The Blood-Drawing Ghost is an Irish folktale found in “Tales of the Fairies and of the Ghost World”) (1895) collected and transcribed by Jeremiah Curtin, an Irish-American scholar among others.
John has three sweethearts but can only marry one. He hides his blackthorn walking stick in the haunted church graveyard, promising to marry whichever girl retrieves it. Kate agrees to go. As she nears the stick, a corpse in an open grave calls for help. Under its spell, Kate helps the corpse, which climbs onto her back and orders her to carry it through town.
The Blood-Drawing Ghost: An Irish Vampiric Folktale
THERE was a young man in the parish of Drimalegue, county Cork, who was courting three girls at one time, and he didn’t know which of them would he take; they had equal fortunes, and any of the three was as pleasing to him as any other. One day when he was coming home from the fair with his two sisters, the sisters began:
‘Well, John,” said one of them, “why don’t you get married. Why don’t you take either Mary, or Peggy, or Kate?”
“I can’t tell you that,” said John, “till I find which of them has the best wish for me.”
“How will you know?” asked the other.
“I will tell you that as soon as any person will die in the parish.” In three weeks’ time from that day an old man died. John went to the wake and then to the funeral. While they were burying the corpse in the graveyard John stood near a tomb which was next to the grave, and when all were going away, after burying the old man, he remained standing a while by himself, as if thinking of something; then he put his blackthorn stick on top of the tomb, stood a while longer, and on going from the graveyard left the stick behind him. He went home and ate his supper. After supper John went to a neighbour’s house where young people used to meet of an evening, and the three girls happened to be there that time. John was very quiet, so that every one noticed him.”What is troubling you this evening, John?” asked one of the girls.
“Oh, I am sorry for my beautiful blackthorn,” said he.
“Did you lose it?”
“I did not,” said John; “but I left it on the top of the tomb next to the grave of the man who was buried to-day, and whichever of you three will go for it is the woman I’ll marry. Well, Mary will you go for my stick?” asked he.
“Faith, then, I will not,” said Mary.
“Well, Peggy, will you go?”
“If I were without a man for ever,” said Peggy, “I wouldn’t go.”
“Well, Kate,” said he to the third, “will you go for my stick? If you go I’ll marry you.”
“Stand to your word,” said Kate, “and I’ll bring the stick.”
“Believe me, that I will,” said John. Kate left the company behind her, and went for the stick. The graveyard was three miles away and the walk was a long one. Kate came to the place at last and made out the tomb by the fresh grave. When she had her hand on the blackthorn a voice called from the tomb:
“Leave the stick where it is and open this tomb for me.” Kate began to tremble and was greatly in dread, but something was forcing her to open the tomb–she couldn’t help herself.
“Take the lid off now,” said the dead man when Kate had the door open and was inside in the tomb, “and take me out of this–take me on your back.”
Afraid to refuse, she took the lid from the coffin, raised the dead man on her back, and walked on in the way he directed. She walked about the distance of a mile. The load, being very heavy, was near breaking her back and killing her. She walked half a mile farther and came to a village; the houses were at the side of the road.
“Take me to the first house,” said the dead man.
She took him.
“Oh, we cannot go in here,” said he, when they came near. “The people have clean water inside, and they have holy water, too. Take me to the next house.” She went to the next house.
“We cannot go in there,” said he, when she stopped in front of the door. “They have clean water, and there is holy water as well.” She went to the third house.
“Go in here,” said the dead man. “There is neither clean water nor holy water in this place; we can stop in it.” They went in.
“Bring a chair now and put me sitting at the side of the fire. Then find me something to eat and to drink.” She placed him in a chair by the hearth, searched the house, found a dish of oatmeal and brought it. “I have nothing to give you to drink but dirty water,” said she.
“Bring me a dish and a razor.” She brought the dish and the razor.
“Come, now,” said he, “to the room above.” They went up to the room, where three young men, sons of the man of the house, were sleeping in bed, and Kate had to hold the dish while the dead man was drawing their blood.
“Let the father and mother have that,” said he, “in return for the dirty water”; meaning that if there was clean water in the house he wouldn’t have taken the blood of the young men. He closed their wounds in the way that there was no sign of a cut on them.
“Mix this now with the meal, get a dish of it for yourself and another for me.” She got two plates and put the oatmeal in it after mixing it, and brought two spoons. Kate wore a handkerchief on her head; she put this under her neck and tied it; she was pretending to eat, but she was putting the food to hide in the handkerchief till her plate was empty.
“Have you your share eaten?” asked the dead man.
“I have,” answered Kate.
“I’ll have mine finished this minute,” said he, and soon after he gave her the empty dish. She put the dishes back in the dresser, and didn’t mind washing them. “Come, now,” said he, “and take me back to the place where you found me.”
“Oh, how can I take you back; you are too great a load; ’twas killing me you were when I brought you.” She was in dread of going from the house again.
“You are stronger after that food than what you were in coming; take me back to my grave.” She went against her will. She rolled up the food inside the handkerchief. There was a deep hole in the wall of the kitchen by the door, where the bar was slipped in when they barred the door; into this hole she put the handkerchief. In going back she shortened the road by going through a big field at command of the dead man. When they were at the top of the field she asked, was there any cure for those young men whose blood was drawn?
“There is no cure,” said he, “except one. If any of that food had been spared, three bits of it in each young man’s mouth would bring them to life again, and they’d never know of their death.”
“Then,” said Kate in her own mind, “that cure is to be had.”
“Do you see this field?” asked the dead man.
“I do.”
“Well, there is as much gold buried in it as would make rich people of all who belong to you. Do you see the three leachtans [piles of small stones]? Underneath each of them is a pot of gold.” The dead man looked around for a while; then Kate went on, without stopping, till she came to the wall of the graveyard, and just then they heard the cock crow.
“The cock is crowing,” said Kate; “it’s time for me to be going home.”
“It is not time yet,” said the dead man; “that is a bastard cock.” A moment after that another cock crowed. “There the cocks are crowing a second time,” said she. “No,” said the dead man, “that is a bastard cock again; that’s no right bird.” They came to the mouth of the tomb and a cock crowed the third time.
“Well,” said the girl, “that must be the right cock.”
“Ah, my girl, that cock has saved your life for you. But for him I would have you with me in the grave for evermore, and if I knew this cock would crow before I was in the grave you wouldn’t have the knowledge you have now of the field and the gold. Put me into the coffin where you found me. Take your time and settle me well. I cannot meddle with you now, and ’tis sorry I am to part with you.”
“Will you tell me who you are?” asked Kate.
“Have you ever heard your father or mother mention a man called Edward Derrihy or his son Michael?”
“It’s often I heard tell of them,” replied the girl.
“Well, Edward Derrihy was my father; I am Michael. That blackthorn that you came for to-night to this graveyard was the lucky stick for you, but if you had any thought of the danger that was before you, you wouldn’t be here. Settle me carefully and close the tomb well behind you.”
She placed him in the coffin carefully, closed the door behind her, took the blackthorn stick, and away home with Kate. The night was far spent when she came. She was tired, and it’s good reason the girl had. She thrust the stick into the thatch above the door of the house and rapped. Her sister rose up and opened the door.
“Where did you spend the night?” asked the sister. “Mother will kill you in the morning for spending the whole night from home.”
“Go to bed,” answered Kate, “and never mind me.”
They went to bed, and Kate fell asleep the minute she touched the bed, she was that tired after the night.
When the father and mother of the three young men rose next morning, and there was no sign of their sons, the mother went to the room to call them, and there she found the three dead. She began to screech and wring her hands. She ran to the road screaming and wailing. All the neighbours crowded around to know what trouble was on her. She told them her three sons were lying dead in their bed after the night. Very soon the report spread in every direction. When Kate’s father and mother heard it they hurried off to the house of the dead men. When they came home Kate was still in bed; the mother took a stick and began to beat the girl for being out all the night and in bed all the day.
“Get up now, you lazy stump of a girl,” said she, “and go to the wake house; your neighbour’s three sons are dead.” Kate took no notice of this. “I am very tired and sick,” said she. “You’d better spare me and give me a drink.” The mother gave her a drink of milk and a bite to eat, and in the middle of the day she rose up.
“Tis a shame for you not to be at the wake house yet,” said the mother; “hurry over now.” When Kate reached the house there was a great crowd of people before her and great wailing. She did not cry, but was looking on. The father was as if wild, going up and down the house wringing his hands.
“Be quiet,” said Kate. “Control yourself.”
“How can I do that, my dear girl, and my three fine sons lying dead in the house?”
“What would you give,” asked Kate, “to the person who would bring life to them again?”
“Don’t be vexing me,” said the father.
“It’s neither vexing you I am nor trifling,” said Kate. “I can put the life in them again.”
“If it was true that you could do that, I would give you all that I have inside the house and outside as well.”
“All I want from you,” said Kate, “is the eldest son to marry and Gort na Leachtan [the field of the stone heaps] as fortune.”
“My dear, you will have that from me with the greatest blessing.
“Give me the field in writing from yourself, whether the son will marry me or not.”
He gave her the field in his handwriting. She told all who were inside in the wake-house to go outside the door, every man and woman of them. Some were laughing at her and more were crying, thinking it was mad she was. She bolted the door inside, and went to the place where she left the handkerchief, found it, and put three bites of the oatmeal and the blood in the mouth of each young man, and as soon as she did that the three got their natural colour, and they looked like men sleeping. She opened the door, then called on all to come inside, and told the father to go and wake his sons.
He called each one by name, and as they woke they seemed very tired after their night’s rest; they put on their clothes, and were greatly surprised to see all the people around. “How is this?” asked the eldest brother.
“Don’t you know of anything that came over you in the night?” asked the father.
“We do not,” said the sons. “We remember nothing at all since we fell asleep last evening.” The father then told them everything, but they could not believe it. Kate went away home and told her father and mother of her night’s journey to and from the graveyard, and said that she would soon tell them more. That day she met John.
“Did you bring the stick?” asked he.
“Find your own stick,” said she, “and never speak to me again in your life.” In a week’s time she went to the house of the three young men, and said to the father, “I have come for what you promised me.”
“You’ll get that with my blessing,” said the father. He called the eldest son aside then and asked would he marry Kate, their neighbour’s daughter. “I will,” said the son. Three days after that the two were married and had a fine wedding. For three weeks they enjoyed a pleasant life without toil or trouble; then Kate said, “This will not do for us; we must be working. Come with me to-morrow and I’ll give yourself and brothers plenty to do, and my own father and brothers as well.”
