Each December, when the nights grow long and the spirit of Christmas fills the air, Bern’s holiday phantoms awaken. These tales from lore and legends, remind us that even amidst celebration, the spirits of bygone eras linger.
As twinkling lights line the ancient streets and snow dusts the rooftops of Bern during Advent season, the scent of mulled wine, gingerbread and candied almonds wafts through the town. The Old City seems like a winter postcard brought to life with its church spires and lit up windows in the cold winter nights.
Read More: Check out all ghost stories from Switzerland
But behind its festive charm and glowing Christmas markets, December brings with it more than warmth and wonder as it invites the return of Bern’s holiday phantoms, whose stories swirl like mist around the Aare River.
These ghost stories were collected by Hedwig Correvon in the book Ghost Stories from Bern in 1919 and are all set in the haunted darkness of Christmas times.
The Dancing Beguines
On quiet, moonlit nights near the Nydeggbrücke, those with the rare gift of second sight may glimpse something truly otherworldly. Seven small lights rise from the river’s dark waters and begin to swirl and twirl, chasing one another in joyful abandon above the gentle current. These are no ordinary flames; they are the spirits of the Beguines, young women once cloistered in the monastery at Klösterlistutz against their will.
Beguines: Although they are called Beguines, were they really this? The Beguines were Christian lay religious orders that were active in Western Europe, particularly in the Low Countries, in the 13th–16th centuries. Their members lived in semi-monastic communities but did not take formal religious vows. Although they promised not to marry “as long as they lived as Beguines”, to quote an early Rule of Life, they were free to leave at any time. Beguines were part of a larger spiritual revival movement of the 13th century that stressed imitation of Jesus’ life through voluntary poverty, care of the poor and sick, and religious devotion.
According to legend, their restless souls are granted a fleeting moment of freedom each Christmas to dance above the river they were once forbidden to cross. As the clock at Nydegg Church strikes midnight, their ghostly game ends in a soft sigh before they vanish, leaving only ripples on the water and a chill in the air.
The Lonely Walk Near the Studerstein
In the deep silence between Christmas and New Year’s, when the moon glows brightest, a solitary figure can be seen walking along the banks near the Studerstein, a park in the old town. Dressed in a long wig, knee breeches, and polished buckled shoes, the ghost of a man emerges from an old pavilion, tapping his silver-capped cane along his familiar path. He never speaks. One worker who once dared to call after him was met not with a reply, but with an inexplicable downpour from a clear sky and a deafening crash behind him. Like echoes of the phantom’s grief, or a warning not to disturb his solemn procession.
The Homesick Ghost
In a narrow house deep within Bern’s Old Town, Christmas brings a soft creak of old doors and the hush of unseen footsteps. The apparition is of a young peasant woman, dressed in centuries-old garb with a sulfur-yellow hat tucked under her arm. She is the homesick ghost, returning each holy season to the childhood home she once knew, although the story doesn’t mention what house it was. .
She drifts from room to room, pausing before mirrors to arrange her hair as if preparing for a celebration that will never come. Residents have learned not to interrupt. When her quiet journey is complete, the doors close behind her, and she vanishes until the next Christmas, drawn again by memories of warmth long gone.
The Aare Crossing
This ghost story takes the haunted christmas all the way to hell and the Aare River, lush with ghost stories.
The Christmas tree lights in the ferryman’s room at Ramseyerloch had already burned out. Ramseyerloch was an old mooring place to the 18th century court prison, but has been used for much longer. Then the ferryman’s wife noticed a dark shadow on the other side of the Aare, waving its arms as if calling the boatman across. At this time? At this hour? Immediately afterward, a shout was heard, three or four times.
With a heavy heart, the ferryman untied his boat and sailed across. He saw that a thick black cloth wrapped his head. He explained that he certainly wouldn’t ferry him across like that. The journeyman jumped into the boat and pressed the oars into the ferryman’s hand. The tide began to surge as the boat passed over them. House-high waves seemed about to tear down the houses. And the boat danced as if it were about to capsize at any moment and sink into the abyss. The ferryman’s hair stood on end. He had never made such a journey before. The cloaked man stood motionless at the bow. Then the ferryman threw his stick at him: “You are to blame for all this!”
A flame hissed. The smell of sulfur began to fill the air. The ferryman’s wife watched the events from the window in horror. She saw a tiny light dance above a high wave for a while. Suddenly, it disappeared in the spray.
The Ghosts from the Cathedral
Shortly before Christmas a long time ago, a young parish assistant arrived in Bern after a day’s hike. Since it was evening and he could not continue his journey to the Oberland until the next day, he was quartered in a small room in the cathedral, whose window faced the platform. The full white light of the moon shone through the window bars.
Around midnight, the sleeper felt as if something were happening outside. He rose and pressed his face to the window bars. There he saw four clergymen in their vestments walking with a serious, measured step beneath the trees on the platform. Four nuns followed them at a distance. Serious questions must have been occupying the clergy, for from time to time they paused, some gesticulating vigorously, others with their hands clasped behind their backs in thought. Not a leaf on the tree stirred, and not a stone stirred beneath the feet of the walkers. Not a sound was heard either.
As they passed the cathedral window, one of the clergymen turned his head and saw the young man watching them. Suddenly, eight tiny flames hissed up. A bluish cloud moved in front of the moon. But when it disappeared, the platform lay as it had been before. The moon covered the turrets and spires of the cathedral with silver; silver wove itself over the leaves of the trees. But there was not the slightest trace of those who had just walked here.
A Merry Haunted Christmas In Bern
In Bern, where ancient cobblestones remember every footstep and every whisper lingers in the cold air, Christmas is not only a season of light but of shadows as well. Long before Christmas became the season of the merry, something darker brewed.
Said to have been conjured up by a sorcerer or even the fairy folk themselves, Pennard Castles history is both mysterious and haunted by the sound of the howling witch left in the sandy ruins of the abandoned castle in Wales.
For a long time, Larnach Castle was New Zealand’s only castle, and for a long time, also one of the more haunted places in the country. Built by a rich banker to live with his family, his dream of a lasting dynasty ended when personal tragedies as well as failed political and business ventures started to turn the family against each other.
Crammed into the ancient towers and dark corner of St Donat’s Castle in the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales, the ghosts lingering within these walls are old and persistent.
After a common feud between two men, a ghost was created to torment the people on Hleiðrargarðs farm. Thus, the Hleiðrargarðs-Skotta and her legendary haunting started, some say it even escalated in her starting a plague, killing both cattle and men.
The current Britannia Adelphi Hotel is the third building here used as a hotel, and filled with ghosts according to rumours. From the dark basement to the haunted suites in the upper floors, this Liverpool hotel is often dubbed Britain’s most haunted one.
Hidden away in a bone for years, the ghost and Skotta of Ábær was sent on a mission to harass a farmer in northern Iceland. However, they lost control of her, and have since been haunting them all.
Said to be unhappy with the fate of the city he once led, the ghost of Duke Berchtold V of Zähringen is said to be haunting the old city in Bern, around the Nydegg Church where his monument is placed.
The little island Munkholmen outside of Trondheim in Norway has had many haunted rumors for a long time. From an old Viking execution place to a state prison, who is still lingering there in their afterlife?
After old friends clash after falling out, a curse is put upon the other. For generations, the Hítardals-Skotta is said to have haunted their family and village, sometimes even said to be behind their deaths.
Have you ever noticed the underground world of the old town in Bern? Now fancy cafes and shops, there are also tales of secret passageways, hideouts and ghosts beneath the cobbled stoned city.
Buried in the mounds of the Icelandic landscape, a murdered shepherd came back from the dead as a Draugr or perhaps a Haugbúi ghost to haunt the people living at Finnbogastaðir farm.
Around the terrifying statue of the Kindlifressenbrunnen devouring children, young ghosts are said to haunt like a misty night. Said to be the unwanted babies taken out of the city through the underground tunnels, they return to the scene of the crime.
Who said that ghost stories only happen around Halloween? Summer horror can be just as chilling. Here is a list of horror short stories found in the public domain that are free to read, perfect for a hot summer day.
Although the nights are shorter during summer and the sun vanquishes the long shadows, the time is no less haunted. The ghosts under the midsummer sun can be just as scary as those appearing on a stormy winters night. With the rise of summer vacationing in the Victorian area, there was also a flux of ghost stories set in this time. This opened for more stories centered around renting a haunted summer cabin, ghosts in the rose gardens and travelers finding strange places where monsters lurk.
These stories, set during the warm and often deceptively calm summer months, create a stark contrast to the chilling ghostly encounters they depict, enhancing their eerie and suspenseful atmospheres. Here are some of the short stories of ghost stories and haunted places in the public domain you can read for free perfect for the summer days.
The Open Door recounts a man’s unsettling visit to a manor house in the summer, where he is cautioned about the mysterious door that leads to a haunted room. It’s a classic ghost story written about someone vacationing in a haunted house during the summer that the Victorian popularized. Written by Charlotte Riddell in 1882 under her pseudonym Mrs. J. H. Riddell, known for her chilling horror tales.
This short story was first published in 1913 in The Wind in the Rosebush and Other Stories of the Supernatural. Her books dealt with Puritanism, and she was one of the first women in America to be elected to the National Institute for Arts and Letters. She was distantly related to another American writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Set during the late summer, this story involves a about a spinster Rebecca Flint who has come to Ford Village to take her elder sister’s daughter with her back to Michigan. But something about the village is strange and she encounters strange and ghostly things surrounding a rose-bush in the garden.
“The Upper Berth” is a short story written by F. Marion Crawford, first published in 1886. The story takes place aboard a transatlantic ocean liner in June. A passenger named Brisbane travels this distance frequently. When the steward behaves oddly while taking his luggage to his stateroom, number 105, he thinks it’s odd, but continues his travels. In the middle of the first night his roommate suddenly leaps down from the upper berth and runs out of the cabin. The morning after he finds out that his roommate has gone overboard. According to the rumors, he was the fourth person staying at that very upper berth to have done the same.
“The Haunted Orchard” by Richard Le Gallienne is a ghost story that takes place in the countryside during the summer. The story follows a man who rents a country house in order to get some rest and inspiration for his work. The house has an old orchard that immediately captures his interest due to its neglected state and the eerie beauty of the overgrown apple trees. He begins to notice a mysterious presence in the orchard. One night, he encounters the ghostly figure of a beautiful young woman among the apple trees. She seems to be searching for something or someone and is clearly tied to the orchard in some tragic way. The story delves into the themes of lost love and lingering sorrow, as the man becomes more involved in uncovering the story behind the haunting and the tragic past of the ghostly figure.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman‘s short story The Giant Wistaria from 1891 is less known than her iconic story The Yellow Wallpaper, a feminist classic and deals with patriarchal values and the repression of women’s sexuality and motherhood. It starts off with a story about an unwed girl with a child and the family discussing what to do with her. The father wants to marry her to her cousin and leave the child behind when they leave the country. Years later, a young couple rents the house and starts to joke around with it being haunted. And perhaps they are right.
The short story One Summer Night by Ambrose Bierce tells the story about a man realizing how he has been buried alive and how he has to deal with it and accept his fate. The story was first published in Cosmopolitan in 1906, and written by a writer who disappeared and was as mysterious as his stories.
The Sand-Walker is a short story written by Fergus Hume. It was first published in the collection: The Dancer in Red, and Other Stories in 1906. It’s about a man coming to the beaches in England one summer where he is warned: Whatever you do, don’t go on to the beaches at dusk, or the Sand-Walker will come to your window at night.
“The Phantom Rickshaw” by Rudyard Kipling is a haunting tale set in colonial India at the end of the monsoon season, where British officer Jack Pansay is tormented by the ghost of his former lover, Agnes Keith-Wessington, whom he had callously abandoned. Following her death, Pansay begins to see her spectral figure riding in a rickshaw, relentlessly haunting him. His repeated encounters with the ghost drive him to the brink of madness, as his fiancée and friends dismiss his experiences as delusions. The story explores themes of guilt, psychological torment, and the supernatural, blending an eerie atmosphere with the complexities of colonial society.
The Rival Ghosts by Brander Matthews was written in 1884 and published in the collection Mystic-Humorous Stories. It tells the story about a group of passengers crossing the transatlantic by ship and debating if Europe or the States have the best ghost stories. They gather around one that has tales about both with a humorous twist.
“The Horla” by Guy de Maupassant is a psychological horror story that delves into the mind of an unnamed narrator who becomes convinced he is being haunted by an invisible entity. The story has been cited as an inspiration for Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu“. Set in the oppressive heat of a French summer, the narrator’s initially peaceful life is disrupted by a series of unsettling events, leading him to believe that a supernatural being, the Horla, is draining his life force and controlling his actions. As his paranoia deepens, he struggles to discern reality from delusion, culminating in a descent into madness. The story explores themes of mental illness, the supernatural, and the fragility of human sanity.
