Part 2 — PARK HOUSE, WESTMINSTER THE CAVALIER’S GHOST

Technical form of apparition: Phantasm of the dead

Source of authenticity: Miscellaneous collection of Ghost Stories by Baxter, Wesley and Simpson

Cause of haunting: Murder

(The following story is told ad verbum in the language of the eye-witness, the quaintness of his style being accounted for by the period in which he lived.)

“I was always a very strong-minded man, and, until the time about which I am going to speak, always ridiculed the idea of ghosts.

“You must know that about two years ago[7] I went to lodge at an ancient house in Westminster, where nothing remarkable happened to me for about three months; and then, on a night in November (too well do I remember it), I saw such an appalling sight as I never before beheld.

“Even were I starving to-morrow, I would not again enter that room—no, not for a thousand pounds! I had been to the theatre, and on my way home had drunk a single pint of porter, so that no doubt of my sobriety can exist for a moment.

“My room was on the second storey of a house that, I should suppose, had weathered well-nigh four hundred years, and was in former days an isolated habitation.

“The room, surrounded by a wainscoting of oak to the height of five feet, was very lofty, and even in the lightest days, owing to the narrowness of the windows, was extremely gloomy. As I said before, I returned from the theatre, and the snuff of the candle, which I had extinguished on getting into bed, had not ceased to emit its disagreeable effluvia when I beheld—my blood freezes when I think of it—a young man, dressed in the habit of days gone by, gliding through the wainscoting on the opposite side of the apartment to where I lay.

“I was completely paralysed—trembled violently in every limb—and the perspiration fell in torrents from my brows.

“I felt for some time as if every nerve was cut asunder and every sense benumbed.

“I exerted myself to speak, but in vain; my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth, and I was obliged to remain a horror-stricken and inactive spectator of the scene before me.

“The apparition remained for nearly ten minutes, which was ample time for me to convince myself that it was no idle chimera of a diseased imagination that stood before me. Yet although it remained so long a time, I could not command sufficient resolution to challenge it or summon any one to my aid—for I felt as though deprived of all energy, and, in fact, I was so during the whole time of its visit, though my sense of perception and consciousness were painfully acute.

“The expression of the countenance was peculiarly mild, and the rich dark locks falling about the forehead and shoulders, and the mustachios of the same hue, showed in horrid relief against the ashy, chilling, and livid hue of the face.

“He wore a doublet of a kind of chocolate colour, richly embroidered with gold lace, full loose breeches of a yellow leather, ornamented uniformly with the doublet, and from each was suspended a bunch of ribbon, adorned with a metal tag, reaching down nearly to the broad and drooping tops of his light russet boots.

“A large travelling-cloak of dark blue cloth reached from the shoulders down to the heels, hanging in full folds over the left arm, which was extended towards the fireplace of my apartment.

“While I was gazing on him in stupid astonishment and terror, he raised his right hand, and lifting from his head his broad, sable-feathered hat, discovered to my agonising sight a deep and bloody wound in the centre of the forehead.

“This action he then followed up with sighs and gesticulations which, although I could not clearly understand, were apparently intended to warn me of some impending danger.

“Harrowing as the sight was to my feelings, it was a mere nothing to what I suffered when I beheld him advance, slowly and almost imperceptibly, towards the spot where I lay, and fixing his dark, piercing gaze upon me for nearly a minute, hold me in a more painful and horrid inactivity than that in which the basilisk is said to hold its victim.

“Although I knew from the expression in his eyes he wished me to speak, and much as I desired to hear from him some of the mysteries attached to the superphysical world, I could not articulate a sound (a phenomenon which I have since learned invariably happens to psychists at the crucial moment).

“At length he retired towards the wainscot, and raising both his hands in the attitude of prayer, remained apparently wrapped in deep contemplation for nearly three minutes, and then suddenly disappeared—sinking into the floor at the bottom of the wainscotting. As you may well suppose, I did not close my eyes again that night, but as soon as it was light I proceeded to my landlord’s room, roused him, and demanded to settle my account, for I determined in my own mind never to re-enter the house which was visited in so superhuman a manner.

“With astonishment in his countenance, he received the amount of my rent, at the same time inquiring what had caused this sudden aversion to my apartment.

“I answered evasively, and as I left him I thought I observed a kind of lurking consciousness of something wrong in his countenance, which led me to surmise he was fully aware of the mysterious visits of the apparition; and so it proved in the end, for, happening to meet him one day in the park, I inveigled him into confessing that it was reported in the neighbourhood that the house, and particularly the room in which I slept, was haunted by the troubled spirit of a young cavalier of King Charles the Second’s days, said to have been murdered there. ‘And,’ he added, ‘during the time he had kept the house, no less than nine people had left the apartment on account of the disturbances. He had concealed this from me,’ he concluded, ‘fearing I might add one more to the list of lodgers scared away by the supernatural vision.’”