Still walking his pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago, the ghost of a lost pilgrim is said to haunt a stretch of road. Still with his staff in hand, he appears in cars in Huesca in Spain and some even claim the ghosts are there to harm them.
There’s something eerie about walking alone on a secluded path, surrounded by dense forests, abandoned ruins, and the silence of the night. But what if you were not alone? What if you felt a presence, a ghostly figure following you, watching your every move? For centuries, pilgrims traveling the Camino de Santiago have reported encounters with restless spirits, whispering voices, and unexplained phenomena.
Read more: Check out all of our ghost stories from Spain
The Camino de Santiago, also known as the Way of St. James, is a network of pilgrimage routes leading to the shrine of the apostle St. James the Great in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain. The pilgrimage has been popular since the Middle Ages, and millions of people have walked the route over the centuries. The Camino de Santiago has a rich history and culture, and it has been the subject of many legends and myths. The route passes through some of the most beautiful and historic regions of Spain, and it is a popular destination for tourists and pilgrims alike.
The Haunted Road at Puente de la Reina to Jaca in Huesca
The area of Aragorn has more than one haunted tale told about it, and the whole region is covered in mystery. Like stories about the Holy Grail for instance.
Read more: Check out all of our ghost stories from Haunted Roads all around the world.
One of the most haunted sections of the Camino de Santiago is the road from Puente de la Reina to Jaca in Huesca, and it is also one of the more dangerous roads. This section of the route passes through the Pyrenees Mountains and is known for its rugged terrain and stunning scenery. However, it is also known for its spooky encounters, as many pilgrims have reported seeing ghostly figures and hearing strange noises along the way.
The Camino de Santiago: The pilgrimage of The Camino de Santiago goes through Huesca in Spain were there is said to be the ghost of a pilgrim on the road.
The Ghost of the Pilgrim
There is a legend that the ghost of a pilgrim that forever is walking the Camino de Santiago route and is passing by the N-240 from Puente de la Reina to Jaca in Huesca. He is seen carrying a staff and gourd as a canteen.
Dozens of drivers have claimed to have seen this lonesome pilgrim and according to many of the stories the ghost is said to throw himself at the oncoming cars at times before just vanishing.
The Haunted Path to Camino de Santiago
The Camino de Santiago is a fascinating and spooky place, full of legends and myths. The Pilgrim Ghost is perhaps the most famous haunting on the route, but there are many other spooky tales and encounters to be found along the way.
Whether you believe in ghosts or not, the Camino de Santiago is a place that will leave you with a sense of awe and wonder. So, put on your walking shoes and join us on a spine-chilling journey through the haunted Camino de Santiago. Who knows? You might just walk with a ghost.
D’Mello House is a place said to be one of the more haunted places in Goa, India. According to legend, a rivalry between two brothers over the property turned deadly and their ghosts are said to linger inside the once grand house.
Hidden amidst the tranquil hillside of Santimol, Raia in South Goa lies a structure shrouded in darkness and dread—the infamous D’Mello House. This abandoned mansion, once a symbol of familial pride, now stands as a haunting reminder of a tragic past.
Today the mansion has a haunted atmosphere with dark rooms and worn out walls. Both the inside and its exterior are covered by plants, slowly taking over the once grand building. The roof is soon caving in and windows and doors have been broken into countless times by people curious about the haunted story the building holds.
Read more: Check out all of the ghost stories from India
Legend has it that the house is cursed by the vengeful spirits of the D’Mello brothers, forever trapped in a cycle of torment and despair.
The Haunted D’Mello House: Facade of the supposed haunted house as it was in 2021, still abandoned and with the nature about to reclaim. // Source: Wikimedia
The Haunted D’Mello House
The tale dates back to a time when the once close D’Mello brothers during the Portuguese rule in Goa that lasted from 1505 to 1946, heirs to their ancestral property, succumbed to greed and envy.
Fueled by a relentless desire for power and possession, their sibling rivalry escalated into a violent confrontation one fateful night. In a fit of rage, one brother mercilessly ended the life of the other, staining the very foundation of the house with blood.
But the horrors did not end there. Within days of the gruesome incident, the second brother met a mysterious demise, leaving behind a legacy tainted by tragedy. The exact nature of his death has always remained a mystery. Since then, the D’Mello House has become a beacon of dread, its walls echoing with the anguished cries of the departed souls.
Some say that it was the killed brother who returned as a ghost to get revenge over his brother. And it is said that both of them are now haunting the mansion they quarreled and lost their lives over.
The Two Brothers Haunting the House
Local lore speaks of chilling encounters experienced by passers-by and nearby residents alike. Strange sounds pierce the silence of the night, sending shivers down the spine of anyone who dares to venture too close. Blood-curdling screams echo through the corridors, serving as a grim reminder of the house’s cursed existence.
Despite its picturesque surroundings, the D’Mello House remains a forsaken relic, abandoned by the living and feared by all who know its dark history. Its crumbling facade stands as a testament to the sins of the past, serving as a warning to those who dare to trespass upon its haunted grounds.
In the dead of night, when the moon casts an eerie glow upon the desolate landscape, the spirits of the D’Mello brothers are said to roam the halls of their former home. Trapped in a purgatorial realm between the living and the dead, they yearn for redemption, their tortured souls eternally bound to the cursed confines of the D’Mello House.
The Curse Set Upon the House
As well as the mansion being haunted, it is also said to be cursed. Those who have tried to live in the house have been plagued by the curse and no one has ever been able to live in it peacefully.
But was it all true? There have of course been a debate at what really happened inside of the house as there are no names or dates connected to the legend that could help shed light if there really was two brothers that went through it. The more strange debate about the D’Mello House is if or where the house is located at all.
Truth of the Mansion and its Haunting
A woman named Maria de Lourdes Bravo da Costa Rodrigues was writing an article for The Navhind Times. According to her, she knew the remaining D’Mello family. According to the legend, the house is supposed to be situated in Santimol in Raia, but was it really? According to her sister-in-law living in the village, there really wasn’t a house like that.
There was however an abandoned house that belonged to the De Melo family who lived in Raia until they moved to Panaji. This house even served as a wedding location in the 1970s and was still not abandoned as in the stories. But was it haunted already then, or did the haunted rumours first start after the family moved away?
In any case, most will refer to this house on Raia Santimol Road were the old mansion still called D’Mello House is slowly deteriorating. So listen closely, perhaps the sound of the screams from the brothers during the night can give us more insight to what really happened inside of this house.
Somebody asked for the cigars. We had talked long, and the conversation as beginning to languish; the tobacco smoke had got into the heavy curtains, he wine had got into those brains which were liable to become heavy, and it was already perfectly evident that, unless somebody did something to rouse our oppressed spirits, the meeting would soon come to its natural conclusion, and we, the guests, would speedily go home to bed, and most certainly to sleep. No one had said anything very remarkable; it may be that no one had anything very remarkable to say. Jones had given us every particular of his last hunting adventure in Yorkshire. Mr. Tompkins, of Boston, had explained at elaborate length those working principles, by the due and careful maintenance of which the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé Railroad not only extended its territory, increased its departmental influence, and transported live stock without starving them to death before the day of actual delivery, but, also, had for years succeeded in deceiving those passengers who bought its tickets into the fallacious belief that the corporation aforesaid was really able to transport human life without destroying it. Signor Tombola had endeavoured to persuade us, by arguments which we took no trouble to oppose, that the unity of his country in no way resembled the average modern torpedo, carefully planned, constructed with all the skill of the greatest European arsenals, but, when constructed, destined to be directed by feeble hands into a region where it must undoubtedly explode, unseen, unfeared, and unheard, into the illimitable wastes of political chaos.
It is unnecessary to go into further details. The conversation had assumed proportions which would have bored Prometheus on his rock, which would have driven Tantalus to distraction, and which would have impelled Ixion to seek relaxation in the simple but instructive dialogues of Herr Ollendorff, rather than submit to the greater evil of listening to our talk. We had sat at table for hours; we were bored, we were tired, and nobody showed signs of moving.
Somebody called for cigars. We all instinctively looked towards the speaker. Brisbane was a man of five-and-thirty years of age, and remarkable for those gifts which chiefly attract the attention of men. He was a strong man. The external proportions of his figure presented nothing extraordinary to the common eye, though his size was above the average. He was a little over six feet in height, and moderately broad in the shoulder; he did not appear to be stout, but, on the other hand, he was certainly not thin; his small head was supported by a strong and sinewy neck; his broad, muscular hands appeared to possess a peculiar skill in breaking walnuts without the assistance of the ordinary cracker, and, seeing him in profile, one could not help remarking the extraordinary breadth of his sleeves, and the unusual thickness of his chest. He was one of those men who are commonly spoken of among men as deceptive; that is to say, that though he looked exceedingly strong he was in reality very much stronger than he looked. Of his features I need say little. His head was small, his hair is thin, his eyes are blue, his nose is large, he has a small moustache, and a square jaw. Everybody knows Brisbane, and when he asked for a cigar everybody looked at him.
“It is a very singular thing,” said Brisbane.
Everybody stopped talking. Brisbane’s voice was not loud, but possessed a peculiar quality of penetrating general conversation, and cutting it like a knife. Everybody listened. Brisbane, perceiving that he had attracted their general attention, lit his cigar with great equanimity.
“It is very singular,” he continued, “that thing about ghosts. People are always asking whether anybody has seen a ghost. I have.”
“Bosh! What, you? You don’t mean to say so, Brisbane? Well, for a man of his intelligence!”
A chorus of exclamations greeted Brisbane’s remarkable statement. Everybody called for cigars, and Stubbs, the butler, suddenly appeared from the depths of nowhere with a fresh bottle of dry champagne. The situation was saved; Brisbane was going to tell a story.
I am an old sailor, said Brisbane, and as I have to cross the Atlantic pretty often, I have my favourites. Most men have their favourites. I have seen a man wait in a Broadway bar for three-quarters of an hour for a particular car which he liked. I believe the bar-keeper made at least one-third of his living by that man’s preference. I have a habit of waiting for certain ships when I am obliged to cross that duck-pond. It may be a prejudice, but I was never cheated out of a good passage but once in my life. I remember it very well; it was a warm morning in June, and the Custom House officials, who were hanging about waiting for a steamer already on her way up from the Quarantine, presented a peculiarly hazy and thoughtful appearance. I had not much luggage—I never have. I mingled with the crowd of passengers, porters, and officious individuals in blue coats and brass buttons, who seemed to spring up like mushrooms from the deck of a moored steamer to obtrude their unnecessary services upon the independent passenger. I have often noticed with a certain interest the spontaneous evolution of these fellows. They are not there when you arrive; five minutes after the pilot has called ‘Go ahead!’ they, or at least their blue coats and brass buttons, have disappeared from deck and gangway as completely as though they had been consigned to that locker which tradition ascribes to Davy Jones. But, at the moment of starting, they are there, clean shaved, blue coated, and ravenous for fees. I hastened on board. The Kamtschatka was one of my favourite ships. I saw was, because she emphatically no longer is. I cannot conceive of any inducement which could entice me to make another voyage in her. Yes, I know what you are going to say. She is uncommonly clean in the run aft, she has enough bluffing off in the bows to keep her dry, and the lower berths are most of them double. She has a lot of advantages, but I won’t cross in her again. Excuse the digression. I got on board. I hailed a steward, whose red nose and redder whiskers were equally familiar to me.
“One hundred and five, lower berth,” said I, in the businesslike tone peculiar to men who think no more of crossing the Atlantic than taking a whisky cocktail at down-town Delmonico’s.
The steward took my portmanteau, greatcoat, and rug. I shall never forget the expression on his face. Not that he turned pale. It is maintained by the most eminent divines that even miracles cannot change the course of nature. I have no hesitation in saying that he did not turn pale; but, from his expression, I judged that he was either about to shed tears, to sneeze, or to drop my portmanteau. As the latter contained two bottles of particularly fine old sherry presented to me for my voyage by my old friend Snigginson van Pickyns, I felt extremely nervous. But the steward did none of these things.
“Well, I’m d——d!” said he in a low voice, and led the way.
I supposed my Hermes, as he led me to the lower regions, had had a little grog, but I said nothing, and followed him. One hundred and five was on the port side, well aft. There was nothing remarkable about the state-room. The lower berth, like most of those upon the Kamtschatka, was double. There was plenty of room; there was the usual washing apparatus, calculated to convey an idea of luxury to the mind of a North American Indian; there were the usual inefficient racks of brown wood, in which it is more easy to hand a large-sized umbrella than the common tooth-brush of commerce. Upon the uninviting mattresses were carefully bolded together those blankets which a great modern humorist has aptly compared to cold buckwheat cakes. The question of towels was left entirely to the imagination. The glass decanters were filled with a transparent liquid faintly tinged with brown, but from which an odour less faint, but not more pleasing, ascended to the nostrils, like a far-off sea-sick reminiscence of oily machinery. Sad-coloured curtains half-closed the upper berth. The hazy June daylight shed a faint illumination upon the desolate little scene. Ugh! how I hate that state-room!
The steward deposited my traps and looked at me, as though he wanted to get away—probably in search of more passengers and more fees. It is always a good plan to start in favour with those functionaries, and I accordingly gave him certain coins there and then.
“I’ll try and make yer comfortable all I can,” he remarked, as he put the coins in his pocket. Nevertheless, there was a doubtful intonation in his voice which surprised me. Possibly his scale of fees had gone up, and he was not satisfied; but on the whole I was inclined to think that, as he himself would have expressed it, he was “the better for a glass”. I was wrong, however, and did the man injustice.
II
Nothing especially worthy of mention occurred during that day. We left the pier punctually, and it was very pleasant to be fairly under way, for the weather was warm and sultry, and the motion of the steamer produced a refreshing breeze. Everybody knows what the first day at sea is like. People pace the decks and stare at each other, and occasionally meet acquaintances whom they did not know to be on board. There is the usual uncertainty as to whether the food will be good, bad, or indifferent, until the first two meals have put the matter beyond a doubt; there is the usual uncertainty about the weather, until the ship is fairly off Fire Island. The tables are crowded at first, and then suddenly thinned. Pale-faced people spring from their seats and precipitate themselves towards the door, and each old sailor breathes more freely as his sea-sick neighbour rushes from his side, leaving him plenty of elbow-room and an unlimited command over the mustard.
One passage across the Atlantic is very much like another, and we who cross very often do not make the voyage for the sake of novelty. Whales and icebergs are indeed always objects of interest, but, after all, one whale is very much like another whale, and one rarely sees an iceberg at close quarters. To the majority of us the most delightful moment of the day on board an ocean steamer is when we have taken our last turn on deck, have smoked our last cigar, and having succeeded in tiring ourselves, feel at liberty to turn in with a clear conscience. On that first night of the voyage I felt particularly lazy, and went to bed in one hundred and five rather earlier than I usually do. As I turned in, I was amazed to see that I was to have a companion. A portmanteau, very like my own, lay in the opposite corner, and in the upper berth had been deposited a neatly-folded rug, with a stick and umbrella. I had hoped to be alone, and I was disappointed; but I wondered who my room-mate was to be, and I determined to have a look at him.
Before I had been long in bed he entered. He was, as far as I could see, a very tall man, very thin, very pale, with sandy hair and whiskers and colourless grey eyes. He had about him, I thought, an air of rather dubious fashion; the short of man you might see in Wall Street, without being able precisely to say what he was doing there—the sort of man who frequents the Café Anglais, who always seems to be alone and who drinks champagne; you might meet him on a racecourse, but he would never appear to be doing anything there either. A little over-dressed—a little odd. There are three or four of his kind on every ocean steamer. I made up my mind that I did not care to make his acquaintance, and I went to sleep saying to myself that I would study his habits in order to avoid him. If he rose early, I would rise late; if he went to bed late, I would go to bed early. I did not care to know him. If you once know people of that kind they are always turning up. Poor fellow! I need not have taken the trouble to come to so many decisions about him, for I never saw him again after that first night in one hundred and five.
I was sleeping soundly when I was suddenly waked by a loud noise. To judge from the sound, my room-mate must have sprung with a single leap from the upper berth to the floor. I heard him fumbling with the latch and bolt of the door, which opened almost immediately, and then I heard his footsteps as he ran at full speed down the passage, leaving the door open behind him. The ship was rolling a little, and I expected to hear him stumble or fall, but he ran as though he were running for his life. The door swung on its hinges with the motion of the vessel, and the sound annoyed me. I got up and shut it, and groped my way back to my berth in the darkness. I went to sleep again; but I have no idea how long I slept.
When I awoke it was still quite dark, but I felt a disagreeable sensation of cold, and it seemed to me that the air was damp. You know the peculiar smell of a cabin which has been wet with sea-water. I covered myself up as well as I could and dozed off again, framing complaints to be made the next day, and selecting the most powerful epithets in the language. I could hear my room-mate turn over in the upper berth. He had probably returned while I was asleep. Once I thought I heard him groan, and I argued that he was sea-sick. That is particularly unpleasant when one is below. Nevertheless I dozed off and slept till early daylight.