“A View from a Hill” is a captivating short ghost story penned by M.R. James and originally published in 1925. The narrative follows Fanshawe, a scholarly figure who embarks on a summer retreat to the English countryside, hosted by his friend Squire Henry Richards. During his stay, Fanshawe stumbles upon a pair of binoculars crafted by a man who met an untimely and enigmatic demise in years past. These binoculars possess a peculiar quality, allowing Fanshawe to behold objects that have long since ceased to exist. This intriguing premise sets the stage for a tale of mystery and suspense, as Fanshawe becomes entangled in a realm where the boundaries of time and perception blur. As the storyline unfolds, readers are drawn into a world where the supernatural seamlessly intertwines with the ordinary, creating an atmosphere of eerie fascination and spine-tingling intrigue.
“The Room in the Tower” by E.F. Benson is a chilling ghost story that centers around a recurring nightmare experienced by the narrator. In his dream, he visits a friend’s house and is always assigned to sleep in a foreboding tower room, accompanied by an overwhelming sense of dread. One summer, he finds himself invited to a real-life version of the house from his dreams. Despite his apprehensions, he is given the very room he fears. As night falls, the nightmare becomes a reality when he encounters the ghost of a previous occupant, revealing a dark and terrifying past. The story masterfully blends psychological tension with supernatural horror, leaving a lasting impression of unease and fear.
“The Wood of the Dead” is a story written by Algernon Blackwood. It appeared in his first collection, The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories, in 1906. The story is set during a summer where a person is making a solo summer walking tour of England’s west country and has stopped for a meal at a village inn. A local man tells the traveler to meet him at midnight in “The Wood of the Dead”. According to local lore when a person entered the nearby wood singing, he knew that person would soon die. Instead of continuing on his journey, the traveler decides to have a closer look at The Woods of the Dead.
“Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance” is a ghost story by British writer M. R. James first published when he included it in his 1911 collection More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. The story is set in the late summer in England, when Mr Humphreys, arrives in Wilsthorpe. He has recently inherited an estate from his uncle, who died a mysterious death and the history of the strange maze and temple next to his new home.
“The Dead Valley” by Ralph Adams Cram from 1895 is a chilling tale that unfolds amidst the haunting landscape of rural New England. Set in the secluded valley of a decaying village, the story follows a young traveler who stumbles upon the eerie remnants of a once-thriving community. As he delves deeper into the desolate surroundings, he uncovers dark secrets and encounters malevolent forces that lurk in the shadows. Through vivid imagery and evocative prose, “The Dead Valley” explores themes of isolation, decay, and the supernatural, leaving readers captivated by its unsettling portrayal of a world teetering on the brink of madness.
This was just a small collection of some of the horror short stories found in the public domain that are free to read and are perfect for reading on a hot summer day or night. Have you read them all? Perhaps you know a couple of good ones that would be great for the list?
Smee is a short story by A.M. Burrage, telling the haunting ghost story of a group of people playing hide and seek in a house were a girl died playing the very same game.
Smee by A.M Burrage
‘No,’ said Jackson, with a deprecatory smile, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to upset your game. I shan’t be doing that because you’ll have plenty without me. But I’m not playing any games of hide-and-seek.’
It was Christmas Eve, and we were a party of fourteen with just the proper leavening of youth. We had dined well; it was the season for childish games, and we were all in the mood for playing them— all, that is, except Jackson. When somebody suggested hide-and-seek there was rapturous and almost unanimous approval. His was the one dissentient voice.
It was not like Jackson to spoil sport or refuse to do as others wanted. Somebody asked him if he were feeling seedy.
‘No,’ he answered, ‘I feel perfectly fit, thanks. But,’ he added with a smile which softened without retracting the flat refusal, ‘I’m not playing hide-and-seek.’
One of us asked him why not. He hesitated for some seconds before replying.
‘I sometimes go and stay at a house where a girl was killed through playing hide-and-seek in the dark. She didn’t know the house very well. There was a servants’ staircase with a door to it. When she was pursued she opened the door and jumped into what she must have thought was one of the bedrooms—and she broke her neck at the bottom of the stairs.’
We all looked concerned, and Mrs Fernley said:
‘How awful! And you were there when it happened?’
Jackson shook his head very gravely. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but I was there when something else happened. Something worse.’
‘I shouldn’t have thought anything could be worse.’
‘This was,’ said Jackson, and shuddered visibly. ‘Or so it seemed to me.’
I think he wanted to tell the story and was angling for encouragement. A few requests which may have seemed to him to lack urgency, he affected to ignore and went off at a tangent.
‘I wonder if any of you have played a game called “Smee”. It’s a great improvement on the ordinary game of hide-and-seek. The name derives from the ungrammatical colloquialism, “It’s me.” You might care to play if you’re going to play a game of that sort. Let me tell you the rules.
‘Every player is presented with a sheet of paper. All the sheets are blank except one, on which is written “Smee”. Nobody knows who is “Smee” except “Smee” himself—or herself, as the case may be. The lights are then turned out and “Smee” slips from the room and goes off to hide, and after an interval the other players go off in search, without knowing whom they are actually in search of. One player meeting another challenges with the word “Smee” and the other player, if not the one concerned, answers “Smee.”
‘The real “Smee” makes no answer when challenged, and the second player remains quietly by him. Presently they will be discovered by a third player, who, having challenged and received no answer, will link up with the first two. This goes on until all the players have formed a chain, and the last to join is marked down for a forfeit. It’s a good noisy, romping game, and in a big house it often takes a long time to complete the chain. You might care to try it; and I’ll pay my forfeit and smoke one of Tim’s excellent cigars here by the fire until you get tired of it.’
I remarked that it sounded a good game and asked Jackson if he had played it himself. ‘Yes,’ he answered; ‘I played it in the house I was telling you about.’
‘And she was there? The girl who broke—‘
‘No, no,’ Mrs Fernley interrupted. ‘He told us he wasn’t there when it happened.’
Jackson considered. ‘I don’t know if she was there or not. I’m afraid she was. I know that there were thirteen of us and there ought only to have been twelve. And I’ll swear that I didn’t know her name, or I think I should have gone clean off my head when I heard that whisper in the dark. No, you don’t catch me playing that game, or any other like it, any more. It spoiled my nerve quite a while, and I can’t afford to take long holidays. Besides, it saves a lot of trouble and inconvenience to own up at once to being a coward.’
Tim Vouce, the best of hosts, smiled around at us, and in that smile there was a meaning which is sometimes vulgarly expressed by the slow closing of an eye. ‘There’s a story coming,’ he announced. ‘There’s certainly a story of sorts,’ said Jackson, ‘but whether it’s coming or not—‘ He paused and shrugged his shoulders.
‘Well, you’re going to pay a forfeit instead of playing?’
‘Please. But have a heart and let me down lightly. It’s not just a sheer cussedness on my part.’
‘Payment in advance,’ said Tim, ‘insures honesty and promotes good feeling. You are therefore sentenced to tell the story here and now.’
And here follows Jackson’s story, unrevised by me and passed on without comment to a wider public: Some of you, I know, have run across the Sangstons. Christopher Sangston and his wife, I mean.
They’re distant connections of mine—at least, Violet Sangston is. About eight years ago they bought a house between the North and South Downs on the Surrey and Sussex border, and five years ago they invited me to come and spend Christmas with them. It was a fairly old house—I couldn’t say exactly of what period—and it certainly deserved the epithet ‘rambling.’ It wasn’t a articularly big house, but the original architect, whoever he may have been, had not concerned himself with economising in space, and at first you could get lost in it quite easily.
Well, I went down for that Christmas, assured by Violet’s letter that I knew most of my fellow-guests and that the two or three who might be strangers to me were all ‘lambs.’ Unfortunately, I’m one of the world’s workers, and couldn’t get away until Christmas Eve, although the other members of the party had assembled on the preceding day. Even then I had to cut it rather fine to be there for dinner on my first night. They were all dressing when I arrived and I had to go straight to my room and waste no time. I may even have kept dinner waiting a bit, for I was last down, and it was announced within a minute of my entering the drawing-room. There was just time to say ‘hullo’ to everybody I knew, to be briefly introduced to the two or three I didn’t know, and then I had to give my arm to Mrs Gorman.
I mention this as the reason why I didn’t catch the name of a tall, dark, handsome girl I hadn’t met before. Everything was rather hurried and I am always bad at catching people’s names. She looked cold and clever and rather forbidding, the sort of girl who gives the impression of knowing all about men and the more she knows of them the less she likes them. I felt that I wasn’t going to hit it off with this particular ‘lamb’ of Violet’s, but she looked interesting all the same, and I wondered who she was. I didn’t ask, because I was pretty sure of hearing somebody address her by name before very long. Unluckily, though, I was a long way off her at table, and as Mrs Gorman was at the top of her form that night I soon forgot to worry about who she might be. Mrs Gorman is one of the most amusing women I know, an outrageous but quite innocent flirt, with a very sprightly wit which isn’t always unkind. She can think half a dozen moves ahead in conversation just as an expert can in a game of chess. We were soon sparring, or, rather, I was ‘covering’ against the ropes, and I quite forgot to ask her in an undertone the name of the cold, proud beauty. The lady on the other side of me was a stranger, or had been until a few minutes since, and I didn’t think of seeking information in that quarter.
There was a round dozen of us, including the Sangstons themselves, and we were all young or trying to be. The Sangstons themselves were the oldest members of the party and their son Reggie, in his last year at Marlborough, must have been the youngest. When there was talk of playing games after dinner it was he who suggested ‘Smee.’ He told us how to play it just as I’ve described it to you.
His father chipped in as soon as we all understood what was going to be required of us. ‘If there are any games of that sort going on in the house,’ he said, ‘for goodness’ sake be careful of the back stairs on the first-floor landing. There’s a door to them and I’ve often meant to take it down. In the dark anybody who doesn’t know the house very well might think they were walking into a room. A girl actually did break her neck on those stairs about ten years ago when the Ainsties lived here.’ I asked how it happened.
‘Oh,’ said Sangston, ‘there was a party here one Christmas time and they were playing hide-and-seek as you propose doing. This girl was one of the hiders. She heard somebody coming, ran along the passage to get away, and opened the door of what she thought was a bedroom, evidently with the intention of hiding behind it while her pursuer went past. Unfortunately it was the door leading to the back stairs, and that staircase is as straight and almost as steep as the shaft of a pit. She was dead when they picked her up.’
We all promised for our own sakes to be careful. Mrs Gorman said that she was sure nothing could happen to her, since she was insured by three different firms, and her next-of-kin was a brother whose consistent ill-luck was a byword in the family. You see, none of us had known the unfortunate girl, and as the tragedy was ten years old there was no need to pull long faces about it. Well, we started the game almost immediately after dinner. The men allowed themselves only five minutes before joining the ladies, and then young Reggie Sangston went round and assured himself that the lights were out all over the house except in the servants’ quarters and in the drawing-room where we were assembled. We then got busy with twelve sheets of paper which he twisted into pellets and shook up between his hands before passing them round. Eleven of them were blank, and ‘Smee’ was written on the twelfth. The person drawing the latter was the one who had to hide. I looked and saw that mine was a blank. A moment later out went the electric lights, and in the darkness I heard somebody get up and creep to the door.
After a minute or so somebody gave a signal and we made a rush for the door. I for one hadn’t the least idea which of the party was ‘Smee.’ For five or ten minutes we were all rushing up and down passages and in and out rooms challenging one another and answering, ‘Smee?—Smee!’ After a bit the alarums and excursions died down, and I guessed that ‘Smee’ was found. Eventually I found a chain of people all sitting still and holding their breath on some narrow stairs leading up to a row of attics. I hastily joined it, having challenged and been answered with silence, and presently two more stragglers arrived, each racing the other to avoid being last. Sangston was one of them, indeed it was he who was marked down for a forfeit, and after a little while he remarked in an undertone, ‘I think we’re all here now, aren’t we?’
He struck a match, looked up the shaft of the staircase, and began to count. It wasn’t hard, although we just about filled the staircase, for we were sitting each a step or two above the next, and all our heads were visible. ‘…nine, ten, eleven, twelve—thirteen‘ he concluded, and then laughed. ‘Dash it all, that’s one too many!’
The match had burned out and he struck another and began to count. He got as far as twelve, and then uttered an exclamation.
‘There are thirteen people here!’ he exclaimed. ‘I haven’t counted myself yet.’
‘Oh, nonsense!’ I laughed. ‘You probably began with yourself, and now you want to count yourself twice.’
