dog
The Mysterious Visitor
The Headless Cavalier
The Dream House
The Wynyard Ghost Story
How the Rector Laid the Ghost
The Demon of Stackpole Court
The White Bird of the Oxenhams
The Grandfather's Clock
What the Watcher Saw
A Watchet Story
The Whistling Ghost of Minehead
The Ghost that Revealed a Murder

Prophetic Dreams
A Note on Vampires

Blurb:
The mummified foot of an ancient Egyptian dancer terrorizes a child. A dying man calls out for his estranged brother and is seen and heard half a world away at the moment of his death. A scene from the English Civil War is observed each year on the anniversary of the eve of battle from the room of the inn from which Cromwell directed his troops. Spurred and clad in chain mail, a ghostly crusader treads the aisles of Gloucester Cathedral. The ghost of a miser appears to reveal the location of a hidden hoard of gold. The spirit of a man's deceased wife summons a vicar to her husband explaining that the man is dying and concerned about the state of his soul. Though perfectly well at the time, ten minutes after unburdening his soul to the vicar, the man dies.
These are but a few of the unforgettable true tales of the unexplained from Another Grey Ghost Book which will haunt your nights for years to come!
Volume II of Jessie Adelaide Middleton's classic trilogy of true tales of the supernatural.
Published in 1915, Another Grey Ghost Book was the second in what would become Jessie Adelaide Middleton's celebrated trilogy chronicling true accounts of ghosts, precognition and other unique supernatural occurrences collected for the most part from those who have inadvertently crossed the invisible threshold into the realm of the unexplained and have returned to tell the tale.
Long out of print, Windwhistle Press is honored to republish for the first time in over one hundred years all three volumes of the trilogy, photographically reproduced from rare surviving copies of what have long been considered indispensable classics in the field of parapsychology.


"Many years ago the master of the house went away and left his wife and child alone in the house. The mother was a cruel woman, who starved her child by shutting it, without food, in a cupboard, so that it died.
The man returned and, on learning what had happened, shut his wife up in the same cupboard, locked the house again, and left her to starve. It is the woman's ghost that appears on the anniversary of the crime."


Honest ghost stories as personally authenticated by the author.

The Haunted House at Notting Hill Gate: A young couple move into a large house close to Kensington gardens. The servants are upset by an old lady in bonnet and cloak with a scarred forehead. Ghost of the previous occupant, a widow, Mrs. Thompson who went into decline following her husband's death.

The Mummy's Foot: "Nothing would induce me to write the full story of the mummy at the British Museum ..." begins the author, who instead fobs us off with this palest of substitutes, an account of the minor inconvenience which befell Miss Westwood's when she arrived home from a New Year's party with a novelty mascot. The foot - that of a female dancer - is gifted her by a Mr Stanhope, who stole it from an ancient tomb in Egypt. He seemed suspiciously keen to be rid of the thing. Jessie disapproves of such relics, but Miss Westwood, who is without superstition, sets her good luck charm on a bookcase, and forgets about it. So begins the reign of underwhelming terror ....


Chelsea Ghosts — and Others: Several strange experiences of Sir Alfred Turner, including a mundane encounter with a phantom monk. Also, a neighbour's home once haunted by a composer who, unaware that he was dead, threatened the new occupants with a solicitor; the room with the whispering hole in the wall where a murderer stored two corpses; Maternal filicide in Guildford.

The Haymarket Theatre Ghost: Phantom footsteps and a face, believed to be that of Victorian playwright and theatre manager, John Buckstone, staring through the window. As witnessed by a psychic fireman.

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The precursor to it, "The Grey Ghost Book" is available in various formats here. Too bad they don't have both.

archive.org/details/the-grey-ghost-book/page/n3/mode/2up

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There's a White Ghost Book, too. Been looking forward to getting to grips with Another ... since reading her accounts of the Mummy's Foot and the Headless Cavalier. While some of the hauntings included are mundane, her work does not entirely lack its Elliott O'Donnell moments, if you get my meaning.