She took them next day to one of the stone heaps in Gort na Leachtan. “Throw these stones to one side,” said she. They thought that she was losing her senses, but she told them that they’d soon see for themselves what she was doing. They went to work and kept at it till they had six feet deep of a hole dug; then they met with a flat stone three feet square and an iron hook in the middle of it.
“Sure there must be something underneath this,” said the men. They lifted the flag, and under it was a pot of gold. All were very happy then. “There is more gold yet in the place,” said Kate. “Come, now, to the other heap.” They removed that heap, dug down, and found another pot of gold. They removed the third pile and found a third pot full of gold. On the side of the third pot was an inscription, and they could not make out what it was. After emptying it they placed the pot by the side of the door. About a month later a poor scholar walked the way, and as he was going in at the door he saw the old pot and the letters on the side of it. He began to study the letters.
“You must be a good scholar if you can read what’s on that pot,” said the young man.
“I can,” said the poor scholar, “and here it is for you. ‘There is a deal more at the south side of each pot.”
The young man said nothing, but putting his hand in his pocket, gave the poor scholar a good day’s hire. When he was gone they went to work and found a deal more of gold at the south side of each stone heap. They were very happy then and very rich, and bought several farms and built fine houses, and it was supposed by all of them in the latter end that it was Derrihy’s money that was buried under the Ieachtans, but they could give no correct account of that, and sure why need they care? When they died they left property to make their children rich to the seventh generation.
After tragedy struck Birthe Svendsdatter, she threw herself from the window and ended up with a limp and a brain injury. Called Halte-Birthe because of her limp, she is said to haunt Fossesholm Manor to this day.
Feeling like a sudden and invisible burden, the life force of wary travellers were long subjected to the terror of the Aufhocker. A creature between the vampire, werewolf and goblin spirits, the legend of the empty road were long haunted by something heavy.
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In the dark Hendrick Street in Dublin, there once were two houses said to be some of the most haunted ones in town. Occupied by at least six ghosts, some say they still linger in their old street.
In the pre civil war Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, the mausoleum of W.W Pool is said to be the grave of The Richmond Vampire. A more recent urban legend is now also connected with The Church Hill Tunnel collapse.
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“Leixlip Castle,” published in 1825, is a novel by Charles Robert Maturin, a renowned writer of Gothic literature and an Irish Protestant clergyman. Born in 1782 and passing away in 1824, Maturin left a lasting impact on the Gothic genre, with his most famous work being “Melmoth the Wanderer,” about at man selling his sould to the devil for an extended life.
“Leixlip Castle” continues this tradition, offering readers a haunting and atmospheric story set in the eponymous castle, where secrets, supernatural elements, and human folly intertwine to create a truly Gothic experience. In 1720 Jacobite supporter Sir Redmond Blayney, tired of the boasts of his Whig about the Siege of Derry, moves from the North of Ireland to rent Leixlip Castle in County Kildare outside Dublin. Over the following years his three daughters all begin suffering from supernatural and tragic events.
Leixlip Castle by Charles Maturin
THE incidents of the following tale are not merely founded on fact, they are facts themselves, which occurred at no very distant period in my own family. The marriage of the parties, their sudden and mysterious separation, and their total alienation from each other until the last period of their mortal existence, are all facts. I cannot vouch for the truth of the supernatural solution given to all these mysteries; but I must still consider the story as a fine specimen of Gothic horrors, and can never forget the impression it made on me when I heard it related for the first time among many other thrilling traditions of the same description.
C.R.M.
The tranquillity of the Catholics of Ireland during the disturbed periods of 1715 and 1745, was most commendable, and somewhat extraordinary; to enter into an analysis of their probable motives, is not at all the object of the writer of this tale, as it is pleasanter to state the fact of their honour, than at this distance of time to assign dubious and unsatisfactory reasons for it. Many of them, however, showed a kind of secret disgust at the existing state of affairs, by quitting their family residences and wandering about like persons who were uncertain of their homes, or possibly expecting better from some near and fortunate contingency.
Among the rest was a Jacobite Baronet, who, sick of his uncongenial situation in a Whig neighbourhood, in the north–where he heard of nothing but the heroic defence of Londonderry; the barbarities of the French generals; and the resistless exhortations of the godly Mr Walker, a Presbyterian clergyman, to whom the citizens gave the title of ‘Evangelist’;–quitted his paternal residence, and about the year 1720 hired the Castle of Leixlip for three years (it was then the property of the Connollys, who let it to triennial tenants); and removed thither with his family, which consisted of three daughters–their mother having long been dead.
The Castle of Leixlip, at that period, possessed a character of romantic beauty and feudal grandeur, such as few buildings in Ireland can claim, and which is now, alas, totally effaced by the destruction of its noble woods; on the destroyers of which the writer would wish ‘a minstrel’s malison were said’.–Leixlip, though about seven miles from Dublin, has all the sequestered and picturesque character that imagination could ascribe to a landscape a hundred miles from, not only the metropolis but an inhabited town. After driving a dull mile (an Irish mile)(1) in passing from Lucan to Leixlip, the road–hedged up on one side of the high wall that bounds the demesne of the Veseys, and on the other by low enclosures, over whose rugged tops you have no view at all–at once opens on Leixlip Bridge, at almost a right angle, and displays a luxury of landscape on which the eye that has seen it even in childhood dwells with delighted recollection.–Leixlip Bridge, a rude but solid structure, projects from a high bank of the Liffey, and slopes rapidly to the opposite side, which there lies remarkably low. To the right the plantations of the Vesey’s demesne–no longer obscured by walls–almost mingle their dark woods in its stream, with the opposite ones of Marshfield and St Catherine’s. The river is scarcely visible, overshadowed as it is by the deep, rich and bending foliage of the trees. To the left it bursts out in all the brilliancy of light, washes the garden steps of the houses of Leixlip, wanders round the low walls of its churchyard, plays, with the pleasure-boat moored under the arches on which the summer-house of the Castle is raised, and then loses itself among the rich woods that once skirted those grounds to its very brink. The contrast on the other side, with the luxuriant walks, scattered shrubberies, temples seated on pinnacles, and thickets that conceal from you the sight of the river until you are on its banks, that mark the character of the grounds which are now the property of Colonel Marly, is peculiarly striking.
Visible above the highest roofs of the town, though a quarter of a mile distant from them, are the ruins of Confy Castle, a right good old predatory tower of the stirring times when blood was shed like water; and as you pass the bridge you catch a glimpse of the waterfall (or salmon-leap, as it is called) on whose noon-day lustre, or moon-light beauty, probably the rough livers of that age when Confy Castle was ‘a tower of strength’, never glanced an eye or cast a thought, as they clattered in their harness over Leixlip Bridge, or waded through the stream before that convenience was in existence.
Whether the solitude in which he lived contributed to tranquillize Sir Redmond Blaney’s feelings, or whether they had begun to rust from want of collision with those of others, it is impossible to say, but certain it is, that the good Baronet began gradually to lose his tenacity in political matters; and except when a Jacobite friend came to dine with him, and drink with many a significant ‘nod and beck and smile’, the King over the water–or the parish-priest (good man) spoke of the hopes of better times, and the final success of the right cause, and the old religion—or a Jacobite servant was heard in the solitude of the large mansion whistling ‘Charlie is my darling’, to which Sir Redmond involuntarily responded in a deep bass voice, somewhat the worse for wear, and marked with more emphasis than good discretion–except, as I have said, on such occasions, the Baronet’s politics, like his life, seemed passing away without notice or effort. Domestic calamities, too, pressed sorely on the old gentleman: of his three daughters the youngest, Jane, had disappeared in so extraordinary a manner in her childhood, that though it is but a wild, remote family tradition, I cannot help relating it:—
The girl was of uncommon beauty and intelligence, and was suffered to wander about the neighbourhood of the castle with the daughter of a servant, who was also called Jane, as a nom de caresse. One evening Jane Blaney and her young companion went far and deep into the woods; their absence created no uneasiness at the time, as these excursions were by no means unusual, till her playfellow returned home alone and weeping, at a very late hour. Her account was, that, in passing through a lane at some distance from the castle, an old woman, in the Fingallian dress, (a red petticoat and a long green jacket), suddenly started out of a thicket, and took Jane Blaney by the arm: she had in her hand two rushes, one of which she threw over her shoulder, and giving the other to the child, motioned to her to do the same. Her young companion, terrified at what she saw, was running away, when Jane Blaney called after her–‘Good-bye, good-bye, it is a long time before you will see me again.’ The girl said they then disappeared, and she found her way home as she could. An indefatigable search was immediately commenced–woods were traversed, thickets were explored, ponds were drained–all in vain. The pursuit and the hope were at length given up. Ten years afterwards, the housekeeper of Sir Redmond, having remembered that she left the key of a closet where sweetmeats were kept, on the kitchen table, returned to fetch it. As she approached the door, she heard a childish voice murmuring–‘Cold–cold–cold how long it is since I have felt a fire!’–She advanced, and saw, to her amazement, Jane Blaney, shrunk to half her usual size, and covered with rags, crouching over the embers of the fire. The housekeeper flew in terror from the spot, and roused the servants, but the vision had fled. The child was reported to have been seen several times afterwards, as diminutive in form, as though she had not grown an inch since she was ten years of age, and always crouching over a fire, whether in the turret-room or kitchen, complaining of cold and hunger, and apparently covered with rags. Her existence is still said to be protracted under these dismal circumstances, so unlike those of Lucy Gray in Wordsworth’s beautiful ballad:
Yet some will say, that to this day She is a living child– That they have met sweet Lucy Gray Upon the lonely wild; O’er rough and smooth she trips along. And never looks behind; And hums a solitary song That whistles in the wind.
The fate of the eldest daughter was more melancholy, though less extraordinary; she was addressed by a gentleman of competent fortune and unexceptionable character: he was a Catholic, moreover; and Sir Redmond Blaney signed the marriage articles, in full satisfaction of the security of his daughter’s soul, as well as of her jointure. The marriage was celebrated at the Castle of Leixlip; and, after the bride and bridegroom had retired, the guests still remained drinking to their future happiness, when suddenly, to the great alarm of Sir Redmond and his friends, loud and piercing cries were heard to issue from the part of the castle in which the bridal chamber was situated.