Out came his son’s electric torch, giving a brighter and steadier light and we all began to count. Of course we numbered twelve. Sangston laughed.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I could have sworn I counted thirteen twice.’
From halfway up the stairs came Violet Sangston’s voice with a little nervous trill in it. ‘I thought there was somebody sitting two steps above me. Have you moved up, Captain Ransome?’
Ransome said that he hadn’t: he also said that he thought there was somebody sitting between Violet and himself. Just for a moment there was an uncomfortable Something in the air, a little cold ripple which touched us all. For that little moment it seemed to all of us, I think, that something odd and unpleasant had happened and was liable to happen again. Then we laughed at ourselves and at one another and were comfortable once more. There were only twelve of us, and there could only have been twelve of us, and there was no argument about it. Still laughing we trooped back to the drawingroom to begin again.
This time I was ‘Smee,’ and Violet Sangston ran me to earth while I was still looking for a hidingplace. That round didn’t last long, and we were a chain of twelve within two or three minutes.
Afterwards there was a short interval. Violet wanted a wrap fetched for her, and her husband went up to get it from her room. He was no sooner gone than Reggie pulled me by the sleeve. I saw that he was looking pale and sick.
‘Quick!’ he whispered, ‘while father’s out of the way. Take me into the smoke room and give me a brandy or a whisky or something.’
Outside the room I asked him what was the matter, but he didn’t answer at first, and I thought it better to dose him first and question him afterward. So I mixed him a pretty dark-complexioned brandy and soda which he drank at a gulp and then began to puff as if he had been running.
‘I’ve had rather a turn,’ he said to me with a sheepish grin.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I don’t know. You were “Smee” just now, weren’t you? Well, of course I didn’t know who “Smee” was, and while mother and the others ran into the west wing and found you, I turned east. There’s a deep clothes cupboard in my bedroom — I’d marked it down as a good place to hide when it was my turn, and I had an idea that “Smee” might be there. I opened the door in the dark, felt round, and touched somebody’s hand. “Smee?” I whispered, and not getting any answer I thought I had found “Smee.”’
‘Well, I don’t know how it was, but an odd creepy feeling came over me, I can’t describe it, but I felt that something was wrong. So I turned on my electric torch and there was nobody there. Now, I swear I touched a hand, and I was filling up the doorway of the cupboard at the time, so nobody could get out and past me.’ He puffed again. ‘What do you make of it?’ he asked.
‘You imagined that you had touched a hand,’ I answered, naturally enough.
He uttered a short laugh. ‘Of course I knew you were going to say that,’ he said. ‘I must have imagined it, mustn’t I?’ He paused and swallowed. ‘I mean, it couldn’t have been anything else but imagination, could it?’
I assured him that it couldn’t, meaning what I said, and he accepted this, but rather with the philosophy of one who knows he is right but doesn’t expect to be believed. We returned together to the drawing-room where, by that time, they were all waiting for us and ready to start again.
It may have been my imagination—although I’m almost sure it wasn’t—but it seemed to me that all enthusiasm for the game had suddenly melted like a white frost in strong sunlight. If anybody had suggested another game I’m sure we should all have been grateful and abandoned ‘Smee.’ Only nobody did. Nobody seemed to like to. I for one, and I can speak for some of the others too, was oppressed with the feeling that there was something wrong. I couldn’t have said what I thought was wrong, indeed I didn’t think about it at all, but somehow all the sparkle had gone out of the fun, and hovering over my mind like a shadow was the warning of some sixth sense which told me that there was an influence in the house which was neither sane, sound nor healthy. Why did I feel like that?
Because Sangston had counted thirteen of us instead of twelve, and his son had thought he had touched somebody in an empty cupboard. No, there was more in it than just that. One would have laughed at such things in the ordinary way, and it was just that feeling of something being wrong which stopped me from laughing.
Well, we started again, and when we went in pursuit of the unknown ‘Smee,’ we were as noisy as ever, but it seemed to me that most of us were acting. Frankly, for no reason other than the one I’ve given you, we’d stopped enjoying the game. I had an instinct to hunt with the main pack, but after a few minutes, during which no ‘Smee’ had been found, my instinct to play winning games and be first if possible, set me searching on my own account. And on the first floor of the west wing following the wall which was actually the shell of the house, I blundered against a pair of human knees.
I put out my hand and touched a soft, heavy curtain. Then I knew where I was. There were tall, deeply-recessed windows with seats along the landing, and curtains over the recesses to the ground.
Somebody was sitting in a corner of this window-seat behind the curtain. Aha, I had caught ‘Smee’!
So I drew the curtain aside, stepped in, and touched the bare arm of a woman.
It was a dark night outside, and, moreover, the window was not only curtained but a blind hung down to where the bottom panes joined up with the frame. Between the curtain and the window it was as dark as the plague of Egypt. I could not have seen my hand held six inches before my face, much less the woman sitting in the corner.
‘Smee?’ I whispered.
I had no answer. ‘Smee’ when challenged does not answer. So I sat beside her, first in the field, to await the others. Then, having settled myself I leaned over to her and whispered: ‘Who is it? What’s your name, “Smee”?’
And out of the darkness beside me the whisper came back: ‘Brenda Ford.’
I didn’t know the name, but because I didn’t know it I guessed at once who she was. The tall, pale, dark girl was the only person in the house I didn’t know by name. Ergo my companion was the tall, pale, dark girl. It seemed rather intriguing to be there with her, shut in between a heavy curtain and a window, and I rather wondered whether she was enjoying the game we were all playing. Somehow she hadn’t seemed to me to be one of the romping sort. I muttered one or two commonplace questions to her and had no answer.
‘Smee’ is a game of silence. ‘Smee’ and the person or persons who have found ‘Smee’ are supposed to keep quiet to make it hard for the others. But there was nobody else about, and it occurred to me that she was playing the game a little too much to the letter. I spoke again and got no answer, and then I began to be annoyed. She was of that cold, ‘superior’ type which affects to despise men; she didn’t like me; and she was sheltering behind the rules of a game for children to be dis-courteous.
Well, if she didn’t like sitting there with me, I certainly didn’t want to be sitting there with her! I half turned from her and began to hope that we should both be discovered without much more delay.
Having discovered that I didn’t like being there alone with her, it was queer how soon I found myself hating it, and that for a reason very different from the one which had at first whetted my annoyance.
The girl I had met for the first time before dinner, and seen diagonally across the table, had a sort of cold charm about her which had attracted while it had half angered me. For the girl who was with me, imprisoned in the opaque darkness between the curtain and the window, I felt no attraction at all. It was so very much the reverse that I should have wondered at myself if, after the first shock of the discovery that she had suddenly become repellent to me, I had had room in my mind for anything besides the consciousness that her close presence was an increasing horror to me.
It came upon me just as quickly as I’ve uttered the words. My flesh suddenly shrank from her as you see a strip of gelatine shrink and wither before the heat of a fire. That feeling of something being wrong had come back to me, but multiplied to an extent which turned foreboding into actual terror. I firmly believe that I should have got up and run if I had not felt that at my first movement she would have divined my intention and compelled me to stay, by some means of which I could not bear to think. The memory of having touched her bare arm made me wince and draw in my lips. I prayed that somebody else would come along soon.
My prayer was answered. Light footfalls sounded on the landing. Somebody on the other side of the curtain brushed against my knees. The curtain was drawn aside and a woman’s hand, fumbling in the darkness, presently rested on my shoulder. ‘Smee?’ whispered a voice which I instantly recognised as Mrs Gorman’s.
Of course she received no answer. She came and settled down beside me with a rustle, and I can’t describe the sense of relief she brought me.
‘It’s Tony, isn’t it?’ she whispered.
‘Yes,’ I whispered back.
‘You’re not “Smee” are you?’
‘No, she’s on my other side.’
She reached a hand across me, and I heard one of her nails scratch the surface of a woman’s silk gown.
‘Hullo, “Smee”! How are you? Who are you? Oh, is it against the rules to talk? Never mind, Tony, we’ll break the rules. Do you know, Tony, this game is beginning to irk me a little. I hope they’re not going to run it to death by playing it all the evening. I’d like to play some game where we can all be together in the same room with a nice bright fire.’
‘Same here,’ I agreed fervently.
‘Can’t you suggest something when we go down? There’s something rather uncanny in this particular amusement. I can’t quite shed the delusion that there’s somebody in this game who oughtn’t to be in at all.’
That was just how I had been feeling, but I didn’t say so. But for my part the worst of my qualms were now gone; the arrival of Mrs Gorman had dissipated them. We sat on talking, wondering from time to time when the rest of the party would arrive. I don’t know how long elapsed before we heard a clatter of feet on the landing and young Reggie’s voice shouting, ‘Hullo! Hullo, there! anybody there?’
‘Yes,’ I answered.
‘Mrs Gorman with you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, you’re a nice pair! You’ve both forfeited. We’ve all been waiting you for hours.’
‘Why, you haven’t found “Smee” yet,’ I objected.
‘You haven’t, you mean. I happen to have been “Smee” myself.’
‘But “Smee’s” here with us,’ I cried.
‘Yes,’ agreed Mrs Gorman.
The curtain was stripped aside and in a moment we were blinking into the eye of Reggie’s electric torch. I looked at Mrs Gorman and then on my other side. Between me and the wall there was an empty space on the window seat. I stood up at once and wished I hadn’t, for I found myself sick and dizzy.
‘There was somebody there,’ I maintained, ‘because I touched her.’
‘So did I,’ said Mrs Gorman in a voice which had lost its steadiness. ‘And I don’t see how she could have got up and gone without our knowing it.’
Reggie uttered a queer, shaken laugh. He, too, had had an unpleasant experience that evening.
‘Somebody’s been playing the goat,’ he remarked. ‘Coming down?’
We were not very popular when we arrived in the drawing-room. Reggie rather tactlessly gave it out that he had found us sitting on a window-seat behind the curtain. I taxed the tall, dark girl with having pretended to be ‘Smee’ and afterwards slipping away. She denied it. After which we settled down and played other games. ‘Smee’ was done with for the evening, and I for one was glad of it.
Some long while later, during an interval, Sangston told me, if I wanted a drink, to go into the smoke room and help myself. I went, and he presently followed me. I could see that he was rather peeved with me, and the reason came out during the following minute or two. It seemed that, in his opinion, if I must sit out and flirt with Mrs Gorman—in circumstances which would have been considered highly compromising in his young days—I needn’t do it during a round game and keep everybody waiting for us.
‘But there was somebody else there,’ I protested, ‘somebody pretending to be “Smee.” I believe it was that tall, dark girl. Miss Ford, although she denied it. She even whispered her name to me.’
Sangston stared at me and nearly dropped his glass.
‘Miss Who? he shouted.
‘Brenda Ford—she told me her name was.’
Sangston put down his glass and laid a hand on my shoulder.
‘Look here, old man,’ he said, ‘I don’t mind a joke, but don’t let it go too far. We don’t want all the women in the house getting hysterical. Brenda Ford is the name of the girl who broke her neck on the stairs playing hide-and-seek here ten years ago.’
Said to have been conjured up by a sorcerer or even the fairy folk themselves, Pennard Castles history is both mysterious and haunted by the sound of the howling witch left in the sandy ruins of the abandoned castle in Wales.
For a long time, Larnach Castle was New Zealand’s only castle, and for a long time, also one of the more haunted places in the country. Built by a rich banker to live with his family, his dream of a lasting dynasty ended when personal tragedies as well as failed political and business ventures started to turn the family against each other.
Crammed into the ancient towers and dark corner of St Donat’s Castle in the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales, the ghosts lingering within these walls are old and persistent.
After a common feud between two men, a ghost was created to torment the people on Hleiðrargarðs farm. Thus, the Hleiðrargarðs-Skotta and her legendary haunting started, some say it even escalated in her starting a plague, killing both cattle and men.
The current Britannia Adelphi Hotel is the third building here used as a hotel, and filled with ghosts according to rumours. From the dark basement to the haunted suites in the upper floors, this Liverpool hotel is often dubbed Britain’s most haunted one.
Hidden away in a bone for years, the ghost and Skotta of Ábær was sent on a mission to harass a farmer in northern Iceland. However, they lost control of her, and have since been haunting them all.
Said to be unhappy with the fate of the city he once led, the ghost of Duke Berchtold V of Zähringen is said to be haunting the old city in Bern, around the Nydegg Church where his monument is placed.
The little island Munkholmen outside of Trondheim in Norway has had many haunted rumors for a long time. From an old Viking execution place to a state prison, who is still lingering there in their afterlife?
After old friends clash after falling out, a curse is put upon the other. For generations, the Hítardals-Skotta is said to have haunted their family and village, sometimes even said to be behind their deaths.