ANOTHER GREY GHOST BOOK
AND CREEPIER EVEN THAN THE FIRST.
A sequel is not always a success, as Milton and many authors since him have found. But Miss Jessie Adelaide Middleton is a notable and delightful exception. We noticed her "Grey Ghost Book" when it appeared, and can now speak in even warmer terms of "Another Grey Ghost Book" (Eveleigh Nash). The first was creepy, but this one is creepier. Mr. Nash includes it in his list of new novels, but this is a palpable mistake, for most of the narratives are given in perfect good faith, as were those in the first series. For instance, there is the late Dr. Augustus Jessop's story of what he saw at Mannington Hall in 1879. We can well recollect Canon Jessop's narrative when it appeared, and the sensation it created, for this eminent and scholarly Churchman was no "spookist," and about the last man to publish what was not correct, so far as his senses led him. Dr. Jessop's is, indeed, today one of the best among classic stories of the kind, and we are glad to find it duly set forth in this book, together with many other far less widely known. Pembrokeshire readers will be interested in the Stackpole story, whilst there are others from Minehead and Watchet that will interest people the other side of the Channel. We do not recommend nervous people to read this book, and that is just another way of saying that as a ghost book it must be pronounced a brilliant and unqualified success.

— Western Mail, 11 November 1914

Stranger than Fiction: Day of the bloody soap-suds. A conscientious suicide returns to a busy SW London salon to tidy a customer's hair.

The Vanishing Lady: A lady prevails upon a clergyman to visit her husband who is gravely ill and desires to unburden his soul. The vicar duly calls at the house of Mr. ______ to find him hail and hearty, though it is true he wishes to get something off his chest. Having done so, he dies. The vicar recognises the woman in the portrait by his bed as his visitor. The butler identifies her as his master's wife, fifteen years dead.

The Ghost with Half a Face: Ghost of a shotgun suicide at a house in St. John's Wood, " ..... the effect being ghastly in the extreme."

The Ghost in the Argyle Rooms: March 1821, in the concert rooms. While listening to a music recital, a society girl is startled to briefly glimpse a naked corpse, partially covered by a boat sail, lying at her feet. An accurate premonition of the drowning of a friend, Sir J ______ Y_______ at Southampton that same day.

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Why do Women Write Unpleasant Books?
Every year there is an enormous output of novels dealing with unsavoury subjects. The majority of these are the work of women. Why should women write these unpleasant books? This is the question raised by Jessie Adelaide Middleton in an article in the March "Pearson's Magazine."
"Many women embark on the writing of a novel not because they have a story to tell or a lesson to teach, but merely to quote the words of Miss Braddon, the veteran woman novelist, for the purpose of tickling the depraved palate of a certain class of reader.
"That women can, when they choose, write with horrible realism, and with a love of gruesome detail that would shame the French decadente, is certain.
"We ourselves are going through a period of literary decadence, and the strange fiction written by women is one of its phases.
"I venture to think that the chief reason why women write unpleasant books is that woman is by nature morbid and neurotic, and deep down, under the mask of convention, she retains all her primeval instincts. These books are a reflex of a certain type of feminine mind, and women, in writing them, hold up the mirror to their own."

—Bexhill Observer, 2 March 1912

The Field of Forty Footsteps: Haunting of Southampton Fields at back of Montague House (now the British Museum), Bloomsbury. During Monmouth's rebellion, two brothers duelled over a coquette who sat on a bank and watched them kill each other. Grass ceased to grow where their boots trod. Author located the exact location to Torrington Square. Also, the ghost of a lady in the black cloak at the Earl of St. Vincent Inn (demolished, 1914), reputedly murdered by a highwayman.

Black Magic: As exhumed by Peter Haining for A Circle of Witches, 1971. A sinister fakir takes a dislike to the new sahib's wife, Mrs. Ross, and resolves to work magic against her. To this end, he demands a hair from her head. She tricks him with one from a woven carpet gifted her as a wedding present. Some nights later, Mrs Ross comes under attack from a homicidal Chinese mat.

The Wicked Lady Ferrers: Ghost of the legendary highwaywoman — in male drag — of Markyate Cell, Dunstable, as later celebrated in Misty. Same property also boasts a forgotten prisoner, regarding whom: "it was usual long ago to put a nun into solitary confinement for disobedience or any other sin, and the nun in question was so shut up and never released. Many years after her death — in fact, recently — when workmen were repairing the kitchen chimney, they came upon a chair in a niche, but whatever was on it crumbled into dust. The chair was sent to the British or South Kensington Museum."