Some of the more courageous hurried up stairs; it was too late–the wretched bridegroom had burst, on that fatal night, into a sudden and most horrible paroxysm of insanity. The mangled form of the unfortunate and expiring lady bore attestation to the mortal virulence with which the disease had operated on the wretched husband, who died a victim to it himself after the involuntary murder of his bride. The bodies were interred, as soon as decency would permit, and the story hushed up.
Sir Redmond’s hopes of Jane’s recovery were diminishing every day, though he still continued to listen to every wild tale told by the domestics; and all his care was supposed to be now directed towards his only surviving daughter. Anne, living in solitude, and partaking only of the very limited education of Irish females of that period, was left very much to the servants, among whom she increased her taste for superstitious and supernatural horrors, to a degree that had a most disastrous effect on her future life.
Among the numerous menials of the Castle, there was one withered crone, who had been nurse to the late Lady Blaney’s mother, and whose memory was a complete Thesaurus terrorum. The mysterious fate of Jane first encouraged her sister to listen to the wild tales of this hag, who avouched, that at one time she saw the fugitive standing before the portrait of her late mother in one of the apartments of the Castle, and muttering to herself–‘Woe’s me, woe’s me! how little my mother thought her wee Jane would ever come to be what she is!’ But as Anne grew older she began more ‘seriously to incline’ to the hag’s promises that she could show her her future bridegroom, on the performance of certain ceremonies, which she at first revolted from as horrible and impious; but, finally, at the repeated instigation of the old woman, consented to act a part in. The period fixed upon for the performance of these unhallowed rites, was now approaching–it was near the 31st of October–the eventful night, when such ceremonies were, and still are supposed, in the North of Ireland, to be most potent in their effects. All day long the Crone took care to lower the mind of the young lady to the proper key of submissive and trembling credulity, by every horrible story she could relate; and she told them with frightful and supernatural energy. This woman was called Collogue by the family, a name equivalent to Gossip in England, or Cummer in Scotland (though her real name was Bridget Dease); and she verified the name, by the exercise of an unwearied loquacity, an indefatigable memory, and a rage for communicating, and inflicting terror, that spared no victim in the household, from the groom, whom she sent shivering to his rug,(2) to the Lady of the Castle, over whom she felt she held unbounded sway.
The 31st of October arrived–the Castle was perfectly quiet before eleven o’clock; half an hour afterwards, the Collogue and Anne Blaney were seen gliding along a passage that led to what is called King John’s Tower, where it is said that monarch received the homage of the Irish princes as Lord of Ireland and which was, at all events, the most ancient part of the structure.(3)
The Collogue opened a small door with a key which she had secreted, about her, and urged the young lady to hurry on. Anne advanced to the postern, and stood there irresolute and trembling like a timid swimmer on the bank of an unknown stream. It was a dark autumnal evening; a heavy wind sighed among the woods of the Castle, and bowed the branches of the lower trees almost to the waves of the Liffey, which, swelled by recent rains, struggled and roared amid the stones that obstructed its channel. The steep descent from the Castle lay before her, with its dark avenue of elms; a few lights still burned in the little village of Leixlip–but from the lateness of the hour it was probable they would soon be extinguished.
The lady lingered–‘And must I go alone?’ said she, foreseeing that the terrors of her fearful journey could be aggravated by her more fearful purpose.
‘Ye must, or all will be spoiled,’ said the hag, shading the miserable light, that did not extend its influence above six inches on the path of the victim. ‘Ye must go alone–and I will watch for you here, dear, till you come back, and then see what will come to you at twelve o’clock.’
The unfortunate girl paused. ‘Oh! Collogue, Collogue, if you would but come with me. Oh! Collogue, come with me, if it be but to the bottom of the castlehill.’
‘If I went with you, dear, we should never reach the top of it alive again, for there are them near that would tear us both in pieces.’
‘Oh! Collogue, Collogue–let me turn back then, and go to my own room–I have advanced too far, and I have done too much.’
‘And that’s what you have, dear, and so you must go further, and do more still, unless, when you return to your own room, you would see the likeness of some one instead of a handsome young bridegroom.’
The young lady looked about her for a moment, terror and wild hope trembling at her heart–then, with a sudden impulse of supernatural courage, she darted like a bird from the terrace of the Castle, the fluttering of her white garments was seen for a few moments, and then the hag who had been shading the flickering light with her hand, bolted the postern, and, placing the candle before a glazed loophole, sat down on a stone seat in the recess of the tower, to watch the event of the spell. It was an hour before the young lady returned; when her face was as pale, and her eyes as fixed, as those of a dead body, but she held in her grasp a dripping garment, a proof that her errand had been performed. She flung it into her companion’s hands, and then stood, panting and gazing wildly about her as if she knew not where she was. The hag herself grew terrified at the insane and breathless state of her victim, and hurried her to her chamber; but here the preparations for the terrible ceremonies of the night were the first objects that struck her, and, shivering at the sight, she covered her eyes with her hands, and stood immovably fixed in the middle of the room.
It needed all the hag’s persuasions (aided even by mysterious menaces), combined with the returning faculties and reviving curiosity of the poor girl, to prevail on her to go through the remaining business of the night. At length she said, as if in desperation, ‘I will go through with it: but be in the next room; and if what I dread should happen, I will ring my father’s little silver bell which I have secured for the night–and as you have a soul to be saved, Collogue, come to me at its first sound.’
The hag promised, gave her last instructions with eager and jealous minuteness, and then retired to her own room, which was adjacent to that of the young lady. Her candle had burned out, but she stirred up the embers of her turf fire, and sat, nodding over them, and smoothing the pallet from time to time, but resolved not to lie down while there was a chance of a sound from the lady’s room, for which she herself, withered as her feelings were, waited with a mingled feeling of anxiety and terror.
It was now long past midnight, and all was silent as the grave throughout the Castle. The hag dozed over the embers till her head touched her knees, then started up as the sound of the bell seemed to tinkle in her ears, then dozed again, and again started as the bell appeared to tinkle more distinctly–suddenly she was roused, not by the bell, but by the most piercing and horrible cries from the neighbouring chamber. The Cologue, aghast for the first time, at the possible consequences of the mischief she might have occasioned, hastened to the room. Anne was in convulsions, and the hag was compelled reluctantly to call up the housekeeper (removing meanwhile the implements of the ceremony), and assist in applying all the specifics known at that day, burnt feathers, etc., to restore her. When they had at length succeeded, the housekeeper was dismissed, the door was bolted, and the Collogue was left alone with Anne; the subject of their conference might have been guessed at, but was not known until many years afterwards; but Anne that night held in her hand, in the shape of a weapon with the use of which neither of them was acquainted, an evidence that her chamber had been visited by a being of no earthly form.
This evidence the hag importuned her to destroy, or to remove: but she persisted with fatal tenacity in keeping it. She locked it up, however, immediately, and seemed to think she had acquired a right, since she had grappled so fearfully with the mysteries of futurity, to know all the secrets of which that weapon might yet lead to the disclosure. But from that night it was observed that her character, her manner, and even her countenance, became altered. She grew stern and solitary, shrunk at the sight of her former associates, and imperatively forbade the slightest allusion to the circumstances which had occasioned this mysterious change.
It was a few days subsequent to this event that Anne, who after dinner had left the Chaplain reading the life of St Francis Xavier to Sir Redmond, and retired to her own room to work, and, perhaps, to muse, was surprised to hear the bell at the outer gate ring loudy and repeatedly–a sound she had never heard since her first residence in the Castle; for the few guests who resorted there came, and departed as noiselessly as humble visitors at the house of a great man generally do. Straightway there rode up the avenue of elms, which we have already mentioned, a stately gentleman, followed by four servants, all mounted, the two former having pistols in their holsters, and the two latter carrying saddle-bags before them: though it was the first week in November, the dinner hour being one o’clock, Anne had light enough to notice all these circumstances. The arrival of the stranger seemed to cause much, though not unwelcome tumult in the Castle; orders were loudly and hastily given for the accommodation of the servants and horses–steps were heard traversing the numerous passages for a full hour–then all was still; and it was said that Sir Redmond had locked with his own hand the door of the room where he and the stranger sat, and desired that no one should dare to approach it. About two hours afterwards, a female servant came with orders from her master, to have a plentiful supper ready by eight o’clock, at which he desired the presence of his daughter. The family establishment was on a handsome scale for an Irish house, and Anne had only to descend to the kitchen to order the roasted chickens to be well strewed with brown sugar according to the unrefined fashion of the day, to inspect the mixing of the bowl of sago with its allowance of a bottle of port wine and a large handful of the richest spices, and to order particularly that the pease pudding should have a huge lump of cold salt butter stuck in its centre; and then, her household cares being over, to retire to her room and array herself in a robe of white damask for the occasion. At eight o’clock she was summoned to the supper-room. She came in, according to the fashion of the times, with the first dish; but as she passed through the ante-room, where the servants were holding lights and bearing the dishes, her sleeve was twitched, and the ghastly face of the Collogue pushed close to hers; while she muttered ‘Did not I say he would come for you, dear?’ Anne’s blood ran cold, but she advanced, saluted her father and the stranger with two low and distinct reverences, and then took her place at the table. Her feelings of awe and perhaps terror at the whisper of her associate, were not diminished by the appearance of the stranger; there was a singular and mute solemnity in his manner during the meal. He ate nothing. Sir Redmond appeared constrained, gloomy and thoughtful. At length, starting, he said (without naming the stranger’s name), ‘You will drink my daughter’s health?’ The stranger intimated his willingness to have that honour, but absently filled his glass with water; Anne put a few drops of wine into hers, and bowed towards him. At that moment, for the first time since they had met, she beheld his face–it was pale as that of a corpse. The deadly whiteness of his cheeks and lips, the hollow and distant sound of his voice, and the strange lustre of his large dark moveless eyes, strongly fixed on her, made her pause and even tremble as she raised the glass to her lips; she set it down, and then with another silent reverence retired to her chamber.
There she found Bridget Dease, busy in collecting the turf that burned on the hearth, for there was no grate in the apartment. ‘Why are you here?’ she said, impatiently.
The hag turned on her, with a ghastly grin of congratulation, ‘Did not I tell you that he would come for you?’
‘I believe he has,’ said the unfortunate girl, sinking into the huge wicker chair by her bedside; ‘for never did I see mortal with such a look.’
‘But is not he a fine stately gentleman?’ pursued the hag.
‘He looks as if he were not of this world,’ said Anne.
‘Of this world, or of the next,’ said the hag, raising her bony fore-finger, ‘mark my words—so sure as the–(here she repeated some of the horrible formularies of the 31st of October)–so sure he will be your bridegroom.’