Have you ever noticed the underground world of the old town in Bern? Now fancy cafes and shops, there are also tales of secret passageways, hideouts and ghosts beneath the cobbled stoned city.
Buried in the mounds of the Icelandic landscape, a murdered shepherd came back from the dead as a Draugr or perhaps a Haugbúi ghost to haunt the people living at Finnbogastaðir farm.
Around the terrifying statue of the Kindlifressenbrunnen devouring children, young ghosts are said to haunt like a misty night. Said to be the unwanted babies taken out of the city through the underground tunnels, they return to the scene of the crime.
Ada Buisson (26 March 1839 – 27 December 1866) was an English author and novelist remembered today for her ghost stories.
During her short lifetime Buisson published one novel, Put to the Test (1865), Her second novel, A Terrible Wrong: A Novel (1867) and short stories were published after her early death. Various of her writings appeared in Belgravia, a magazine edited by her friend the novelist Mary Elizabeth Braddon. This is were the short story The Ghost’s Summons were published in 1868.
“Wanted, sir—a patient.”
It was in the early days of my professional career, when patients were scarce and fees scarcer; and though I was in the act of sitting down to my chop, and had promise! myself a glass of steaming punch afterwards, in honour of the Christmas season, I hurried instantly into my surgery.
I entered briskly; but no sooner did I catch sight of the figure standing leaning against the counter than I started back with a strange feeling of horror which for the life of me I could not comprehend.
Never shall I forget the ghastliness of that face—the white horror stamped upon every feature — the agony which seemed to sink the very eyes beneath the contracted brows; it was awful to me to behold, accustomed as I was to scenes of terror.
“You seek advice,” I began, with some hesitation.
“No; I am not ill.”
“You require then—”
“Hush!” he interrupted, approaching more nearly, and dropping his already low murmur to a mere whisper. “I believe you are not rich. Would you be willing to earn a thousand pounds?”
A thousand pounds! His words seemed to burn my very ears.
“I should be thankful, if I could do so honestly,” I replied with dignity. “What is the service required of me?”
A peculiar look of intense horror passed over the white face before me; but the blue-black lips answered firmly, “To attend a death-bed.”
“A thousand pounds to attend a death-bed! Where am I to go, then ?—whose is it?”
“Mine.”
The voice in which this was said sounded so hollow and distant, that involuntarily I shrank back. “Yours! What nonsense! You are not a dying man. You are pale, but you appear perfectly healthy. You—”
“Hush!” he interrupted; “I know all this. You cannot be more convinced of my physical health than I am myself; yet I know that before the clock tolls the first hour after midnight I shall be a dead man.”
“But—”
He shuddered slightly; but stretching out his hand commandingly, motioned me to be silent. “I am but too well informed of what I affirm,” he said quietly; “I have received a mysterious summons from the dead. No mortal aid can avail me. I am as doomed as the wretch on whom the judge has passed sentence. I do not come either to seek your advice or to argue the matter with you, but simply to buy your services. I offer you a thousand pounds to pass the night in my chamber, and witness the scene which takes place. The sum may appear to you extravagant. But I have no further need to count the cost of any gratification; and the spectacle you will have to witness is no common sight of horror.”
The words, strange as they were, were spoken calmly enough; but as the last sentence dropped slowly from the livid lips, an expression of such wild horror again passed over the stranger’s face, that, in spite of the immense fee, I hesitated to answer.
“You fear to trust to the promise of a dead man! See here, and be convinced,” he exclaimed eagerly; and the next instant, on the counter between us lay a parchment document; and following the indication of that white muscular hand, I read the words, “And to Mr. Frederick Kead, of 14 High-street, Alton, I bequeath the sum of one thousand pounds for certain services rendered to me.”
“I have had that will drawn up within the last twenty-four hours, and I signed it an hour ago, in the presence of competent witnesses. I am prepared, you see. Now, do you accept my offer, or not?”
My answer was to walk across the room and take down my hat, and then lock the door of the surgery communicating with the house.
It was a dark, icy-cold night, and somehow the courage and determination which the sight of my own name in connection with a thousand pounds had given me, flagged considerably as I found myself hurried along through the silent darkness by a man whose death-bed I was about to attend.
He was grimly silent; but as his hand touched mine, in spite of the frost, it felt like a burning coal.
On we went—tramp, tramp, through the snow—on, on, till even I grew weary, and at length on my appalled ear struck the chimes of a church-clock; whilst close at hand I distinguished the snowy hillocks of a churchyard.
Heavens! was this awful scene of which I was to be the witness to take place veritably amongst the dead?
“Eleven,” groaned the doomed man. “Gracious God! but two hours more, and that ghostly messenger will bring the summons. Come, come; for mercy’s sake, let us hasten.”
There was but a short road separating us now from a wall which surrounded a large mansion, and along this we hastened until we reached a small door.
Passing through this, in a few minutes we were stealthily ascending the private staircase to a splendidly-furnished apartment, which left no doubt of the wealth of its owner.
All was intensely silent, however, through the house; and about this room in particular there was a stillness that, as I gazed around, struck me as almost ghastly.
My companion glanced at the clock on the mantelshelf, and sank into a large chair by the side of the fire with a shudder. “Only an hour and a half longer,” he muttered. “Great heaven! I thought I had more fortitude. This horror unmans me.” Then, in a fiercer tone, and clutching my arm, he added, “Ha! you mock me, you think me mad; but wait till you see—wait till you see!”
I put my hand on his wrist; for there was now a fever in his sunken eyes which checked the superstitious chill which had been gathering over me, and made me hope that, after all, my first suspicion was correct, and that my patient was but the victim of some fearful hallucination.
“Mock you!” I answered soothingly. “Far from it; I sympathise intensely with you, and would do much to aid you. You require sleep. Lie down, and leave me to watch.”
He groaned, but rose, and began throwing off his clothes; and, watching my opportunity, I slipped a sleeping-powder, which I had managed to put in my pocket before leaving the surgery, into the tumbler of claret that stood beside him.
The more I saw, the more I felt convinced that it was the nervous system of my patient which required my attention; and it was with sincere satisfaction I saw him drink the wine, and then stretch himself on the luxurious bed.
“Ha,” thought I, as the clock struck twelve, and instead of a groan, the deep breathing of the sleeper sounded through the room; “you won’t receive any summons to-night, and I may make myself comfortable.”
Noiselessly, therefore, I replenished the fire, poured myself out a large glass of wine, and drawing the curtain so that the firelight should not disturb the sleeper, I put myself in a position to follow his example.
How long I slept I know not, but suddenly I aroused with a start and as ghostly a thrill of horror as ever I remember to have felt in my life.
Something—what, I knew not—seemed near, something nameless, but unutterably awful.
I gazed round.
The fire emitted a faint blue glow, just sufficient to enable me to see that the room was exactly the same as when I fell asleep, but that the long hand of the clock wanted but five minutes of the mysterious hour which was to be the death-moment of the “summoned” man!
Was there anything in it, then?—any truth in the strange story he had told?
The silence was intense.
I could not even hear a breath from the bed; and I was about to rise and approach, when again that awful horror seized me, and at the same moment my eye fell upon the mirror opposite the door, and I saw—
Great heaven! that awful Shape—that ghastly mockery of what had been humanity—was it really a messenger from the buried, quiet dead?
It stood there in visible death-clothes; but the awful face was ghastly with corruption, and the sunken eyes gleamed forth a green glassy glare which seemed a veritable blast from the infernal fires below.
To move or utter a sound in that hideous presence was impossible; and like a statue I sat and saw that horrid Shape move slowly towards the bed.
What was the awful scene enacted there, I know not. I heard nothing, except a low stifled agonised groan; and I saw the shadow of that ghastly messenger bending over the bed.
Whether it was some dreadful but wordless sentence its breathless lips conveyed as it stood there, I know not; but for an instant the shadow of a claw-like hand, from which the third finger was missing, appeared extended over the doomed man’s head; and then, as the clock struck one clear silvery stroke, it fell, and a wild shriek rang through the room—a death-shriek.
I am not given to fainting, but I certainly confess that the next ten minutes of my existence was a cold blank; and even when I did manage to stagger to my feet, I gazed round, vainly endeavouring to understand the chilly horror which still possessed me.
Thank God! the room was rid of that awful presence—I saw that; so, gulping down some wine, I lighted a wax-taper and staggered towards the bed. Ah, how I prayed that, after all, I might have been dreaming, and that my own excited imagination had but conjured up some hideous memory of the dissecting-room!
But one glance was sufficient to answer that.
No! The summons had indeed been given and answered.
I flashed the light over the dead face, swollen, convulsed still with the death-agony; but suddenly I shrank back.
Even as I gazed, the expression of the face seemed to change: the blackness faded into a deathly whiteness; the convulsed features relaxed, and, even as if the victim of that dread apparition still lived, a sad solemn smile stole over the pale lips.
I was intensely horrified, but still I retained sufficient self-consciousness to be struck professionally by such a phenomenon.
Surely there was something more than supernatural agency in all this?
Again I scrutinised the dead face, and even the throat and chest; but, with the exception of a tiny pimple on one temple beneath a cluster of hair, not a mark appeared. To look at the corpse, one would have believed that this man had indeed died by the visitation of God, peacefully, whilst sleeping.
How long I stood there I know not, but time enough to gather my scattered senses and to reflect that, all things considered, my own position would be very unpleasant if I was found thus unexpectedly in the room of the mysteriously dead man.
So, as noiselessly as I could, I made my way out of the house. No one met me on the private staircase; the little door opening into the road was easily unfastened; and thankful indeed was I to feel again the fresh wintry air as I hurried along that road by the churchyard.
There was a magnificent funeral soon in that church; and it was said that the young widow of the buried man was inconsolable; and then rumours got abroad of a horrible apparition which had been seen on the night of the death; and it was whispered the young widow was terrified, and insisted upon leaving her splendid mansion.
I was too mystified with the whole affair to risk my reputation by saying what I knew, and I should have allowed my share in it to remain for ever buried in oblivion, had I not suddenly heard that the widow, objecting to many of the legacies in the last will of her husband, intended to dispute it on the score of insanity, and then there gradually arose the rumour of his belief in having received a mysterious summons.
On this I went to the lawyer, and sent a message to the lady, that, as the last person who had attended her husband, I undertook to prove his sanity; and I besought her to grant me an interview, in which I would relate as strange and horrible a story as ear had ever heard. The same evening I received an invitation to go to the mansion. I was ushered immediately into a splendid room, and there, standing before the fire, was the most dazzlingly beautiful young creature I had ever seen.
She was very small, but exquisitely made; had it not been for the dignity of her carriage, I should have believed her a mere child. With a stately bow she advanced, but did not speak.”I come on a strange and painful errand,” I began, and then I started, for I happened to glance full into her eyes, and from them down to the small right hand grasping the chair. The wedding-ring was on that hand!
“I conclude you are the Mr. Kead who requested permission to tell me some absurd ghost-story, and whom my late husband mentions here.” And as she spoke she stretched out her left hand towards something—but what I knew not, for my eyes were fixed on that hand.
Horror! White and delicate it might be, but it was shaped like a claw, and the third finger was missing!
One sentence was enough after that. “Madam, all I can tell you is, that the ghost who summoned your husband was marked by a singular deformity. The third finger of the left hand was missing,” I said sternly; and the next instant I had left that beautiful sinful presence.
That will was never disputed. The next morning, too, I received a check for a thousand pounds; and the next news I heard of the widow was, that she had herself seen that awful apparition, and had left the mansion immediately.
Said to have been conjured up by a sorcerer or even the fairy folk themselves, Pennard Castles history is both mysterious and haunted by the sound of the howling witch left in the sandy ruins of the abandoned castle in Wales.
For a long time, Larnach Castle was New Zealand’s only castle, and for a long time, also one of the more haunted places in the country. Built by a rich banker to live with his family, his dream of a lasting dynasty ended when personal tragedies as well as failed political and business ventures started to turn the family against each other.
Crammed into the ancient towers and dark corner of St Donat’s Castle in the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales, the ghosts lingering within these walls are old and persistent.
After a common feud between two men, a ghost was created to torment the people on Hleiðrargarðs farm. Thus, the Hleiðrargarðs-Skotta and her legendary haunting started, some say it even escalated in her starting a plague, killing both cattle and men.
The current Britannia Adelphi Hotel is the third building here used as a hotel, and filled with ghosts according to rumours. From the dark basement to the haunted suites in the upper floors, this Liverpool hotel is often dubbed Britain’s most haunted one.
Hidden away in a bone for years, the ghost and Skotta of Ábær was sent on a mission to harass a farmer in northern Iceland. However, they lost control of her, and have since been haunting them all.
Said to be unhappy with the fate of the city he once led, the ghost of Duke Berchtold V of Zähringen is said to be haunting the old city in Bern, around the Nydegg Church where his monument is placed.