The Lady in Black: As related to author by a clergyman's wife of unblemished character concerning time spent at a rectory in New Zealand, where the ghost of a small, "snakey haired" woman regularly appeared beneath a willow tree in the garden.

Birkinhead News, 7 Dec. 1918.

The Claw: Actress attacked in bed by phantom taloned hunchback! Nightmare experience of Miss Frances Dillon over consecutive nights in a Buxton lodging house. "He was dressed in modern clothes, with a tweed cap pulled down well over the most unhappy and tragic eyes that I ever saw."

Sarah Fletcher: "At C —, Mrs. Sarah Fletcher, who put an end to her life by hanging herself with her pocket-handkerchief, which she fastened to a small piece of cord and affixed it to the curtain-rod of the bedstead in which she usually slept. After a full investigation of the previous conduct of the deceased, and the derangement of her mind appearing very evident from the testimony of the gentleman at whose house this unfortunate affair happened, as well as from many other circumstances, the jury, without hesitation, found a verdict of lunacy. Her husband is an officer in the Navy, and now on his passage to the East Indies." — Obituary notice, The Gentleman’s Magazine, June 1799.

Testimonies of the Rev. E. E. Crake, a private schoolmaster, and various family members and guests who experienced poltergeist activity and ghostly phenomena in the haunted room. There is some doubt as to Sarah's "lunacy." It seems the unhappy young woman was driven to despair by the callous and unfaithful husband she haunted to the grave. Eyewitness accounts vary whether the ghost is with or without head.

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The Haunted Vault: A thorough account of "the Barbadoes Coffin story" taken from multiple contemporary sources, the finger of blame pointing at a Colonel Chase, as there'd been no trouble before he was admitted to the tomb — a premature burial? Also, a news item from the European for Sept. 1815 concerning similar activity within a "curious vault" at Staunton, Suffolk.

The Bloody Wynd and the Burgling Ghost: On returning from sea to find his girl had married another, a sailor murdered the rival, dragged the bloody corpse along the lane and deposited it down a well. Lady R ______, wife of a Scotch peer, can vouch for this as she was treated to a re-enactment on the centenary. Same witness also provides brief account of a night in an Irish murder room.

A Strange Experience. An Oxford Story. Told by an Undergraduate: (Oxford Magazine, ?). Rapping in the night, the briefest sightings of a man and woman in the Gateway Tower rooms. Ghosts possibly those of sixteenth century Lutherans once imprisoned therein.

The Ghost in the Cedar Avenue: A phantom flighty young woman in Tudor dress torments a succession of gardeners in the grounds of an East Anglian stately home. Author believes ghost to be that of a suicide in the lily pond.

The Lady in the Lace Cap: A West Country ghost. Even in death, the old woman can't bring herself to leave the house she loves so. Favourite haunt is the door to the coal-cellar.

At a Boer Farm: Farmer Johan Schmidt's marital distress transcends the grave.

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A Riverside Ghost: Vera Shaw, a noted racing reporter of the day, recalls an encounter with a swarthy looking, horse-frightening phantom wearing a speckled straw hat, blue pilot coat and lavender boating trousers. Location, "a well-known riverside village."

The Haunted Ship: Reprinted from an edition of the Pembrokeshire Guardian. Captain Alldridge, R.N., on poltergeist activity aboard his ship, HMS Asp, and the haunting of its paddle-box by the transparent figure of a woman "pointing toward heaven." He speculates she may be the ghost of a mystery stowaway found dead in a cabin with her throat cut.

From a Politician's Note-Book: Sir Henry William Lucy shares a diary entry for October 6 1890, including an account of a "thrilling ghost story" as told him by a Washington correspondent. Attending Congress with her husband, the lady was informed her preferred hotel she full. After some protest on her part, staff reluctantly offered a room they'd intended to leave empty for a time, on account of .....

The Two Brothers: Thomas, stricken by pernicious anaemia and wasted to skin and bone, pays a last Transatlantic visit to his estranged brother in London.

The Ghost at Mannington Hall: A Norfolk Story: Dr. Canon Augustus Jessop's unvarnished account of his encounter with a phantom clergyman in Lord Orford's library.

The Old Inn in Wiltshire: The widow of a London medical man provides an eyewitness account of a phantom Roundhead-Royalist civil war re-enactment in the yard of Salisbury country inn, The Green Dragon (not its real name). The same building contained a room haunted by the Duke of Buckingham, who'd spent the eve of his execution under guard therein. The witness signs off with a brief summary of an eerie experience in an old house in Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, where a ghost coffin, complete with pall and, presumably corpse, appeared on her bed!

