Part 2 — NO. XYZ EUSTON ROAD THE LITTLE OLD WOMAN IN THE HELIOTROPE SKIRT

Technical form of apparition: Phantasm of the dead

Source of authenticity: Personal experience of author

Cause of haunting: Murder

Of all the most annoying things in this world few are more so than missing one’s train, especially when it happens to be the last in the day.

This unpleasant experience happened to me one evening early in September 1895. I came into Euston just as the 7 P.M. for Northampton—the last train connected with Brixworth—was steaming out of the station—and so, willy-nilly, I had to remain in town all night.

“Where to put up,” now became the absorbing question. I wanted to be close to the station in order to catch the earliest morning train, but, although there were plenty of rich men’s hotels, there seemed a sore dearth of “go-betweens;” it was either five shillings the night or sixpence; Purgatory or Hell: I could see no place that suited ME.

At last after traversing many squares and the more respectable of the side streets, I retraced my steps, eventually alighting on a private and inconsequential looking hotel in Euston Road.

The interior of the establishment was in keeping with the exterior—gloomy and forbidding, and the damp, earthy smell that seemed to rise from the basement made me gravely apprehensive of rheumatism; still the tariff was in strict accordance with my means, and feeling too tired to wander further, I decided to remain.

The room in which I had a very sparse supper was like the majority of dining-rooms in middle-class hotels: overcrowded with unwieldy furniture, frowsy, ill-ventilated; imagine that the table had been laid once and for all (it had undoubtedly presented the same spectacle for months), and that the cloth, never very white, was removed, only, when it grew too begrimed even for the blunted susceptibilities of the proprietress. I afterwards found that the beef did not belie its looks, that the bread was in excellent accord, and that the water might well have been the receptacle of innumerable generations of bacilli.

There were other visitors besides myself, either Germans or commercial travellers, probably both; but as their conversation carried on over plates of half raw meat, was neither particularly edifying nor interesting, I preferred an antique number of Vanity Fair until, at length, tiring of that, I picked up a candlestick and made my way to bed.

The moment I crossed the threshold of my room, that peculiar and indefinable sensation that invariably suggests the immediate proximity of the superphysical came over me, I felt sure the house was haunted. But by what? Ah! that was the problem left for ME to solve.

The furniture of the room was of the orthodox lodging-house type—inartistic, scant and seedy; a gaunt four-poster propped against the middle of the wall running at right angles to the door was adorned with exceedingly dirty valances of a nondescript pink and white pattern; facing this was a fireplace the register of which was of course down; to the left of this was a hanging wardrobe that I at once examined and found to contain nothing more formidable than a score or two of black-beetles that scuttled unceremoniously away into holes at the sight of my candle; whilst on the opposite side of the room, facing the window, was a rickety dressing-table surmounted by a still more rickety looking-glass. In one corner of the room stood a washing-stand from which the white paint had peeled in a hundred places, and in the other corner a dismantled bureau that resembled some vessel after a great storm. These, I believe, apart from a couple of cane-bottomed chairs, constituted the entire furniture, nor can I say this scantiness, taking into consideration the poorness of the quality, was any matter of regret.

The carpet, undoubtedly the best feature of the room, and either an Axminster or a Brussels—not being an expert on such a point I cannot tell which—hid all the boarding save where the margins were stained with a preparation of potash.

I give all these details to show that several years of practical investigation of haunted houses had developed my inquiring faculties to a very high degree, little, if anything, escaping my notice.

The raison d’être of ghosts often lies where it is least expected; in some article of furniture, not infrequently a cupboard near at hand, in the panelling, the skirting, or, not infrequently again, on or under the boards.

When I am in a haunted room, my first instinct, therefore, is to take a very careful stock of my surroundings; the bare appearance or touch of a piece of furniture often supplying me with the necessary clue.

On this occasion, however, nothing arousing my suspicions and feeling abnormally sleepy, I bolted my door and lay on the bed; I say “on,” not “in,” as a cursory glance at the pillow made me draw deductions as to the sheets. Within a few minutes I went to sleep, falling into a heavy, dreamless slumber from which I was suddenly and most alarmingly awakened by the feeling I was no longer alone in the room.

Opening my eyes, I perceived the apartment flooded with a bright unnatural light that apparently emanated from, or at all events accompanied, the figure of a little old woman with yellow hair and a heliotrope skirt. I noticed these idiosyncrasies of person and dress directly, the nature of the light accentuating them, and my senses being, as they always are in the presence of superphysical phenomena, wonderfully and painfully acute.

Standing in front of the dressing-table, the eccentric individual was examining herself with the greatest curiosity in the crazy looking-glass to which allusion has already been made.

Her profile was angular, her lack of colour ghastly, whilst from her ears hung that style of drop-earring worn by ladies in the days of the crinoline; otherwise her costume might have belonged to the latter seventies or early eighties. There was nothing actually HORRIBLE about her, save her reflection, and as my eyes turned with irresistible fascination towards the looking-glass, my blood turned to ice. The surface of the mirror, made preternaturally bright, flashed back the most hideous, the most incomparably HIDEOUS image of Fear.

Never! never in all my life had I seen depicted in aught but Wiertz’s pictures such inconceivably awful terror as that which confronted me there—and now as I gazed at it, a sickly curiosity seized me as to what could be the origin of such Hellish Fear. Was it Fear of Death; of the Unknown metetherical Abysses; of Eternal Damnation; of what?

Then—as I followed the direction of the dilating pupils—I saw—God help me—the Cause! Descending from a few inches above her head were the snake-like coils of a rope. Had I been able to turn my head, maybe I should have seen whence they came; but I could not move a muscle, and could only feel the keynote to some great and hitherto unsolvable mystery was at hand but purposely hidden from me.

There was scant time for speculation. The enactment of this drama was brief as it was lurid; uttering an appalling scream that was quickly converted into a gurgle of the most blood-curdling significance, the old lady clawed the air with her spidery fingers.

The murderer was pitiless, the noose coming to with an irresistible snap, jerked the wretched victim off her feet.

For one instant—the most harrowing of all—I watched her falling backwards; watched the changing of her deadly pallor into a deep and vivid purple, watched the rolling of her starting eyeballs, the foam-flakes on her lips, and the frenzied movements of her stiffening arms and then—THEN—as she struck the ground with a reverberating crash—all was darkness. The ghostly tragedy for this night at least was over.

This I realised, but my nerves being too completely unstrung by what I had witnessed to allow me to sleep, I crept under the counterpane and lay there shivering till the welcome rays of early dawn converted the room into another place. My first movement was to examine the scene of the ghostly murder, and upon turning up the carpet, I discovered not a bloodstain, but a comparatively new piece of boarding!

With that, drawing my own conclusions, I had to rest content—there was nothing else in the room that could in any way have been transmuted into evidence.

The moment the clock struck six I picked up my valise, and gobbling down a lukewarm breakfast with little relish, quitted the house, determining to pay it another visit before very long.

In this, however, I was doomed to disappointment. Some months elapsed before I could again visit the neighbourhood of Euston, and when I did so, I found the hotel had vanished nor have I to this day been able to identify the house wherein I slept.

I have but lately been informed that a good many years ago (when we middle-aged fogies were mere children) a singularly repulsive murder was committed at a house in or near Euston Road, the victim being a somewhat extraordinary old lady. Further details I do not know, therefore I can only surmise that what I saw may possibly have been HER phantasm—but please remember, it is ONLY a surmise.