‘Then I shall be the bride of a corpse,’ said Anne; ‘for he I saw tonight is no living man.’
A fortnight elapsed, and whether Anne became reconciled to the features she had thought so ghastly, by the discovery that they were the handsomest she had ever beheld–and that the voice, whose sound at first was so strange and unearthly, was subdued into a tone of plaintive softness when addressing her or whether it is impossible for two young persons with unoccupied hearts to meet in the country, and meet often, to gaze silently on the same stream, wander under the same trees, and listen together to the wind that waves the branches, without experiencing an assimilation of feeling rapidly succeeding an assimilation of taste;–or whether it was from all these causes combined, but in less than a month Anne heard the declaration of the stranger’s passion with many a blush, though without a sigh. He now avowed his name and rank. He stated himself to be a Scottish Baronet, of the name of Sir Richard Maxwell; family misfortunes had driven him from his country, and forever precluded the possibility of his return: he had transferred his property to Ireland, and purposed to fix his residence there for life. Such was his statement. The courtship of those days was brief and simple. Anne became the wife of Sir Richard, and, I believe, they resided with her father till his death, when they removed to their estate in the North. There they remained for several years, in tranquility and happiness, and had a numerous family. Sir Richard’s conduct was marked by but two peculiarities: he not only shunned the intercourse, but the sight of any of his countrymen, and, if he happened to hear that a Scotsman had arrived in the neighbouring town, he shut himself up till assured of the stranger’s departure. The other was his custom of retiring to his own chamber, and remaining invisible to his family on the anniversary of the 31st of October. The lady, who had her own associations connected with that period, only questioned him once on the subject of this seclusion, and was then solemnly and even sternly enjoined never to repeat her inquiry. Matters stood thus, somewhat mysteriously, but not unhappily, when on a sudden, without any cause assigned or assignable, Sir Richard and Lady Maxwell parted, and never more met in this world, nor was she ever permitted to see one of her children to her dying hour. He continued to live at the family mansion and she fixed her residence with a distant relative in a remote part of the country. So total was the disunion, that the name of either was never heard to pass the other’s lips, from the moment of separation until that of dissolution.
Lady Maxwell survived Sir Richard forty years, living to the great age of ninety-six; and, according to a promise, previously given, disclosed to a descendent with whom she had lived, the following extraordinary circumstances.
She said that on the night of the 31st of October, about seventy-five years before, at the instigation of her ill-advising attendant, she had washed one of her garments in a place where four streams met, and peformed other unhallowed ceremonies under the direction of the Collogue, in the expectation that her future husband would appear to her in her chamber at twelve o’clock that night. The critical moment arrived, but with it no lover-like form. A vision of indescribable horror approached her bed, and flinging at her an iron weapon of a shape and construction unknown to her, bade her ‘recognize her future husband by that.’ The terrors of this visit soon deprived her of her senses; but on her recovery, she persisted, as has been said, in keeping the fearful pledge of the reality of the vision, which, on examination, appeared to be incrusted with blood. It remained concealed in the inmost drawer of her cabinet till the morning of the separation. On that morning, Sir Richard Maxwell rose before daylight to join a hunting party–he wanted a knife for some accidental purpose, and, missing his own, called to Lady Maxwell, who was still in bed, to lend him one. The lady, who was half asleep, answered, that in such a drawer of her cabinet he would find one. He went, however, to another, and the next moment she was fully awakened by seeing her husband present the terrible weapon to her throat, and threaten her with instant death unless she disclosed how she came by it. She supplicated for life, and then, in an agony of horror and contrition, told the tale of that eventful night. He gazed at her for a moment with a countenance which rage, hatred, and despair converted, as she avowed, into a living likeness of the demon-visage she had once beheld (so singularly was the fated resemblance fulfilled), and then exclaiming, ‘You won me by the devil’s aid, but you shall not keep me long,’ left her–to meet no more in this world. Her husband’s secret was not unknown to the lady, though the means by which she became possessed of it were wholly unwarrantable. Her curiosity had been strongly excited by her husband’s aversion to his countrymen, and it was so–stimulated by the arrival of a Scottish gentleman in the neighbourhood some time before, who professed himself formerly acquainted with Sir Richard, and spoke mysteriously of the causes that drove him from his country–that she contrived to procure an interview with him under a feigned name, and obtained from him the knowledge of circumstances which embittered her after-life to its latest hour. His story was this:
Sir Richard Maxwell was at deadly feud with a younger brother; a family feast was proposed to reconcile them, and as the use of knives and forks was then unknown in the Highlands, the company met armed with their dirks for the purpose of carving. They drank deeply; the feast, instead of harmonizing, began to inflame their spirits; the topics of old strife were renewed; hands, that at first touched their weapons in defiance, drew them at last in fury, and in the fray, Sir Richard mortally wounded his brother. His life was with difficulty saved from the vengeance of the clan, and he was hurried towards the seacoast, near which the house stood, and concealed there till a vessel could be procured to convey him to Ireland. He embarked on the night of the 31st of October, and while he was traversing the deck in unutterable agony of spirit, his hand accidentally touched the dirk which he had unconsciously worn ever since the fatal night. He drew it, and, praying ‘that the guilt of his brother’s blood might be as far from his soul, as he could fling that weapon from his body,’ sent it with all his strength into the air. This instrument he found secreted in the lady’s cabinet, and whether he really believed her to have become possessed of it by supernatural means, or whether he feared his wife was a secret witness of his crime, has not been ascertained, but the result was what I have stated.
The separation took place on the discovery:–for the rest.
I know not how the truth may be. I tell the Tale as ’twas told to me.
THE END
Charles Maturin (1782–1824) was an Irish writer and clergyman best known for his Gothic novel “Melmoth the Wanderer” (1820). A descendant of Huguenot refugees, Maturin’s works often explore themes of religious conflict, human suffering, and the supernatural. Despite initial struggles to achieve literary success, his distinctive style and dark, elaborate storytelling eventually gained him recognition. “Melmoth the Wanderer,” his most acclaimed work, tells the story of an immortal man doomed to wander the earth, seeking someone who will take on his curse. Maturin’s influence extended to notable writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Baudelaire, securing his legacy within the Gothic literary tradition.
After tragedy struck Birthe Svendsdatter, she threw herself from the window and ended up with a limp and a brain injury. Called Halte-Birthe because of her limp, she is said to haunt Fossesholm Manor to this day.
Feeling like a sudden and invisible burden, the life force of wary travellers were long subjected to the terror of the Aufhocker. A creature between the vampire, werewolf and goblin spirits, the legend of the empty road were long haunted by something heavy.
A maid who once worked at the hotel allegedly took her own life at the old Visnes Hotel, deep in the Norwegian fjords. Now it is said she is lingering in the afterlife in the old rooms she once worked in.
An ancient ghost coming from the depths of graves across the nordic countries, the Haugbúi Draugr could be both dangerous and even deadly. Not merely a specter, but the rotten flesh of the dead, the ghosts are remembered as The Walking Dead of the North.
In the dark Hendrick Street in Dublin, there once were two houses said to be some of the most haunted ones in town. Occupied by at least six ghosts, some say they still linger in their old street.
In the pre civil war Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, the mausoleum of W.W Pool is said to be the grave of The Richmond Vampire. A more recent urban legend is now also connected with The Church Hill Tunnel collapse.
Old cities carry old ghost stories, and Bern in Switzerland is no exception. From the old buildings filled with history to the depth of the Aare river, here are some of the most haunted places in Bern.
Centuries after the vampire panic starting with the death of Petar Blagojević, another vampire was said to haunt the Serbian village, Kisiljevo. Who was Ruža Vlajna and what happened to her?
Said to be the mass burial place for the dead Irish Independence rebels from 1798, the Croppie’s Acre in Dublin is said to be haunted by their lingering souls.
“Ken’s Mystery” by Julian Hawthorne was first published in 1883 in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. It’s a mystery story set in the late 19th century, following Ken, a young man home from an educational trip to Europe from which he has returned with an old banjo. He tells the story about what happened that halloween night in Ireland when he was walking home late and met a mysterious and beautiful woman in a graveyard who asked him to play his banjo for her. Later the same night, he met her again. But there was something strange about her, and as he played, he felt his life force being sucked out from him. The story is described as part vampire story and part Irish Samhain story, much inspired by Irish folklore.
Ken’s Mystery by Julian Hawthorne (1883)
One cool October evening — it was the last day of the month, and unusually cool for the time of year — I made up my mind to go and spend an hour or two with my friend Keningale. Keningale was an artist (as well as a musical amateur and poet), and had a very delightful studio built onto his house, in which he was wont to sit of an evening. The studio had a cavernous fire-place, designed in imitation of the old-fashioned fire-places of Elizabethan manor-houses, and in it, when the temperature out-doors warranted, he would build up a cheerful fire of dry logs. It would suit me particularly well, I thought, to go and have a quiet pipe and chat in front of that fire with my friend.
I had not had such a chat for a very long time — not, in fact, since Keningale (or Ken, as his friends called him) had returned from his visit to Europe the year before. He went abroad, as he affirmed at the time, “for purposes of study,” whereat we all smiled, for Ken, so far as we knew him, was more likely to do anything else than to study. He was a young fellow of buoyant temperament, lively and social in his habits, of a brilliant and versatile mind, and possessing an income of twelve or fifteen thousand dollars a year; he could sing, play, scribble, and paint very cleverly, and some of his heads and figure — pieces were really well done, considering that he never had any regular training in art; but he was not a worker. Personally he was fine-looking, of good height and figure, active, healthy, and with a remarkably fine brow, and clear, full-gazing eye. Nobody was surprised at his going to Europe, nobody expected him to do anything there except amuse himself, and few anticipated that he would be soon again seen in New York. He was one of the sort that find Europe agree with them. Off he went, therefore; and in the course of a few months the rumor reached us that he was engaged to a handsome and wealthy New York girl whom he had met in London. This was nearly all we did hear of him until, not very long afterward, he turned up again on Fifth Avenue, to every one’s astonishment; made no satisfactory answer to those who wanted to know how he happened to tire so soon of the Old World; while, as to the reported engagement, he cut short all allusion to that in so peremptory a manner as to show that it was not a permissible topic of conversation with him. It was surmised that the lady had jilted him; but, on the other hand, she herself returned home not a great while after, and, though she had plenty of opportunities, she has never married to this day.