The ship was rolling heavily, much more than on the previous evening, and the grey light which came in through the porthole changed in tint with every movement according as the angle of the vessel’s side turned the glass seawards or skywards. It was very cold—unaccountably so for the month of June. I turned my head and looked at the porthole, and saw to my surprise that it was wide open and hooked back. I believe I swore audibly. Then I got up and shut it. As I turned back I glanced at the upper berth. The curtains were drawn close together; my companion had probably felt cold as well as I. It struck me that I had slept enough. The state-room was uncomfortable, though, strange to say, I could not smell the dampness which had annoyed me in the night. My room-mate was still asleep—excellent opportunity for avoiding him, so I dressed at once and went on deck. The day was warm and cloudy, with an oily smell on the water. It was seven o’clock as I came out—much later than I had imagined. I came across the doctor, who was taking his first sniff of the morning air. He was a young man from the West of Ireland—a tremendous fellow, with black hair and blue eyes, already inclined to be stout; he had a happy-go-lucky, healthy look about him which was rather attractive.
“Fine morning,” I remarked, by way of introduction.
“Well,” said he, eyeing me with an air of ready interest, “it’s a fine morning and it’s not a fine morning. I don’t think it’s much of a morning.”
“Well, no—it is not so very fine,” said I.
“It’s just what I call fuggly weather,” replied the doctor.
“It was very cold last night, I thought,” I remarked. “However, when I looked about, I found that the porthole was wide open. I had not noticed it when I went to bed. And the state-room was damp, too.”
“Damp!” said he. “Whereabouts are you?”
“One hundred and five——“
To my surprise the doctor started visibly, and stared at me.
“What is the matter?” I asked.
“Oh—nothing,” he answered; “only everybody has complained of that state-room for the last three trips.”
“I shall complain too,” I said. “It has certainly not been properly aired. It is a shame!”
“I don’t believe it can be helped,” answered the doctor. “I believe there is something—well, it is not my business to frighten passengers.”
“You need not be afraid of frightening me,” I replied. “I can stand any amount of damp. If I should get a bad cold I will come to you.”
I offered the doctor a cigar, which he took and examined very critically.
“It is not so much the damp,” he remarked. “However, I dare say you will get on very well. Have you a room-mate?”
“Yes; a deuce of a fellow, who bolts out in the middle of the night, and leaves the door open.”
Again the doctor glanced curiously at me. Then he lit the cigar and looked grave.
“Did he come back?” he asked presently.
“Yes. I was asleep, but I waked up, and heard him moving. Then I felt cold and went to sleep again. This morning I found the porthole open.”
“Look here,” said the doctor quietly, “I don’t care much for this ship. I don’t care a rap for her reputation. I tell you what I will do. I have a good-sized place up here. I will share it with you, though I don’t know you from Adam.”
I was very much surprised at the proposition. I could not imagine why he should take such a sudden interest in my welfare. However, his manner as he spoke of the ship was peculiar.
“You are very good, doctor,” I said. “But, really, I believe even now the cabin could be aired, or cleaned out, or something. Why do you not care for the ship?”
“We are not superstitious in our profession, sir,” replied the doctor, “but the sea makes people so. I don’t want to prejudice you, and I don’t want to frighten you, but if you will take my advice you will move in here. I would as soon see you overboard,” he added earnestly, “as know that you or any other man was to sleep in one hundred and five.”
“Good gracious! Why?” I asked.
“Just because on the last three trips the people who have slept there actually have gone overboard,” he answered gravely.
The intelligence was startling and exceedingly unpleasant, I confess. I looked hard at the doctor to see whether he was making game of me, but he looked perfectly serious. I thanked him warmly for his offer, but told him I intended to be the exception to the rule by which every one who slept in that particular state-room went overboard. He did not say much, but looked as grave as ever, and hinted that, before we got across, I should probably reconsider his proposal. In the course of time we went to breakfast, at which only an inconsiderable number of passengers assembled. I noticed that one or two of the officers who breakfasted with us looked grave. After breakfast I went into my state-room in order to get a book. The curtains of the upper berth were still closely drawn. Not a word was to be heard. My room-mate was probably still asleep.
As I came out I met the steward whose business it was to look after me. He whispered that the captain wanted to see me, and then scuttled away down the passage as if very anxious to avoid any questions. I went toward the captain’s cabin, and found him waiting for me.
“Sir,” said he, “I want to ask a favour of you.”
I answered that I would do anything to oblige him.
“Your room-mate had disappeared,” he said. “He is known to have turned in early last night. Did you notice anything extraordinary in his manner?”
The question coming, as it did, in exact confirmation of the fears the doctor had expressed half an hour earlier, staggered me.
“You don’t mean to say he has gone overboard?” I asked.
“I fear he has,” answered the captain.
“This is the most extraordinary thing——” I began.
“Why?” he asked.
“He is the fourth, then?” I exclaimed. In answer to another question from the captain, I explained, without mentioning the doctor, that I had heard the story concerning one hundred and five. He seemed very much annoyed at hearing that I knew of it. I told him what had occurred in the night.
“What you say,” he replied, “coincides almost exactly with what was told me by the room-mates of two of the other three. They bolt out of bed and run down the passage. Two of them were seen to go overboard by the watch; we stopped and lowered boats, but they were not found. Nobody, however, saw or heard the man who was lost last night—if he is really lost. The steward, who is a superstitious fellow, perhaps, and expected something to go wrong, went to look for him, this morning, and found his berth empty, but his clothes lying about, just as he had left them. The steward was the only man on board who knew him by sight, and he has been searching everywhere for him. He has disappeared! Now, sir, I want to beg you not to mention the circumstance to any of the passengers; I don’t want the ship to get a bad name, and nothing hangs about an ocean-goer like stories of suicides. You shall have your choice of any one of the officers’ cabins you like, including my own, for the rest of the passage. Is that a fair bargain?”
“Very,” said I; “and I am much obliged to you. But since I am alone, and have the state-room to myself, I would rather not move. If the steward will take out that unfortunate man’s things, I would as leave stay where I am. I will not say anything about the matter, and I think I can promise you that I will not follow my room-mate.”
The captain tried to dissuade me from my intention, but I preferred having a state-room alone to being the chum of any officer on board. I do not know whether I acted foolishly, but if I had taken his advice I should have had nothing more to tell. There would have remained the disagreeable coincidence of several suicides occurring among men who had slept in the same cabin, but that would have been all.
That was not the end of the matter, however, by any means. I obstinately made up my mind that I would not be disturbed by such tales, and I even went so far as to argue the question with the captain. There was something wrong about the state-room, I said. It was rather damp. The porthole had been left open last night. My room-mate might have been ill when he came on board, and he might have become delirious after he went to bed. He might even now be hiding somewhere on board, and might be found later. The place ought to be aired and the fastening on the port looked to. If the captain would give me leave, I would see that what I thought necessary were done immediately.
“Of course you have a right to stay where you are if you please,” he replied, rather petulantly; “but I wish you would turn out and let me lock the place up, and be done with it.”
I did not see it in the same light, and left the captain, after promising to be silent concerning the disappearance of my companion. The latter had had no acquaintances on board, and was not missed in the course of the day. Towards evening I met the doctor again, and he asked me whether I had changed my mind. I told him I had not.
“Then you will before long,” he said, very gravely.
III
We played whist in the evening, and I went to bed late. I will confess now that I felt a disagreeable sensation when I entered my state-room. I could not help thinking of the tall man I had seen on the previous night, who was now dead, drowned, tossing about in the long swell, two or three hundred miles astern. His face rose very distinctly before me as I undressed, and I even went so far as to draw back the curtains of the upper berth, as though to persuade myself that he was actually gone. I also bolted the door of the state-room. Suddenly I became aware that the porthole was open, and fastened back. This was more than I could stand. I hastily threw on my dressing-gown and went in search of Robert, the steward of my passage. I was very angry, I remember, and when I found him I dragged him roughly to the door of one hundred and five, and pushed him towards the open porthole.
“What the deuce do you mean, you scoundrel, by leaving that port open every night? Don’t you know it is against the regulations? Don’t you know that if the ship heeled and the water began to come in, ten men could not shut it? I will report you to the captain, you blackguard, for endangering the ship!”
I was exceedingly wroth. The man trembled and turned pale, and then began to shut the round glass plate with the heavy brass fittings.
“Why don’t you answer me?” I said roughly.
“If you please, sir,” faltered Robert, “there’s nobody on board as can keep this ‘ere port shut at night. You can try it yourself, sir. I ain’t a-going to stop hany longer on board o’ this vessel, sir; I ain’t, indeed. But if I was you, sir, I’d just clear out and go and sleep with the surgeon, or something, I would. Look ‘ere, sir, is that fastened what you may call securely, or not, sir? Try it, sir, see if it will move a hinch.”
I tried the port, and found it perfectly tight.
“Well, sir,” continued Robert triumphantly, “I wager my reputation as a A1 steward that in ‘arf an hour it will be open again; fastened back, too, sir, that’s the horful thing—fastened back!”
I examined the great screw and the looped nut that ran on it.
“If I find it open in the night, Robert, I will give you a sovereign. It is not possible. You may go.”
“Soverin’ did you say, sir? Very good, sir. Thank ye, sir. Good-night, sir. Pleasant reepose, sir, and all manner of hinchantin’ dreams, sir.”
Robert scuttled away, delighted at being released. Of course, I thought he was trying to account for his negligence by a silly story, intended to frighten me, and I disbelieved him. The consequence was that he got his sovereign, and I spent a very peculiarly unpleasant night.
I went to bed, and five minutes after I had rolled myself up in my blankets the inexorable Robert extinguished the light that burned steadily behind the ground-glass pane near the door. I lay quite still in the dark trying to go to sleep, but I soon found that impossible. It had been some satisfaction to be angry with the steward, and the diversion had banished that unpleasant sensation I had at first experienced when I thought of the drowned man who had been my chum; but I was no longer sleepy, and I lay awake for some time, occasionally glancing at the porthole, which I could just see from where I lay, and which, in the darkness, looked like a faintly-luminous soup-plate suspended in blackness. I believe I must have lain there for an hour, and, as I remember, I was just dozing into sleep when I was roused by a draught of cold air, and by distinctly feeling the spray of the sea blown upon my face. I started to my feet, and not having allowed in the dark for the motion of the ship, I was instantly thrown violently across the state-room upon the couch which was placed beneath the port-hole. I recovered myself immediately, however, and climbed upon my knees. The port-hole was again wide open and fastened back!
Now these things are facts. I was wide awake when I got up, and I should certainly have been waked by the fall had I still been dozing. Moreover, I bruised my elbows and knees badly, and the bruises were there on the following morning to testify to the fact, if I myself had doubted it. The porthole was wide open and fastened back—a thing so unaccountable that I remember very well feeling astonishment rather that fear when I discovered it. I at once closed the plate again, and screwed down the loop nut with all my strength. It was very dark in the state-room. I reflected that the port had certainly been opened within an hour after Robert had at first shut it in my presence, and I determined to watch it, and see whether it would open again. Those brass fittings are very heavy and by no means easy to move; I could not believe that the clamp had been turned by the shaking of the screw. I stood peering out through the thick glass at the alternate white and grey streaks of the sea that foamed beneath the ship’s side. I must have remained there a quarter of an hour.
Suddenly, as I stood, I distinctly heard something moving behind me in one of the berths, and a moment afterwards, just as I turned instinctively to look—though I could, of course, see nothing in the darkness—I heard a very faint groan. I sprang across the state-room, and tore the curtains of the upper berth aside, thrusting in my hands to discover if there were any one there. There was some one.
I remember that the sensation as I put my hands forward was as though I were plunging them into the air of a damp cellar, and from behind the curtains came a gust of wind that smelled horribly of stagnant sea-water. I laid hold of something that had the shape of a man’s arm, but was smooth, and wet, and icy cold. But suddenly, as I pulled, the creature sprang violently forward against me, a clammy oozy mass, as it seemed to me, heavy and wet, yet endowed with a sort of supernatural strength. I reeled across the state-room, and in an instant the door opened and the thing rushed out. I had not had time to be frightened, and quickly recovering myself, I sprang through the door and gave chase at the top of my speed, but I was too late. Ten yards before me I could see—I am sure I saw it—a dark shadow moving in the dimly lighted passage, quickly as the shadow of a fast horse thrown before a dog-cart by the lamp on a dark night. But in a moment it had disappeared, and I found myself holding on to the polished rail that ran along the bulkhead where the passage turned towards the companion. My hair stood on end, and the cold perspiration rolled down my face. I am not ashamed of it in the least: I was very badly frightened.
Still I doubted my senses, and pulled myself together. It was absurd, I thought. The Welsh rare-bit I had eaten had disagreed with me. I had been in a nightmare. I made my way back to my state-room, and entered it with an effort. The whole place smelled of stagnant sea-water, as it had when I had waked on the previous evening. It required my utmost strength to go in, and grope among my things for a box of wax lights. As I lighted a railway reading lantern which I always carry in case I want to read after the lamps are out, I perceived that the porthole was again open, and a sort of creeping horror began to take possession of me which I never felt before, nor wish to feel again. But I got a light and proceeded to examine the upper berth, expecting to find it drenched with sea-water.
But I was disappointed. The bed had been slept in, and the smell of the sea was strong; but the bedding was as dry as a bone. I fancied that Robert had not had the courage to make the bed after the accident of the previous night—it had all been a hedeous dream. I drew the curtains back as far as I could and examined the place very carefully. It was perfectly dry. But the porthole was open again. With a sort of dull bewilderment of horror I closed it and screwed it down, and thrusting my heavy stick through the brass loop, wrenched it with all my might, till the thick metal began to bend under the pressure. Then I hooked my reading lantern into the red velvet at the head of the couch, and sat down to recover my senses if I could. I sat there all night, unable to think of rest—hardly able to think at all. But the porthole remained closed, and I did not believe it would now open again without the application of a considerable force.
The morning dawned at last, and I dressed myself slowly, thinking over all that had happened in the night. It was a beautiful day and I went on deck, glad to get out into the early, pure sunshine, and to smell the breeze from the blue water, so different from the noisome, stagnant odour of my state-room. Instinctively I turned aft, towards the surgeon’s cabin. There he stood, with a pipe in his mouth, taking his morning airing precisely as on the preceding day.
“Good-morning,” said he quietly, but looking at me with evident curiosity.
“Doctor, you were quite right,” said I. “There is something wrong about that place.”
“I thought you would change your mind,” he answered, rather triumphantly. “You have had a bad night, eh? Shall I make you a pick-me-up? I have a capital recipe.”
“No, thanks,” I cried. “But I would like to tell you what happened.”
I then tried to explain as clearly as possible precisely what had occurred, not omitting to state that I had been scared as I had never been scared in my whole life before. I dwelt particularly on the phenomenon of the porthole, which was a fact to which I could testify, even if the rest had been an illusion. I had closed it twice in the night, and the second time I had actually bent the brass in wrenching it with my stick. I believe I insisted a good deal on this point.
“You seem to think I am likely to doubt the story,” said the doctor, smiling at my detailed account of the state of the porthole. “I do not doubt in the least. I renew my invitation to you. Bring your traps here, and take half my cabin.”
“Come and take half of mine for one night,” I said. “Help me to get at the bottom of this thing.”
“You will get to the bottom of something else if you try,” answered the doctor.
“What?” I asked.
“The bottom of the sea. I am going to leave this ship. It is not canny.”
“Then you will not help me to find out——“
“Not I,” said the doctor quickly. “It is my business to keep my wits about me—not to go fiddling about with ghosts and things.”
“Do you really believe it is a ghost?” I enquired, rather contemptuously. But as I spoke I remembered very well the horrible sensation of the supernatural which had got possession of me during the night. The doctor turned sharply on me——
“Have you any reasonable explanation of these things to offer?” he asked. “No; you have not. Well, you say you will find an explanation. I say that you won’t, sir, simply because there is not any.”
“But, my dear sir,” I retorted, “do you, a man of science, mean to tell me that such things cannot be explained?”
I do,” he answered stoutly. “And, if they could, I would not be concerned in the explanation.”
I did not care to spend another night alone in the state-room, and yet I was obstinately determined to get at the root of the disturbances. I do not believe there are many men who would have slept there alone, after passing two such nights. But I made up my mind to try it, if I could not get any one to share a watch with me. The doctor was evidently not inclined for such an experiment. He said he was a surgeon, and that in case any accident occurred on board he must be always in readiness. He could not afford to have his nerves unsettled. Perhaps he was quite right, but I am inclined to think that his precaution was prompted by his inclination. On enquiry, he informed me that there was no one on board who would be likely to join me in my investigations, and after a little more conversation I left him. A little later I met the captain, and told him my story. I said that, if no one would spend the night with me, I would ask leave to have the light burning all night, and would try it alone.
“Look here,” said he, “I will tell you what I will do. I will share your watch myself, and we will see what happens. It is my belief that we can find out between us. There may be some fellow skulking on board, who steals a passage by frightening the passengers. It is just possible that there may be something queer in the carpentering of that berth.”
I suggested taking the ship’s carpenter below and examining the place; but I was overjoyed at the captain’s offer to spend the night with me. He accordingly sent for the workman and ordered him to do anything I required. We went below at once. I had all the bedding cleared out of the upper berth, and we examined the place thoroughly to see if there was a board loose anywhere, or a panel which could be opened or pushed aside. We tried the planks everywhere, tapped the flooring, unscrewed the fittings of the lower berth and took it to pieces—in short, there was not a square inch of the state-room which was not searched and tested. Everything was in perfect order, and we put everything back in its place. As we were finishing our work, Robert came to the door and looked in.
“Well, sir—find anything, sir?” he asked, with a ghastly grin.
