The bodies were in various stages of decay, all greatly shrunken in face
and figure. Some were but little more than skeletons. “While I stood stupefied with horror by this ghastly spectacle and still
holding open the door, by some unaccountable perversity my attention was
diverted from the shocking scene and concerned itself with trifles and
details. Perhaps my mind, with an instinct of self-preservation, sought
relief in matters which would relax its dangerous tension. Among other
things, I observed that the door that I was holding open was of heavy
iron plates, riveted. Equidistant from one another and from the top and
bottom, three strong bolts protruded from the beveled edge. I turned the
knob and they were retracted flush with the edge; released it, and they
shot out. It was a spring lock. On the inside there was no knob, nor
any kind of projection—a smooth surface of iron. “While noting these things with an interest and attention which it now
astonishes me to recall I felt myself thrust aside, and Judge Veigh, whom
in the intensity and vicissitudes of my feelings I had altogether
forgotten, pushed by me into the room. ‘For God’s sake,’ I cried, ‘do
not go in there! Let us get out of this dreadful place!’

“He gave no heed to my entreaties, but (as fearless a gentleman as lived
in all the South) walked quickly to the center of the room, knelt beside
one of the bodies for a closer examination and tenderly raised its
blackened and shriveled head in his hands. A strong disagreeable odor
came through the doorway, completely overpowering me. My senses reeled;
I felt myself falling, and in clutching at the edge of the door for
support pushed it shut with a sharp click! “I remember no more: six weeks later I recovered my reason in a hotel at
Manchester, whither I had been taken by strangers the next day. For all
these weeks I had suffered from a nervous fever, attended with constant
delirium. I had been found lying in the road several miles away from the
house; but how I had escaped from it to get there I never knew. On
recovery, or as soon as my physicians permitted me to talk, I inquired
the fate of Judge Veigh, whom (to quiet me, as I now know) they
represented as well and at home. “No one believed a word of my story, and who can wonder? And who can
imagine my grief when, arriving at my home in Frankfort two months later,
I learned that Judge Veigh had never been heard of since that night? I
then regretted bitterly the pride which since the first few days after
the recovery of my reason had forbidden me to repeat my discredited story
and insist upon its truth. “With all that afterward occurred—the examination of the house; the
failure to find any room corresponding to that which I have described;
the attempt to have me adjudged insane, and my triumph over my
accusers—the readers of the _Advocate_ are familiar. After all these
years I am still confident that excavations which I have neither the
legal right to undertake nor the wealth to make would disclose the secret
of the disappearance of my unhappy friend, and possibly of the former
occupants and owners of the deserted and now destroyed house. I do not
despair of yet bringing about such a search, and it is a source of deep
grief to me that it has been delayed by the undeserved hostility and
unwise incredulity of the family and friends of the late Judge Veigh.”

Colonel McArdle died in Frankfort on the thirteenth day of December, in
the year 1879. THE OTHER LODGERS


“IN order to take that train,” said Colonel Levering, sitting in the
Waldorf-Astoria hotel, “you will have to remain nearly all night in
Atlanta. That is a fine city, but I advise you not to put up at the
Breathitt House, one of the principal hotels. It is an old wooden
building in urgent need of repairs. There are breaches in the walls that
you could throw a cat through. The bedrooms have no locks on the doors,
no furniture but a single chair in each, and a bedstead without
bedding—just a mattress. Even these meager accommodations you cannot be
sure that you will have in monopoly; you must take your chance of being
stowed in with a lot of others. Sir, it is a most abominable hotel. “The night that I passed in it was an uncomfortable night. I got in late
and was shown to my room on the ground floor by an apologetic night-clerk
with a tallow candle, which he considerately left with me. I was worn
out by two days and a night of hard railway travel and had not entirely
recovered from a gunshot wound in the head, received in an altercation. Rather than look for better quarters I lay down on the mattress without
removing my clothing and fell asleep. “Along toward morning I awoke. The moon had risen and was shining in at
the uncurtained window, illuminating the room with a soft, bluish light
which seemed, somehow, a bit spooky, though I dare say it had no uncommon
quality; all moonlight is that way if you will observe it. Imagine my
surprise and indignation when I saw the floor occupied by at least a
dozen other lodgers! I sat up, earnestly damning the management of that
unthinkable hotel, and was about to spring from the bed to go and make
trouble for the night-clerk—him of the apologetic manner and the tallow
candle—when something in the situation affected me with a strange
indisposition to move. I suppose I was what a story-writer might call
‘frozen with terror.’  For those men were obviously all dead! “They lay on their backs, disposed orderly along three sides of the room,
their feet to the walls—against the other wall, farthest from the door,
stood my bed and the chair. All the faces were covered, but under their
white cloths the features of the two bodies that lay in the square patch
of moonlight near the window showed in sharp profile as to nose and chin. “I thought this a bad dream and tried to cry out, as one does in a
nightmare, but could make no sound. At last, with a desperate effort I
threw my feet to the floor and passing between the two rows of clouted
faces and the two bodies that lay nearest the door, I escaped from the
infernal place and ran to the office. The night-clerk was there, behind
the desk, sitting in the dim light of another tallow candle—just sitting
and staring. He did not rise: my abrupt entrance produced no effect upon
him, though I must have looked a veritable corpse myself. It occurred to
me then that I had not before really observed the fellow. He was a
little chap, with a colorless face and the whitest, blankest eyes I ever
saw. He had no more expression than the back of my hand. His clothing
was a dirty gray. “‘Damn you!’ I said; ‘what do you mean?’

“Just the same, I was shaking like a leaf in the wind and did not
recognize my own voice. “The night-clerk rose, bowed (apologetically) and—well, he was no longer
there, and at that moment I felt a hand laid upon my shoulder from
behind. Just fancy that if you can!