The little island Munkholmen outside of Trondheim in Norway has had many haunted rumors for a long time. From an old Viking execution place to a state prison, who is still lingering there in their afterlife?
After old friends clash after falling out, a curse is put upon the other. For generations, the Hítardals-Skotta is said to have haunted their family and village, sometimes even said to be behind their deaths.
Have you ever noticed the underground world of the old town in Bern? Now fancy cafes and shops, there are also tales of secret passageways, hideouts and ghosts beneath the cobbled stoned city.
Buried in the mounds of the Icelandic landscape, a murdered shepherd came back from the dead as a Draugr or perhaps a Haugbúi ghost to haunt the people living at Finnbogastaðir farm.
Around the terrifying statue of the Kindlifressenbrunnen devouring children, young ghosts are said to haunt like a misty night. Said to be the unwanted babies taken out of the city through the underground tunnels, they return to the scene of the crime.
Bring me a light is a short story written by Jane Margaret Hooper in 1861 for the Once A Week Magazine.
My name is Thomas Whinmore, and when I was a young man I went to spend a college vacation with a gentleman in Westmoreland. He had known my father’s family, and had been appointed the trustee of a small estate left me by my great aunt, Lady Jane Whinmore. At the time I speak of I was one-and-twenty, and he was anxious to give up the property into my hands. I accepted his invitation to “come down to the old place and look about me.” When I arrived at the nearest point to the said “old place,” to which the Carlisle coach would carry me, I and my portmanteau were put into a little cart, which was the only wheeled thing I could get at the little way-side inn.
“How far is it to Whinmore?” I asked of a tall grave-looking lad, who had already informed me I could have “t’horse and cairt” for a shilling a mile.
“Twal mile to t’ould Hall gaet—a mile ayont that to Squire Erle’s farm.”
As I looked at the shaggy wild horse, just caught from the moor for the purpose of drawing “t’cairt,” I felt doubtful as to which of us would be the master on the road. I had ascertained that the said road lay over moor and mountain—just the sort of ground on which such a steed would gambol away at his own sweet will. I had no desire to be run away with.
“Is there any one here who can drive me to Mr. Erle’s?” I asked of the tall grave lad.
“Nobbut fayther.”
I was puzzled; and was about to ask for an explanation, when a tall, strong old man, as like the young one as might be, came out from the door of the house with his hat on, and a whip in his hand. He got up into the cart, and looking at me, said,
“Ye munna stan here, sir. We shan’t pass Whinmore Hall afore t’deevil brings a light.”
“But I want something to eat before we start,” I remonstrated. “I’ve had no dinner.”
“Then ye maun keep your appetite till supper time,” replied the old man. “I canna gae past Whinmore lights for na man—nor t’horse neither. Get up wi’ ye! Joe, lend t’gentleman a hand.”
Joe did as he was desired, and then said—
“Will ye be home the night, fayther?”
“May be yees, may be na, lad; take care of t’place.”
In a moment the horse started, and we were rattling over the moor at the rate of eight miles an hour. Surprise, indignation, and hunger possessed me. Was it possible I had been whirled off dinnerless into this wilderness against my own desire?
“I say, my good man,” I began.
“My name is Ralph Thirlston.”
“Well! Mr. Thirlston, I want something to eat. Is there any inn between this desert and Mr. Erle’s house!”
“Nobbut Whinmore Hall,” said the old man, with a grin.
“I suppose I can get something to eat there, without being obliged to anybody. It is my own property.”
Mr. Thirlston glanced at me sharply.
“Be ye t’maister, lad?”
“I am, Mr. Thirlston,” said I. “My name is Whinmore.”
“Maister Tom!”
“The same. Do you know anything about me and my old house?”
“’Deed do I. You’re the heir of t’ould leddy. Mr. Erle is your guardian, and farms your lands.”
“I know so much, myself,” I replied. “I want you to tell me who lives in Whinmore Hall now, and whether I can get a dinner there, for I’m clem, as you say here.”
“Weel, weel. It is a sore trial to a young stomach! You must e’en bear it till we get to Mr. Erle’s.”
“But surely there is somebody, some old woman or other, who lives in the old house and airs the rooms!”
“’Deed is there. But it’s nobbut ghosts and deevil’s spawn of that sort.”
“I am surprised, Mr. Thirlston, to hear a man like you talk such nonsense.”
“What like man do ye happen know that I am, Maister Whinmore? Tho’ if I talk nonsense (and I’m no gainsaying what a learned colleger like you can tell about nonsense), yet it’s just the things I have heard and seen mysell I am speaking of.”
“What have you heard and seen at Whinmore Hall?”
“What a’ body hears and sees to Whinmore, ’twixt sunset and moonlight;—and what I used to see times and oft, when I lived there farming-man to t’ould Leddy Jane,—what I’m not curious to see again, now. So get on, Timothy,” he added to the horse, “or we may chance to come in for a fright.”
I did not trouble myself about the delay, as he did, but watched him.
This man is no fool, I thought. I wonder what strange delusion has got possession of the people about this old house of mine. I remembered that Mr. Erle had told me in one of the very few letters I ever received from him, that it was difficult to find a tenant for Whinmore Hall. Curiosity took precedence of hunger, and I began to think how I could best soothe my irritated companion, and get him to tell me what he believed.
We were back on the road again, and going across the shoulder of a great fell;—the sun had just disappeared behind a distant range of similar fells; it left no rosy clouds, no orange streaks in the sky—black rain-clouds spread all over the great concave, and in a very few minutes they burst upon us. There was a cold, piercing wind in our teeth. I felt my spirits rise. The vast monotonous moor, the threatening sky, and the fierce rushing blast had something for me sublime and invigorating. I looked round at the new range of moorland which we were gradually commanding, as we rounded the hill.
“I like this wild place, Mr. Thirlston,” I said.
“Wild enough!” he grumbled in reply. “’Tis college learning is a deal better than such house and land. Beggars won’t live in th’ house, and th’ land is the poorest in all England.”
“Is that the house, yonder, on the right?”
“There’s na ither house, good or bad, to be seen from this,” he replied: but I observed that he did not turn his head in the direction I had indicated. He kept a look-out straight between the horse’s ears; I, on the contrary, never took my eyes off the grey building which we were approaching. Nearer and nearer we came, and I saw that there was a sort of large garden or pleasure-ground enclosed round the house, and that the road ran past a part of this enclosure, and also past a large open-worked iron gate, which was the chief entrance. Very desolate, cold, and inhospitable looked this old house of mine; wild and tangled looked the garden. The tall, smokeless chimneys were numerous, and stood up white against the blackness of the sky; the windows, more numerous still, looked black, in contrast with the whitish-grey stone of the walls. Just as we entered the shadow cast by the trees of the shrubbery, our horse snorted, and sprang several yards from the enclosure.
“Now for it! It is your own fault for running away, and bringing us late,” muttered Ralph Thirlston, grasping the reins and standing up to get a better hold of the horse. Timothy now stood still; and to my surprise he was trembling in every limb, and shaking with terror.
“Something has frightened the beast,” said I. “I shall just go and see what it was,” and was about to jump down, when I felt Ralph Thirlston’s great hand on my arm: it was a powerful grip.
“For the love of God, lad, stay where ye are!” he said, in a frightened whisper. “It’s just here that my brother met his death, for doing what you want to do now.”
“What! For walking up to that fence and seeing what trifle frightened a skittish horse?” And I looked at the fence intently. There was nothing to be seen but a straggling bough of an elder bush which had forced its way through a chink in the rotten wood and was waving in the wind.
Finding that the man was really frightened as well as the horse, I humoured him. He still held my arm.
“There is no need for any one to go closer to see the cause of poor Timothy’s fear,” I said, laughing. “If you will look, Mr. Thirlston, you will see what it was.”
“Na! lad, na! I’m not going to turn my face towards the deevil and his works. ‘Lord have mercy upon us! Christ have mercy upon us! Our Father which art in heaven—’” and he repeated the whole prayer with emphasis, slowness, and with his eyes closed. I sat still, an amazed witness of his state of mind. When he had said “Amen,” he opened his eyes, and looking down at the horse, who seemed to have recovered, as I judged by his putting his head down to graze, he gave a low whistle, and tightening the reins once more, Timothy allowed himself to be driven forward. Thirlston kept his face away from the enclosure on his right hand, and looked steadily at Timothy. I gave another glance towards the innocent elder bough,—but what was my astonishment to see where it had been, or seemed to be, the figure of a man with a drawn sword in his hand.
“Stop, Thirlston! stop!” I cried. “There is somebody there. I see a man with a sword. Look! Turn back, and I’ll soon see what he is doing there.”
“Na! na! Never turn back to meet the deevil, when ye have once got past him!” And Thirlston drove on rapidly.
“But he may overtake you,” I cried, laughing. But as I looked back I saw that a pursuit was not intended, for the figure I had seen was gone. “I’ll pay a visit to that devil to-morrow,” I added. “I shall not harbour such game in my preserves.”
“Lord’s sake, don’t talk like that, Maister Whinmore!” whispered Thirlston. “We’re just coming to the gaet! May be they may strike Timothy dead!”
“They?—who? Not the ghosts, surely?” I looked through the great gate as we passed, and saw the whole front of the house. “Why, Mr. Thirlston, you said no one lived in the old Hall! Look! There are lights in the windows.”
“Ay! ay! I thought you would see them,” he said, in a terrified whisper, without turning his head.
“Why, look at them yourself,” cried I, pointing to the house.
“God forbid!” he exclaimed; and he gave Timothy a stroke with the whip, that sent him flying past the rest of the garden of the Hall. Our ground rose again, and in a few minutes a good view of the place was obtained. I looked back at it with vivid interest. No lights were to be seen now; no moving thing; the black windows contrasted with the grey walls, and the grey chimneys with the black clouds, as when the place first appeared to me. The moon now rose above a dark hill on our left. Thirlston allowed Timothy to slacken his speed, and, turning round his head, he also looked back at Whinmore Hall.
“We are safe enough now,” he said. “The only dangerous time is betwixt sunset and moonrise, when people are passing close to the accursed ould place.”
About a mile further, the barking of a housedog indicated that we were approaching Mr. Erle’s. The driver stopped at a small wicket-gate leading into a shrubbery, got down, and invited me to do the same. He then fastened Timothy to the gatepost. The garden and the house have nothing to do with my present tale, and are far too dear to me to be flung in as an episodical adornment. They form the scenery of the romantic part of my own life; for Miss Erle became my wife a few years after this first visit to Whinmore. I saw her that evening, and forgot Ralph Thirlston, the old Hall, its ghosts and mysterious lights. However, the next morning I was forced back to this work-a-day world in her father’s study. There I heard Mr. Erle’s account of my property. All the land was farmed by himself, except the few acres round the Hall, which no one would take because it was not worth tillage, and because of the evil name of the house itself.
“I suppose you know why no tenant can be found for the Hall, since Ralph Thirlston drove you over?”
“Yes,” I said, smiling. “But I could get no rational account from him. What is this nonsense about ghosts and lights? Who lives in the Hall?”
“No one, my good fellow. Why, you would not get the stoutest man in the parish, and that’s Thirlston, to go into the house after sunset, much less live in it.”
“But I have seen lights in some of the windows myself.”
“So have I,” he replied.
“Do you mean to say that no human beings make use of the house, in virtue of the superstition about it? Tricks of this kind are not uncommon.”
“At the risk of seeming foolish in your eyes, I must reply, that I believe no human beings now living have any hand in the operations which go on in Whinmore Hall.” Mr. Erle looked perfectly grave as he said this.
“I saw a man with a sword in his hand start from a part of the fence. I think he frightened our horse.”
“I, too, have seen the figure you speak of. But I do not think it is a living man.”
“What do you suppose it to be?” I asked, in amazement; for Mr. Erle was no ignorant or weak-minded person. He had already impressed me with real respect for his character and intellect.
He smiled at my impetuous tone.
“I live apart from what is called the world,” said he. “Grace and I are not polite enough to think everything which we cannot account for either impossible or ridiculous. Ten years ago, I myself was a new resident in this county, and wishing to improve your property, I determined to occupy the old Hall myself. I had it prepared for my family. No mechanic would work about the place after sunset. However, I brought all my servants from a distance; and took care that they should have no intercourse with any neighbour for the first three days. On the third evening they all came to me and said that they must leave the next morning—all but Grace’s nurse, who had been her mother’s attendant, and was attached to the family. She told me that she did not think it safe for the child to remain another night, and that I must give her permission to take her away.”
“What did you do?” said I.