Be the rights of that matter what they may, it was soon remarked that Ken was no longer the careless and merry fellow he used to be; on the contrary, he appeared grave, moody, averse from general society, and habitually taciturn and undemonstrative even in the company of his most intimate friends. Evidently something had happened to him, or he had done something. What? Had he committed a murder? or joined the Nihilists? or was his unsuccessful love affair at the bottom of it? Some declared that the cloud was only temporary, and would soon pass away.
Nevertheless, up to the period of which I am writing, it had not passed away, but had rather gathered additional gloom, and threatened to become permanent.
Meanwhile I had met him twice or thrice at the club, at the opera, or in the street, but had as yet had no opportunity of regularly renewing my acquaintance with him. We had been on a footing of more than common intimacy in the old days, and I was not disposed to think that he would refuse to renew the former relations now. But what I had heard and myself seen of his changed condition imparted a stimulating tinge of suspense or curiosity to the pleasure with which I looked forward to the prospects of this evening. His house stood at a distance of two or three miles beyond the general range of habitations in New York at this time, and as I walked briskly along in the clear twilight air I had leisure to go over in my mind all that I had known of Ken and had divined of his character. After all, had there not always been something in his nature — deep down, and held in abeyance by the activity of his animal spirits — but something strange and separate, and capable of developing under suitable conditions into — into what? As I asked myself this question I arrived at his door; and it was with a feeling of relief that I felt the next moment the cordial grasp of his hand, and his voice bidding me welcome in a tone that indicated unaffected gratification at my presence. He drew me at once into the studio, relieved me of my hat and cane, and then put his hand on my shoulder.
“I am glad to see you,” be repeated, with singular earnestness — “glad to see you and to feel you; and tonight of all nights in the year.”
“Why to-night especially?”
“Oh, never mind. It’s just as well, too, you didn’t let me know beforehand you were coming; the unreadiness is all, to paraphrase the poet. Now, with you to help me, I can drink a glass of whisky and water and take a bit draw of the pipe. This would have been a grim night for me if I’d been left to myself.”
“In such a lap of luxury as this, too!” said I, looking round at the glowing fire-place, the low, luxurious chairs, and all the rich and sumptuous fittings of the room. “I should have thought a condemned murderer might make himself comfortable here.”
“Perhaps; but that’s not exactly my category at present. But have you forgotten what night this is? This is November-eve, when, as tradition asserts, the dead arise and walk about, and fairies, goblins, and spiritual beings of all kinds have more freedom and power than on any other day of the year. One can see you’ve never been in Ireland.”
“I wasn’t aware till now that you had been there, either.”
“Yes, I have been in Ireland. Yes –” He paused, sighed, and fell into a reverie, from which, however, he soon roused himself by an effort, and went to a cabinet in a corner of the room for the liquor and tobacco. While he was thus employed I sauntered about the studio, taking note of the various beauties, grotesquenesses, and curiosities that it contained. Many things were there to repay study and arouse admiration; for Ken was a good collector, having excellent taste as well as means to back it. But, upon the whole, nothing interested me more than some studies of a female head, roughly done in oils, and, judging from the sequestered positions in which I found them, not intended by the artist for exhibition or criticism. There were three or four of these studies, all of the same face, but in different poses and costumes. In one the head was enveloped in a dark hood, overshadowing and partly concealing the features; in another she seemed to be peering duskily through a latticed casement, lit by a faint moonlight; a third showed her splendidly attired in evening costume, with jewels in her hair and ears, and sparkling on her snowy bosom. The expressions were as various as the poses; now it was demure penetration, now a subtle inviting glance, now burning passion, and again a look of elfish and elusive mockery. In whatever phase, the countenance possessed a singular and poignant fascination, not of beauty merely, though that was very striking, but of character and quality likewise.
“Did you find this model abroad?” I inquired at length. “She has evidently inspired you, and I don’t wonder at it.”
Ken, who had been mixing the punch, and had not noticed my movements, now looked up, and said: “I didn’t mean those to be seen. They don’t satisfy me, and I am going to destroy them; but I couldn’t rest till I’d made some attempts to reproduce — What was it you asked? Abroad? Yes — or no. They were all painted here within the last six weeks.”
“Whether they satisfy you or not, they are by far the best things of yours I have ever seen.”
“Well, let them alone, and tell me what you think of this beverage. To my thinking, it goes to the right spot. It owes its existence to your coming here. I can’t drink alone, and those portraits are not company, though, for aught I know, she might have come out of the canvas to-night and sat down in that chair.” Then, seeing my inquiring look, he added, with a hasty laugh, “It’s November-eve, you know, when anything may happen, provided its strange enough. Well, here’s to ourselves.”
We each swallowed a deep draught of the smoking and aromatic liquor, and set down our glasses with approval. The punch was excellent. Ken now opened a box of cigars, and we seated ourselves before the fireplace.
“All we need now,” I remarked, after a short silence, “is a little music. By-the-by, Ken, have you still got the banjo I gave you before you went abroad?”
He paused so long before replying that I supposed he had not heard my question. “I have got it,” he said, at length, “but it will never make any more music.”
“Got broken, eh? Can’t it be mended? It was a fine instrument.”
“It’s not broken, but it’s past mending. You shall see for yourself.”
He arose as he spoke, and going to another part of the studio, opened a black oak coffer, and took out of it a long object wrapped up in a piece of faded yellow silk. He handed it to me, and when I had unwrapped it, there appeared a thing that might once have been a banjo, but had little resemblance to one now. It bore every sign of extreme age. The wood of the handle was honey-combed with the gnawings of worms, and dusty with dry-rot. The parchment head was green with mold, and hung in shriveled tatters. The hoop, which was of solid silver, was so blackened and tarnished that it looked like dilapidated iron. The strings were gone, and most of the tuning-screws had dropped out of their decayed sockets. Altogether it had the appearance of having been made before the Flood, and been forgotten in the forecastle of Noah’s Ark ever since.
“It is a curious relic, certainly,” I said. “Where did you come across it? I had no idea that the banjo was invented so long ago as this. It certainly can’t be less than two hundred years old, and may be much older than that.”
Ken smiled gloomily. “You are quite right,” he said; “it is at least two hundred years old, and yet it is the very same banjo that you gave me a year ago.”
“Hardly,” I returned, smiling in my turn, “since that was made to my order with a view to presenting it to you.”
“I know that; but the two hundred years have passed since then. Yes; it is absurd and impossible, I know, but nothing is truer. That banjo, which was made last year, existed in the sixteenth century, and has been rotting ever since. Stay. Give it to me a moment, and I’ll convince you. You recollect that your name and mine, with the date, were engraved on the silver hoop?”
“Yes; and there was a private mark of my own there, also.”
“Very well,” said Ken, who had been rubbing a place on the hoop with a corner of the yellow silk wrapper; “look at that.”
I took the decrepit instrument from him, and examined the spot which he had rubbed. It was incredible, sure enough; but there wee the names and the date precisely as I had caused them to be engraved; and there, moreover, was my own private mark, which I had idly made with an old etching point not more than eighteen months before. After convincing myself that there was no mistake, I laid the banjo across my knees, and stared at my friend in bewilderment. He sat smoking with a kind of grim composure, his eyes fixed upon the blazing logs.
“I’m mystified, I confess,” said I. “Come; what is the joke? What method have you discovered of producing the decay of centuries on this unfortunate banjo in a few months? And why did you do it? I have heard of an elixir to counteract the effects of time, but your recipe seems to work the other way — to make time rush forward at two hundred times his usual rate, in one place, while he jogs on at his usual gait elsewhere. Unfold your mystery, magician. Seriously, Ken, how on earth did the thing happen?”
“I know no more about it than you do,” was his reply. “Either you and I and all the rest of the living world are insane, or else there has been wrought a miracle as strange as any in tradition.
“How can I explain it? It is a common saying — a common experience, if you will — that we may, on certain trying or tremendous occasions, live years in one moment. But that’s a mental experience, not a physical one, and one that applies, at all events, only to human beings, not to senseless things of wood and metal. You imagine the thing is some trick or jugglery. If it be, I don’t know the secret of it. There’s no chemical appliance that I ever heard of that will get a piece of solid wood into that condition in a few months, or a few years. And it wasn’t done in a few years, or a few months either. A year ago to-day at this very hour that banjo was as sound as when it left the maker’s hands, and twenty-four hours afterward — I’m telling you the simple truth — it was as you see it now.” The gravity and earnestness with which Ken made this astounding statement were evidently not assumed. He believed every word that he uttered. I knew not what to think. Of course my friend might be insane, though he betrayed none of the ordinary symptoms of mania; but, however that might be, there was the banjo, a witness whose silent testimony there was no gain-saying. The more I meditated on the matter the more inconceivable did it appear. Two hundred years — twenty-four hours; these were the terms of the proposed equation. Ken and the banjo both affirmed that the equation had been made; all worldly knowledge and experience affirmed it to be impossible. What was the explanation? What is time? What is life? I felt myself beginning to doubt the reality of all things. And so this was the mystery which my friend had been brooding over since his return from abroad. No wonder it had changed him. More to be wondered at was it that it had not changed him more.
“Can you tell me the whole story?” I demanded at length.
Ken quaffed another draught from his glass of whisky and water and rubbed his hand through his thick brown beard. “I have never spoken to any one of it heretofore,” he said, “and I had never meant to speak of it. But I’ll try and give you some idea of what it was. You know me better than any one else; you’ll understand the thing as far as it can ever be understood, and perhaps I may be relieved of some of the oppression it has caused me. For it is rather a ghastly memory to grapple with alone, I can tell you.”
Hereupon, without further preface, Ken related the following tale. He was, I may observe in passing, a naturally fine narrator. There were deep, lingering tones in his voice, and he could strikingly enhance the comic or pathetic effect of a sentence by dwelling here and there upon some syllable. His features were equally susceptible of humorous and of solemn expressions, and his eyes were in form and hue wonderfully adapted to showing great varieties of emotion. Their mournful aspect was extremely earnest and affecting; and when Ken was giving utterance to some mysterious passage of the tale they had a doubtful, melancholy, exploring look which appealed irresistibly to the imagination. But the interest of his story was too pressing to allow of noticing these incidental embellishments at the time, though they doubtless had their influence upon me all the same.