“You were right about the porthole, Robert,” I said, and I gave him the promised sovereign. The carpenter did his work silently and skilfully, following my directions. When he had done he spoke.
“I’m a plain man, sir,” he said. “But it’s my belief you had better just turn out your things, and let me run half a dozen four-inch screws through the door of this cabin. There’s no good never came o’ this cabin yet, sir, and that’s all about it. There’s been four lives lost out o’ here to my own remembrance, and that is four trips. Better give it up, sir—better give it up!”
“I will try it for one night more,” I said.
“Better give it up, sir—better give it up! It’s a precious bad job,” repeated the workman, putting his tools in his bag and leaving the cabin.
But my spirits had risen considerably at the prospect of having the captain’s company, and I made up my mind not to be prevented from going to the end of this strange business. I abstained from Welsh rare-bits and grog that evening, and did not even join in the customary game of whist. I wanted to be quite sure of my nerves, and my vanity made me anxious to make a good figure in the captain’s eyes.
IV
The captain was one of those splendidly tough and cheerful specimens of seafaring humanity whose combined courage, hardihood, and calmness in difficulty leads them naturally into high positions of trust. He was not the man to be led away by an idle tale, and the mere fact that he was willing to join me in the investigation was proof that he thought there was something seriously wrong, which could not be accounted for on ordinary theories, nor laughed down as a common superstition. To some extent, too, his reputation was at stake, as well as the reputation of the ship. It is no light thing to lose passengers overboard, and he knew it.
About ten o’clock that evening, as I was smoking a last cigar, he came up to me, and drew me aside from the beat of the other passengers who were patrolling the deck in the warm darkness.
“This is a serious matter, Mr. Brisbane,” he said. “We must make up our minds either way—to be disappointed or to have a pretty rough time of it. You see I cannot afford to laugh at the affair, and I will ask you to sign your name to a statement of whatever occurs. If nothing happens tonight we will try it again tomorrow and next day. Are you ready?”
So we went below, and entered the state-room. As we went in I could see Robert the steward, who stood a little further down the passage, watching us, with his usual grin, as though certain that something dreadful was about to happen. The captain closed the door behind us and bolted it.
“Supposing we put your portmanteau before the door,” he suggested. “One of us can sit on it. Nothing can get out then. Is the port screwed down?”
I found it as I had left it in the morning. Indeed, without using a lever, as I had done, no one could have opened it. I drew back the curtains of the upper berth so that I could see well into it. By the captain’s advice I lighted my reading lantern, and placed it so that it shone upon the white sheets above. He insisted upon sitting on the portmanteau, declaring that he wished to be able to swear that he had sat before the door.
Then he requested me to search the state-room thoroughly, an operation very soon accomplished, as it consisted merely in looking beneath the lower berth and under the couch below the porthole. The spaces were quite empty.
“It is impossible for any human being to get in,” I said, “or for any human being to open the port.”
“Very good,” said the captain calmly. “If we see anything now, it must be either imagination or something supernatural.”
I sat down on the edge of the lower berth.
“The first time it happened,” said the captain, crossing his legs and leaning back against the door, “was in March. The passenger who slept here, in the upper berth, turned out have been a lunatic—at all events, he was known to have been a little touched, and he had taken his passage without the knowledge of his friends. He rushed out in the middle of the night, and threw himself overboard, before the officer who had the watch could stop him. We stopped and lowered a boat; it was a quiet night, just before that heavy weather came on; but we could not find him. Of course his suicide was afterwards accounted for on the ground of his insanity.”
“I suppose that often happens?” I remarked, rather absently.
“Not often—no,” said the captain; “never before in my experience, though I have heard of it happening on board of other ships. Well, as I was saying, that occurred in March. On the very next trip—— What are you looking at?” he asked, stopping suddenly in his narration.
I believe I gave no answer. My eyes were riveted upon the porthole. It seemed to me that the brass loop-nut was beginning to turn very slowly upon the screw—so slowly, however, that I was not sure it moved at all. I watched it intently, fixing its position in my mind, and trying to ascertain whether it changed. Seeing where I was looking, the captain looked too.
“It moves!” he exclaimed, in a tone of conviction. “No, it does not,” he added, after a minute.
“If it were the jarring of the screw,” said I, “it would have opened during the day; but I found it this evening jammed tight as I left it this morning.”
I rose and tried the nut. It was certainly loosened, for by an effort I could move it with my hands.
“The queer thing,” said the captain, “is that the second man who was lost is supposed to have got through that very port. We had a terrible time over it. It was in the middle of the night, and the weather was very heavy; there was an alarm that one of the ports was open and the sea running in. I came below and found everything flooded, the water pouring in every time she rolled, and the whole port swinging from the top bolts—not the porthole in the middle. Well, we managed to shut it, but the water did some damage. Ever since that the place smells of sea-water from time to time. We supposed the passenger had thrown himself out, though the Lord only knows how he did it. The steward kept telling me that he cannot keep anything shut here. Upon my word—I can smell it now, cannot you?” he enquired, sniffing the air suspiciously.
“Yes—distinctly,” I said, and I shuddered as that same odour of stagnant sea-water grew stronger in the cabin. “Now, to smell like this, the place must be damp,” I continued, “and yet when I examined it with the carpenter this morning everything was perfectly dry. It is most extraordinary—hallo!”
My reading lantern, which had been placed in the upper berth, was suddenly extinguished. There was still a good deal of light from the pane of ground glass near the door, behind which loomed the regulation lamp. The ship rolled heavily, and the curtain of the upper berth swung far out into the state-room and back again. I rose quickly from my seat on the edge of the bed, and the captain at the same moment started to his feet with a loud cry of surprise. I had turned with the intention of taking down the lantern to examine it, when I heard his exclamation, and immediately afterwards his call for help. I sprang towards him. He was wrestling with all his might with the brass loop of the port. It seemed to turn against his hands in spite of all his efforts. I caught up my cane, a heavy oak stick I always used to carry, and thrust it through the ring and bore on it with all my strength. But the strong wood snapped suddenly and I fell upon the couch. When I rose again the port was wide open, and the captain was standing with his back against the door, pale to the lips.
“There is something in that berth!” he cried, in a strange voice, his eyes almost starting from his head. “Hold the door, while I look—it shall not escape us, whatever it is!”
But instead of taking his place, I sprang upon the lower bed, and seized something which lay in the upper berth.
It was something ghostly, horrible beyond words, and it moved in my grip. It was like the body of a man long drowned, and yet it moved, and had the strength of ten men living; but I gripped it with all my might—the slippery, oozy, horrible thing—the dead white eyes seemed to stare at me out of the dusk; the putrid odour of rank sea-water was about it, and its shiny hair hung in foul wet curls over its dead face. I wrestled with the dead thing; it thrust itself upon me and forced me back and nearly broke my arms; it wound its corpse’s arms about my neck, the living death, and overpowered me, so that I, at last, cried aloud and fell, and left my hold.
As I fell the thing sprang across me, and seemed to throw itself upon the captain. When I last saw him on his feet his face was white and his lips set. It seemed to me that he struck a violent blow at the dead being, and then he, too, fell forward upon his face, with an inarticulate cry of horror.
The thing paused an instant, seeming to hover over his prostrate body, and I could have screamed again for very fright, but I had no voice left. The thing vanished sudddenly, and it seemed to my disturbed senses that it made its exit through the open port, though how that was possible, considering the smallness of the aperture, is more than any one can tell. I lay a long time on the floor, and the captain lay beside me. At last I partially recovered my senses and moved, and instantly I knew that my arm was broken—the small bone of my left forearm near the wrist.
I got upon my feet somehow, and with my remaining hand I tried to raise the captain. He groaned and moved, and at last came to himself. He was not hurt, but he seemed badly stunned.
Well, do you want to hear any more? There is nothing more. That is the end of my story. The carpenter carried out his scheme of running half a dozen four-inch screws through the door of one hundred and five; and if ever you take a passage in the Kamtschatka, you may ask for a berth in that state-room. You will be told that it is engaged—yes—it is engaged by that dead thing.
I finished the trip in the surgeon’s cabin. He doctored my broken arm, and advised me not to “fiddle about with ghosts and things” any more. The captain was very silent, and never sailed again in that ship, though it is still running. And I will not sail in her either. It was a very disagreeable experience, and I was very badly frightened, which is a thing I do not like. That is all. That is how I saw a ghost—if it was a ghost. It was dead, anyhow.
In the small village Lonavala in Pune, there is a small hotel where the reviews claim it’s haunted. Although no backstories are given, guests complained so much about a room in particular the staff closed it off. Would you dare to check into the haunted Raj Kiran Hotel?
India, a land of diverse landscapes and cultures, is often associated with age-old tales of the supernatural, or dramatic events from colonial times. While many of these stories originate from places of great historic importance, there are exceptions and even seemingly ordinary buildings in small places can come with a haunted story.
Read more: Check out all of the ghost stories from India
One such exception is the Raj Kiran Hotel in Maharashtra, a petite establishment that used to be in the picturesque town of Lonavala in the Pune district with two floors. During monsoon season the weather is pleasant and green around the hill station and there are several hotels in Lonavala to accommodate this. Like the Raj Kiran hotel that used to be found just by the main street.
Used to, because the hotel looks like it is no longer in operation, and comparing the maps to Google maps, it looks like the entire building is gone as well in 2014. The story about it continues though, and even reviews on other hotels in Lonavala retell the haunted rumors that once belonged to this particular hotel.
Surprisingly, there is no known story or legend attached to the Raj Kiran Hotel that might explain the supernatural occurrences within its walls. Instead, it’s the guests who have ventured into this unassuming abode who share the hair-raising tales of their stay and ended up on more than one list of India’s most haunted.
Read more: Check out all of the Haunted Hotels around the world
Among the unsettling accounts, one room on the ground floor, situated next to the reception counter, emerges as the epicenter of paranormal activity. Many have reported experiencing unexplained phenomena within its confines, enough to leave them tossing and turning through sleepless nights.
The Hair-Raising Encounters at Raj Kiran Hotel
Source: Was it behind this reception the room was?
According to the rumors, the haunted room is a room in a corner behind the reception at the hotel. Numerous guests have reported a peculiar occurrence – their bed sheets being tugged off during the dead of night. It’s as if an invisible presence were pulling the sheets, leaving startled occupants in sheer disbelief.
For some, the night takes an eerie turn as they suddenly awaken to a surreal sight – a mysterious ray of blue light illuminating the area around their feet. The source of this uncanny radiance remains a perplexing mystery.
Perhaps the most unsettling encounter is the sighting of an indiscernible apparition that seems to float through the room’s darkness. Guests have recounted the unnerving experience of witnessing an inexplicable presence making its presence known in the dead of night.
In light of the inexplicable incidents that have unfolded within this room, it has earned a notorious reputation and even the reviews for it people claim it is haunted. As a result, hotel management has taken the extraordinary step of permanently locking this room. It is no longer available for rent, as the unsettling encounters have left guests with restless nights and enduring unease.
The Raj Kiran Hotel doesn’t boast historical significance or a well-documented ghostly legend, so it’s hard to pinpoint the background story for the potential haunting.
Where, what and who is behind the haunting the hotel in the lush green valleys remains a mystery.
Today the traces of Anemone Cave, otherwise known as the Devil Den or The Devil’s Oven, have almost been erased from the park. Dangerous because of the tide submerging the cave completely, stories about strange things happening around the cave have been told for centuries.
Hidden along the foggy shorelines of Mount Desert Island within Acadia National Park, a foreboding sea cave known as Anemone Cave, or otherwise called, The Devil’s Oven stands as a silent witness to centuries of mysteries and eerie legends.
Acadia National Park is a stunning natural reserve located primarily on Mount Desert Island, the largest offshore island outside of Maine, United States. Established in 1916, it encompasses over 49,000 acres of rugged coastline, lush forests, granite peaks, and pristine lakes.
Read More: Check out all of our ghost stories from USA
Acadia National Park is not only a haven for outdoor enthusiasts but also a place of profound natural beauty and ecological significance.
Taken off the Maps of Acadia National Park
The Haunted Devil’s Oven is located near DeGregoire Park, in Bar Harbor, Maine and it is said you have to make sure to be there at low tide to not be completely submerged under water.
Years ago the Anemone Cave was marked on the trail of the National Park’s maps. Today signs are removed and the name disappeared from the map and even the railings have been removed to deter people for seeking its slippery path, for a good reason, and only those with knowledge of its whereabouts or searching for it on the internet can find it.
It is said to be to protect the tiny lives of the anemones as well as hikers were often injured or trapped by the tide in the caves. There have also been at least one death in modern time. But although it was removed from the map, it is still there as the legend surrounding it.
Anemone Cave History
This hidden alcove has long been shrouded in tales of the supernatural, with whispers of a portal to the underworld echoing through the annals of Mount Desert Island history.
Anemone Cave got its name from the anemones, but that is only in recent years as it has been known as both the Devil’s Den and Cave of the Sea among other things. The origin of the ominous name, The Devil’s Oven is uncertain, but it is said that the cave itself looks like a skull and the paranormal stuff are said to happen both at high and low tide.
Even in contemporary times, The Devil’s Oven continues to evoke a sense of unease and spectral energy. Nighttime visitors have reported witnessing inexplicable lights gleaming and flashing from the depths of the Anemone Cave, casting an eerie glow along the coastal expanse.
Religious Sacrifices inside of the Cave
This is not only a modern phenomenon though, but all the way back to when European settlers came about and even further in Native American stories, something was amiss with the caves. Those who venture near during daylight hours speak of hearing haunting cries and strange chants carried by the ocean breeze.
There is a claim put forth in the book named Ghosts of Acadia, where the author Marcus Librizzi says that the cave was used by the Native Americans where they held terrible and grotesque rituals and sacrifices where they drowned people slowly by the tide according to legend.
A Warning to Visitors Seeking the Anemone Cave
For the intrepid souls seeking to unravel the mysteries of The Devil’s Oven, a cautionary note lingers. The sea cave is accessible only during the ebb of low tide, a precarious journey fraught with maritime challenges. Owing to the surge in drownings and perilous sea rescues, the National Park Service has removed all railings and signs leading to the Anemone Cave, emphasizing the need for caution and even experienced climbers have died.
As you contemplate the allure of The Devil’s Oven, consider not only the haunting rumors that enshroud its existence but also the inherent risks that accompany the quest for the supernatural. In the shadowy realm between legend and reality, Acadia National Park harbors secrets that beckon the curious yet cautionary tales that echo through time.
In the watery depths off the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland, it is said that the phantom island and The Lost City of Kilstuitheen appears every seven years. There are still legends that it will return for those that holds the key.
Between the picturesque towns of Lahinch and Spanish Point lies the Liscannor Bay. Its tranquil surface hints at the mysteries concealed beneath its waters, and one of its most intriguing enigmas is the phantom island and The Lost City of Kilstuitheen.
The coastline of County Clare has been shaped by nature’s fury over millennia. Ancient earthquakes and tidal waves have left their mark on this rugged terrain. In the bay’s vicinity, once-verdant forests and bogs have become submerged, and the dramatic events of centuries past split Mutton Island into three separate isles during the tsunami of approximately 800 AD.
Read More: Check out all of the ghost stories from Ireland
This could explain the legends of the lost city of Kilstuitheen. It is also called Kilstapheen, Kilstiffen or Cill Stuifin and is supposedly an ancient city that is now lost outside the coast. It is said that the city sank down into the ocean when the chieftain lost its golden key in a battle. According to the legend, the city will not return until the key is found.
The Cliffs of Moher: The cliffs are well known for its legends. In addition for the legends about the lost city, there are also legends about mermaids, witches, a corpse eating eel as well were the pagan deities took refuge when Christianity came to Ireland.
The Lost City of Kilstuitheen’s Forgotten Splendor
Long ago according to legend, the city of Kilstuitheen was a place of unparalleled magnificence and riches. Its skyline was adorned with golden turrets that graced castles and glistening spires that adorned churches. These structures were a testament to the prosperity of its inhabitants, particularly the Chieftain and his esteemed clan.
However, even the most prosperous of places can succumb to the capricious whims of fate. Kilstuitheen’s fortunes took a dire turn when defeat befell the Chieftain in a fierce battle. What followed was a calamity of epic proportions—an immense tidal wave surged forth, engulfing the island and all its inhabitants. The once-mighty Kilstuitheen lay buried beneath the turbulent waters, its glory swallowed by the relentless sea.
Read More: Check out all of the ghost stories on Haunted Islands
There is a legend telling how to find the island though. It used to be a key which opened the door that the chieftain had lost during the fateful battle. It was later believed to be entombed beneath a towering monolith on Mount Callan.
When the long-lost golden key is unearthed and returned to its rightful place, it is said that Kilstuitheen shall rise once more from the depths of the sea. The valiant Chieftain, now relegated to the annals of history, will reawaken to lead his people anew, and the island’s golden splendor will once again grace the surface.
Glimpses of a Submerged City
Over the centuries, fishermen have claimed to catch fleeting glimpses of The Lost City of Kilstuitheen’s submerged city beneath the restless waves of Liscannor Bay. Every seven years, the phantom island performs a tantalizing upsurge, just enough to be visible from the shores of Lahinch.
This is also the case with the mythical phantom island of Brasil said to be off the coast of Ireland as well.
However, this remarkable sighting comes with a dire warning: those who behold the lost island from the shore shall not live to witness its reemergence and will die before The Lost City of Kilstuitheen appears again.