“I asked for some account of the things that had frightened them. Of course, I heard some wild and exaggerated tales; but the main phenomena related were what I myself had seen and heard, and which I was as fully determined as they were not to see and hear again, or to let my child have a chance of encountering. I told them so, candidly; and at the same time declared that it was my belief God’s Providence or punishment was at work in that old house, as everywhere else in creation, and not the devil’s mischievous hand. Once more I made a rigorous search for secret devices and means for producing the sights and sounds which so many had heard and seen; but without any discovery: and before sunset that afternoon the Hall was cleared of all human occupants. And so it has remained until this day.”
“Will you tell me the things you saw and heard?”
“Nay, you had better see and hear them for yourself. We have plenty of time before sunset. I can show you over the whole house, and if your courage holds good, I will leave you there to pass an hour or so between sunset and moonrise. You can come back here when you like; and if you are in a condition to hear, and care to hear, the story which peoples your old Hall with horrors, I will tell it you.”
“Thank you,” said I. “Will you lend me a gun and pistols to assist me in my investigations?”
“Surely.” And taking down the weapons I had pointed out, he began to examine them.
“You want them loaded?”
“Certainly, and with bullets. I am not going to play.”
Mr. Erle loaded both gun and pistols. I put the latter into my pocket, and we left the room by the window. Grace Erle met us on the moor, riding a shaggy pony.
“Where are you going, so near dinner time?” she asked.
“Mr. Whinmore is going to look at the old Hall.”
“And his gun?” she asked, smiling.
“I want to shoot vermin there.”
She looked as if she were about to say something eagerly, but checked herself, and rode slowly away. I looked after her, and wondered what she was going to say. Perhaps she wished to prevent me from going.
Presently we stood before the great iron gate of Whinmore. Mr. Erle took two keys from his pocket. With one he unlocked the gate, with the other the chief door. There were no other fastenings. These were very rusty, and were moved with difficulty.
“People don’t get in this way,” said I. “That is clear.”
The garden was a sad wilderness, and grass grew on the broad steps which led up to the door.
As soon as we had crossed the threshold, I felt the influence of that desolate dwelling creep over my spirits. There was a cold stagnation in the air—a deathly stillness—a murky light in the old rooms that was indescribably depressing. All the lower windows had their pierced shutters fastened, and cobwebs and dust adorned them plentifully.
Yet I could have sworn I saw lights in two, at least, of these lower windows. I said so to my companion. He replied—
“Yes. It was in this very room you saw a light, I dare say. This is one in which I have seen lights myself. But I do not wish to spoil my dinner by seeing anything supernatural now. We will leave it, and I will hasten to the lady’s bed-chamber and dressing-room, where the apparitions and noises are most numerous.”
I followed him, but cast a glance round the room before I shut the door carefully. It was partly furnished like a library, but on one side was a bed, and beside it an easy-chair. “What name is given to this room? It looks ominous of some evil deed,” I said.
“It is called ‘t’ould Squire’s Murder Room,’ by the people who know the story connected with it.”
“Ah!” I said; “then I may look for a ghost there?”
“You will perhaps see one, or more, if you stay long enough,” said Mr. Erle, with the utmost composure. “This way.”
I followed him along a gallery on the first floor to the door of a room. He opened it, and we entered what had been apparently one of the principal bedrooms. It was a regular lady’s chamber, of the seventeenth century, with dark plumes waving on the top of the bed-pillars of black oak. The massy toilette, with its oval looking-glass, set in silver and shrouded in old lace—the carved chairs and lofty mantelpiece—gave an air of quaint elegance to the dignity of the apartment. I had but little time to examine the objects here, for Mr. Erle had passed on to an inner room, which was reached by ascending a short flight of steps.
“Come up here,” cried a voice which did not sound like Mr. Erle’s. I ran up the stairs and found him alone in a small room which contained little else than an escritoire, a cabinet, and two great chairs. On one side, a large Parisian looking-glass, à la Régence, was fixed on the wall. The branches for lights still held some yellow bits of wax-candle covered with dust. I joined Mr. Erle, who was looking through the window over a vast expanse of mountainous moorland. “What a grand prospect!” I exclaimed. “I like these two rooms very much. I shall certainly come and live here.”
“You shall tell me your opinion about that to-morrow,” said Mr. Erle. “I must go now.”
Concealing as much as possible the contempt I felt for his absurd superstition, I accompanied him down-stairs again. “Are these the only rooms worth looking at?” I asked.
“No; most of the rooms are good enough for a gentleman’s household. The rooms I have shown you, and the passages and staircase which lead from one to the other, are the only portions of the house in which you are subjected to annoyance. I have slept in both the rooms, and advise no one else to do so.”
“You had bad dreams?” I asked, with an involuntary smile, as I took my gun from the hall-table, where I had left it.
“As you please,” said Mr. Erle, smiling also.
I stretched out my hand to him when we stood at the gate together.
“Good night!” said I. “I think I shall sleep in one of those rooms, and return to you in the morning.”
Mr. Erle shook his head. “You will be back at my house within three hours, Tom Whinmore; so, au revoir!”
He strode away over the moor. His fine figure appeared almost gigantic as it moved between me and the setting sun.
“That does not look like a man who should be a prey to weak superstition, any more than good Ralph Thirlston, who drove home alone willingly enough past this same gate and fence at nine o’clock last night! The witching hour, it seems, is just after sunset. Well, it wants a quarter of an hour of that now,” I continued, thinking silently. “There will be time enough for me to explore the garden a little, before I return to the house and wait for my evening’s entertainment.”
As I walked through the shrubbery, I recollected the figure I had seen outside the fence on the previous evening. I must find out how that trick is managed, thought I, and if I get a chance I will certainly wing that ghost, pour encourager les autres.
Ascertaining, as well as I was able, the part of the shrubbery near which I saw the man, I began to search for footsteps or marks of human ingenuity. I soon discovered the elder bush that had sent some of its branches through a hole in the fence. I crept round it, and examined the fence. No plank was loose, though some boughs had grown through the hole. I could see no footstep except my own on the moist, dank leafy mould. I got over the fence and saw no marks outside. Baffled, and yet suspicious, I went back and continued my walk, in the course of which I came upon sundry broken and decayed summer-houses and seats. In the tangled flower-garden, on the south-west side, were a few rich blossoms, growing amicably with the vilest weeds. I tore up a great root of hemlock to get at a branch of Provence rose, and then seeing that the sun had disappeared below the opposite fell, I pursued my course and arrived again at the broad gravel path leading from the gate to the hall-door.
Both stood open, as I had left them. I lingered on the grass-grown steps to look at the last rays of the sun, reddening the heather on the distant fell. As I leaned on my gun enjoying the profound stillness of this place, far from all sounds of village, or wood, or sea—a stillness that seemed to deepen and deepen into unearthly intensity—the charm was broken by a human voice speaking near me—the tone was hollow and full of agony—“Bring me a light! Bring me a light!” it cried. It was like a sick or dying man. The voice came, I thought, from the room next to me on the right hand of the Hall. I rushed into the house and to the door of that room; it was the first which Mr. Erle had shown me. I remembered shutting the door—it now stood wide open; and there was a sound of hurrying footsteps within.
“Who is there?” I shouted. No answer came. But there passed by me, as it were, in the very doorway, the figure of a young and, as I could see at a glance, very beautiful woman.
When she moved onwards I could not choose but follow, trembling with an indefinable fear, yet borne on by a mystic attraction. At the foot of the stairs she turned on me again, and smiled, and beckoned me with an upraised arm, whereon great jewels flashed in the gloom. I followed her quickly, but could not overtake her. My limbs—I am not ashamed to say it—shook with strange fear; yet I could not turn back from following that fair form. Onward she led me—up the stairs and through the gallery to the door of the lady’s chamber. There she paused a moment, and again turned her bewitching face, radiant with smiles, upon me before she disappeared within the dark doorway. I followed into the room, and saw her stand before the antique toilette and arrange in her bosom a spray of roses—the very spray that I had so lately pulled in the garden, it seemed—then she kissed her hand to me and glided to the narrow stairs that led to the little room above. Then came a loud haughty voice—the voice of a woman accustomed to command. It sounded from the little room above, and it could not be the voice of that fair girl, I felt sure. It said:
“Bring me a light! Bring me a light!”
I shuddered at the sound; I knew not why, but I stood there still. I then saw the figure of an old female servant, rise from a chair by one of the windows. She approached the toilette, and there I saw her light two tapers, with her breath, it seemed.
“Bring me a light!” was repeated in an angry tone from the upper room.
The old woman passed rapidly to the stairs. Thither I followed in obedience to a sign from her; and, mounting to the top, saw into the room.
That beautiful girl stood in the centre, with her costly lace gown sweeping the floor, and her bright curls drooping to the waist. Her back was towards me, but I could see her innocent, sweet face in the great glass. What a lovely, happy face it was!
Behind her stood another lady, taller, and more majestic. She pretended to caress her, but her proud eyes, unseen by the young lady, brightened with triumphant malice. They danced gladly in the light of the taper which she took from the maid. “God of heaven! can a woman look so wicked?” I thought.
“Watch her!” whispered a voice in my ear—a voice that stirred my hair.
I did watch her. Would to God I could forget that vision! She—the woman, the fiend—bent carefully to the floor, as though to set right something amiss in the border of the fair bride’s robe. I saw her lower the flame of the candle, and set fire to the dress of the smiling, trusting girl. Ere I could move she was enveloped in flames, and I heard her wild shrieks mingling with the low demoniac laughter of her murderess.
I remember suddenly raising the gun in my hand and firing at the horrid apparition. But still she laughed and pointed with mocking gestures to the flames and the writhing figure they enveloped. I ran forward to extinguish them;—my arms struck against the wall, and I fell down insensible.
*****
When I recovered my senses I found myself lying on the floor of that little room, with the bright cold moon looking in on me. I waited without moving, listening for some more of those demon sounds. All was still. I rose—went to the window—the moon was high in heaven, and all the great moor seemed light as day. The air of that room was stifling. I turned and fled. Hastily I ran down those few steps—quicker yet through the great chamber and out into the gallery. As I began to go down the stairs, I saw a figure coming up.
I was now a very coward. Grasping the banister with one hand, and feeling for the unused pistol with the other, I called out—
“Who are you?” and with stupid terror I fired at the thing, without pausing.
There was a slight cry; a very human one. Then a little laugh.
“Don’t fire any more pistols at me, Mr. Whinmore. I’m not a ghost.”
Something in the voice sent the blood once more coursing through my veins.
“Is it ——?” I could not utter another word.
“It is I, Grace Erle.”
“What brought you here?” I said, at length, after I had descended the stairs, and had seized her hand that I might feel sure it was of flesh and blood.
“My pony. We began to get uneasy about you. It is nearly midnight. So papa and I set off to see what you were doing.”
“What the devil are you firing at, Whinmore?” asked Mr. Erle, coming hurriedly from a search in the lower rooms.
“Only at me, papa!” answered his daughter, archly, glancing up at my face. “But he is a bad shot, for he didn’t hit me.”
“Thank God!” I ejaculated—“Miss Erle, I was mad.”
“No, only very frightened. Look at him, papa!”
Mr. Erle looked at me. He took my arm.
“Why! Whinmore, you don’t look the better for seeing the spirits of your ancestors. However, I see it is no longer a joking matter with you. You do not wish to take up your abode here immediately.”
I rallied under their kindly badinage.
“Let me get out of this horrible place,” said I.
Mr. Erle led me beyond the gate. I leaned against it, in a state of exhaustion.
“Here. Try your hand at my other pocket-pistol!” said Mr. Erle, as he put a precious flask of that kind to my lips. After a second application of the remedy I was decidedly better.
Miss Erle mounted her pony, and we set off across the moor. I was very silent, and my companions talked a little with each other. My mind was too confused to recollect just then all that I had experienced during my stay in the house, and I wished to arrange my thoughts and compose my nerves before I conversed with Mr. Erle on the strange visions of that night.
I excused myself to my host and his daughter, in the best way I could, and after taking a slice of bread and a glass of water, I went to bed.
The next day I rose late; but in my right mind. I was much shocked to think of the cowardly fear which had led me to fire a pistol at Miss Erle. I began my interview with my host, by uttering some expressions of this feeling. But it was an awkward thing to declare myself a fool and a coward.
“The less we say about that the better,” said her father, gravely. “Fear is the strongest human passion, my boy; and will lead us to commit the vilest acts, if we let it get the mastery.”
“I acknowledge that I was beside myself with terror at the sights and sounds of that accursed house. I was not sane, at the moment, I saw your daughter! I shall never—”
“Whinmore, she hopes you will never mention it again! We certainly shall not. Now, if you are disposed to hear the story of your ancestor’s evil deeds, I am ready to fulfil the promise I made you last night. I see you know too much, now, to think me a fool for believing my own senses, and keeping clear of disagreeable creatures that will not trouble themselves about me. I don’t raise the question of what they are, or how they exist—nor even whether they exist at all. It is sufficient that they appear; and that by their appearance they put a stop to normal human life. You may be a philosopher; and may find some means of banishing these supernatural horrors. I shall like you none the less, if you can do what I cannot.”