“I left New York on an Inman Line steamer, you remember,” began Ken, “and landed at Havre. I went the usual round of sight-seeing on the Continent, and got round to London in July, at the height of the season. I had good introductions, and met any number of agreeable and famous people. Among others was a young lady, a countrywoman of my own — you know whom I mean — who interested me very much, and before her family left London she and I were engaged. We parted there for the time, because she had the Continental trip still to make, while I wanted to take the opportunity to visit the north of England and Ireland. I landed at Dublin about the 1st of October, and, zigzagging about the country, I found myself in County Cork about two weeks later.
“There is in that region some of the most lovely scenery that human eyes ever rested on, and it seems to be less known to tourists than many places of infinitely less picturesque value. A lonely region too: during my rambles I met not a single stranger like myself, and few enough natives. It seems incredible that so beautiful a country should be so deserted. After walking a dozen Irish miles you come across a group of two or three one-roomed cottages, and, like as not, one or more of those will have the roof off and the walls in ruins. The few peasants whom one sees, however, are affable and hospitable, especially when they hear you are from that terrestrial heaven whither most of their friends and relatives have gone before them. They seem simple and primitive enough at first sight, and yet they are as strange and incomprehensible a race as any in the world. They are as superstitious, as credulous of marvels, fairies, magicians, and omens, as the men whom St. Patrick preached to, and at the same time they are shrewd, skeptical, sensible, and bottomless liars. Upon the whole, I met with no nation on my travels whose company I enjoyed so much, or who inspired me with so much kindliness, curiosity, and repugnance.
“At length I got to a place on the sea-coast, which I will not further specify than to say that it is not many miles from Ballymacheen, on the south shore. I have seen Venice and Naples, I have driven along the Cornice Road, I have spent a month at our own Mount Desert, and I say that all of them together are not so beautiful as this glowing, deep-hued, soft-gleaming, silvery-lighted, ancient harbor and town, with the tall hills crowding round it and the black cliffs and headlands planting their iron feet in the blue, transparent sea. It is a very old place, and has had a history which it has outlived ages since. It may once have had two or three thousand inhabitants; it has scarce five or six hundred to-day. Half the houses are in ruins or have disappeared; many of the remainder are standing empty. All the people are poor, most of them abjectly so; they saunter about with bare feet and uncovered heads, the women in quaint black or dark-blue cloaks, the men in such anomalous attire as only an Irishman knows how to get together, the children half naked. The only comfortable-looking people are the monks and the priests, and the soldiers in the fort. For there is a fort there, constructed on the huge ruins of one which may have done duty in the reign of Edward the Black Prince, or earlier, in whose mossy embrasures are mounted a couple of cannon, which occasionally sent a practice-shot or two at the cliff on the other side of the harbor. The garrison consists of a dozen men and three or four officers and non-commissioned officers. I suppose they are relieved occasionally, but those I saw seemed to have become component parts of their surroundings.
“I put up at a wonderful little old inn, the only one in the place, and took my meals in a dining-saloon fifteen feet by nine, with a portrait of George I (a print varnished to preserve it) hanging over the mantel-piece. On the second evening after dinner a young gentleman came in — the dining-saloon being public property of course — and ordered some bread and cheese and a bottle of Dublin stout. We presently fell into talk; he turned out to be an officer from the fort, Lieutenant O’Connor, and a fine young specimen of the Irish soldier he was. After telling me all he knew about the town, the surrounding country, his friends, and himself, he intimated a readiness to sympathize with whatever tale I might choose to pour into his ear; and I had pleasure in trying to rival his own outspokenness. We became excellent friends; we had up a half-pint of Kinahan’s whisky, and the lieutenant expressed himself in terms of high praise of my countrymen, my country, and my own particular cigars. When it became time for him to depart I accompanied him — for there was a splendid moon abroad — and bade him farewell at the fort entrance, having promised to come over the next day and make the acquaintance of the other fellows. ‘And mind your eye, now, going back, my dear boy,’ he called out, as I turned my face homeward. ‘Faith, ’tis a spooky place, that graveyard, and you’ll as likely meet the black woman there as anywhere else!’
“The graveyard was a forlorn and barren spot on the hill-side, just the hither side of the fort: thirty or forty rough head-stones, few of which retained any semblance of the perpendicular, while many were so shattered and decayed as to seem nothing more than irregular natural projections from the ground. Who the black woman might be I knew not, and did not stay to inquire. I had never been subject to ghostly apprehensions, and as a matter of fact, though the path I had to follow was in places very bad going, not to mention a hap-hazard scramble over a ruined bridge that covered a deep-lying brook. I reached my inn without any adventure whatever.
“The next day I kept my appointment at the fort, and found no reason to regret it; and my friendly sentiments were abundantly reciprocated, thanks more especially, perhaps, to the success of my banjo, which I carried with me, and which was as novel as it was popular with those who listened to it. The chief personages in the social circle besides my friend the lieutenant were Major Molloy, who was in command, a racy and juicy old campaigner, with a face like a sunset, and the surgeon, Dr. Dudeen, a long, dry, humorous genius, with a wealth of anecdotical and traditional lore at his command that I have never seen surpassed. We had a jolly time of it, and it was the precursor of many more like it. The remains of October slipped away rapidly, and I was obliged to remember that I was a traveler in Europe, and not a resident in Ireland. The major, the surgeon, and the lieutenant all protested cordially against my proposed departure, but, as there was no help for it, they arranged a farewell dinner to take place in the fort on All-halloween.
“I wish you could have been at that dinner with me! It was the essence of Irish good-fellowship. Dr. Dudeen was in great force; the major was better than the best of Lever’s novels; the lieutenant was overflowing with hearty good-humor, merry chaff, and sentimental rhapsodies about this or the other pretty girl of the neighborhood. For my part I made the banjo ring as it had never rung before, and the others joined in the chorus with a mellow strength of lungs such as you don’t often hear outside of Ireland. Among the stories that Dr. Dudeen regaled us with was one about the Kern of Querin and his wife, Ethelind Fionguala — which being interpreted signified ‘the white-shouldered.’ The lady, it appears, was originally betrothed to one O’Connor (here the lieutenant smacked his lips), but was stolen away on the wedding night by a party of vampires, who, it would seem, where at that period a prominent feature among the troubles of Ireland. But as they were bearing her along — she being unconscious — to that supper where she was not to eat but to be eaten, the young Kern of Querin, who happened to be out duck-shooting, met the party, and emptied his gun at it. The vampires fled, and the Kern carried the fair lady, still in a state of insensibility, to his house. ‘And by the same token, Mr. Keningale,’ observed the doctor, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, ‘ye’re after passing that very house on your way here. The one with the dark archway underneath it, and the big mullioned window at the corner.
ye recollect, hanging over the street as I might say –‘
“‘Go ‘long wid the house, Dr. Dudeen, dear,’ interrupted the lieutenant; ‘sure can’t you see we’re all dying to know what happened to sweet Miss Fionguala, God be good to her, when I was after getting her safe up-stairs –‘
“‘Faith, then, I can tell ye that myself, Mr. O’Connor,’ exclaimed the major, imparting a rotary motion to the remnants of whisky in his tumbler. ‘
“‘Tis a question to be solved on general principles, as Colonel O’Halloran said that time he was asked what he’d do if he’d been the Dook O’Wellington, and the Prussians hadn’t come up in the nick o’ time at Waterloo. ‘Faith,’ says the colonel, ‘I’ll tell ye –‘
“‘Arrah, then, major, why would ye be interruptin’the doctor, and Mr. Keningale there lettin’ his glass stay empty till he hears — The Lord save us! the bottle’s empty!’
“In the excitement consequent upon this discovery, the thread of the doctor’s story was lost; and before it could be recovered the evening had advanced so far that I felt obliged to withdraw. It took some time to make my proposition heard and comprehended; and a still longer time to put it in execution; so that it was fully midnight before I found myself standing in the cool pure air outside the fort, with the farewells of my boon companions ringing in my ears.
“Considering that it had been rather a wet evening indoors, I was in a remarkably good state of preservation, and I therefore ascribed it rather to the roughness of the road than to the smoothness of the liquor, when, after advancing a few rods, I stumbled and fell. As I picked myself up I fancied I had heard a laugh, and supposed that the lieutenant, who had accompanied me to the gate, was making merry over my mishap; but on looking round I saw that the gate was closed and no one was visible. The laugh, moreover, had seemed to be close at hand, and to be even pitched in a key that was rather feminine than masculine. Of course I must have been deceived; nobody was near me: my imagination had played me a trick, or else there was more truth than poetry in the tradition that Halloween is the carnival-time of disembodied spirits. It did not occur to me at the time that a stumble is held by the superstitious Irish to be an evil omen, and had I remembered it it would only have been to laugh at it. At all events, I was physically none the worse for my fall, and I resumed my way immediately.
“But the path was singularly difficult to find, or rather the path I was following did not seem to be the right one. I did not recognize it; I could have sworn (except I knew the contrary) that I had never seen it before. The moon had risen, though her light was as yet obscured by clouds, but neither my immediate surroundings nor the general aspect of the region appeared familiar. Dark, silent hill-sides mounted up on either hand, and the road, for the most part, plunged down-ward, as if to conduct me into the bowels of the earth. The place was alive with strange echoes, so that at times I seemed to be walking through the midst of muttering voices and mysterious whispers, and a wild, faint sound of laughter seemed ever and anon to reverberate among the passes of the hills. Currents of colder air sighing up through narrow defiles and dark crevices touched my face as with airy fingers. A certain feeling of anxiety and insecurity began to take possession of me, though there was no definable cause for it, unless that I might be belated in getting home. With the perverse instinct of those who are lost I hastened my steps, but was impelled now and then to glance back over my shoulder, with a sensation of being pursued. But no living creature was in sight. The moon, however, had now risen higher, and the clouds that were drifting slowly across the sky flung into the naked valley dusky shadows, which occasionally assumed shapes that looked like the vague semblance of gigantic human forms.
“How long I had been hurrying onward I know not, when, with a kind of suddenness, I found myself approaching a graveyard. It was situated on the spur of a hill, and there was no fence around it, nor anything to protect it from the incursions of passers-by. There was something in the general appearance of this spot that made me half fancy I had seen it before; and I should have taken it to be the same that I had often noticed on my way to the fort, but that the latter was only a few hundred yards distant therefrom, whereas I must have traversed several miles at least.
As I drew near, moreover, I observed that the head-stones did not appear so ancient and decayed as those of the other. But what chiefly attracted my attention was the figure that was leaning or half sitting upon one of the largest of the upright slabs near the road. It was a female figure draped in black, and a closer inspection — for I was soon within a few yards of her — showed that she wore the calla, or long hooded cloak, the most common as well as the most ancient garment of Irish women, and doubtless of Spanish origin.