The Haunted Child: Napier, New Zealand. An ostracised daughter, denied a deathbed visit from her favourite niece, vows to haunt the child, May Jarvis, from beyond the grave. She duly does so in the company of "a man with a hat pulled down over his face." Ghosts given to stone throwing and phantom bell-ringing before narrator's father puts an end to their mischief by suggesting the child be baptised.

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The Ghost in the Sealskin Coat: Bridewell, Cockermouth. Canon Sutton's kindness toward the orphan daughter of a fellow clergyman ends in tragedy after he introduces her to a young soldier who duly has his way and jilts her at the altar. Story widely reported in the days press. See below.

The Cathedral Ghost at Gloucester: Miss Agnes Weston, a tireless seaman's charity campaigner, reports an encounter with a phantom Crusader in the organ loft after dark.

The Echo of a Crime: Editor of a London newspaper spends the night at a hotel in Rugeley, Staffs, unaware that his was the room where the surgeon and serial strychnine poisoner John Parsons Cook did for his racing friend, William Palmer, in 1855.

The Little White Dog: Its appearance portends an imminent death in a certain Irish family.

The Mysterious Visitor: A doorstep conversation with Miss L _____ that, quite plainly, could never have taken place.

The Headless Cavalier: It's claimed the officer's decapitated ghost rides from High Down to Hitchin Priory every June 15, the anniversary of his execution by Roundheads. Read here should you wish.

The Dream House: Despite this being her first visit to Ireland, Lady Barton recognises every aspect of the charming country house she has leased, having dreamt of it since childhood. A further shock awaits on her return to London when she meets its owner.

DYING GIRL'S FORM.
A CUMBERLAND CANON'S STRANGE EXPERIENCE.

Canon Sutton, vicar of Bridekirk, Cockermouth, and vice-chairman of the Cumberland County Council, in a lecture on Spiritualism to the Churchpeople of Dearham, Maryport, dealt with the possibility of a dying person's form appearing to the individual in his or her mind at the moment of death, and he related an extraordinary experience which befell him. He befriended the orphan daughter of a clergyman by obtaining her a situation as a governess. She became engaged to an officer of the Indian army, and Canon Sutton gave her a sealskin coat as a present. The affair turned out unhappily, however, for the officer jilted her and broke her heart.

Some time afterwards Canon Sutton dined at Dovenby Hall and rode home to Bridekirk, on a clear moonlight night. Near Dovenby School, at 12 15 a.m., he saw the form of the girl in her sealskin coat. The horse seemed to see something too, and stopped. On reaching home the Canon told his wife what he had seen, but she laughed at him. Nevertheless, he learned later that the girl had died at the very moment she appeared to him on the road, that at the time of death she was wearing the sealskin coat he had given her, and that her last words were to tell him that she forgave him for introducing her to her faithless lover.

Canon Sutton also told of a similar experience he had had when travelling in the Soudan in early manhood.

Asked if his experience on the Dovenby road had not shaken his nerves, Canon Sutton replied that he had no nerves.

— Lancashire Evening Post, Monday 26 Jan 1914

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The Wynyard Ghost Story: As Henry Wynward breathed his last in England, his ghost crossed continents to appear before his brother, Lieutenant George and three fellow officers in a Nova Scotia mess hall. "An absolute true incident," assures the author.

How the Rector Laid the Ghost: Haunting of Asfordby Rectory, Melton Mowbray, by a mischievous ghost given to stripping the sheets from a bed in the guest room. Exorcised by the Rev. Gage Hall.

The Demon of Stackpole Court: 'Simon', spawn of a local woman and an "unearthly and diabolical-looking creature" haunts the village pond at midnight. Also, Parson Pritchett, rector of St. Patrox, versus the headless ghosts of Lady Mathias, her phantom coach driver and two horses.

The White Bird of the Oxenhams: A Devonshire Story: It's appearance warns of a death in the Oxenham family of Sale-Monachorum, and its never wrong. At time of writing, its last reported appearance was in December 1873.

The Grandfather's Clock: A Lincolnshire Story: A miser's ghost returns for a final spectral salivate over his hidden fortune before revealing its whereabouts to his widow.