The Mysteries Beneath the Waves
As we ponder the legends of Kilstuitheen and its submerged treasures, we are reminded that the sea has long been a capricious mistress, capable of concealing the most remarkable of secrets. In the heart of Liscannor Bay, The Lost City of Kilstuitheen’s lost splendor lies beneath the waves, its golden turrets and spires hidden, awaiting the return of the golden key that may one day resurrect its glory. The enigma of Kilstuitheen endures as a testament to the enduring mysteries of Ireland’s coastal landscapes, where legends and history are eternally intertwined.
May no ill dreams disturb my rest, Nor Powers of Darkness me molest. —Evening Hymn.
One of the few advantages that India has over England is a great Knowability. After five years’ service a man is directly or indirectly acquainted with the two or three hundred Civilians in his Province, all the Messes of ten or twelve Regiments and Batteries, and some fifteen hundred other people of the non-official caste. In ten years his knowledge should be doubled, and at the end of twenty he knows, or knows something about, every Englishman in the Empire, and may travel anywhere and everywhere without paying hotel-bills.
Globe-trotters who expect entertainment as a right, have, even within my memory, blunted this open-heartedness, but none the less to-day, if you belong to the Inner Circle and are neither a Bear nor a Black Sheep, all houses are open to you, and our small world is very, very kind and helpful.
Rickett of Kamartha stayed with Polder of Kumaon some fifteen years ago. He meant to stay two nights, but was knocked down by rheumatic fever, and for six weeks disorganized Polder’s establishment, stopped Polder’s work, and nearly died in Polder’s bedroom. Polder behaves as though he had been placed under eternal obligation by Rickett, and yearly sends the little Ricketts a box of presents and toys. It is the same everywhere. The men who do not take the trouble to conceal from you their opinion that you are an incompetent ass, and the women who blacken your character and misunderstand your wife’s amusements, will work themselves to the bone in your behalf if you fall sick or into serious trouble.
Heatherlegh, the Doctor, kept, in addition to his regular practice, a hospital on his private account—an arrangement of loose boxes for Incurables, his friend called it—but it was really a sort of fitting-up shed for craft that had been damaged by stress of weather. The weather in India is often sultry, and since the tale of bricks is always a fixed quantity, and the only liberty allowed is permission to work overtime and get no thanks, men occasionally break down and become as mixed as the metaphors in this sentence.
Heatherlegh is the dearest doctor that ever was, and his invariable prescription to all his patients is, “lie low, go slow, and keep cool.” He says that more men are killed by overwork than the importance of this world justifies. He maintains that overwork slew Pansay, who died under his hands about three years ago. He has, of course, the right to speak authoritatively, and he laughs at my theory that there was a crack in Pansay’s head and a little bit of the Dark World came through and pressed him to death. “Pansay went off the handle,” says Heatherlegh, “after the stimulus of long leave at Home. He may or he may not have behaved like a blackguard to Mrs. Keith-Wessington. My notion is that the work of the Katabundi Settlement ran him off his legs, and that he took to brooding and making much of an ordinary P. & O. flirtation. He certainly was engaged to Miss Mannering, and she certainly broke off the engagement. Then he took a feverish chill and all that nonsense about ghosts developed. Overwork started his illness, kept it alight, and killed him poor devil. Write him off to the System—one man to take the work of two and a half men.”
I do not believe this. I used to sit up with Pansay sometimes when Heatherlegh was called out to patients, and I happened to be within claim. The man would make me most unhappy by describing in a low, even voice, the procession that was always passing at the bottom of his bed. He had a sick man’s command of language. When he recovered I suggested that he should write out the whole affair from beginning to end, knowing that ink might assist him to ease his mind. When little boys have learned a new bad word they are never happy till they have chalked it up on a door. And this also is Literature.
He was in a high fever while he was writing, and the blood-and-thunder Magazine diction he adopted did not calm him. Two months afterward he was reported fit for duty, but, in spite of the fact that he was urgently needed to help an undermanned Commission stagger through a deficit, he preferred to die; vowing at the last that he was hag-ridden. I got his manuscript before he died, and this is his version of the affair, dated 1885:
My doctor tells me that I need rest and change of air. It is not improbable that I shall get both ere long—rest that neither the red-coated messenger nor the midday gun can break, and change of air far beyond that which any homeward-bound steamer can give me. In the meantime I am resolved to stay where I am; and, in flat defiance of my doctor’s orders, to take all the world into my confidence. You shall learn for yourselves the precise nature of my malady; and shall, too, judge for yourselves whether any man born of woman on this weary earth was ever so tormented as I.
Speaking now as a condemned criminal might speak ere the drop-bolts are drawn, my story, wild and hideously improbable as it may appear, demands at least attention. That it will ever receive credence I utterly disbelieve. Two months ago I should have scouted as mad or drunk the man who had dared tell me the like. Two months ago I was the happiest man in India. Today, from Peshawur to the sea, there is no one more wretched. My doctor and I are the only two who know this. His explanation is, that my brain, digestion, and eyesight are all slightly affected; giving rise to my frequent and persistent “delusions.” Delusions, indeed! I call him a fool; but he attends me still with the same unwearied smile, the same bland professional manner, the same neatly trimmed red whiskers, till I begin to suspect that I am an ungrateful, evil-tempered invalid. But you shall judge for your-selves.
Three years ago it was my fortune—my great misfortune—to sail from Gravesend to Bombay, on return from long leave, with one Agnes Keith-Wessington, wife of an officer on the Bombay side. It does not in the least concern you to know what manner of woman she was. Be content with the knowledge that, ere the voyage had ended, both she and I were desperately and unreasoningly in love with one another. Heaven knows that I can make the admission now without one particle of vanity. In matters of this sort there is always one who gives and another who accepts. From the first day of our ill-omened attachment, I was conscious that Agnes’s passion was a stronger, a more dominant, and—if I may use the expression—a purer sentiment than mine. Whether she recognized the fact then, I do not know. Afterward it was bitterly plain to both of us.
Arrived at Bombay in the spring of the year, we went our respective ways, to meet no more for the next three or four months, when my leave and her love took us both to Simla. There we spent the season together; and there my fire of straw burned itself out to a pitiful end with the closing year. I attempt no excuse. I make no apology. Mrs. Wessington had given up much for my sake, and was prepared to give up all. From my own lips, in August, 1882, she learned that I was sick of her presence, tired of her company, and weary of the sound of her voice. Ninety-nine women out of a hundred would have wearied of me as I wearied of them; seventy-five of that number would have promptly avenged themselves by active and obtrusive flirtation with other men. Mrs. Wessington was the hundredth. On her neither my openly expressed aversion nor the cutting brutalities with which I garnished our interviews had the least effect.
“Jack, darling!” was her one eternal cuckoo cry: “I’m sure it’s all a mistake—a hideous mistake; and we’ll be good friends again some day. Please forgive me, Jack, dear.”
I was the offender, and I knew it. That knowledge transformed my pity into passive endurance, and, eventually, into blind hate—the same instinct, I suppose, which prompts a man to savagely stamp on the spider he has but half killed. And with this hate in my bosom the season of 1882 came to an end.
Next year we met again at Simla—she with her monotonous face and timid attempts at reconciliation, and I with loathing of her in every fibre of my frame. Several times I could not avoid meeting her alone; and on each occasion her words were identically the same. Still the unreasoning wail that it was all a “mistake”; and still the hope of eventually “making friends.” I might have seen had I cared to look, that that hope only was keeping her alive. She grew more wan and thin month by month. You will agree with me, at least, that such conduct would have driven any one to despair. It was uncalled for; childish; unwomanly. I maintain that she was much to blame. And again, sometimes, in the black, fever-stricken night-watches, I have begun to think that I might have been a little kinder to her. But that really is a “delusion.” I could not have continued pretending to love her when I didn’t; could I? It would have been unfair to us both.
Last year we met again—on the same terms as before. The same weary appeal, and the same curt answers from my lips. At least I would make her see how wholly wrong and hopeless were her attempts at resuming the old relationship. As the season wore on, we fell apart—that is to say, she found it difficult to meet me, for I had other and more absorbing interests to attend to. When I think it over quietly in my sick-room, the season of 1884 seems a confused nightmare wherein light and shade were fantastically intermingled—my courtship of little Kitty Mannering; my hopes, doubts, and fears; our long rides together; my trembling avowal of attachment; her reply; and now and again a vision of a white face flitting by in the ‘rickshaw with the black and white liveries I once watched for so earnestly; the wave of Mrs. Wessington’s gloved hand; and, when she met me alone, which was but seldom, the irksome monotony of her appeal. I loved Kitty Mannering; honestly, heartily loved her, and with my love for her grew my hatred for Agnes. In August Kitty and I were engaged. The next day I met those accursed “magpie” jhampanies at the back of Jakko, and, moved by some passing sentiment of pity, stopped to tell Mrs. Wessington everything. She knew it already.
“So I hear you’re engaged, Jack dear.” Then, without a moment’s pause: “I’m sure it’s all a mistake—a hideous mistake. We shall be as good friends some day, Jack, as we ever were.”
My answer might have made even a man wince. It cut the dying woman before me like the blow of a whip. “Please forgive me, Jack; I didn’t mean to make you angry; but it’s true, it’s true!”
And Mrs. Wessington broke down completely. I turned away and left her to finish her journey in peace, feeling, but only for a moment or two, that I had been an unutterably mean hound. I looked back, and saw that she had turned her ‘rickshaw with the idea, I suppose, of overtaking me.
The scene and its surroundings were photographed on my memory. The rain-swept sky (we were at the end of the wet weather), the sodden, dingy pines, the muddy road, and the black powder-riven cliffs formed a gloomy background against which the black and white liveries of the jhampanies, the yellow-paneled ‘rickshaw and Mrs. Wessington’s down-bowed golden head stood out clearly. She was holding her handkerchief in her left hand and was leaning hack exhausted against the ‘rickshaw cushions. I turned my horse up a bypath near the Sanjowlie Reservoir and literally ran away. Once I fancied I heard a faint call of “Jack!” This may have been imagination. I never stopped to verify it. Ten minutes later I came across Kitty on horseback; and, in the delight of a long ride with her, forgot all about the interview.
A week later Mrs. Wessington died, and the inexpressible burden of her existence was removed from my life. I went Plainsward perfectly happy. Before three months were over I had forgotten all about her, except that at times the discovery of some of her old letters reminded me unpleasantly of our bygone relationship. By January I had disinterred what was left of our correspondence from among my scattered belongings and had burned it. At the beginning of April of this year, 1885, I was at Simla—semi-deserted Simla—once more, and was deep in lover’s talks and walks with Kitty. It was decided that we should be married at the end of June. You will understand, therefore, that, loving Kitty as I did, I am not saying too much when I pronounce myself to have been, at that time, the happiest man in India.
Fourteen delightful days passed almost before I noticed their flight. Then, aroused to the sense of what was proper among mortals circumstanced as we were, I pointed out to Kitty that an engagement ring was the outward and visible sign of her dignity as an engaged girl; and that she must forthwith come to Hamilton’s to be measured for one. Up to that moment, I give you my word, we had completely forgotten so trivial a matter. To Hamilton’s we accordingly went on the 15th of April, 1885. Remember that—whatever my doctor may say to the contrary—I was then in perfect health, enjoying a well-balanced mind and an absolute tranquil spirit. Kitty and I entered Hamilton’s shop together, and there, regardless of the order of affairs, I measured Kitty for the ring in the presence of the amused assistant. The ring was a sapphire with two diamonds. We then rode out down the slope that leads to the Combermere Bridge and Peliti’s shop.
While my Waler was cautiously feeling his way over the loose shale, and Kitty was laughing and chattering at my side—while all Simla, that is to say as much of it as had then come from the Plains, was grouped round the Reading-room and Peliti’s veranda,—I was aware that some one, apparently at a vast distance, was calling me by my Christian name. It struck me that I had heard the voice before, but when and where I could not at once determine. In the short space it took to cover the road between the path from Hamilton’s shop and the first plank of the Combermere Bridge I had thought over half a dozen people who might have committed such a solecism, and had eventually decided that it must have been singing in my ears. Immediately opposite Peliti’s shop my eye was arrested by the sight of four jhampanies in “magpie” livery, pulling a yellow-paneled, cheap, bazar ‘rickshaw. In a moment my mind flew back to the previous season and Mrs. Wessington with a sense of irritation and disgust. Was it not enough that the woman was dead and done with, without her black and white servitors reappearing to spoil the day’s happiness? Whoever employed them now I thought I would call upon, and ask as a personal favor to change her jhampanies’’ livery. I would hire the men myself, and, if necessary, buy their coats from off their backs. It is impossible to say here what a flood of undesirable memories their presence evoked.
“Kitty,” I cried, “there are poor Mrs. Wessington’s jhampanies turned up again! I wonder who has them now?”
Kitty had known Mrs. Wessington slightly last season, and had always been interested in the sickly woman.
“What? Where?” she asked. “I can’t see them anywhere.”
Even as she spoke her horse, swerving from a laden mule, threw himself directly in front of the advancing ‘rickshaw. I had scarcely time to utter a word of warning when, to my unutterable horror, horse and rider passed through men and carriage as if they had been thin air.
“What’s the matter?” cried Kitty; “what made you call out so foolishly, Jack? If I am engaged I don’t want all creation to know about it. There was lots of space between the mule and the veranda; and, if you think I can’t ride—There!”
Whereupon wilful Kitty set off, her dainty little head in the air, at a hand-gallop in the direction of the Bandstand; fully expecting, as she herself afterward told me, that I should follow her. What was the matter? Nothing indeed. Either that I was mad or drunk, or that Simla was haunted with devils. I reined in my impatient cob, and turned round. The ‘rickshaw had turned too, and now stood immediately facing me, near the left railing of the Combermere Bridge.
“Jack! Jack, darling!” (There was no mistake about the words this time: they rang through my brain as if they had been shouted in my ear.) “It’s some hideous mistake, I’m sure. Please forgive me, Jack, and let’s be friends again.”
The ‘rickshaw-hood had fallen back, and inside, as I hope and pray daily for the death I dread by night, sat Mrs. Keith-Wessington, handkerchief in hand, and golden head bowed on her breast.
How long I stared motionless I do not know. Finally, I was aroused by my syce taking the Waler’s bridle and asking whether I was ill. From the horrible to the commonplace is but a step. I tumbled off my horse and dashed, half fainting, into Peliti’s for a glass of cherry-brandy. There two or three couples were gathered round the coffee-tables discussing the gossip of the day. Their trivialities were more comforting to me just then than the consolations of religion could have been. I plunged into the midst of the conversation at once; chatted, laughed, and jested with a face (when I caught a glimpse of it in a mirror) as white and drawn as that of a corpse. Three or four men noticed my condition; and, evidently setting it down to the results of over-many pegs, charitably endeavoured to draw me apart from the rest of the loungers. But I refused to be led away. I wanted the company of my kind—as a child rushes into the midst of the dinner-party after a fright in the dark. I must have talked for about ten minutes or so, though it seemed an eternity to me, when I heard Kitty’s clear voice outside inquiring for me. In another minute she had entered the shop, prepared to roundly upbraid me for failing so signally in my duties. Something in my face stopped her.
“Why, Jack,” she cried, “what have you been doing? What has happened? Are you ill?” Thus driven into a direct lie, I said that the sun had been a little too much for me. It was close upon five o’clock of a cloudy April afternoon, and the sun had been hidden all day. I saw my mistake as soon as the words were out of my mouth: attempted to recover it; blundered hopelessly and followed Kitty in a regal rage, out of doors, amid the smiles of my acquaintances. I made some excuse (I have forgotten what) on the score of my feeling faint; and cantered away to my hotel, leaving Kitty to finish the ride by herself.
In my room I sat down and tried calmly to reason out the matter. Here was I, Theobald Jack Pansay, a well-educated Bengal Civilian in the year of grace, 1885, presumably sane, certainly healthy, driven in terror from my sweetheart’s side by the apparition of a woman who had been dead and buried eight months ago. These were facts that I could not blink. Nothing was further from my thought than any memory of Mrs. Wessington when Kitty and I left Hamilton’s shop. Nothing was more utterly commonplace than the stretch of wall opposite Peliti’s. It was broad daylight. The road was full of people; and yet here, look you, in defiance of every law of probability, in direct outrage of Nature’s ordinance, there had appeared to me a face from the grave.
Kitty’s Arab had gone through the ‘rickshaw: so that my first hope that some woman marvelously like Mrs. Wessington had hired the carriage and the coolies with their old livery was lost. Again and again I went round this treadmill of thought; and again and again gave up baffled and in despair. The voice was as inexplicable as the apparition. I had originally some wild notion of confiding it all to Kitty; of begging her to marry me at once; and in her arms defying the ghostly occupant of the ‘rickshaw. “After all,” I argued, “the presence of the ‘rickshaw is in itself enough to prove the existence of a spectral illusion. One may see ghosts of men and women, but surely never of coolies and carriages. The whole thing is absurd. Fancy the ghost of a hillman!”
Next morning I sent a penitent note to Kitty, imploring her to overlook my strange conduct of the previous afternoon. My Divinity was still very wroth, and a personal apology was necessary. I explained, with a fluency born of night-long pondering over a falsehood, that I had been attacked with sudden palpitation of the heart—the result of indigestion. This eminently practical solution had its effect; and Kitty and I rode out that afternoon with the shadow of my first lie dividing us.
