Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History The Haunters & The Haunted: Ghost Stories And Tales Of The SupernaturalThe Project Gutenberg eBook of The Haunters & The Haunted This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: The Haunters & The Haunted Editor: Ernest Rhys Release date: March 9, 2006 [eBook #17953] Language: English Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17953 Credits: Produced by Suzanne Shell, Josephine Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAUNTERS & THE HAUNTED *** Produced by Suzanne Shell, Josephine Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE HAUNTERS & THE HAUNTED GHOST STORIES AND TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ERNEST RHYS PUBLISHED IN LONDON BY DANIEL O'CONNOR, 90 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, W.C.1. 1921 For permission to use copyright stories in this volume, the editor and publishers wish to make special acknowledgments to Messrs Allen & Unwin, Mr Arnold Bennett, Mr E.H. Blakeney, Sir George Douglas, Bart., Dr Greville MacDonald, Mr Arthur Machen, and Mr Thomas Hardy. CONTENTS I. GHOST STORIES FROM LITERARY SOURCES PAGE 1. THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER 17 2. THE OLD NURSE'S STORY 40 3. THE SUPERSTITIOUS MAN'S STORY 54 4. A STORY OF RAVENNA 58 5. TEIG O'KANE AND THE CORPSE 67 6. THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERS: OR THE HOUSE AND THE BRAIN 83 7. THE BOTATHEN GHOST 128 8. THE GHOST OF LORD CLARENCEUX 138 9. DR DUTHOIT'S VISION 143 10. THE SEVEN LIGHTS 147 11. THE SPECTRAL COACH OF BLACKADON 160 12. DRAKE'S DRUM 169 13. THE SPECTRE BRIDEGROOM 171 14. THE POOL IN THE GRAVEYARD 179 15. THE LIANHAN SHEE 181 16. THE HAUNTED COVE 216 17. WANDERING WILLIE'S TALE 225 II. GHOST STORIES FROM LOCAL RECORDS, FOLK LORE, AND LEGEND PAGE 18. GLAMIS CASTLE 249 19. POWYS CASTLE 253 20. CROGLIN GRANGE 259 21. THE GHOST OF MAJOR SYDENHAM 264 22. THE MIRACULOUS CASE OF JESCH CLAES 268 23. THE RADIANT BOY OF CORBY CASTLE 270 24. CLERK SAUNDERS 274 25. DOROTHY DURANT 280 26. PEARLIN JEAN 284 27. THE DENTON HALL GHOST 287 28. THE GOODWOOD GHOST STORY 293 29. CAPTAIN WHEATCROFT 300 30. THE IRON CAGE 303 31. THE GHOST OF ROSEWARNE 310 32. THE IRON CHEST OF DURLEY 317 33. THE STRANGE CASE OF M. BEZUEL 320 34. THE MARQUIS DE RAMBOUILLET 326 35. THE ALTHEIM REVENANT 329 36. SERTORIUS AND HIS HIND 331 37. ERICHTHO 334 III. OMENS AND PHANTASMS PAGE 38. PATROKLOS 343 39. VISION OF CROMWELL 345 40. LORD STRAFFORD'S WARNING 346 41. KOTTER'S RED CIRCLE 348 42. THE VISION OF CHARLES XI. OF SWEDEN 350 43. BEN JONSON'S PREVISION 359 44. QUEEN ULRICA 360 45. DENIS MISANGER 362 46. THE PIED PIPER 365 47. JEANNE D'ARC 367 48. ANNE WALKER 368 49. THE HAND OF GLORY 371 50. THE BLOODY FOOTSTEP 375 51. THE GHOSTLY WARRIORS OF WORMS 378 52. THE WANDERING JEW IN ENGLAND 379 53. BENDITH EU MAMMAU 382 54. THE RED BOOK OF APPIN 385 55. THE GOOD O'DONOGHUE 387 56. SARAH POLGRAIN 390 57. ELEANOR COBHAM, DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER 393 INTRODUCTION In this Ghost Book, M. Larigot, himself a writer of supernatural tales, has collected a remarkable batch of documents, fictive or real, describing the one human experience that is hardest to make good. Perhaps the very difficulty of it has rendered it more tempting to the writers who have dealt with the subject. His collection, notably varied and artfully chosen as it is, yet by no means exhausts the literature, which fills a place apart with its own recognised classics, magic masters, and dealers in the occult. Their testimony serves to show that the forms by which men and women are haunted are far more diverse and subtle than we knew. So much so, that one begins to wonder at last if every person is not liable to be "possessed." For, lurking under the seeming identity of these visitations, the dramatic differences of their entrances and appearances, night and day, are so marked as to suggest that the experience is, given the fit temperament and occasion, inevitable. One would even be disposed, accepting this idea, to bring into the account, as valid, stories and pieces of literature not usually accounted part of the ghostly canon. There are the novels and tales whose argument is the tragedy of a haunted mind. Such are Dickens' _Haunted Man_, in which the ghost is memory; Hawthorne's _Scarlet Letter_, in which the ghost is cruel conscience; and Balzac's _Quest of the Absolute_, in which the old Flemish house of Balthasar Claes, in the Rue de Paris at Douai, is haunted by a daemon more potent than that of Canidia. One might add some of Balzac's shorter stories, among them "The Elixir"; and some of Hawthorne's _Twice-Told Tales_, including "Edward Randolph's Portrait." On the French side we might note too that terrible graveyard tale of Guy de Maupassant, _La Morte_, in which the lover who has lost his beloved keeps vigil at her grave by night in his despair, and sees--dreadful resurrection--"que toutes les tombes etaient ouvertes, et tous les cadavres en etaient sortis." And why? That they might efface the lying legends inscribed on their tombs, and replace them with the actual truth. Villiers de l'Isle Adam has in his _Contes Cruels_ given us the strange story of Vera, which may be read as a companion study to _La Morte_, with another recall from the dead to end a lover's obsession. Nature and supernature cross in de l'Isle Adam's mystical drama _Axel_ a play which will never hold the stage, masterly attempt as it is to dramatise the inexplainable mystery. Among later tales ought to be reckoned Edith Wharton's _Tales of Men and Ghosts_, and Henry James's _The Two Magics_, whose "Turn of the Screw" gives us new instances of the evil genii that haunt mortals, in this case two innocent children. One remembers sundry folk-tales with the same motive--of children bewitched or forespoken--inspiring them. And an old charm in Orkney which used to run: "Father, Son, Holy Ghost! Bitten sall they be, Bairn, wha have bitten thee! Care to their black vein, Till thou hast thy health again! Mend thou in God's name!" John Aubrey in his _Miscellanies_ has many naive evidences of the twilight region of consciousness, like that between wake and sleep, which tends to fade when we are wideawake; so much so, that we call it visionary. Yet it is very real to the haunted folk, to Aubrey's correspondent, the Rector of Chedzoy, or to the false love of the Demon Lover, or that Mr Bourne of whom Glanvil tells in _The Iron Chest of Durley_, or the Bishop Evodius who was St Augustine's friend, or for that matter the son of Monica himself. The reality |