Both Mr.
and Mrs. Murphy then made a frantic attempt to find the door, the head
still pursuing them, and, tripping over something in their wild haste,
fell together on the floor. There was now no hope, the head had caught
them up; it hovered immediately above them, and, descending lower,
lower, and lower, finally passed right through them, through the
floor, and out of sight. It was long ere either of them could
sufficiently recover to stir from the floor, and when they did move,
it was only to totter to their bed, and to lie with the bedclothes
well over their heads, quivering and quaking till the morning. The hot morning sun dissipating their fears, they got up, and,
hurrying downstairs, demanded an interview with their landlord. It was
in vain the latter argued it was all a nightmare they showed the
absurdity of such a theory by vehemently attesting they had both
simultaneously experienced the phenomena. They were about to take
their departure, when the landlord, retracting all he had said,
offered them another room and any terms they liked, "if only they
would stay and hold their tongues." "I know every word of what you say is true," he said, in such
submissive tones that the tender hearts of Mr. and Mrs. Murphy
instantly relented, and they promised to remain. "But what am I to do? I cannot shut up a house which I have taken on a twenty years' lease,
because one room in it is haunted--and, after all, there is only one
visitor in twenty who is disturbed by the apparition. What is the
history of the head? Why, it is said to be that of a pedlar who was
murdered here over a hundred years ago. The body was hidden behind the
wainscoting, and his head under the cupboard floor. The miscreants
were never caught; they are supposed to have gone down in a ship that
sailed from this port just about that time and was never heard of
again." This is the gist of the story the clergyman told me, and, believing
it as I undoubtedly do to be true, there is every reason to suppose
that the inn, to which I have, of course, given a fictitious name, if
still in existence, is still haunted. CASE XIV

    THE HAUNTINGS OF "---- HOUSE," IN THE
      NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE GREAT WESTERN ROAD,
      ABERDEEN


The following experience of a haunting is that of Mr. Scarfe, who told
it me some few summers ago, expressing at the same time great
eagerness to accompany me on some of my investigations. I append it as nearly as possible in his own words:--

I was spending Easter, he began, with some friends of mine in
Aberdeen, and, learning from them that there was a haunted house in
the immediate vicinity of the Great Western Road, I begged them to try
and get me permission to spend a night in it. As good luck would have
it, the landlord happened to be a connection of theirs, and although
at first rather reluctant to give me leave, lest by doing so he
should create a precedent, and, consequently, be pestered to death by
people whom he knew to be as anxious as I was to see the ghost, he
eventually yielded; and, the following evening at 8 p.m., accompanied
only by my dog, Scott, I entered the premises. I cannot say I felt very comfortable when the door slammed behind me,
and I found myself standing alone in a cold, dark passage out of which
rose a gloomy staircase, suggestive of all sorts of uncanny
possibilities. However, overcoming these nervous apprehensions as best
I could, I began a thorough search of the premises, to make sure that
no one was hiding there. Descending first of all into the basement, I explored the kitchen,
scullery, larder, and other domestic offices. The place fairly reeked
with damp, but this was not to be wondered at, taking in consideration
the fact, that the soil was clay, the floor of the very poorest
quality of cement, cracked and broken in a dozen and one places, and
that there had been no fires in any of the rooms for many months. Here
and there in the darkest corners were clusters of ugly cockroaches,
whilst more than one monstrous rat scampered away on my approach. My
dog, or rather the dog that was lent me, and which went by the name of
Scott, kept close at my heel, showing no very great enthusiasm in his
mission, and giving even the rodents as wide a berth as possible. I invariably trust to my psychic faculty (as you know, Mr. O'Donnell,
some people are born with the faculty) to enable me to detect the
presence of the superphysical. I generally feel the latter
incorporated in some inexplicable manner in the ether, or see it
inextricably interwoven with the shadows. Here in the basement it was everywhere--the air was simply saturated
with it, and, as the fading sunlight called shadow after shadow into
existence, it confronted me enigmatically whichever way I turned. I went upstairs, and the presence followed me. In one or two of the
top bedrooms--more particularly in a tiny garret overlooking the
back-yard--the Presence seemed inclined to hover. For some seconds I
waited there, in order to see if there would be any further
development; there being none--I obeyed the mandates of a sudden
impulse and made my way once more to the basement. On arriving at the
top of the kitchen stairs, Scott showed a decided disinclination to
descend farther. Crouching down, he whined piteously, and when I
attempted to grasp him by the collar, snarled in a most savage manner. Consequently, thinking it better to have no companion at all than one
so unwilling, I descended without him. The stairs terminated in a very dark and narrow passage, into which
the doors of the kitchen, larder, store room, etc., opened
respectively, and at the farther extremity of which was a doorway
leading to the back-yard. The superphysical Presence seeming to be
more pronounced in this passage than anywhere else, I decided to spend
the night in it, and, selecting a spot opposite the entrance to the
scullery, I constructed a seat out of two of the drawers of the
kitchen dresser, by placing them, one on the other, bottom uppermost
on the floor. It was now half-past nine; the traffic in the street overhead was
beginning to diminish--the rumbling of drays or heavy four-wheelers
had almost ceased, whilst the jingling of hansoms and even the
piercing hoot-hoot and loud birr-birr of motors was fast becoming less
and less frequent. I put out my candle and waited; and, as I waited,
the hush and gloom of the house deepened and intensified, until, by
midnight, all round me was black and silent--black with a blackness
that defies penetration, and silent with a silence that challenges
only the rivalry of the grave. Occasionally I heard sounds--such, for
example, as the creaking of a board, the flopping of a cockroach, and
the growling of Scott--sounds which in the daytime would have been too
trivial to attract attention, but which now assumed the most startling
and exaggerated proportions.