GHOST "LAID" BY RECTOR.
SOLEMN EXORCISM IN CASSOCK AND SURPLICE.
THIRTY YEARS OF WEIRD PRANKS.

An obstreperous ghost that has annoyed the residents at Ashfordsby Rectory, Leicestershire, for over 30 years, has at last been "laid" by the rector, the Rev. F. A. Gage Hall. Mr. Hall, after many fruitless attempts to rid the rectory of its uninvited, long-staying and non-paying guest, in desperation resorted to the expedient of solemn exorcism. Putting on a cassock and surplice, he went into the affected parts of the house and commanded the spirits to depart "in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." "I believe," said the rector in an interview, "that my action has been successful, for we have since seen or heard nothing of the ghost."

It seems that the rectory is a very old building, rather rambling in structure, and with a stirring past. It has been the residence of many well-known people, and it is alleged to have been the scene of many grim and daring deeds. Hence, it has possessed ideal and unrivalled attractions for any enterprising and house-hunting ghost.

But the particular ghost upon whose eviction the Rector of Ashfordsby is being widely congratulated was not merely a creature of moans and groans and creepy manners and appearance. He was as well apparently a spook of vigorous physique, and, moreover, an apparition with strongly developed likes and dislikes. His pet aversion, seemingly, was for people occupying certain rooms in the house to cover themselves with bed-clothes, and as an unmistakable indication of his displeasure he was in the rude habit of tearing the blankets and other
coverings from harmless sleepers in the middle of the night.

VISITING VICAR'S TRIAL

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The Rev. C. H. Strudwick, vicar of Whetstone, a neighbouring Leicestershire parish, recently slept for several nights in the haunted rooms. He relates how on the first occasion he was alarmed in the small hours of the morning by a violent tugging at his bedclothes. He held on as tightly as he could, but all in vain. The ghost won the tug-of-war, and stripped the clothes from the bed while the vicar made haste to throw the light of his candle on the mystery.

"All I could see," he said in the course of an interview, "was a heap of disordered bedclothes on the floor. There was nothing else to indicate that anything unusual had occurred. I searched the room thoroughly, and all was in order. The door was locked on the inside, and no one could have entered. But when the same thing happened the very next night I was glad to change my room."

The sister-in-law of the Rector of Ashfordsby subsequently slept in the same room, and had the same alarming experience to narrate to the small knot of scared folk in the middle of the night.

The Rev. Gage Hall says that such occurrences have been troubling the household ever since he can remember the place. He described, in the course of the interview referred to, how the family have heard the ghost tramping round the corridor of the house at night, and how the servants have been scared by strange happenings and noises. Since the exorcism however, the ghost has ceased his pranks, and it is generally hoped that he has gone away for good.

Gloucestershire Echo, Saturday 23 August 1913

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Finally ...

What the Watcher Saw: Sceptic Edward Drury arranges to spend the night of 3 July 1840 at Willington Mill, Tyneside, the Procter family's exuberantly haunted house. At the time of Dr. Drury's stopover its, reported phenomena comprised a spectral priest, a grey lady without eyes, a disembodied peal of laughter, phantom heavy footsteps, and the incredible shrinking animal.

Two Somerset Stories:
A Watchet Story: Testimony of Mrs. Forbes-William, who witnessed the spectral re-enactment of a murder in a secret passage beneath a house on Swain Street. Spectre smugglers.

The Whistling Ghost of Minehead: Phantom witch in "black gowne, a kerchiefe and a white stomacher," prone to attacking small children and yelling "a boat, a boat, ho!" in a shrill voice. Mother Leakey performed only good works in life, the opposite afterward.

The Ghost that Revealed a Murder: William Barwick might have escaped justice for drowning his wife, had not her sodden ghost appeared before brother-in-law, Thomas Lofthouse, who duly reported to the Lord Mayor. Confronted over his wife's disappearance, Barwick broke down and confessed to her murder. He hung in chains at York Castle in the early 1690s.

Prophetic Dreams: "When, in my dreams, I wear evening-dress, it does not mean good news in any way. And whenever I dream of wearing this particular pearl necklace, it always means a death in the family. Only once have I worn it in a dream for the death of anyone not related." The death-omens of Mrs. Scarlett. Those featuring either phantom kilted coffins bearers or a piper in tartan precluded railway tragedy, the outbreak of war, or the sinking of The Titanic.

