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Page 15
The house had been built and afterward inhabited for a term of
years by one of the city fathers, a well-known and still widely
remembered merchant. No unusual manifestations had marked it
during his occupancy. Not till it had run to seed and been the
home of decaying gentility, and later of actual poverty, did it
acquire a name which made it difficult to rent, though the
neighborhood was a growing one and the house itself well-enough
built to make it a desirable residence. Those who had been
induced to try living within its spacious walls invariably left
at the end of the month. Why, they hesitated to say; yet if
pressed would acknowledge that the rooms were full of terrible
sights and sounds which they could not account for; that a
presence other than their own was felt in the house; and that
once (every tenant seemed to be able to cite one instance) a hand
had touched them or a breath had brushed their cheek which had no
visible human source, and could be traced to no mortal presence.
Not much in all this, but it served after a while to keep the
house empty, while its reputation for mystery did not lie idle.
Sounds were heard to issue from it. At times lights were seen
glimmering through this or that chink or rift in the window
curtain, but by the time the door was unlocked and people were
able to rush in, the interior was still and dark and seemingly
untouched. Finally the police took a hand in the matter. They
were on the scent just then of a party of counterfeiters and were
suspicious of the sounds and lights in this apparently unoccupied
dwelling. But they watched and waited in vain. One of them got
a scare and that was all. The mystery went unsolved and the sign
"To Let" remained indefinitely on the house-front.
At last a family from the West decided to risk the terrors of
this domicile. The nurse, whose story I was listening to, came
with them and entered upon her duties without prejudice or any
sort of belief in ghosts, general or particular. She held this
belief just two weeks. Then her incredulity began to waver. In
fact, she saw the light; almost saw the ghost, certainly saw the
ghost's penumbra. It was one night, or rather very early, one
morning. She had been sitting up with the baby, who had been
suffering from a severe attack of croup. Hot water was wanted,
and she started for the kitchen for the purpose of making a fire
and putting on the kettle. The gas had not been lit in the hall
--they had all been too busy, and she was feeling her way down the
front stairs with a box of matches in her hand, when suddenly she
heard from somewhere below a sound which she could never
describe, and at the same moment saw a light which spread itself
through all the lower hall so that every object stood out
distinctly.
She did not think of the ghost at first, her thoughts were so
full of the child; but when a board creaked in the hall floor, a
board that always creaked when stepped on, she remembered the
reputation and what had been told her about a creaking board and
a light that came and went without human agency. Frightened for
a minute, she stood stock-still, then she rushed down. Whatever
it was, natural or supernatural, she went to see it; but the
light vanished before she passed the lower stair, and only a
long-drawn sigh not far from her ear warned her that the space
between her and the real hall was not the solitude she was
anxious to consider it. A sigh! That meant a person. Striking
a match, she looked eagerly down the hall. Something was moving
between the two walls. But when she tried to determine its
character, it was swallowed up in darkness,--the match had gone
out. Anxious for the child and determined to go her way to the
kitchen, she now felt about for the gas-fixture and succeeded in
lighting up. The whole hall again burst into view but the thing
was no longer there; the space was absolutely empty. And so were
the other rooms, for she went into every one, lighting the gas as
she went; and so was the cellar when she reached it. For she had
to go to its extreme length for wood and wait about the kitchen
till the water boiled, during which time she searched every nook
and cranny. Oh, she was a brave woman, but she did have this
thought as she went upstairs: If the child died she would know
that she had seen a spirit; if the child got well, that she had
been the victim of her own excitement.
And did the child die?
"No, it got well, but the family moved out as soon as it was safe
to leave the house. Her employees did not feel as easy about the
matter as she did."
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