“I was a trifle startled by this apparition, so unexpected as it was, and so strange did it seem that any human creature should be at that hour of the night in so desolate and sinister a place. Involuntarily I paused as I came opposite her, and gazed at her intently. But the moonlight fell behind her, and the deep hood of her cloak so completely shadowed her face that I was unable to discern anything but the sparkle of a pair of eyes, which appeared to be returning my gaze with much vivacity.
“‘You seem to be at home here,’ I said, at length. ‘Can you tell me where I am?’
“Hereupon the mysterious personage broke into a light laugh, which, though in itself musical and agreeable, was of a timbre and intonation that caused my heart to beat rather faster than my late pedestrian exertions warranted; for it was the identical laugh (or so my imagination persuaded me) that had echoed in my ears as I arose from my tumble an hour or two ago. For the rest, it was the laugh of a young woman, and presumably of a pretty one; and yet it had a wild, airy, mocking quality, that seemed hardly human at all, or not, at any rate, characteristic of a being of affections and limitations like unto ours. But this impression of mine was fostered, no doubt, by the unusual and uncanny circumstances of the occasion.
“‘Sure, sir,’ said she, ‘you’re at the grave of Ethelind Fionguala.’
“As she spoke she rose to her feet, and pointed to the inscription on the stone. I bent forward, and was able, without much difficulty, to decipher the name, and a date which indicated that the occupant of the grave must have entered the disembodied state between two and three centuries ago.
“‘And who are you?’ was my next question.
“‘I’m called Elsie,’ she replied. ‘But where would your honor be going November-eve?’
“I mentioned my destination, and asked her whether she could direct me thither.
“‘Indeed, then, ’tis there I’m going myself,’ Elsie replied; ‘and if your honor ‘ll follow me, and play me a tune on the pretty instrument, ’tisn’t long we’ll be on the road.’
“She pointed to the banjo which I carried wrapped up under my arm. How she knew that it was a musical instrument I could not imagine; possibly, I thought, she may have seen me playing on it as I strolled about the environs of the town. Be that as it may, I offered no opposition to the bargain, and further intimated that I would reward her more substantially on our arrival. At that she laughed again, and made a peculiar gesture with her hand above her head. I uncovered my banjo, swept my fingers across the strings, and struck into a fantastic dance-measure, to the music of which we proceeded along the path, Elsie slightly in advance, her feet keeping time to the airy measure. In fact, she trod so lightly, with an elastic, undulating movement, that with a little more it seemed as if she might float onward like a spirit. The extreme whiteness of her feet attracted my eye, and I was surprised to find that instead of being bare, as I had supposed, these were incased in white satin slippers quaintly embroidered with gold thread.
“‘Elsie,’ said I, lengthening my steps so as to come up with her, ‘where do you live, and what do you do for a living?’
“‘Sure, I live by myself,’ she answered; ‘and if you’d be after knowing how, you must come and see for yourself.’
“‘Are you in the habit of walking over the hills at night in shoes like that?’
“‘And why would I not?’ she asked, in her turn. ‘And where did your honor get the pretty gold ring on your finger?’
“The ring, which was of no great intrinsic value, had struck my eye in an old curiosity-shop in Cork. It was an antique of very old-fashioned design, and might have belonged (as the vender assured me was the case) to one of the early kings or queens of Ireland.
“‘Do you like it?’ said I.
“‘Will your honor be after making a present of it to Elsie?’ she returned, with an insinuating tone and turn of the head.
“‘Maybe I will, Elsie, on one condition. I am an artist; I make pictures of people. If you will promise to come to my studio and let me paint your portrait, I’ll give you the ring, and some money besides.’
“‘And will you give me the ring now?’ said Elsie.
“‘Yes, if you’ll promise.’
“‘And will you play the music to me?’ she continued.
“‘As much as you like.’
“‘But maybe I’ll not be handsome enough for ye,’ said she, with a glance of her eyes beneath the dark hood.
“‘I’ll take the risk of that,’ I answered, laughing, ‘though, all the same, I don’t mind taking a peep beforehand to remember you by.’ So saying, I put forth a hand to draw back the concealing hood. But Elsie eluded me, I scarce know how, and laughed a third time, with the same airy, mocking cadence.
“‘Give me the ring first, and then you shall see me,’ she said, coaxingly.
“‘Stretch out your hand, then,’ returned I, removing the ring from my finger. ‘When we are better acquainted, Elsie, you won’t be so suspicious.’
“She held out a slender, delicate hand, on the forefinger of which I slipped the ring. As I did so, the folds of her cloak fell a little apart, affording me a glimpse of a white shoulder and of a dress that seemed in that deceptive semi-darkness to be wrought of rich and costly material; and I caught, too, or so I fancied, the frosty sparkle of precious stones.
“‘Arrah, mind where ye tread!’ said Elsie, in a sudden, sharp tone.
“I looked round, and became aware for the first time that we were standing near the middle of a ruined bridge which spanned a rapid stream that flowed at a considerable depth below. The parapet of the bridge on one side was broken down, and I must have been, in fact, in imminent danger of stepping over into empty air. I made my way cautiously across the decaying structure; but, when I turned to assist Elsie, she was nowhere to be seen.
“What had become of the girl? I called, but no answer came. I gazed about on every side, but no trace of her was visible. Unless she had plunged into the narrow abyss at my feet, there was no place where she could have concealed herself — none at least that I could discover. She had vanished, nevertheless; and since her disappearance must have been premeditated, I finally came to the conclusion that it was useless to attempt to find her. She would present herself again in her own good time, or not at all. She had given me the slip very cleverly, and I must make the best of it. The adventure was perhaps worth the ring.
“On resuming my way, I was not a little relieved to find that I once more knew where I was. The bridge that I had just crossed was none other than the one I mentioned some time back; I was within a mile of the town, and my way lay clear before me. The moon, moreover, had now quite dispersed the clouds, and shone down with exquisite brilliance. Whatever her other failings, Elsie had been a trustworthy guide; she had brought me out of the depth of elf-land into the material world again. It had been a singular adventure, certainly; and I mused over it with a sense of mysterious pleasure as I sauntered along, humming snatches of airs, and accompanying myself on the strings. Hark! what light step was that behind me? It sounded like Elsie’s; but no, Elsie was not there. The same impression or hallucination, however, recurred several times before I reached the outskirts of the town — the tread of an airy foot behind or beside my own. The fancy did not make me nervous; on the contrary, I was pleased with the notion of being thus haunted, and gave myself up to a romantic and genial vein of reverie.
“After passing one or two roofless and moss-grown cottages, I entered the narrow and rambling street which leads through the town. This street a short distance down widens a little, as if to afford the wayfarer space to observe a remarkable old house that stands on the northern side.
“The house was built of stone, and in a noble style of architecture; it reminded me somewhat of certain palaces of the old Italian nobility that I had seen on the Continent, and it may very probably have been built by one of the Italian or Spanish immigrants of the sixteenth or seventeenth century. The molding of the projecting windows and arched doorway was richly carved, and upon the front of the building was an escutcheon wrought in high relief, though I could not make out the purport of the device. The moonlight failing upon this picturesque pile enhanced all its beauties, and at the same time made it seem like a vision that might dissolve away when the light ceased to shine. I must often have seen the house before, and yet I retamed no definite recollection of it; I had never until now examined it with my eyes open, so to speak.
“Leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the street, I contemplated it for a long while at my leisure. The window at the corner was really a very fine and massive affair. It projected over the pavement below, throwing a heavy shadow aslant; the frames of the diamond-paned lattices were heavily mullioned. How often in past ages had that lattice been pushed open by some fair hand, revealing to a lover waiting beneath in the moonlight the charming countenance of his high-born mistress! Those were brave days. They had passed away long since. The great house had stood empty for who could tell how many years; only bats and vermin were its inhabitants.
“Where now were those who had built it? and who were they? Probably the very name of them was forgotten.
“As I continued to stare upward, however, a conjecture presented itself to my mind which rapidly ripened into a conviction. Was not this the house that Dr. Dudeen had described that very evening as having been formerly the abode of the Kern of Querin and his mysterious bride? There was the projecting window, the arched doorway. Yes, beyond a doubt this was the very house. I emitted a low exclamation of renewed interest and pleasure, and my speculations took a still more imaginative, but also a more definite turn.
“What had been the fate of that lovely lady after the Kern had brought her home insensible in his arms? Did she recover, and were they married and made happy ever after; or had the sequel been a tragic one? I remembered to have read that the victims of vampires generally became vampires themselves. Then my thoughts went back to that grave on the hill-side. Surely that was unconsecrated ground. Why had they buried her there? Ethelind of the white shoulder! Ah! why had not I lived in those days; or why might not some magic cause them to live again for me? Then would I seek this street at midnight, and standing here beneath her window, I would lightly touch the strings of my bandore until the casement opened cautiously and she looked down. A sweet vision indeed! And what prevented my realizing it? Only a matter of a couple of centuries or so. And was time, then, at which poets and philosophers sneer, so rigid and real a matter that a little faith and imagination might not overcome it? At all events, I had my banjo, the bandore’s legitimate and lineal descendant, and the memory of Fionguala should have the love-ditty.
“Hereupon, having retuned the instrument, I launched forth into an old Spanish love-song, which I had met with in some moldy library during my travels, and had set to music of my own. I sang low, for the deserted street re-echoed the lightest sound, and what I sang must reach only my lady’s ears. The words were warm with the fire of the ancient Spanish chivalry, and I threw into their expression all the passion of the lovers of romance. Surely Fionguala, the white-shouldered, would hear, and awaken from her sleep of centuries, and come to the latticed casement and look down! Hist! see yonder! What light — what shadow is that that seems to flit from room to room within the abandoned house, and now approaches the mullioned window? Are my eyes dazzled by the play of the moonlight, or does the casement move — does it open? Nay, this is no delusion; there is no error of the senses here. There is simply a woman, young, beautiful, and richly attired, bending forward from the window, and silently beckoning me to approach.
“Too much amazed to be conscious of amazement, I advanced until I stood directly beneath the casement, and the lady’s face, as she stooped toward me, was not more than twice a man’s height from my own. She smiled and kissed her finger-tips; something white fluttered in her hand, then fell through the air to the ground at my feet. The next moment she had withdrawn, and I heard the lattice close.