A Note on Vampires: The protracted vengeance of the Viscount de Moreive, a French noble who retained his estate during the Revolution. At close of the Terror, de Moreive initiated his own, decapitating his workforce before his own murder by local peasantry, whereupon he rose from the grave to feast upon the blood of infants for 72 years. Other cases referenced include those of Arnod Paolo, Miliza, vampire lady of Meducgna, and the vampire of Kring.

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GHOST STORIES.

Legends of ghosts and haunted houses have an unfailing attraction. One half mankind, it is true, opposes to them an unfailing scepticism and a destructive criticism fatal to a large number. The other half have a rooted love for the supernatural and a faith which is not disturbed because they are never, in the opinion of authorities like the late Andrew Lang, susceptible of strict legal proof, but all probably retain from childhood an instinctive fondness for tales such as the Ghost of Hamlet's father could unfold, which freeze the blood and make each particular hair to stand on end. "The Grey Ghost Book," by Miss Jessie Adelaide Middleton (Eveleigh Nash, 3s. Gd.), may therefore be commended as a storehouse of the best-known and most discussed ghost stories, including the tale of Mrs. Veal, of Dover, in which Daniel Defoe had a part, the mysterious disturbances and voices in the house of the sister of Lord St. Vincent recorded by Goldsmith's dainty "Jessamy Bride," who heard the tearing up of the boards — which she described as being as loud as if three or four carpenters had been employed — and the three separate voices. She also heard the soft strains of music which, she said, reminded her of the sounds produced by Cartwright, the well-known player, on musical glasses. The shrieks, she said, were so loud as to rend the air.

There are also such recognised family legends as that of Wild Darrell, of Littlecote, which looms large in all histories of Wiltshire, the Lambton so-called "Worm," the "Luck" of Edenhall, the secret of Glamis Castle, "the White Lady of the Lytteltons," and the Beresford story of a similarly uncanny warning of approaching death. Many of these legends are told in the form authenticated by the living representative of the family concerned.

Altogether Miss Middleton has brought together the cream of ghostly histories to the number of fifty or a hundred. She is an avowed occultist and a believer in psychic phenomena, but she by no means blindly repeats the stories as they came to her, but has taken a great amount of trouble to sift the evidence on which they rest. Thus she has made "the mystery of Berkeley-square resolve itself into nothingness." No. 50 was once the abode of a misanthropic recluse, a relative of Lady Dorothy Nevill, and hence the story grew that it was haunted. For instance, an avowed romance contributed by Miss Rhoda Broughton to Temple Bar was narrated as fact to Bishop Thirlwall.

LONDON GHOSTS.
Among other stories of London houses is one of a house in Kensington, where uncanny knockings and footsteps were heard. These are attributed to a murderer of the Crippen school, without his nerve, for we are told —

One day a hospital nurse living in the district threw some light upon the matter. She said she had heard a story to the effect that, some years ago, one of the doctors in the house had murdered a woman in the kitchen, and had then gone upstairs to the dispensary and shot himself. His body and that of the woman were moved from the house together by the police. Here, then, was the explanation of the weird noises. The wretched doctor, unable to rest in, his grave, visits the scene of his crime nightly and re-acts the ghastly deed. Going down the stone stairs into the kitchen, he kills his victim, and wipes up the blood with the large wet swabs used in surgeries. He then goes into the scullery (locking the door behind him) and washes his hands, evidently with the intention of removing all traces of the crime. When he goes upstairs, however, he is overcome with either fear or remorse, and shoots himself in the dispensary, falling back with a loud crash among the bottles. His restless footsteps walk at night all about the house-up and down, backwards and forwards. They are heard in rooms at the top of the house as well as down in the basement, and, in fact, everywhere.

HAMPTON COURT.