“I will try. Will you tell the story?”
“Yes, if you will take a cigar with me first.”
After we had composed ourselves comfortably before the fire in his study, Mr. Erle began.
“How long ago, I can’t exactly find out, but some time between the Reformation and the Great Rebellion, the Whinmores settled in this part of the county, and owned a large tract of land. They were of gentle blood, and most ungentle manners; for they quarrelled with every one, and carried themselves in an insolent fashion, to the simple below them, and to the noble above. The Whinmores were iron-handed and iron-hearted, staunch Catholics and staunch Jacobites, during the religious and political dissensions of the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries. After the establishment of Protestantism in the reigns of William III. and Anne, the position of the proud house of Whinmore was materially altered. The cadets went early into foreign service as soldiers and priests, and the first-born remained at home to keep up a blighted dignity. After the establishment of the Hanoverian dynasty, the Whinmores of Whinmore Hall ceased to take any part in public affairs. They were too proud to farm their own land; and putting trust in a nefarious steward, the Whinmore who reigned at the Hall when King George the Second reigned over England was compelled to keep up appearances by selling half the family estate.
“The Whinmore in question, ‘t’ould squire,’ as the people call him, was a melancholy man, not much blest in the matrimonial lottery. His wife, Lady Henrietta Whinmore, was the daughter of a poor Catholic Earl. Tradition says she was equally beautiful and proud; and I believe it.
“To return. This couple had only one child, a son. When Lady Henrietta found that her husband was a gentleman of a moping and unenterprising turn of mind, that she could not persuade him to compromise his principles, and so find favour with the new government, she devoted herself to the education of her son, Graham. As he was a clever boy, with strong health and good looks, she determined that he should retrieve the fortunes of the family. She kept him under her own superintendence till he was ten years of age. She then sent him to Eton, with his cousin the little Earl of ——. He was brought up a Protestant, and thus the civil disabilities of the family would be removed. He was early accustomed to the society of all ranks, to be found in a first-class English public school; and his personal gifts as well as his mental excellence helped to win him the good opinion of others. Graham came home from Oxford in his twenty-third year, a first-class man.”
“Indeed!” I exclaimed. “I hope I am descended from him, and that his good luck will be a part of my inheritance. Is there any portrait of this fine young English gentleman of the olden time?”
“A very good one. It is in my daughter’s sitting-room. We are both struck by your likeness to your grandfather, Graham Whinmore.”
“I shall never take a first-class,” I sighed; “but go on.”
“When Graham returned home after his success at college, he found his father a hopeless valetudinarian, who had had his bed brought down to his library, because he thought himself too feeble to go up and down stairs. He showed little emotion at sight of his son, and seemed to be fast sinking to idiotcy. His mother, on the contrary, was radiant with joy; and had made the old ruined house look its best to welcome the heir. For, at that time, the place was much dilapidated, and only a small portion was habitable, that is the part you saw yesterday, the south front.
“And Graham stayed at home for a month or two in repose, after the fatigues of study. One afternoon as he rode home from a distant town, he paused on the top of Whinmore Hill, which commands a good view of the Hall. The simple bareness of the great hills around, the antique beauty and retirement of the Hall—above all, the sweet impressive stillness of the place, had often charmed Graham, as a boy. Now he gazed with far stronger feeling at it all.
“‘It shall not be lost to me and my children,’ he vowed, inwardly. ‘I will redeem the mortgage on the house, I will win back every acre of the old Whinmore land. Yes, I will work for wealth; but I must lose no time, or my opportunity will be gone.’
“He looked at the ruined part of the house, and began to calculate the cost of rebuilding as he hastened forward. As soon as he entered the house he went to see his father, whom he had not seen that day. He found him in his bed, with the nurse asleep in the easy chair beside it. His father did not recognise him, and to Graham’s mind, looked very much changed since the previous day. He left the room in search of his mother; thinking, in spite of his love for her, that she neglected her duty as a wife. ‘She should be beside him now,’ he thought. Still, he framed the best excuse he could for her then, for he loved and reverenced her. She was so strong-minded, so beautiful. Above all, she loved him with such passionate devotion. He dreaded to tell her the resolution he had formed. She was an aristocrat and a woman. She did not understand the mutation of things in that day; she would not believe that the best way to wealth and power was not through the Court influence, but by commercial enterprise. He went to her bed-room, the Lady’s Chamber, in which you were last night. She was not there, and he was about to retreat, when he heard her voice in anger speaking to some one, in the dressing-room or oratory above. Graham went towards the stairs, and was met by an old female servant who was in his mother’s confidence, and acted as her maid and head-nurse to his father. She came down in tears, murmuring, ‘I cannot bear it. It was you gave me the draught for him. I will send for a doctor.’
“‘A doctor, indeed! He wants no doctor,’ cried the angry mistress. ‘And don’t talk any more nonsense, my good woman, if you value your place.’
“In her agitation the woman did not see her young master, and hastily left the room.
“Astonished at the woman’s words, he slowly ascended the steps to the dressing-room. He found his mother standing before the long looking-glass arrayed in a rich dress of old point lace, over a brocaded petticoat, with necklace, bracelets, and tiara of diamonds. She looked very handsome as her great eyes still flashed and her cheek was yet crimson with anger. She turned hastily as her son’s foot was heard on the topmost stair. When she saw who it was her face softened with a smile.
“‘You here, Graham! I have been wanting you. Read that.’
“He could scarcely take his admiring eyes from the brilliant figure before him as he received the letter.
“It was addressed to his mother, and came from his cousin, the Earl, informing her that he had obtained a certain post under government for Graham.
“She kissed him as he sat down after reading the letter.
“‘There is your first step on fortune’s ladder, my son. You are sure to rise.’
“‘I hope so, mother. But where are you going decked out in the family diamonds and lace?’
“‘Have you forgotten?—To the ball at the Lord-Lieutenant’s. You must dress quickly, or we shall be late. Your cousin will be there, and we must thank him for that letter.’
“‘Yes, mother,’ he replied, ‘but we must refuse the place—I have other views.’
“Lady Henrietta’s brow darkened.
“‘Mother! I have vowed to recover the estate of my ancestors. It will require a large fortune to do this. I cannot get a large fortune by dangling about the Court—I am going to turn merchant.’
“Lady Henrietta stared at him in amazement.
“‘You?—My son become a merchant?’
“‘Why not, mother? Sons of nobler houses have done so; and I have advantages that few have ever had. Listen, dear mother. I saved the life of a college friend, who was drowning. His father is one of the wealthiest merchants in London—in all England. He wrote to tell me that if it suited my views and those of my family, he was ready to receive me, at once, as a junior partner in his firm. He had learned from his son that I wished to become rich that I might buy back my ancestral estate. His offer puts it in my power to become rich in a comparatively short space of time.—I intend to accept his munificent offer.’
“Lady Henrietta’s proud bosom swelled; but there was something in her son’s tone which made her feel that anger and persuasion were alike vain. After some minutes’ silence, she said bitterly:
“‘The world is changed indeed, Graham, if men of gentle blood can become traders and not lose their gentility.’
“‘They can, mother. And I do not think the world can be much changed in that particular. A man of gentle blood, who is, in very truth, a gentleman, cannot lose that distinction in any occupation. Come, good mother, give me a smile! I am about to go forth to win an inheritance. I shall fight with modern weapons—the pen and the ledger—instead of sword and shield.’
“At that moment hasty steps were heard in the chamber below, and a voice called:
“‘My lady! my lady! come quick! The Squire is dying!’
“Mother and son went fast to Mr. Whinmore’s room. They arrived in time to see the old man die. He pointed to her, and cried with his last breath,
“She did it! She did it!’
“Lady Henrietta sat beside his bed and listened to these incoherent words without any outward emotion. She watched the breath leave the body, and then closed the eyes herself. But though she kept up so bravely then, she was dangerously ill for several months after her husband’s death, and was lovingly tended by her son and the old servant.
*****
“I must now pass over ten years. Before the end of that time Graham Whinmore had become rich enough to buy back every acre of the land and to build a bran new house, twenty times finer than the old one, if he were so minded. But he was by no means so minded. He restored the old house—made it what it now is. He would not have accepted Chatsworth or Stowe in exchange.
“The Lady Henrietta lived there still; and superintended all the improvements. She had become reconciled to her son’s occupation for the sake of the result in wealth. She entered eagerly into all his plans for the improvement of his property, and she had some of her own to propose.
“It was the autumn of the tenth year since her husband’s death, and she was expecting Graham shortly for his yearly visit to the Hall. She sat looking over papers of importance in her dressing-room; the old servant (who seems to have grown no older) sat sewing in the bedroom below, when a housemaid brought in a letter which the old servant took immediately to her mistress.
“Lady Henrietta opened the letter quickly, for she saw that the handwriting was her son’s. ‘Perhaps he is coming this week,’ she thought with a thrill of delight. ‘Yes, he will come to take me to the Lord-Lieutenant’s ball. He is proud of his mother yet, and I must look my best.’ But she had not read a dozen words before the expression of her face changed. Surprise darkened into contempt and anger—anger deepened into rage and hatred. She uttered a sharp cry of pain. The old servant ran to her in alarm; but her mistress had composed herself, though her cheek was livid.
“‘Did your ladyship call me?’
“‘Yes. Bring me a light!’
“In this letter Graham announced his return home the following week—with a wife;—a beautiful girl—penniless and without connections of gentility. No words can describe the bitter rage and disappointment of this proud woman. He had a second time thwarted her plans for his welfare, and each time he had outraged her strongest feelings. He had turned merchant, and by his plebeian peddling had bought the land which his ancestors had won at the point of the sword. She had borne that, and had submitted to help him in his schemes. But receive a beggarly, low-born wench for her daughter-in-law?—No! She would never do that. She paced the room with soft, firm steps, like a panther. After a time thought became clearer, and she saw that there was no question of her willingness to receive her daughter-in-law, but of that daughter-in-law’s willingness to allow her to remain in the house. Ah! but it was an awful thing to see the proud woman when she looked that fact fully in the face. She hated her unseen daughter with a keen cold hate—a remorseless hate born of that terrible sin, Pride. But she was not a woman to hate passively. She paced to and fro, turning and returning with savage, stealthy quickness. The day waned, and night began. Her servant came to see if she were wanted, and was sent away with a haughty negative. ‘She is busy with some wicked thought,’ murmured the old woman.
*****
“Graham Whinmore’s bride was, as he had said, ‘so good and so lovely, that no one ever thought of asking who were her parents.’ She was also accomplished and elegant in manner. She was in all respects but birth superior to the Duke’s daughter whom Lady Henrietta had selected for her son’s wife. The beautiful Lilian’s father was a music master, and she had given lessons in singing herself. Lady Henrietta learned this and everything else concerning her young daughter-in-law that could be considered disgraceful in her present station. But she put restraint on her contempt, and received her with an outward show of courtesy and stately kindness. Graham believed that for his sake his mother was determined to forget his wife’s low origin, and he became easy about the result of their connection after he had seen his mother caress his wife once or twice. He felt sure that no one could know Lilian and not love her. He was proud and happy to think that two such beautiful women belonged to him.
“The Lord-Lieutenant’s ball was expected to be unusually brilliant that year, and Graham was anxious that his wife should be the queen of the assembly.
“‘I should like her to wear the old lace and the jewels, mother,’ said Graham.
“The Lady Henrietta’s eyebrows were contracted for a moment, and she shot forth a furtive glance at Lilian, who sat near, playing with a greyhound.
“If Graham had seen that glance! But her words he believed.
“‘Certainly, my son. It is quite proper that your wife should wear such magnificent heirlooms. There is no woman of quality in this county that can match them. I am proud to abdicate my right in her favour.’
“‘There, Lilian! Do you hear, you are to eclipse the Duchess herself!’
“I will do so, if you wish it,’ said Lilian. ‘But I do not think that will amuse me so much as dancing.’
*****
“Balls, in those times, began at a reasonable hour. Ladies who went to a ball early in November, began to dress by daylight.
“Lilian had been dressed by her maid. Owing to a certain sentimental secret between her and her husband, she wore her wedding-dress of white Indian muslin, instead of a rich brocaded silk petticoat, underneath the grand lace robe. The diamonds glittered gaily round her head and her softly-rounded throat and arms. She went to the old library, where Graham sat awaiting the ladies. She wanted his opinion concerning her appearance. The legend does not tell how he behaved on this occasion, but leaves it to young husbands to imagine.