Nothing would please her save a canter round Jakko. With my nerves still unstrung from the previous night I feebly protested against the notion, suggesting Observatory Hill, Jutogh, the Boileaugunge road—anything rather than the Jakko round. Kitty was angry and a little hurt: so I yielded from fear of provoking further misunderstanding, and we set out together toward Chota Simla. We walked a greater part of the way, and, according to our custom, cantered from a mile or so below the Convent to the stretch of level road by the Sanjowlie Reservoir. The wretched horses appeared to fly, and my heart beat quicker and quicker as we neared the crest of the ascent. My mind had been full of Mrs. Wessington all the afternoon; and every inch of the Jakko road bore witness to our oldtime walks and talks. The bowlders were full of it; the pines sang it aloud overhead; the rain-fed torrents giggled and chuckled unseen over the shameful story; and the wind in my ears chanted the iniquity aloud.
As a fitting climax, in the middle of the level men call the Ladies’ Mile the Horror was awaiting me. No other ‘rickshaw was in sight—only the four black and white jhampanies, the yellow-paneled carriage, and the golden head of the woman within—all apparently just as I had left them eight months and one fortnight ago! For an instant I fancied that Kitty must see what I saw—we were so marvelously sympathetic in all things. Her next words undeceived me—“Not a soul in sight! Come along, Jack, and I’ll race you to the Reservoir buildings!” Her wiry little Arab was off like a bird, my Waler following close behind, and in this order we dashed under the cliffs. Half a minute brought us within fifty yards of the ‘rickshaw. I pulled my Waler and fell back a little. The ‘rickshaw was directly in the middle of the road; and once more the Arab passed through it, my horse following. “Jack! Jack dear! Please forgive me,” rang with a wail in my ears, and, after an interval:—“It’s a mistake, a hideous mistake!”
I spurred my horse like a man possessed. When I turned my head at the Reservoir works, the black and white liveries were still waiting—patiently waiting—under the grey hillside, and the wind brought me a mocking echo of the words I had just heard. Kitty bantered me a good deal on my silence throughout the remainder of the ride. I had been talking up till then wildly and at random. To save my life I could not speak afterward naturally, and from Sanjowlie to the Church wisely held my tongue.
I was to dine with the Mannerings that night, and had barely time to canter home to dress. On the road to Elysium Hill I overheard two men talking together in the dusk.—“It’s a curious thing,” said one, “how completely all trace of it disappeared. You know my wife was insanely fond of the woman (‘never could see anything in her myself), and wanted me to pick up her old ‘rickshaw and coolies if they were to be got for love or money. Morbid sort of fancy I call it; but I’ve got to do what the Memsahib tells me. Would you believe that the man she hired it from tells me that all four of the men—they were brothers—died of cholera on the way to Hardwar, poor devils, and the ‘rickshaw has been broken up by the man himself. ‘Told me he never used a dead Memsahib’s ‘rickshaw. ‘Spoiled his luck. Queer notion, wasn’t it? Fancy poor little Mrs. Wessington spoiling any one’s luck except her own!” I laughed aloud at this point; and my laugh jarred on me as I uttered it. So there were ghosts of ‘rickshaws after all, and ghostly employments in the other world! How much did Mrs. Wessington give her men? What were their hours? Where did they go?
And for visible answer to my last question I saw the infernal Thing blocking my path in the twilight. The dead travel fast, and by short cuts unknown to ordinary coolies. I laughed aloud a second time and checked my laughter suddenly, for I was afraid I was going mad. Mad to a certain extent I must have been, for I recollect that I reined in my horse at the head of the ‘rickshaw, and politely wished Mrs. Wessington “Good-evening.” Her answer was one I knew only too well. I listened to the end; and replied that I had heard it all before, but should be delighted if she had anything further to say. Some malignant devil stronger than I must have entered into me that evening, for I have a dim recollection of talking the commonplaces of the day for five minutes to the Thing in front of me.
“Mad as a hatter, poor devil—or drunk. Max, try and get him to come home.”
Surely that was not Mrs. Wessington’s voice! The two men had overheard me speaking to the empty air, and had returned to look after me. They were very kind and considerate, and from their words evidently gathered that I was extremely drunk. I thanked them confusedly and cantered away to my hotel, there changed, and arrived at the Mannerings’ ten minutes late. I pleaded the darkness of the night as an excuse; was rebuked by Kitty for my unlover-like tardiness; and sat down.
The conversation had already become general; and under cover of it, I was addressing some tender small talk to my sweetheart when I was aware that at the further end of the table a short red-whiskered man was describing, with much broidery, his encounter with a mad unknown that evening.
A few sentences convinced me that he was repeating the incident of half an hour ago. In the middle of the story he looked round for applause, as professional story-tellers do, caught my eye, and straightway collapsed. There was a moment’s awkward silence, and the red-whiskered man muttered something to the effect that he had “forgotten the rest,” thereby sacrificing a reputation as a good story-teller which he had built up for six seasons past. I blessed him from the bottom of my heart, and—went on with my fish.
In the fulness of time that dinner came to an end; and with genuine regret I tore myself away from Kitty—as certain as I was of my own existence that It would be waiting for me outside the door. The red-whiskered man, who had been introduced to me as Doctor Heatherlegh, of Simla, volunteered to bear me company as far as our roads lay together. I accepted his offer with gratitude.
My instinct had not deceived me. It lay in readiness in the Mall, and, in what seemed devilish mockery of our ways, with a lighted head-lamp. The red-whiskered man went to the point at once, in a manner that showed he had been thinking over it all dinner time.
“I say, Pansay, what the deuce was the matter with you this evening on the Elysium road?” The suddenness of the question wrenched an answer from me before I was aware.
“That!” said I, pointing to It.
“That may be either D. T. or Eyes for aught I know. Now you don’t liquor. I saw as much at dinner, so it can’t be D. T. There’s nothing whatever where you’re pointing, though you’re sweating and trembling with fright like a scared pony. Therefore, I conclude that it’s Eyes. And I ought to understand all about them. Come along home with me. I’m on the Blessington lower road.”
To my intense delight the ‘rickshaw instead of waiting for us kept about twenty yards ahead—and this, too whether we walked, trotted, or cantered. In the course of that long night ride I had told my companion almost as much as I have told you here.
“Well, you’ve spoiled one of the best tales I’ve ever laid tongue to,” said he, “but I’ll forgive you for the sake of what you’ve gone through. Now come home and do what I tell you; and when I’ve cured you, young man, let this be a lesson to you to steer clear of women and indigestible food till the day of your death.”
The ‘rickshaw kept steady in front; and my red-whiskered friend seemed to derive great pleasure from my account of its exact whereabouts.
“Eyes, Pansay—all Eyes, Brain, and Stomach. And the greatest of these three is Stomach. You’ve too much conceited Brain, too little Stomach, and thoroughly unhealthy Eyes. Get your Stomach straight and the rest follows. And all that’s French for a liver pill. I’ll take sole medical charge of you from this hour! for you’re too interesting a phenomenon to be passed over.”
By this time we were deep in the shadow of the Blessington lower road and the ‘rickshaw came to a dead stop under a pine-clad, over-hanging shale cliff. Instinctively I halted too, giving my reason. Heatherlegh rapped out an oath.
“Now, if you think I’m going to spend a cold night on the hillside for the sake of a stomach-cum-Brain-cum-Eye illusion…. Lord, ha’ mercy! What’s that?”
There was a muffled report, a blinding smother of dust just in front of us, a crack, the noise of rent boughs, and about ten yards of the cliff-side—pines, undergrowth, and all—slid down into the road below, completely blocking it up. The uprooted trees swayed and tottered for a moment like drunken giants in the gloom, and then fell prone among their fellows with a thunderous crash. Our two horses stood motionless and sweating with fear. As soon as the rattle of falling earth and stone had subsided, my companion muttered:—“Man, if we’d gone forward we should have been ten feet deep in our graves by now. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth.’… Come home, Pansay, and thank God. I want a peg badly.”
We retraced our way over the Church Ridge, and I arrived at Dr. Heatherlegh’s house shortly after midnight.
His attempts toward my cure commenced almost immediately, and for a week I never left his sight. Many a time in the course of that week did I bless the good-fortune which had thrown me in contact with Simla’s best and kindest doctor. Day by day my spirits grew lighter and more equable. Day by day, too, I became more and more inclined to fall in with Heatherlegh’s “spectral illusion” theory, implicating eyes, brain, and stomach. I wrote to Kitty, telling her that a slight sprain caused by a fall from my horse kept me indoors for a few days; and that I should be recovered before she had time to regret my absence.
Heatherlegh’s treatment was simple to a degree. It consisted of liver pills, cold-water baths, and strong exercise, taken in the dusk or at early dawn—for, as he sagely observed: “A man with a sprained ankle doesn’t walk a dozen miles a day, and your young woman might be wondering if she saw you.”
At the end of the week, after much examination of pupil and pulse, and strict injunctions as to diet and pedestrianism, Heatherlegh dismissed me as brusquely as he had taken charge of me. Here is his parting benediction: “Man, I can certify to your mental cure, and that’s as much as to say I’ve cured most of your bodily ailments. Now, get your traps out of this as soon as you can; and be off to make love to Miss Kitty.”
I was endeavoring to express my thanks for his kindness. He cut me short.
“Don’t think I did this because I like you. I gather that you’ve behaved like a blackguard all through. But, all the same, you’re a phenomenon, and as queer a phenomenon as you are a blackguard. No!”—checking me a second time—“not a rupee, please. Go out and see if you can find the eyes-brain-and-stomach business again. I’ll give you a lakh for each time you see it.”
Half an hour later I was in the Mannerings’ drawing-room with Kitty—drunk with the intoxication of present happiness and the fore-knowledge that I should never more be troubled with Its hideous presence. Strong in the sense of my new-found security, I proposed a ride at once; and, by preference, a canter round Jakko.
Never had I felt so well, so overladen with vitality and mere animal spirits, as I did on the afternoon of the 30th of April. Kitty was delighted at the change in my appearance, and complimented me on it in her delightfully frank and outspoken manner. We left the Mannerings’ house together, laughing and talking, and cantered along the Chota Simla road as of old.
I was in haste to reach the Sanjowlie Reservoir and there make my assurance doubly sure. The horses did their best, but seemed all too slow to my impatient mind. Kitty was astonished at my boisterousness. “Why, Jack!” she cried at last, “you are behaving like a child. What are you doing?”
We were just below the Convent, and from sheer wantonness I was making my Waler plunge and curvet across the road as I tickled it with the loop of my riding-whip.
“Doing?” I answered; “nothing, dear. That’s just it. If you’d been doing nothing for a week except lie up, you’d be as riotous as I.”
“‘Singing and murmuring in your feastful mirth, Joying to feel yourself alive; Lord over Nature, Lord of the visible Earth, Lord of the senses five.’”
My quotation was hardly out of my lips before we had rounded the corner above the Convent; and a few yards further on could see across to Sanjowlie. In the centre of the level road stood the black and white liveries, the yellow-paneled ‘rickshaw, and Mrs. Keith-Wessington. I pulled up, looked, rubbed my eyes, and, I believe must have said something. The next thing I knew was that I was lying face downward on the road with Kitty kneeling above me in tears.
“Has it gone, child!” I gasped. Kitty only wept more bitterly.
“Has what gone, Jack dear? what does it all mean? There must be a mistake somewhere, Jack. A hideous mistake.” Her last words brought me to my feet—mad—raving for the time being.
“Yes, there is a mistake somewhere,” I repeated, “a hideous mistake. Come and look at It.”
I have an indistinct idea that I dragged Kitty by the wrist along the road up to where It stood, and implored her for pity’s sake to speak to It; to tell It that we were betrothed; that neither Death nor Hell could break the tie between us; and Kitty only knows how much more to the same effect. Now and again I appealed passionately to the Terror in the ‘rickshaw to bear witness to all I had said, and to release me from a torture that was killing me. As I talked I suppose I must have told Kitty of my old relations with Mrs. Wessington, for I saw her listen intently with white face and blazing eyes.
“Thank you, Mr. Pansay,” she said, “that’s quite enough. Syce ghora láo.”
The syces, impassive as Orientals always are, had come up with the recaptured horses; and as Kitty sprang into her saddle I caught hold of the bridle, entreating her to hear me out and forgive. My answer was the cut of her riding-whip across my face from mouth to eye, and a word or two of farewell that even now I cannot write down. So I judged, and judged rightly, that Kitty knew all; and I staggered back to the side of the ‘rickshaw. My face was cut and bleeding, and the blow of the riding-whip had raised a livid blue wheal on it. I had no self-respect. Just then, Heatherlegh, who must have been following Kitty and me at a distance, cantered up.
“Doctor,” I said, pointing to my face, “here’s Miss Mannering’s signature to my order of dismissal and… I’ll thank you for that lakh as soon as convenient.”
Heatherlegh’s face, even in my abject misery, moved me to laughter.
“I’ll stake my professional reputation”—he began.
“Don’t be a fool,” I whispered. “I’ve lost my life’s happiness and you’d better take me home.”
As I spoke the ‘rickshaw was gone. Then I lost all knowledge of what was passing. The crest of Jakko seemed to heave and roll like the crest of a cloud and fall in upon me.
Seven days later (on the 7th of May, that is to say) I was aware that I was lying in Heatherlegh’s room as weak as a little child. Heatherlegh was watching me intently from behind the papers on his writing-table. His first words were not encouraging; but I was too far spent to be much moved by them.
“Here’s Miss Kitty has sent back your letters. You corresponded a good deal, you young people. Here’s a packet that looks like a ring, and a cheerful sort of a note from Mannering Papa, which I’ve taken the liberty of reading and burning. The old gentleman’s not pleased with you.”
“And Kitty?” I asked, dully.
“Rather more drawn than her father from what she says. By the same token you must have been letting out any number of queer reminiscences just before I met you. ‘Says that a man who would have behaved to a woman as you did to Mrs. Wessington ought to kill himself out of sheer pity for his kind. She’s a hot-headed little virago, your mash. ‘Will have it too that you were suffering from D. T. when that row on the Jakko road turned up. ‘Says she’ll die before she ever speaks to you again.”
I groaned and turned over to the other side.
“Now you’ve got your choice, my friend. This engagement has to be broken off; and the Mannerings don’t want to be too hard on you. Was it broken through D. T. or epileptic fits? Sorry I can’t offer you a better exchange unless you’d prefer hereditary insanity. Say the word and I’ll tell ‘em it’s fits. All Simla knows about that scene on the Ladies’ Mile. Come! I’ll give you five minutes to think over it.”
During those five minutes I believe that I explored thoroughly the lowest circles of the Inferno which it is permitted man to tread on earth. And at the same time I myself was watching myself faltering through the dark labyrinths of doubt, misery, and utter despair. I wondered, as Heatherlegh in his chair might have wondered, which dreadful alternative I should adopt. Presently I heard myself answering in a voice that I hardly recognized,—
“They’re confoundedly particular about morality in these parts. Give ‘em fits, Heatherlegh, and my love. Now let me sleep a bit longer.”
Then my two selves joined, and it was only I (half crazed, devil-driven I) that tossed in my bed, tracing step by step the history of the past month.
“But I am in Simla,” I kept repeating to myself. “I, Jack Pansay, am in Simla and there are no ghosts here. It’s unreasonable of that woman to pretend there are. Why couldn’t Agnes have left me alone? I never did her any harm. It might just as well have been me as Agnes. Only I’d never have come hack on purpose to kill her. Why can’t I be left alone—left alone and happy?”
It was high noon when I first awoke: and the sun was low in the sky before I slept—slept as the tortured criminal sleeps on his rack, too worn to feel further pain.
Next day I could not leave my bed. Heatherlegh told me in the morning that he had received an answer from Mr. Mannering, and that, thanks to his (Heatherlegh’s) friendly offices, the story of my affliction had traveled through the length and breadth of Simla, where I was on all sides much pitied.
“And that’s rather more than you deserve,” he concluded, pleasantly, “though the Lord knows you’ve been going through a pretty severe mill. Never mind; we’ll cure you yet, you perverse phenomenon.”
I declined firmly to be cured. “You’ve been much too good to me already, old man,” said I; “but I don’t think I need trouble you further.”
In my heart I knew that nothing Heatherlegh could do would lighten the burden that had been laid upon me.
With that knowledge came also a sense of hopeless, impotent rebellion against the unreasonableness of it all. There were scores of men no better than I whose punishments had at least been reserved for another world; and I felt that it was bitterly, cruelly unfair that I alone should have been singled out for so hideous a fate. This mood would in time give place to another where it seemed that the ‘rickshaw and I were the only realities in a world of shadows; that Kitty was a ghost; that Mannering, Heatherlegh, and all the other men and women I knew were all ghosts; and the great, grey hills themselves but vain shadows devised to torture me. From mood to mood I tossed backward and forward for seven weary days; my body growing daily stronger and stronger, until the bedroom looking-glass told me that I had returned to everyday life, and was as other men once more. Curiously enough my face showed no signs of the struggle I had gone through. It was pale indeed, but as expression-less and commonplace as ever. I had expected some permanent alteration—visible evidence of the disease that was eating me away. I found nothing.