It is not surprising to read that Hampton Court holds a proud pre-eminence in the world of ghosts. From its five famous Tudor ghosts down to the big reddish-brown spiders which residents there whisper are in some mysterious way connected with the fate of Cardinal Wolsey, it is haunted by many eerie Occupants, including Queen Catherine Howard, who rushes shrieking along the haunted gallery on All Souls' Eve. Catherine of Arragon walks in the corridor outside her own apartments. A lady who occupied the Blue Room narrates a flesh-creeping personal experience: One night she was suddenly awakened by feeling a figure standing by her bedside, and her pillow was sharply pulled away from under her head. Then something seemed to lean over the bed, as if gazing at her, and to press the spring mattress. It was perfectly dark, and she felt so paralysed with fright that she could not move to light a candle. A medium who once visited the palace for the purpose of investigating the Royal ghosts, reported that

She got into communication with Queen Catherine Howard, whom she interviewed at great length, and also with Jane Seymour, whom she saw sitting in a tapestry room before a fire. The spirit of the latter told her that she wanders perpetually through Hampton Court in the undying hope of regaining her son. "He was born there and is there still." she added, "but between us there rolls a sea of blood."

THE HOHENZOLLERN WHITE LADY.

The Hohenzollerns have a family spectre who is appropriately terrible:

The White Lady of the Hohenzolleras and Hapsburgs is famous throughout Europe. She is the spectre of a woman in a white mourning robe, who appears whenever any of the Hohenzollerns, the reigning family of Prussia, are threatened with death, and sometimes before the death of a Hapsburg. Three different persons are said to be her originals — Agnes, Countess of Orlamünde, Bertha of Rosenberg, and Princess Kunigund, who married Ottocar II of Bohemia. Agnes was a murderess, who fell in love with Albert Burgrave (a Hohenzollern) of Nurnberg, who she called "the handsome," and was much younger than her self. When she made advances to him, he said that four eyes stood in the way — meaning those of her parents — but she took it to mean those of her children, and thereupon she murdered them by running a silver hairpin into their brains. Albert shrank away in horror from her on learning of her cruel deed, and she went on a pilgrimage to Rome to expiate her crime.

It appears that the All Highest regarded the apparition with disdainful common sense:

The story goes that on one occasion a young subaltern of the Guards told his colonel that he had seen the White Lady gliding along one of the corridors of the palace when he was on night duty there. The colonel brought the fact to the notice of the Kaiser, William II., who sent for the subaltern and interrogated him. "What was the lady like? Was she short or tall?" he asked. "She was tall, your Majesty." "How was she dressed!" "She wore a white petticoat with a white bodice, had a white cap on her head, and had a long white veil over it." "Was she carrying anything!" "Oh, yes, your Majesty." What had she in her right hand 1" "A candlestick." "A candlestick." "And what in her left hand?" "A box of matches." "That will do," interrupted the Kaiser. "Don't let me hear anything more about the White Lady. And take my advice: Don't look about in the corridors of the palace at night. For you might see more ladies attired in white petticoats and bodices, carrying candlesticks and match-boxes in their hands."

ANNE BOLEYN STILL WALKS.

Blickling Hall was the birthplace of Anne Boleyn, and we are told she still haunts it, as well as her father:

Poor Anne's ghost is not the only one that haunts Blickling. According to local tradition Sir Thomas Boleyn, her father, re-visits the earth, carrying his head under his arm, seated in his carriage drawn by four headless horses and driven by a headless coachman, for a term of a thousand years. He is condemned to cross forty bridges in the neighbourhood within a given time as a penance for his sins, and if the bridges are not crossed within the time he must become the prey of the Evil One. Therefore he drives furiously, and, as he does so, flames of fire issue from the head, to the horror of all beholders:

In this case we have an almost unique instance of a present-day appearance of this historic spectre well vouched for. Lady Chichester says she was staying at the hall with her children, when
Lord Pelham, the eldest boy, who was two and a half years old at the time, was one day with his mother in the court leading to the hall door when all of a sudden the little boy pointed with his finger to the closed door, exclaiming: "Look at white lady!" "Where?" said Lady Chichester, who could see nothing. The child turned to her with the most astonished gaze she says she ever remembers having seen on any face, and replied: "White lady by door, bad face" and he eventually refused to go up to the door. Suddenly he said, evidently with great relief, "Lady gone now." His mother asked him where she had gone, which puzzled him, and his explanation was, "Lady gone, but not on her feet." No questioning could get him to say a word more on the subject. Lady Chichester declares that the experience was a most eerie one. The child was much too young to invent such a story, even if he had tried to, and his astonishment because his mother could not see the "'ittle white lady" as well as he was so absolutely natural that it could not have been assumed.

— The Globe, 26 November 1915