“‘You must go to my mother, and let her see how lovely you look. Walk first, that I may see how you look behind.’ So she took from his hand a spray of roses he had gathered, and preceded him from the room, and up the staircase to his mother’s chamber. She was in the dressing-room above.
“‘Go up by yourself,’ said Graham; ‘I will remain on the stairs, and watch you both. I should like to hear what she says, when she does not think I hear; for she never praises you much to me, for fear of increasing my blind adoration, I suppose.’
“Lilian smiled at him, and disappeared up the stairs. It was now becoming dark, and as he approached the stairs, a few minutes afterwards, to hear what was said, his mother’s voice, in a strange, eager tone, called from above,
“‘Bring me a light! Bring me a light!’
“Then Graham saw his mother’s old servant run quickly from her seat by the window, and light a tall taper on the toilette. She carried this up to her mistress, and found Graham on the stair on her return. She grasped his arm, and whispered fearfully,
“‘Watch her! Watch her!’
“He did watch, and saw—”
“For God’s sake, Mr. Erle,” I interrupted, “don’t tell me what he saw—for I saw the same dreadful sight!”
“I have no doubt you did, since you say so; and because I have seen it myself.”
We were silent for some moments, and then I asked if he knew anything more of these people.
“Yes—the rest is well known to every one who lives within twenty miles. Graham Whinmore vowed not to remain under the same roof with his mother, after he had seen his wife’s blackened corpse. His grief and resentment were quiet and enduring. He would not leave the corpse in the house; but before midnight had it carried to a summer-house in the shrubbery, where he watched beside it, and allowed no one to approach, except the old servant who figures in this story. She brought him food, and carried his commands to the household. From the day of Lilian’s death till the day of her burial in the family vault at Whinmore Church, Graham guarded the summer-house where his wife lay, with his drawn sword as he walked by night round about. It was known that he would not allow the family jewels to be taken from the body, and that they were to be buried with it. Some say that he finally took them from the body himself, and buried them in the shrubbery, lest the undertakers, tempted by the sight of the jewels on the corpse, might desecrate her tomb afterwards for the sake of stealing them. This opinion is supported by the fact that a portion of the shrubbery is haunted by the apparition of Graham Whinmore, in mourning garments, and with a drawn sword in his hand.
“Would you advise me to institute a search for those old jewels?” I asked smiling.
“I would,” said he. “But take no one into your confidence, Tom Whinmore. You may raise a laugh against you, if you are unsuccessful. And if you find them, and take them away—”
“Which I certainly should do,” I interrupted.
“You will raise a popular outcry against you. The superstitious people will believe that you have outraged the ghost of your great-grandfather, who will become mischievous, in consequence.”
I saw the prudence of this remark; and it was agreed between us, that we should do all the digging ourselves, unknown to any one. I then asked how it was that I was descended from this unfortunate gentleman.
Mr. Erle’s story continued thus:—
“After his wife’s funeral, Graham Whinmore did not return to the Hall, but went away to the south, and never came here again, not even to visit his mother on her death-bed, a year after. In a few years he married again, and had sons and daughters. To an unmarried daughter, Jane Whinmore,—always called ‘Leddy Jane’ by our neighbours,—he left the house and lands. He did not care to keep it in the family, and she might leave it to a stranger, or sell it, if she pleased. It was but a small portion of Graham Whinmore’s property, as you must know. She, however—this ‘Leddy Jane’—took a great fancy to the old place. She is said to have lived on terms of familiarity with the ghost of her grandmother, and still more affectionately with her father’s first wife. She heard nothing of the buried jewels, and saw nothing of her own father’s ghost during his lifetime. That part of the story did not come to light until after the death of Graham Whinmore; when the ‘Leddy Jane’ herself was startled one evening in the shrubbery, by meeting the apparition of her father. It is said that she left her property to her youngest nephew’s youngest son, in obedience to his injunctions during that interview.”
“So that though unborn at the time, I may consider myself lord of Whinmore Hall, by the will of my great-grandfather!” I said.
“Precisely so. I think it an indication that the ghostly power is to die out in your time. The last year of the wicked Lady Henrietta’s life was very wretched, as you may suppose. Her besetting and cherished sins brought their own reward—and her crowning crime was avenged without the terror of the law. For it is said that every evening at sunset the apparition of her murdered daughter-in-law came before her, wearing the rich dress which was so dear to the proud woman; and that she was compelled to repeat the cruel act, and to hear her screams and the farewell curses of her adored son. The servants all left the Hall in affright; and no one lived with the wicked Lady except the faithful old servant, Margaret Thirlston, who stayed with her to the last, followed her to the grave, and died soon after.
“Her son and his wife were sought for by Jane Whinmore on her arrival here. She gave them a home and everything they wanted as housekeeper and farm-manager at the Hall. And at the death of Giles Thirlston, his son Ralph became farm-manager in his place. He continued there till ‘t’ Leddy’s’ death, when he settled at the little wayside inn which you have seen, and which he calls ‘Leddy Jane’s Gift.’”
*****
I have but little more to say. Mr. Erle and I sought long for the hidden treasure. We found it, after reading a letter secreted in the escritoire, addressed to ‘My youngest nephew’s youngest son.’ In that letter directions were given for recovering the hidden jewels of the family. They were buried outside the garden fence, on the open moor, on the very spot where I can swear I saw the figure of a man with a sword—my great-grandfather, Graham Whinmore.
After I married, we came to live in the south; and I took every means to let my little estate of Whinmore. To my regret the Hall has never found a tenant, and it is still without a tenant after these twenty-five years.
Will any reader of Once a Week make me an offer? They shall have it cheap.
Said to have been conjured up by a sorcerer or even the fairy folk themselves, Pennard Castles history is both mysterious and haunted by the sound of the howling witch left in the sandy ruins of the abandoned castle in Wales.
For a long time, Larnach Castle was New Zealand’s only castle, and for a long time, also one of the more haunted places in the country. Built by a rich banker to live with his family, his dream of a lasting dynasty ended when personal tragedies as well as failed political and business ventures started to turn the family against each other.
Crammed into the ancient towers and dark corner of St Donat’s Castle in the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales, the ghosts lingering within these walls are old and persistent.
After a common feud between two men, a ghost was created to torment the people on Hleiðrargarðs farm. Thus, the Hleiðrargarðs-Skotta and her legendary haunting started, some say it even escalated in her starting a plague, killing both cattle and men.
The current Britannia Adelphi Hotel is the third building here used as a hotel, and filled with ghosts according to rumours. From the dark basement to the haunted suites in the upper floors, this Liverpool hotel is often dubbed Britain’s most haunted one.
Hidden away in a bone for years, the ghost and Skotta of Ábær was sent on a mission to harass a farmer in northern Iceland. However, they lost control of her, and have since been haunting them all.
Said to be unhappy with the fate of the city he once led, the ghost of Duke Berchtold V of Zähringen is said to be haunting the old city in Bern, around the Nydegg Church where his monument is placed.
The little island Munkholmen outside of Trondheim in Norway has had many haunted rumors for a long time. From an old Viking execution place to a state prison, who is still lingering there in their afterlife?
After old friends clash after falling out, a curse is put upon the other. For generations, the Hítardals-Skotta is said to have haunted their family and village, sometimes even said to be behind their deaths.
Have you ever noticed the underground world of the old town in Bern? Now fancy cafes and shops, there are also tales of secret passageways, hideouts and ghosts beneath the cobbled stoned city.
Buried in the mounds of the Icelandic landscape, a murdered shepherd came back from the dead as a Draugr or perhaps a Haugbúi ghost to haunt the people living at Finnbogastaðir farm.
Around the terrifying statue of the Kindlifressenbrunnen devouring children, young ghosts are said to haunt like a misty night. Said to be the unwanted babies taken out of the city through the underground tunnels, they return to the scene of the crime.
The trend of “Get Ready With Me” Youtube videos has been extremely popular the last years. Even celebrities through well established fashion magazines are doing it, but it all started on Youtube with independent creators. The Youtubers would go through their morning of make-up routine while telling a story, everything from what I did this summer, to questions and answers. But a more fun and creative way was when great story tellers started telling great scary stories. Here are some of the content creators that has some great scary GRWM videos.
Perhaps one that put a new and high standard to these videos was the ever so wonderful Bailey Sarian with her “Mystery & Makeup” series. Not a paranormal ghost story channel exclusively, but the dramatic looks and macabre stories she does is definitely aligning with the horror aesthetic. She has also done a couple of paranormal stories, like talking about her haunting in her own house,Elizabeth Bathory, the exorcism of Anna Ecklund, Candyman among others. And hopefully, this Halloween will inspire her to tell more scary stories, as her way of telling them are great.
One content creator that does ghost stories exclusively in his story time is, Robert Welsh. He is a professional makeup artist on Youtube that does a lot of tutorials and gives out helpful makeup advise, but he is as an avid paranormal fan as well. He has this series Ghost Stories & Makeup where he reads out his subscribers own ghost stories they send him. And with the matching makeup, you will definitely get some inspiration to your Halloween look.
This Youtuber is a self taught SFX artist, that has worked her way through the Hollywood movie sets before starting her own Youtube channel. And although she is on an undefined hiatus per now (2021) from posting videos, there is a lot of them to go through if you haven’t already. Her she reviews horror movies while doing an impressive cosplay of a character from the movie, doing her makeup in haunted places and going on ghost hunts.
If horror movies are more your thing than haunted locations, she also has done a couple of videos that are her reviewing and putting her film degree to use, various bad horror movies. And while at it, making a really great look from those movies.
This Youtuber is mostly doing her vintage hair tutorials, clothing hauls and makeup tutorials. But she as well tried out the make up and ghost stories trend in a playlist called FREAKY FRIDAY. Sadly it ended with the 16 episode, but if you are in the mood for a Pin Up look as well as a ghost story, you should check them out.
Every look this girl does will definitely fit with a Halloween vibe, and although she has morphed into more of a drama channel the last year, she still has her paranormal ghost stories up there. What the difference is with hers though is that they are her own experiences.
This British Youtuber is mostly doing a true crime version of GRWM videos sorted with Zodiac oriented playlists, but there are also some horror-related stuff on her channel of the more gorey cases. Like the Candyman story, the origin of American Horror Stories’ Murder House and the story behind the true Jigsaw killer.
This Youtuber is mostly focused on wholesome GRWM videos, Hauls and many Korean Skin-care and makeup videos. In addition to this she has a Folklore and Fairytale Friday playlist. Her she focuses on more Asian oriented legends from Asia, everything from mermaids, the Nine Tailed Fox, goblins and Asian ghosts and demons. Sadly, there haven’t been any Friday updates since January, but hopefully they will make their comeback for more.
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.
Said to have been conjured up by a sorcerer or even the fairy folk themselves, Pennard Castles history is both mysterious and haunted by the sound of the howling witch left in the sandy ruins of the abandoned castle in Wales.
For a long time, Larnach Castle was New Zealand’s only castle, and for a long time, also one of the more haunted places in the country. Built by a rich banker to live with his family, his dream of a lasting dynasty ended when personal tragedies as well as failed political and business ventures started to turn the family against each other.
Crammed into the ancient towers and dark corner of St Donat’s Castle in the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales, the ghosts lingering within these walls are old and persistent.
After a common feud between two men, a ghost was created to torment the people on Hleiðrargarðs farm. Thus, the Hleiðrargarðs-Skotta and her legendary haunting started, some say it even escalated in her starting a plague, killing both cattle and men.
The current Britannia Adelphi Hotel is the third building here used as a hotel, and filled with ghosts according to rumours. From the dark basement to the haunted suites in the upper floors, this Liverpool hotel is often dubbed Britain’s most haunted one.
Hidden away in a bone for years, the ghost and Skotta of Ábær was sent on a mission to harass a farmer in northern Iceland. However, they lost control of her, and have since been haunting them all.
Said to be unhappy with the fate of the city he once led, the ghost of Duke Berchtold V of Zähringen is said to be haunting the old city in Bern, around the Nydegg Church where his monument is placed.
The little island Munkholmen outside of Trondheim in Norway has had many haunted rumors for a long time. From an old Viking execution place to a state prison, who is still lingering there in their afterlife?
After old friends clash after falling out, a curse is put upon the other. For generations, the Hítardals-Skotta is said to have haunted their family and village, sometimes even said to be behind their deaths.
Have you ever noticed the underground world of the old town in Bern? Now fancy cafes and shops, there are also tales of secret passageways, hideouts and ghosts beneath the cobbled stoned city.
Around the terrifying statue of the Kindlifressenbrunnen devouring children, young ghosts are said to haunt like a misty night. Said to be the unwanted babies taken out of the city through the underground tunnels, they return to the scene of the crime.