On the 15th of May, I left Heatherlegh’s house at eleven o’clock in the morning; and the instinct of the bachelor drove me to the Club. There I found that every man knew my story as told by Heatherlegh, and was, in clumsy fashion, abnormally kind and attentive. Nevertheless I recognized that for the rest of my natural life I should be among but not of my fellows; and I envied very bitterly indeed the laughing coolies on the Mall below. I lunched at the Club, and at four o’clock wandered aimlessly down the Mall in the vague hope of meeting Kitty. Close to the Band-stand the black and white liveries joined me; and I heard Mrs. Wessington’s old appeal at my side. I had been expecting this ever since I came out; and was only surprised at her delay. The phantom ‘rickshaw and I went side by side along the Chota Simla road in silence. Close to the bazar, Kitty and a man on horseback overtook and passed us. For any sign she gave I might have been a dog in the road. She did not even pay me the compliment of quickening her pace; though the rainy afternoon had served for an excuse.
So Kitty and her companion, and I and my ghostly Light-o’-Love, crept round Jakko in couples. The road was streaming with water; the pines dripped like roof-pipes on the rocks below, and the air was full of fine, driving rain. Two or three times I found myself saying to myself almost aloud: “I’m Jack Pansay on leave at Simla—at Simla! Everyday, ordinary Simla. I mustn’t forget that—I mustn’t forget that.” Then I would try to recollect some of the gossip I had heard at the Club: the prices of So-and-So’s horses—anything, in fact, that related to the workaday Anglo-Indian world I knew so well. I even repeated the multiplication-table rapidly to myself, to make quite sure that I was not taking leave of my senses. It gave me much comfort; and must have prevented my hearing Mrs. Wessington for a time.
Once more I wearily climbed the Convent slope and entered the level road. Here Kitty and the man started off at a canter, and I was left alone with Mrs. Wessington. “Agnes,” said I, “will you put back your hood and tell me what it all means?” The hood dropped noiselessly, and I was face to face with my dead and buried mistress. She was wearing the dress in which I had last seen her alive; carried the same tiny handkerchief in her right hand; and the same cardcase in her left. (A woman eight months dead with a cardcase!) I had to pin myself down to the multiplication-table, and to set both hands on the stone parapet of the road, to assure myself that that at least was real.
“Agnes,” I repeated, “for pity’s sake tell me what it all means.” Mrs. Wessington leaned forward, with that odd, quick turn of the head I used to know so well, and spoke.
If my story had not already so madly overleaped the bounds of all human belief I should apologize to you now. As I know that no one—no, not even Kitty, for whom it is written as some sort of justification of my conduct—will believe me, I will go on. Mrs. Wessington spoke and I walked with her from the Sanjowlie road to the turning below the Commander-in-Chief’s house as I might walk by the side of any living woman’s ‘rickshaw, deep in conversation. The second and most tormenting of my moods of sickness had suddenly laid hold upon me, and like the Prince in Tennyson’s poem, “I seemed to move amid a world of ghosts.” There had been a garden-party at the Commander-in-Chief’s, and we two joined the crowd of homeward-bound folk. As I saw them then it seemed that they were the shadows—impalpable, fantastic shadows—that divided for Mrs. Wessington’s ‘rickshaw to pass through. What we said during the course of that weird interview I cannot—indeed, I dare not—tell. Heatherlegh’s comment would have been a short laugh and a remark that I had been “mashing a brain-eye-and-stomach chimera.” It was a ghastly and yet in some indefinable way a marvelously dear experience. Could it be possible, I wondered, that I was in this life to woo a second time the woman I had killed by my own neglect and cruelty?
I met Kitty on the homeward road—a shadow among shadows.
If I were to describe all the incidents of the next fortnight in their order, my story would never come to an end; and your patience would be exhausted. Morning after morning and evening after evening the ghostly ‘rickshaw and I used to wander through Simla together. Wherever I went there the four black and white liveries followed me and bore me company to and from my hotel. At the Theatre I found them amid the crowd or yelling jhampanies; outside the Club veranda, after a long evening of whist; at the Birthday Ball, waiting patiently for my reappearance; and in broad daylight when I went calling. Save that it cast no shadow, the ‘rickshaw was in every respect as real to look upon as one of wood and iron. More than once, indeed, I have had to check myself from warning some hard-riding friend against cantering over it. More than once I have walked down the Mall deep in conversation with Mrs. Wessington to the unspeakable amazement of the passers-by.
Before I had been out and about a week I learned that the “fit” theory had been discarded in favor of insanity. However, I made no change in my mode of life. I called, rode, and dined out as freely as ever. I had a passion for the society of my kind which I had never felt before; I hungered to be among the realities of life; and at the same time I felt vaguely unhappy when I had been separated too long from my ghostly companion. It would be almost impossible to describe my varying moods from the 15th of May up to to-day.
The presence of the ‘rickshaw filled me by turns with horror, blind fear, a dim sort of pleasure, and utter despair. I dared not leave Simla; and I knew that my stay there was killing me. I knew, moreover, that it was my destiny to die slowly and a little every day. My only anxiety was to get the penance over as quietly as might be. Alternately I hungered for a sight of Kitty and watched her outrageous flirtations with my successor—to speak more accurately, my successors—with amused interest. She was as much out of my life as I was out of hers. By day I wandered with Mrs. Wessington almost content. By night I implored Heaven to let me return to the world as I used to know it. Above all these varying moods lay the sensation of dull, numbing wonder that the Seen and the Unseen should mingle so strangely on this earth to hound one poor soul to its grave.
August 27.—Heatherlegh has been indefatigable in his attendance on me; and only yesterday told me that I ought to send in an application for sick leave. An application to escape the company of a phantom! A request that the Government would graciously permit me to get rid of five ghosts and an airy ‘rickshaw by going to England. Heatherlegh’s proposition moved me to almost hysterical laughter. I told him that I should await the end quietly at Simla; and I am sure that the end is not far off. Believe me that I dread its advent more than any word can say; and I torture myself nightly with a thousand speculations as to the manner of my death.
Shall I die in my bed decently and as an English gentleman should die; or, in one last walk on the Mall, will my soul be wrenched from me to take its place forever and ever by the side of that ghastly phantasm? Shall I return to my old lost allegiance in the next world, or shall I meet Agnes loathing her and bound to her side through all eternity? Shall we two hover over the scene of our lives till the end of Time? As the day of my death draws nearer, the intense horror that all living flesh feels toward escaped spirits from beyond the grave grows more and more powerful. It is an awful thing to go down quick among the dead with scarcely one-half of your life completed. It is a thousand times more awful to wait as I do in your midst, for I know not what unimaginable terror. Pity me, at least on the score of my “delusion,” for I know you will never believe what I have written here. Yet as surely as ever a man was done to death by the Powers of Darkness I am that man.
In justice, too, pity her. For as surely as ever woman was killed by man, I killed Mrs. Wessington. And the last portion of my punishment is ever now upon me.
Perhaps one of the most well known figures from Irish mythology is the Banshee, the omen of death, wailing as death comes to a house. But where does she come from? And what does she want from the dead?
Before meeting a vampire in Transylvania, a short story places Jonathan Harket facing the undead outside of Munich. Could it have a connection to the village that according to legend, vanished suddenly in the middle ages.
One of the dark entities on the emerald island, there is the Death Coach who comes to collect the souls of the dead. Pulled by headless horses, the Cóiste Bodhar stops at nothing before its mission is complete, and misfortune happens upon those getting in its way.
In 1687, the ghost of a murdered child started to testify against its mother in northern Norway and people took it seriously. Today, the Utburd of Skåvoll or the Nille-case is remembered as the ghost story that condemned a woman to her death.
Have a look at some of the most haunted places in Dublin, from the mysteries of the Hellfire Club, churches where you can supposedly summon the devil and the dead lingering in the dusty libraries and colleges.
After strange knocking and poltergeist activity made the people at Erstad Farm believe it was haunted. And when they asked the ghost what it wanted, it unraveled the lives of more than one person forever.
Was there an iberian vampire before the European vampire panic in Eastern Europe? Who was really Conde Estruch, the vampire of Catalonia, and what happened to the witches of Llers Castle the count was said to use as his lair.
Join a haunted pub crawl through Dublin’s ancient streets for ghosts and a pint of Guinness. From plotting revolutionaries to somber writers, these pubs and bars are said to be a place where some of the patrons have been lingering for a long time.
In 1852, the alleged psychic Erika Larsdatter Bogen, arrived at Børholmen, a small island in western Norway. She claimed that she had found the ghost and corpse of the dead child, and she named the mother who allegedly buried it. But what was the truth?
Ghostly whispers in the old castle ruins, soldiers haunting the bloody battlefields and even the drums of pagan druids still lingering, Ireland is certainly a haunted country. This is only a small portion of the most haunted places in Ireland and the ghost stories behind them.
Who is the ghostly priest in brown, haunting the old Vicarage in Sande? Legend says he still carries guilt for the young boy he failed that had tragic consequences.
A railroad network was started by political prisoners during the Franco regime, but never completed. Now it is said that the unfinished Cantabrian Tunnel of Engañais haunted by those that died when trying to build it.
Have you ever been enticed by a dark and mysterious place? If so, you won’t want to miss out on a visit to the haunted tunnel entrance in Spain of an incomplete railway tunnel called the Engaña Tunnel.
Read more: Check out all of our ghost stories from Spain
It’s an eerie spot that’s shrouded in gloom and legend. As you explore its depths with no lights along the sides, you may find yourself surrounded by the ghosts of its past.
The Unfinished Engaña Tunnel
At the entrance of the Cantabrian tunnel of Engaña people have claimed to have seen strange apparitions and heard mysterious sounds coming from the incomplete tunnel that runs through the Cantabrian Mountains.
Read more: Check out all of our ghost stories from Haunted Roads all around the world.
The tunnel was designed to go to the Bay of Biscay and connect it to the Mediterranean Sea by rail in 1942. With its almost 7000 meters of length it was supposed to be the longest railway tunnel in Spain, but the rails were never laid at all.
Hundreds of people were building on this patch and the structure was also built by political prisoners of the Franco regime after the Spanish Civil War ended.
When they started the project they believed that it would only take a year, but nothing went as planned. The construction for this project lasted for 17 years however, the funds for the project ran out and the final patch of the stretch was abandoned in 1959 and never completed.
The tunnel was built though and sometimes used as an alternative road when the other roads were closed due to snowfall, but the hazardous tunnel was closed after many collapses and was closed off.
Flooded: The Cantabrian Tunnel of Engaña is said to be haunted and has over the years also started to collapse or have become flooded.//Source:Roberto Lumbreras/wikimedia
According to the tales, hundreds of lives of the prisoners that were forced to build it died during the unfinished construction.
This number is hard to back up by fact as the first years of construction were not written up. We do know however that at least 16 workers died during the construction from 1951 to 1959. So who really knows the truth about what happened before then?
The construction itself was ot the only thing that killed off those working on the tunnel, as a large number of the workers eventually died of lung diseases caused by inhaling the toxic crystalline silica dust from the tunnel.
The Ghost of the Prisoners
The project itself was looked at as a failure and has stood as a dark entrance to a much darker past. The place was until it was sealed off mostly used by impatient drivers, people carrying illegal contraband and seekers of the paranormal.
After the project was abandoned and the lives of the prisoners were almost forgotten, the stories of seeing their ghosts started to be told around the area.
People talked about seeing the unfortunate prisoners that died building it and drivers claiming to have seen their ghosts as they pass the tunnel opening or dare to go through it as a shortcut through the mountains.
The death of a paranormal investigator in India was shrouded in rumors for a long time. After Gaurav Tiwari was found dead in 2016, people started to speculate whether something paranormal was the cause behind it.
In 2016, the prominent Indian paranormal investigator, Gaurav Tiwari was found dead in his home at only 32 years old. The police declared his death as a suicide, but speculations about what happened, ranging from something foul play, possession by evil forces to the power of a vengeful ghost, started to circulate. His death became a mystery, not unlike what he spent his life investigating. Let’s have a look at what happened back then and the stories it spawned.
Background as a Paranormal Investigator
Gaurav Tiwari: 2 September 1984 – 7 July 2016 (aged 31) was a well known paranormal investigator in India whose death sparked much speculations.
Gaurav Tiwari emerged as a figure of the paranormal and mysterious in India. He appeared in numerous TV shows like MTV Girls Night Out and Haunted Weekends, documentaries and podcasts where he discussed and tried to investigate the paranormal.
Instead of pursuing his career in aviation, he decided to found the Indian Paranormal Society and for years, Tiwari and his team searched the labyrinthine landscape of India, venturing into the darkest recesses of abandoned buildings, ancient ruins, and haunted locales.
Read more: Check out all of the ghost stories from India
His interests in the paranormal had started after he moved to Florida when he was 21 and moved into an apartment together with four other people. In 2007 as he was studying to become a pilot, he claimed to have experienced poltergeist like phenomena and heard whispers coming from nowhere. One of his other flatmates claimed to have seen the apparition of a young girl. They heard footsteps in the attic and ended up fleeing the house as the haunting wouldn’t stop.
This initial interest started to take over his life, eventually turning into a lifelong passion as well as a career. Over the course of his work he investigated more than 6000 alleged haunted locations as well as delving into UFO abductions and mysterious creatures.
The Death of Gaurav Tiwari
On a fateful night in July 2016, the world of paranormal investigation was plunged into darkness as news of Tiwari’s tragic demise spread like wildfire. His lifeless body was discovered in his home on July 7th in Dwarka, New Delhi and it looked like a suicide.
The news of his death came as a shock as there seemed to be no reason for him taking his life. He was newly married, had appeared on the cover of a magazine, tweeting and going to work like normally. He died on a Thursday and the days leading up to it seemed completely fine.
That Wednesday he had been investigating an alleged haunted house in Delhi’s Janakpuri and didn’t return back home until 1:30 that night in his apartment in Dwarka sector 19 he shared with his wife and parents. He fought with his wife when he came back that night, but the next day he was back to his normal self according to his family.
The Thursday evening he was checking his mails few moments before heading to his bathroom. His wife had heard a big thud from the bathroom at around 11, and when she came back to check on him as he didn’t give a life sign. Together with a neighbor they had to force their way through the door. There they found him on the floor. Although he was rushed to the hospital, they were unable to save his life.
Paranormal Investigator: Up until his death he was always investigating the paranormal realm and had been complaining about feeling the forces of them taking over him. What was the truth behind his death?
Speculation about his Death
So what happened if everything seemed fine? There was seemingly a lot of confusion about his sudden death and people started to talk. Some of the speculations were of course connected to his life work, the paranormal.
To Times of India, Gaurav Tiwari’s father told that he had been feeling “a negative force was pulling him towards it.“
He was found with black marks on his necks, something that according to his family, Tiwari often talked about being a sign of revenge of spirits in distress. Often citing the movie The Omen from 1976 where such black lines seemed to also appear from nowhere.
His father persisted with the theory that they had numerous spirit sightings at home, all having occurred within five feet of his son who saw them although others didn’t.
To his wife he had said a month before his death that “he was trying to control it but seemed unable to do so.” His wife had not thought much about it and thought he was just depressed because of the heavy work that his family was unaware of.
Police Investigation of his Death
The Delhi Police concluded that the cause of death was asphyxiation as he had hanged himself in the bathroom. According to Surender Kumar, DCP said: “It is a clear case of suicide. He hanged himself in the bathroom using his wife’s dupatta on Thursday night”
Further investigation showed that his work had seemingly dried up and that his project didn’t really bring in a lot of money, although he was well known. This caused arguments between him and his family that wanted him to get a more conventional job, including his wife.
The argument the night he had died had lasted for almost two hours and during police investigation it was also revealed that the wife thought he was cheating as he spent long nights outside of his home. His broken phone was recovered from his room and although it didn’t really give any conclusive evidence of anything, it indicated that he was indeed tired and upset of being questioned by his family.
The Enduring Legend of Gaurav Tiwari
As we reflect on the life and work of Gaurav Tiwari, we are confronted with the sobering reality of our own mortality—a reminder that in the shadowy realm of the paranormal, death is but a gateway to the mysteries that lie beyond.
It is also a case of how we are confronted by death, we often try to deflect and come up with some other forces that are taking our lives instead of ourselves. Even within the community of those seeking death and the afterlife.
How pleasant it can be, alone in a first-class railway carriage, on the first day of a holiday that is to be fairly long, to dawdle through a bit of English country that is unfamiliar, stopping at every station. You have a map open on your knee, and you pick out the villages that lie to right and left by their church towers. You marvel at the complete stillness that attends your stoppage at the stations, broken only by a footstep crunching the gravel. Yet perhaps that is best experienced after sundown, and the traveler I have in mind was making his leisurely progress on a sunny afternoon in the latter half of June.
He was in the depths of the country. I need not particularise further than to say that if you divided the map of England into four quarters, he would have been found in the south-western of them.
He was a man of academic pursuits, and his term was just over. He was on his way to meet a new friend, older than himself. The two of them had met first on an official inquiry in town, had found that they had many tastes and habits in common, liked each other, and the result was an invitation from Squire Richards to Mr. Fanshawe which was now taking effect.