“I picked up what she had let fall; it was a delicate lace handkerchief, tied to the handle of an elaborately wrought bronze key. It was evidently the key of the house, and invited me to enter. I loosened it from the handkerchief, which bore a faint, delicious perfume, like the aroma of flowers in an ancient garden, and turned to the arched doorway. I felt no misgiving, and scarcely any sense of strangeness. All was as I had wished it to be, and as it should be; the medieval age was alive once more, and as for myself, I almost felt the velvet cloak hanging from my shoulder and the long rapier dangling at my belt. Standing in front of the door I thrust the key into the lock, turned it, and felt the bolt yield. The next instant the door was opened, apparently from within; I stepped across the threshold, the door closed again, and I was alone in the house, and in darkness.
“Not alone, however! As I extended my hand to grope my way it was met by another hand, soft, slender, and cold, which insinuated itself gently into mine and drew me forward. Forward I went, nothing loath; the darkness was impenetrable, but I could hear the light rustle of a dress close to me, and the same delicious perfume that had emanated from the handkerchief enriched the air that I breathed, while the little hand that clasped and was clasped by my own alternately tightened and half relaxed the hold of its soft cold fingers. In this manner, and treading lightly, we traversed what I presumed to be a long, irregular passageway, and ascended a staircase. Then another corridor, until finally we paused, a door opened, emitting a flood of soft light, into which we entered, still hand in hand. The darkness and the doubt were at an end.
“The room was of imposing dimensions, and was furnished and decorated in a style of antique splendor. The walls were draped with mellow hues of tapestry; clusters of candles burned in polished silver sconces, and were reflected and multiplied in tall mirrors placed in the four corners of the room. The heavy beams of the dark oaken ceiling crossed each other in squares, and were laboriously carved; the curtains and the drapery of the chairs were of heavy-figured damask. At one end of the room was a broad ottoman, and in front of it a table, on which was set forth, in massive silver dishes, a sumptuous repast, with wines in crystal beakers. At the side was a vast and deep fire-place, with space enough on the broad hearth to burn whole trunks of trees.
No fire, however, was there, but only a great heap of dead embers; and the room, for all its magnificence, was cold — cold as a tomb, or as my lady’s hand — and it sent a subtle chill creeping to my heart.
“But my lady! how fair she was! I gave but a passing glance at the room; my eyes and my thoughts were all for her. She was dressed in white, like a bride; diamonds sparkled in her dark hair and on her snowy bosom; her lovely face and slender lips were pale, and all the paler for the dusky glow of her eyes. She gazed at me with a strange, elusive smile; and yet there was, in her aspect and bearing, something familiar in the midst of strangeness, like the burden of a song heard long ago and recalled among other conditions and surroundings. It seemed to me that something in me recognized her and knew her, had known her always. She was the woman of whom I had dreamed, whom I had beheld in visions, whose voice and face had haunted me from boyhood up. Whether we had ever met before, as human beings meet, I knew not; perhaps I had been blindly seeking her all over the world, and she had been awaiting me in this splendid room, sitting by those dead embers until all the warmth had gone out of her blood, only to be restored by the heat with which my love might supply her.
“‘I thought you had forgotten me,’ she said, nodding as if in answer to my thought. ‘The night was so late — our one night of the year! How my heart rejoiced when I heard your dear voice singing the song I know so well! Kiss me — my lips are cold!’
“Cold indeed they were — cold as the lips of death. But the warmth of my own seemed to revive them. They were now tinged with a faint color, and in her cheeks also appeared a delicate shade of pink. She drew fuller breath, as one who recovers from a long lethargy. Was it my life that was feeding her? I was ready to give her all. She drew me to the table and pointed to the viands and the wine.
“‘Eat and drink,’ she said. ‘You have traveled far, and you need food.’
“‘Will you eat and drink with me?’ said I, pouring out the wine.
“‘You are the only nourishment I want,’ was her answer. ‘This wine is thin and cold. Give me wine as red as your blood and as warm, and I will drain a goblet to the dregs.’
“At these words, I know not why, a slight shiver passed through me. She seemed to gain vitality and strength at every instant, but the chill of the great room struck into me more and more.
“She broke into a fantastic flow of spirits, clapping her hands, and dancing about me like a child. Who was she? And was I myself, or was she mocking me when she implied that we had belonged to each other of old? At length she stood still before me, crossing her hands over her breast. I saw upon the forefinger of her right hand the gleam of an antique ring.
“‘Where did you get that ring?’ I demanded.
“She shook her head and laughed. ‘Have you been faithful?’ she asked. ‘It is my ring; it is the ring that unites us; it is the ring you gave me when you loved me first. It is the ring of the Kern — the fairy ring, and I am your Ethelind — Ethelind Fionguala.’
“‘So be it,’ I said, casting aside all doubt and fear, and yielding myself wholly to the spell of her inscrutable eyes and wooing lips. ‘You are mine, and I am yours, and let us be happy while the hours last.’
“‘You are mine, and I am yours,’ she repeated, nodding her head with an elfish smile. ‘Come and sit beside me, and sing that sweet song again that you sang to me so long ago. Ah, now I shall live a hundred years.’
“We seated ourselves on the ottoman, and while she nestled luxuriously among the cushions, I took my banjo and sang to her. The song and the music resounded through the lofty room, and came back in throbbing echoes. And before me as I sang I saw the face and form of Ethelind Fionguala, in her jeweled bridal dress, gazing at me with burning eyes. She was pale no longer, but ruddy and warm, and life was like a flame within her. It was I who had become cold and bloodless, yet with the last life that was in me I would have sung to her of love that can never die. But at length my eyes grew dim, the room seemed to darken, the form of Ethelind alternately brightened and waxed indistinct, like the last flickerings of a fire; I swayed toward her, and felt myself lapsing into unconsciousness, with my head resting on her white shoulder.”
Here Keningale paused a few moments in his story, flung a fresh log upon the fire, and then continued:
“I awoke, I know not how long afterward. I was in a vast, empty room in a ruined building.
Rotten shreds of drapery depended from the walls, and heavy festoons of spiders’ webs gray with dust covered the windows, which were destitute of glass or sash; they had been boarded up with rough planks which had themselves become rotten with age, and admitted through their holes and crevices pallid rays of light and chilly draughts of air. A bat, disturbed by these rays or by my own movement, detached himself from his hold on a remnant of moldy tapestry near me, and after circling dizzily around my head, wheeled the flickering noiselessness of his flight into a darker corner. As I arose unsteadily from the heap of miscellaneous rubbish on which I had been lying, something which had been resting across my knees fell to the floor with a rattle. I picked it up, and found it to be my banjo — as you see it now.
“Well, that is all I have to tell. My health was seriously impaired; all the blood seemed to have been drawn out of my veins; I was pale and haggard, and the chill — Ah, that chill,” murmured Keningale, drawing nearer to the fire, and spreading out his hands to catch the warmth — “I shall never get over it; I shall carry it to my grave.”
After tragedy struck Birthe Svendsdatter, she threw herself from the window and ended up with a limp and a brain injury. Called Halte-Birthe because of her limp, she is said to haunt Fossesholm Manor to this day.
Feeling like a sudden and invisible burden, the life force of wary travellers were long subjected to the terror of the Aufhocker. A creature between the vampire, werewolf and goblin spirits, the legend of the empty road were long haunted by something heavy.
A maid who once worked at the hotel allegedly took her own life at the old Visnes Hotel, deep in the Norwegian fjords. Now it is said she is lingering in the afterlife in the old rooms she once worked in.
An ancient ghost coming from the depths of graves across the nordic countries, the Haugbúi Draugr could be both dangerous and even deadly. Not merely a specter, but the rotten flesh of the dead, the ghosts are remembered as The Walking Dead of the North.
In the dark Hendrick Street in Dublin, there once were two houses said to be some of the most haunted ones in town. Occupied by at least six ghosts, some say they still linger in their old street.
In the pre civil war Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, the mausoleum of W.W Pool is said to be the grave of The Richmond Vampire. A more recent urban legend is now also connected with The Church Hill Tunnel collapse.
Old cities carry old ghost stories, and Bern in Switzerland is no exception. From the old buildings filled with history to the depth of the Aare river, here are some of the most haunted places in Bern.
Centuries after the vampire panic starting with the death of Petar Blagojević, another vampire was said to haunt the Serbian village, Kisiljevo. Who was Ruža Vlajna and what happened to her?
Said to be the mass burial place for the dead Irish Independence rebels from 1798, the Croppie’s Acre in Dublin is said to be haunted by their lingering souls.
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.
After tragedy struck Birthe Svendsdatter, she threw herself from the window and ended up with a limp and a brain injury. Called Halte-Birthe because of her limp, she is said to haunt Fossesholm Manor to this day.
Feeling like a sudden and invisible burden, the life force of wary travellers were long subjected to the terror of the Aufhocker. A creature between the vampire, werewolf and goblin spirits, the legend of the empty road were long haunted by something heavy.
Said to appear in the mirror of his favorite place for a pint in Dublin, the ghost of James Joyce is rumored to still linger in Davy Byrne’s Pub.
A maid who once worked at the hotel allegedly took her own life at the old Visnes Hotel, deep in the Norwegian fjords. Now it is said she is lingering in the afterlife in the old rooms she once worked in.
A church with the sinister name The Black Church in Dublin has a legend that claims if you follow the ritual, you will be able to summon the devil.
An ancient ghost coming from the depths of graves across the nordic countries, the Haugbúi Draugr could be both dangerous and even deadly. Not merely a specter, but the rotten flesh of the dead, the ghosts are remembered as The Walking Dead of the North.
In the dark Hendrick Street in Dublin, there once were two houses said to be some of the most haunted ones in town. Occupied by at least six ghosts, some say they still linger in their old street.
In the pre civil war Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, the mausoleum of W.W Pool is said to be the grave of The Richmond Vampire. A more recent urban legend is now also connected with The Church Hill Tunnel collapse.
Said to be haunted by headless prisoners who tried to capture Dublin Castle, this storied building has shadows lingering in the corners.
Old cities carry old ghost stories, and Bern in Switzerland is no exception. From the old buildings filled with history to the depth of the Aare river, here are some of the most haunted places in Bern.
Centuries after the vampire panic starting with the death of Petar Blagojević, another vampire was said to haunt the Serbian village, Kisiljevo. Who was Ruža Vlajna and what happened to her?
Said to be the mass burial place for the dead Irish Independence rebels from 1798, the Croppie’s Acre in Dublin is said to be haunted by their lingering souls.