The journey ended about five o’clock. Fanshawe was told by a cheerful country porter that the car from the Hall had been up to the station and left a message that something had to be fetched from half a mile farther on, and would the gentleman please to wait a few minutes till it came back? ‘But I see,’ continued the porter, ‘as you’ve got your bystile, and very like you’d find it pleasanter to ride up to the ‘all yourself. Straight up the road ‘ere, and then first turn to the left—it ain’t above two mile—and I’ll see as your things is put in the car for
You’ll excuse me mentioning it, only I though it were a nice evening for a ride. Yes, sir, very seasonable weather for the haymakers: met me see, I have your bike ticket. Thank you, sir; much obliged: you can’t miss your road, etc., etc.’
The two miles to the Hall were just what was needed, after the day in the train, to dispel somnolence and impart a wish for tea. The Hall, when sighted, also promised just what was needed in the way of a quiet resting-place after days of sitting on committees and college-meetings. It was neither excitingly old nor depressingly new. Plastered walls, sash-windows, old trees, smooth lawns, were the features which Fanshawe noticed as he came up the drive. Squire Richards, a burly man of sixty odd, was awaiting him in the porch with evident pleasure ‘Tea first,’ he said, ‘or would you like a longer drink? No? All right, tea’s ready in the garden. Come along, they’ll put your machine away. I always have tea under the lime-tree by the stream on a day like this.’ Nor could you ask for a better place. Midsummer afternoon, shade and scent of a vast lime-tree, cool, swirling water within five yards. It was long before either of them suggested a move. But about six, Mr. Richards sat up, knocked out his pipe, and said: ‘Look here, it’s cool enough now to think of a stroll, if you’re inclined? All right: then what I suggest is that we walk up the park and get on to the hill-side, where we can look over the country. We’ll have a map, and I’ll show you where things are; and you can go off on your machine, or we can take the car, according as you want exercise or not. If you’re ready, we can start now and be back well before eight, taking it very easy.’
‘I’m ready. I should like my stick, though, and have you got any field-glasses? I lent mine to a man a week ago, and he’s gone off Lord knows where and taken them with him.’
Mr. Richards pondered. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I have, but they’re not things I use myself, and I don’t know whether the ones I have will suit you. They’re old-fashioned, and about twice as heavy as they make ‘em now. You’re welcome to have them, but I won’t carry them. By the way, what do you want to drink after dinner?’
Protestations that anything would do were overruled, and a satisfactory settlement was reached on the way to the front hall, where Mr. Fanshawe found his stick, and Mr. Richards, after thoughtful pinching of his lower lip, resorted to a drawer in the hall-table, extracted a key, crossed to a cupboard in the panelling, opened it, took a box from the shelf, and put it on the table. ‘The glasses are in there,’ he said, ‘and there’s some dodge of opening it, but I’ve forgotten what it is. You try.’ Mr. Fanshawe accordingly tried. There was no keyhole, and the box was solid, heavy and smooth: it seemed obvious that some part of it would have to be pressed before anything could happen. ‘The corners,’ said he to himself, ‘are the likely places; and infernally sharp corners they are too,’ he added, as he put his thumb in his mouth after exerting force on a lower corner.
‘What’s the matter?’ said the Squire.
‘Why, your disgusting Borgia box has scratched me, drat it,’ said Fanshawe. The Squire chuckled unfeelingly. ‘Well, you’ve got it open, anyway,’ he said.
‘So I have! Well, I don’t begrudge a drop of blood in a good cause, and here are the glasses. They are pretty heavy, as you said, but I think I’m equal to carrying them.’
‘Ready?’ said the Squire. ‘Come on then; we go out by the garden.’
So they did, and passed out into the park, which sloped decidedly upwards to the hill which, as Fanshawe had seen from the train, dominated the country. It was a spur of a larger range that lay behind. On the way, the Squire, who was great on earthworks, pointed out various spots where he detected or imagined traces of war-ditches and the like. ‘And here,’ he said, stopping on a more or less level plot with a ring of large trees, ‘is Baxter’s Roman villa.’ ‘Baxter?’ said Mr. Fanshawe.
‘I forgot; you don’t know about him. He was the old chap I got those glasses from. I believe he made them. He was an old watch-maker down in the village, a great antiquary. My father gave him leave to grub about where he liked; and when he made a find he used to lend him a man or two to help him with the digging. He got a surprising lot of things together, and when he died—I dare say it’s ten or fifteen years ago—I bought the whole lot and gave them to the town museum. We’ll run in one of these days, and look over them. The glasses came to me with the rest, but of course I kept them. If you look at them, you’ll see they’re more or less amateur work—the body of them; naturally the lenses weren’t his making.’
‘Yes, I see they are just the sort of thing that a clever workman in a different line of business might turn out. But I don’t see why he made them so heavy. And did Baxter actually find a Roman villa here?’
‘Yes, there’s a pavement turfed over, where we’re standing: it was too rough and plain to be worth taking up, but of course there are drawings of it: and the small things and pottery that turned up were quite good of their kind. An ingenious chap, old Baxter: he seemed to have a quite out-of-the-way instinct for these things. He was invaluable to our archæologists. He used to shut up his shop for days at a time, and wander off over the district, marking down places, where he scented anything, on the ordnance map; and he kept a book with fuller notes of the places. Since his death, a good many of them have been sampled, and there’s always been something to justify him.’
‘What a good man!’ said Mr. Fanshawe.
‘Good?’ said the Squire, pulling up brusquely.
‘I meant useful to have about the place,’ said Mr. Fanshawe. ‘But was he a villain?’
‘I don’t know about that either,’ said the Squire; ‘but all I can say is, if he was good, he wasn’t lucky. And he wasn’t liked: I didn’t like him,’ he added, after a moment.
‘Oh?’ said Fanshawe interrogatively.
‘No, I didn’t; but that’s enough about Baxter: besides, this is the stiffest bit, and I don’t want to talk and walk as well.’
Indeed it was hot, climbing a slippery grass slope that evening. ‘I told you I should take you the short way,’ panted the Squire, ‘and I wish I hadn’t. However, a bath won’t do us any harm when we get back. Here we are, and there’s the seat.’
A small clump of old Scotch firs crowned the top of the hill; and, at the edge of it, commanding the cream of the view, was a wide and solid seat, on which the two disposed themselves, and wiped their brows, and regained breath.
‘Now, then,’ said the Squire, as soon as he was in a condition to talk connectedly, ‘this is where your glasses come in. But you’d better take a general look round first. My word! I’ve never seen the view look better.’
Writing as I am now with a winter wind flapping against dark windows and a rushing, tumbling sea within a hundred yards, I find it hard to summon up the feelings and words which will put my reader in possession of the June evening and the lovely English landscape of which the Squire was speaking.
Across a broad level plain they looked upon ranges of great hills, whose uplands—some green, some furred with woods—caught the light of a sun, westering but not yet low. And all the plain was fertile, though the river which traversed it was nowhere seen. ‘There were copses, green wheat, hedges and pasture-land: the little compact white moving cloud marked the evening train. Then the eye picked out red farms and grey houses, and nearer home scattered cottages, and then the Hall, nestled under the hill. The smoke of chimneys was very blue and straight. There was a smell of hay in the air: there were wild roses on bushes hard by. It was the acme of summer.
After some minutes of silent contemplation, the Squire began to point out the leading features, the hills and valleys, and told where the towns and villages lay. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘with the glasses you’ll be able to pick out Fulnaker Abbey. Take a line across that big green field, then over the wood beyond it, then over the farm on the knoll.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Fanshawe. ‘I’ve got it. What a fine tower!’
‘You must have got the wrong direction,’ said the Squire; ‘there’s not much of a tower about there that I remember, unless it’s Oldbourne Church that you’ve got hold of. And if you call that a fine tower, you’re easily pleased.’
‘Well, I do call it a fine tower,’ said Fanshawe, the glasses still at his eyes, ‘whether it’s Oldbourne or any other. And it must belong to a largish church; it looks to me like a central tower—four big pinnacles a the corners, and four smaller ones between. I must certainly go over there. How far is it?’
‘Oldbourne’s about nine miles, or less,’ said the Squire. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve been there, but I don’t remember thinking much of it. Now I’ll show you another thing.’
Fanshawe had lowered the glasses, and was still gazing in the Oldbourne direction. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I can’t make out anything with the naked eye. What was it you were going to show me?’
‘A good deal more to the left—it oughtn’t to be difficult to find. Do you see a rather sudden knob of a hill with a thick wood on top of it? It’s in a dead line with that single tree on the top of the big ridge.’
‘I do,’ said Fanshawe, ‘and I believe I could tell you without much difficulty what it’s called.’
‘Could you now?’ said the Squire. ‘Say on.’
‘Why, Gallows Hill,’ was the answer.
‘How did you guess that?’
‘Well, if you don’t want it guessed, you shouldn’t put up a dummy gibbet and a man hanging on it.’
‘What’s that?’ said the Squire abruptly. ‘There’s nothing on that hill but wood.’
‘On the contrary,’ said Fanshawe, ‘there’s a largish expanse of grass on the top and your dummy gibbet in the middle; and I thought there was something on it when I looked first. But I see there’s nothing—or is there? I can’t be sure.’
‘Nonsense, nonsense, Fanshawe, there’s no such thing as a dummy gibbet, or any other sort, on that hill. And it’s thick wood—a fairly young plantation. I was in it myself not a year ago. Hand me the glasses, though I don’t suppose I can see anything.’ After a pause: ‘No, I thought not: they won’t show a thing.’
Meanwhile Fanshawe was scanning the hill—it might be only two or three miles away. ‘Well, it’s very odd,’ he said, ‘it does look exactly like a wood without the glass.’ He took it again. ‘That is one of the oddest effects. The gibbet is perfectly plain, and the grass field, and there even seem to be people on it, and carts, or a cart, with men in it. And yet when I take the glass away, there’s nothing. It must be something in the way this afternoon light falls: I shall come up earlier in the day when the sun’s full on it.’
‘Did you say you saw people and a cart on that hill?’ said the Squire incredulously. ‘What should they be doing there at this time of day, even if the trees have been felled? Do talk sense—look again.’
‘Well, I certainly thought I saw them. Yes, I should say there were a few, just clearing off. And now—by Jove, it does look like something hanging on the gibbet. But these glasses are so beastly heavy I can’t hold them steady for long. Anyhow, you can take it from me there’s no wood. And if you’ll show me the road on the map, I’ll go there tomorrow.’
The Squire remained brooding for some little time. At last he rose and said, ‘Well, I suppose that will be the best way to settle it. And now we’d better be getting back. Bath and dinner is my idea.’ And on the way back he was not very communicative.
They returned through the garden, and went into the front hall to leave sticks, etc., in their due place. And here they found the aged butler Patten evidently in a state of some anxiety. ‘Beg pardon, Master Henry,’ he began at once, ‘but someone’s been up to mischief here, I’m much afraid.’ He pointed to the open box which had contained the glasses.
‘Nothing worse than that, Patten?’ said the Squire. ‘Mayn’t I take out my own glasses and lend them to a friend? Bought with my own money, you recollect? At old Baxter’s sale, eh?’
Patten bowed, unconvinced. ‘Oh, very well, Master Henry, as long as you know who it was. Only I thought proper to name it, for I didn’t think that box’d been off its shelf since you first put it there; and, if you’ll excuse me, after what happened … ‘ The voice was lowered, and the rest was not audible to Fanshawe. The Squire replied with a few words and a gruff laugh, and called on Fanshawe to come and be shown his room. And I do not think that anything else happened that night which bears on my story.
Except, perhaps, the sensation which invaded Fanshawe in the small hours that something had been let out which ought not to have been let out. It came into his dreams. He was walking in a garden which he seemed half to know, and stopped in front of a rockery made of old wrought stones, pieces of window tracery from a church, and even bits of figures. One of these moved his curiosity: it seemed to be a sculptured capital with scenes carved on it. He felt he must pull it out, and worked away, and, with an ease that surprised him, moved the stones that obscured it aside, and pulled out the block. As he did so, a tin label fell down by his feet with a little clatter. He picked it up and read on it: ‘On no account move this stone. Yours sincerely, J. Patten.’ As often happens in dreams, he felt that this injunction was of extreme importance; and with an anxiety that amounted to anguish he looked to see if the stone had really been shifted. Indeed it had; in fact, he could not see it anywhere. The removal had disclosed the mouth of a burrow, and he bent down to look into it. Something stirred in the blackness, and then, to his intense horror, a hand emerged—a clean right hand in a neat cull and coat-sleeve, just in the attitude of a hand that means to shake yours. He wondered whether it would not be rude to let it alone. But, as he looked at it, it began to grow hairy and dirty and thin, and also to change its pose and stretch out as if to take hold of his leg. At that he dropped all thought of politeness, decided to run, screamed and woke himself up.
This was the dream he remembered; but it seemed to him (as, again, it often does) that there had been others of the same import before, but not so insistent. He lay awake for some little time, fixing the details of the last dream in his mind, and wondering in particular what the figures had been which he had seen or half seen on the carved capital. Something quite incongruous, he felt sure; but that was the most he could recall.
Whether because of the dream, or because it was the first day of his holiday, he did not get up very early; nor did he at once plunge into the exploration of the country. He spent a morning, half lazy, half instructive, in looking over the volumes of the County Archæological Society’s transactions, in which were many contributions from Mr. Baxter on finds of flint implements, Roman sites, ruins of monastic establishments—in fact, most departments of archæology. They were written in an odd, pompous, only half-educated style. If the man had had more early schooling, thought Fanshawe, he would have been a very distinguished antiquary; or he might have been (he thus qualified his opinion a little later), but for a certain love of opposition and controversy, and, yes, a patronising tone as of one possessing superior knowledge, which left an unpleasant taste. He might have been a very respectable artist. There was an imaginary restoration and elevation of a priory church which was very well conceived. A fine pinnacled central tower was a conspicuous feature of this; it reminded Fanshawe of that which he had seen from the hill, and which the Squire had told him must be Oldbourne. But it was not Oldbourne; it was Fulnaker Priory. ‘Oh, well,’ he said to himself, ‘I suppose Oldbourne Church may have been built by Fulnaker monks, and Baxter has copied Oldbourne tower. Anything about it in the letterpress? Ah, I see it was published after his death—found among his papers.’
After lunch the Squire asked Fanshawe what he meant to do.
‘Well,’ said Fanshawe, ‘I think 1 shall go out on my bike about four as far as Oldbourne and back by Gallows Hill. That ought to be a round of about fifteen miles, oughtn’t it?’
‘About that,’ said the Squire, ‘and you’ll pass Lambsfield and Wanstone, both of which are worth looking at. There’s a little glass at Lambsfield and the stone at Wanstone.’
‘Good,’ said Fanshawe, ‘I’ll get tea somewhere, and may I take the glasses? I’ll strap them on my bike, on the carrier.’
‘Of course, if you like,’ said the Squire. ‘I really ought to have some better ones. If I go into the town today, I’ll see if 1 can pick up some.’ ‘Why should you trouble to do that if you can’t use them yourself?’ said Fanshawe.
‘Oh, I don’t know; one ought to have a decent pair; and—well, old Patten doesn’t think those are fit to use.’
‘Is he a judge?’
‘He’s got some tale: I don’t know: something about old Baxter. I’ve promised to let him tell me about it. It seems very much on his mind since last night.’
‘Why that? Did he have a nightmare like me?’
‘He had something: he was looking an old man this morning, and he said he hadn’t closed an eye.’
‘Well, let him save up his tale till I come back.’
‘Very well, I will if I can. Look here, are you going to be late? If you get a puncture eight miles off and have to walk home, what then? I don’t trust these bicycles: I shall tell them to give us cold things to eat.’
‘I shan’t mind that, whether I’m late or early. But I’ve got things to mend punctures with. And now I’m off.’
It was just as well that the Squire had made that arrangement about a cold supper, Fanshawe thought, and not for the first time, as he wheeled his bicycle up the drive about nine o’clock. So also the Squire thought and said, several times, as he met him in the hall, rather pleased at the confirmation of his want of faith in bicycles than sympathetic with his hot, weary, thirsty, and indeed haggard, friend. In fact, the kindest thing he found to say was: ‘You’ll want a long drink tonight? Cider-cup do? All right. Hear that, Patten? Cider-cup, iced, lots of it.’ Then to Fanshawe, ‘Don’t be all night over your bath.’
By half-past nine they were at dinner, and Fanshawe was reporting progress, if progress it might be called.
‘I got to Lambsfield very smoothly, and saw the glass. It is very interesting stuff, but there’s a lot of lettering I couldn’t read.’ ‘Not with glasses?’ said the Squire.
‘Those glasses of yours are no manner of use inside a church—or inside anywhere, I suppose, for that matter. But the only places I took ‘em into were churches.’
‘H’m! Well, go on,’ said the Squire.
‘However, I took some sort of a photograph of the window, and I dare say an enlargement would show what I want. Then Wanstone; I should think that stone was a very out-of-the-way thing, only I don’t know about that class of antiquities. Has anybody opened the mound it stands on?’
‘Baxter wanted to, but the farmer wouldn’t let him.’
‘Oh, well, I should think it would be worth doing. Anyhow, the next thing was Fulnaker and Oldbourne. You know, it’s very odd about that tower I saw from the hill. Oldbourne Church is nothing like it, and of course there’s nothing over thirty feet high at Fulnaker, though you can see it had a central tower. I didn’t tell you, did I? that Baxter’s fancy drawing of Fulnaker shows a tower exactly like the one I saw.’
‘So you thought, I dare say,’ put in the Squire.
‘No, it wasn’t a case of thinking. The picture actually reminded me of what I’d seen, and I made sure it was Oldbourne, well before I looked at the title.’
‘Well, Baxter had a very fair idea of architecture. I dare say what’s left made it easy for him to draw the right sort of tower.’
‘That may be it, of course, but I’m doubtful if even a professional could have got it so exactly right. There’s absolutely nothing left at Fulnaker but the bases of the piers which supported it. However, that isn’t the oddest thing.’
‘What about Gallows Hill?’ said the Squire. ‘Here, Patten, listen to this. I told you what Mr. Fanshawe said he saw from the hill.’
‘Yes, Master Henry, you did; and I can’t say I was so much surprised, considering.’
‘All right, all right. You keep that till afterwards. We want to hear what Mr. Fanshawe saw today. Go on, Fanshawe. You turned to come back by Ackford and Thorfield, I suppose?’
‘Yes, and I looked into both the churches. Then I got to the turning which goes to the top of Gallows Hill; I saw that if I wheeled my machine over the field at the top of the hill I could join the home road on this side. It was about half-past six when I got to the top of the hill, and there was a gate on my right, where it ought to be, leading into the belt of plantation.’
‘You hear that, Patten? A belt, he says.’
‘So I thought it was—a belt. But it wasn’t. You were quite right, and I was hopelessly wrong. I cannot understand it. The whole top is planted quite thick. Well, I went on into this wood, wheeling and dragging my bike, expecting every minute to come to a clearing, and then my misfortunes began. Thorns, I suppose; first I realised that the front tyre was slack, then the back. I couldn’t stop to do more than try to find the punctures and mark them; but even that was hopeless. So I ploughed on, and the farther I went, the less I liked the place.’
‘Not much poaching in that cover, eh, Patten?’ said the Squire. ‘No, indeed, Master Henry: there’s very few cares to go—’ ‘No, I know: never mind that now. Go on, Fanshawe.’ ‘I don’t blame anybody for not caring to go there. I know I had all the fancies one least likes: steps crackling over twigs behind me, indistinct people stepping behind trees in front of me, yes, and even a hand laid on my shoulder. I pulled up very sharp at that and looked round, but there really was no branch or bush that could have done it. Then, when I was just about at the middle of the plot, I was convinced that there was someone looking down on me from above—and not with any pleasant intent. I stopped again, or at least slackened my pace, to look up. And as I did, down I came, and barked my shins abominably on, what do you think? a block of stone with a big square hole in the top of it. And within a few paces there were two others just like it. The three were set in a triangle. Now, do you make out what they were put there for?’
‘I think I can,’ said the Squire, who was now very grave and absorbed in the story. ‘Sit down, Patten.’
It was time, for the old man was supporting himself by one hand, and leaning heavily on it. He dropped into a chair, and said in a very tremulous voice, ‘You didn’t go between them stones, did you, sir?’
‘I did not,’ said Fanshawe, emphatically. ‘I dare say I was an ass, but as soon as it dawned on me where I was, I just shouldered my machine and did my best to run. It seemed to me as if I was in an unholy evil sort of graveyard, and I was most profoundly thankful that it was one of the longest days and still sunlight. Well, 1 had a horrid run, even if it was only a few hundred yards. Everything caught on everything: handles and spokes and carrier and pedals—caught in them viciously, or I fancied so. I fell over at least five times. At last I saw the hedge, and I couldn’t trouble to hunt for the gate.’
‘There is no gate on my side,’ the Squire interpolated.
‘Just as well I didn’t waste time, then. I dropped the machine over somehow and went into the road pretty near head-first; some branch or something got my ankle at the last moment. Anyhow, there I was out of the wood, and seldom more thankful or more generally sore. Then came the job of mending my punctures. I had a good outfit and I’m not at all bad at the business; but this was an absolutely hopeless case. It was seven when I got out of the wood, and I spent fifty minutes over one tyre. As fast as I found a hole and put on a patch, and blew it up, it went flat again. So I made up my mind to walk. That hill isn’t three miles away, is it?’
Not more across country, but nearer six by road.’
‘I thought it must be. I thought I couldn’t have taken well over the hour over less than five miles, even leading a bike. Well, there’s my story: where’s yours and Patten’s?’
‘Mine? I’ve no story,’ said the Squire. ‘But you weren’t very far out when you thought you were in a graveyard. There must be a good few of them up there, Patten, don’t you think? They left ‘em there when they fell to bits, I fancy.’
Patten nodded, too much interested to speak. ‘Don’t,’ said Fanshawe. ‘Now then, Patten,’ said the Squire, ‘you’ve heard what sort of a time
Mr. Fanshawe’s been having. What do you make of it? Anything to do with Mr. Baxter? Fill yourself a glass of port, and tell us.’
‘Ah, that done me good, Master Henry,’ said Patten, after absorbing what was before him. ‘If you really wish to know what were in my thoughts, my answer would be clear in the affirmative. Yes,’ he went on, warming to his work, ‘I should say as Mr. Fanshawe’s experience of today were very largely doo to the person you named. And I think, Master Henry, as I have some title to speak, in view of me ‘axing been many years on speaking terms with him, and swore in to be jury on the Coroner’s inquest near this time ten years ago, you being then, if you carry your mind back, Master Henry, travelling abroad, and no one ‘ere to represent the family.’
‘Inquest?’ said Fanshawe. ‘An inquest on Mr. Baxter, was there?’
‘Yes, sir, on—on that very person. The facts as led up to that occurrence was these. The deceased was, as you may have gathered, a very peculiar individual in ‘is ‘abits—in my idear, at least, but all must speak as they find. He lived very much to himself, without neither chick nor child, as the saying is. And how he passed away his time was what very few could orfer a guess at.’
‘He lived unknown, and few could know when Baxter ceased to be,’ said the Squire to his pipe.
‘I beg pardon, Master Henry, I was just coming to that. But when I say how he passed away his time—to be sure we know ‘ow intent he was in rummaging and ransacking out all the ‘istry of the neighbourhood and the number of things he’d managed to collect together—well, it was spoke of for miles round as Baxter’s Museum, and many a time when he might be in the mood, and I might have an hour to spare, have he showed me his pieces of pots and what not, going back by his account to the times of the ancient Romans. However, you know more about that than what I do, Master Henry: only what I was a-going to say was this, as know what he might and interesting as he might be in his talk, there was something about the man—well, for one thing, no one ever remember to see him in church nor yet chapel at service-time. And that made talk. Our rector he never come in the house but once. “Never ask me what the man said”; that was all anybody could ever get out of him. Then how did he spend his nights, particularly about this season of the year? Time and again the labouring men’d meet him coming back as they went out to their work, and he’d pass ‘em by without a word, looking, they says, like someone straight out of the asylum. They see the whites of his eyes all round. He’d have a fish-basket with him, that they noticed, and he always come the same road. And the talk got to be that he’d made himself some business, and that not the best kind—well, not so far from where you was at seven o’clock this evening, sir.
‘Well, now, after such a night as that, Mr. Baxter he’d shut up the shop, and the old lady that did for him had orders not to come in; and knowing what she did about his language, she took care to obey them orders. But one day it so happened, about three o’clock in the afternoon, the house being shut up as I said, there come a most fearful to-do inside, and smoke out of the windows, and Baxter crying out seemingly in an agony. So the man as lived next door he run round to the back premises and burst the door in, and several others come too. Well, he tell me he never in all his life smelt such a fearfu—well, odour, as what there was in that kitchen-place. It seem as if Baxter had been boiling something in a pot and overset it on his leg. There he laid on the floor, trying to keep back the cries, but it was more than he could manage, and when he seen the people come in—oh, he was in a nice condition: if his tongue warn’t blistered worse than his leg it warn’t his fault. Well, they picked him up, and got him into a chair, and run for the medical man, and one of ‘em was going to pick up the pot, and Baxter, he screams out to let it alone. So he did, but he couldn’t see as there was anything in the pot but a few old brown bones. Then they says “Dr. Lawrence’ll be here in a minute, Mr. Baxter; he’ll soon put you to rights.” And then he was off again. He must be got up to his room, he couldn’t have the doctor come in there and see all that mess—they must throw a cloth over it—anything—the tablecloth out of the parlour; well, so they did. But that must have been poisonous stuff in that pot, for it was pretty near on two months afore Baxter were about agin. Beg pardon, Master Henry, was you going to say something?’
‘Yes, I was,’ said the Squire. ‘I wonder you haven’t told me all this before. However, I was going to say I remember old Lawrence telling me he’d attended Baxter. He was a queer card, he said. Lawrence was up in the bedroom one day, and picked up a little mask covered with black velvet, and put it on in fun and went to look at himself in the glass. He hadn’t time for a proper look, for old Baxter shouted out to him from the bed: “Put it down, you fool! Do you want to look through a dead man’s eyes?” and it startled him so that he did put it down, and then he asked Baxter what he meant. And Baxter insisted on him handing it over, and said the man he bought it from was dead, or some such nonsense. But Lawrence felt it as he handed it over, and he declared he was sure it was made out of the front of a skull. He bought a distilling apparatus at Baxter’s sale, he told me, but he could never use it: it seemed to taint everything, however much he cleaned it. But go on, Patten.’
‘Yes, Master Henry, I’m nearly done now, and time, too, for I don’t know what they’ll think about me in the servants’ ‘all. Well, this business of the scalding was some few years before Mr. Baxter was took, and he got about again, and went on just as he’d used. And one of the last jobs he done was finishing up them actual glasses what you took out last night. You see he’d made the body of them some long time, and got the pieces of glass for them, but there was somethink wanted to finish ‘em, whatever it was, I don’t know, but I picked up the frame one day, and I says: “Mr. Baxter, why don’t you make a job of this?” And he says, “Ah, when I’ve done that, you’ll hear news, you will: there’s going to be no such pair of glasses as mine when they’re filled and sealed,” and there he stopped, and I says: “Why, Mr. Baxter, you talk as if they was wine bottles: filled and sealed—why, where’s the necessity for that?” “Did I say filled and sealed?” he says. “O, well, I was suiting my conversation to my company.” Well, then come round this time of year, and one fine evening, I was passing his shop on my way home, and he was standing on the step, very pleased with hisself, and he says: “All right and tight now: my best bit of work’s finished, and I’ll be out with ‘em tomorrow.” “What, finished them glasses?” I says, “might I have a look at them?” “No, no,” he says, “I’ve put ‘em to bed for tonight, and when I do show ‘em you, you’ll have to pay for peepin’, so I tell you.” And that, gentlemen, were the last words I heard that man say.
‘That were the 17th of June, and just a week after, there was a funny thing happened, and it was doo to that as we brought in “unsound mind” at the inquest, for barring that, no one as knew Baxter in business could anyways have laid that against him. But George Williams, as lived in the next house, and do now, he was woke up that same night with a stumbling and tumbling about in Mr. Baxter’s premises, and he got out o’ bed, and went to the front window on the street to see if there was any rough customers about. And ft being a very light night, he could make sure as there was not. Then he stood and listened, and he hear Mr. Baxter coming down his front stair one step after another very slow, and he got the idear as it was like someone bein’ pushed or pulled down and holdin’ on to everythin’ he could. Next thing he hear the street door come open, and out come Mr. Baxter into the street in his day-clothes, ‘at and all, with his arms straight down by his sides, and talking to hisself, and shakin’ his head from one side to the other, and walking in that peculiar way that he appeared to be going as it were against his own will. George Williams put up the window, and hear him say: “O mercy, gentlemen!” and then he shut up sudden as if, he said, someone clapped his hand over his mouth, and Mr. Baxter threw his head back, and his hat fell off. And Williams see his face looking something pitiful, so as he couldn’t keep from calling out to him: “Why, Mr. Baxter, ain’t you well?” and he was goin’ to offer to fetch Dr. Lawrence to him, only he heard the answer: ” ‘Tis best you mind your own business. Put in your head.” But whether it were Mr. Baxter said it so hoarse-like and faint, he never could be sure. Still there weren’t no one but him in the street, and yet Williams was that upset by the way he spoke that he shrank back from the window and went and sat on the bed. And he heard Mr. Baxter’s step go on and up the road, and after a minute or more he couldn’t help but look out once more and he see him going along the same curious way as before. And one thing he recollected was that Mr. Baxter never stopped to pick up his ‘at when it fell off, and yet there it was on his head. Well, Master Henry, that was the last anybody see of Mr. Baxter, leastways for a week or more. There was a lot of people said he was called off on business, or made off because he’d got into some scrape, but he was well known for miles round, and none of the railway people nor the public-house people hadn’t seen him; and then ponds was looked into and nothink found; and at last one evening Fakes the keeper come down from over the hill to the village, and he says he seen the Gallows Hill planting black with birds, and that were a funny thing, because he never see no sign of a creature there in his time. So they looked at each other a bit, and first one says: “I’m game to go up,” and another says: “So am I, if you are,” and half a dozen of ‘em set out in the evening time, and took Dr. Lawrence with them, and you know, Master Henry, there he was between them three stones with his neck broke.’
Useless to imagine the talk which this story set going. It is not remembered. But before Patten left them, he said to Fanshawe: ‘Excuse me, sir, but did I understand as you took out them glasses with you today? I thought you did; and might I ask, did you make use of them at all?’
‘Yes. Only to look at something in a church.’
‘Oh, indeed, you took ‘em into the church, did you, sir?’
‘Yes, I did; it was Lambsfield church. By the way, I left them strapped on to my bicycle, I’m afraid, in the stable-yard.’
‘No matter for that, sir. I can bring them in the first thing tomorrow, and perhaps you’ll be so good as to look at ‘em then.’
Accordingly, before breakfast, after a tranquil and well-earned sleep, Fanshawe took the glasses into the garden and directed them to a distant hill. He lowered them instantly, and looked at top and bottom, worked the screws, tried them again and yet again, shrugged his shoulders and replaced them on the hall-table.
‘Patten,’ he said, ‘they’re absolutely useless. I can’t see a thing: it’s as if someone had stuck a black wafer over the lens.’
‘Spoilt my glasses, have you?’ said the Squire. ‘Thank you: the only ones I’ve got.’
‘You try them yourself,’ said Fanshawe, ‘I’ve done nothing to them.’
So after breakfast the Squire took them out to the terrace and stood on the steps. After a few ineffectual attempts, ‘Lord, how heavy they are!’ he said impatiently, and in the same instant dropped them on to the stones, and the lens splintered and the barrel cracked: a little pool of liquid formed on the stone slab. It was inky black, and the odour that rose from it is not to be described.
‘Filled and sealed, eh?’ said the Squire. ‘If I could bring myself to touch it, I dare say we should find the seal. So that’s what came of his boiling and distilling, is it? Old Ghoul!’
‘What in the world do you mean?’
‘Don’t you see, my good man? Remember what he said to the doctor about looking through dead men’s eyes? Well, this was another way of it. But they didn’t like having their bones boiled, I take it, and the end of it was they carried him off whither he would not. Well, I’ll get a spade, and we’ll bury this thing decently.’
As they smoothed the turf over it, the Squire, handing the spade to Patten, who had been a reverential spectator, remarked to Fanshawe: ‘It’s almost a pity you took that thing into the church: you might have seen more than you did. Baxter had them for a week, I make out, but I don’t see that he did much in the time.’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Fanshawe, ‘there is that picture of Fulnaker Priory Church.’
Perhaps one of the most well known figures from Irish mythology is the Banshee, the omen of death, wailing as death comes to a house. But where does she come from? And what does she want from the dead?
Before meeting a vampire in Transylvania, a short story places Jonathan Harket facing the undead outside of Munich. Could it have a connection to the village that according to legend, vanished suddenly in the middle ages.
One of the dark entities on the emerald island, there is the Death Coach who comes to collect the souls of the dead. Pulled by headless horses, the Cóiste Bodhar stops at nothing before its mission is complete, and misfortune happens upon those getting in its way.
In 1687, the ghost of a murdered child started to testify against its mother in northern Norway and people took it seriously. Today, the Utburd of Skåvoll or the Nille-case is remembered as the ghost story that condemned a woman to her death.
Have a look at some of the most haunted places in Dublin, from the mysteries of the Hellfire Club, churches where you can supposedly summon the devil and the dead lingering in the dusty libraries and colleges.
After strange knocking and poltergeist activity made the people at Erstad Farm believe it was haunted. And when they asked the ghost what it wanted, it unraveled the lives of more than one person forever.
Was there an iberian vampire before the European vampire panic in Eastern Europe? Who was really Conde Estruch, the vampire of Catalonia, and what happened to the witches of Llers Castle the count was said to use as his lair.
Join a haunted pub crawl through Dublin’s ancient streets for ghosts and a pint of Guinness. From plotting revolutionaries to somber writers, these pubs and bars are said to be a place where some of the patrons have been lingering for a long time.
In 1852, the alleged psychic Erika Larsdatter Bogen, arrived at Børholmen, a small island in western Norway. She claimed that she had found the ghost and corpse of the dead child, and she named the mother who allegedly buried it. But what was the truth?
Ghostly whispers in the old castle ruins, soldiers haunting the bloody battlefields and even the drums of pagan druids still lingering, Ireland is certainly a haunted country. This is only a small portion of the most haunted places in Ireland and the ghost stories behind them.
Who is the ghostly priest in brown, haunting the old Vicarage in Sande? Legend says he still carries guilt for the young boy he failed that had tragic consequences.
An online magazine about the paranormal, haunted and macabre. We collect the ghost stories from all around the world as well as review horror and gothic media.
