THURLOW HALL,[3] NEAR EXETER FIRE! FIRE! BRING ME FIRE!

THURLOW HALL,[3] NEAR EXETER FIRE! FIRE! BRING ME FIRE!

Technical form of apparition: Phantasm of dead

Source of authenticity: First-hand evidence

The following story was related to me by Miss Constance Delaunay, and is given as near as possible in her own words:

“The early spring of 1898 was, I daresay you remember, exceptionally fine—so fine, indeed, that my mother, a chronic sufferer from rheumatism, determined to remain in England instead of going, as was her custom, to the Riviera.

“We did not want, however, to stay in town, an unusually gay Christmas having given us an appetite for the country; so we sub-let our flat and took Thurlow Hall, furnished, on a three months’ lease.

“We had never been to Devon; we had heard much of its beauty; we were disappointed.

“Possibly, being of foreign extraction, I am prejudiced, but in my opinion the scenery of Devon is almost, if not quite, as inferior to that of Belgium and Switzerland as the manners of its peasants are inferior to those of the corresponding class of Continentals.

“The West Country rustics did not impress us favourably; on our arrival they welcomed us with gapes and stares and boorish grunts; not a few of them giggled, whilst others, slouching up to our boxes, read the labels and muttered disparaging things about foreigners.

“We were told it was the spirit of independence, a spirit presumably fostered by the democratic teaching of the board school which—if it had accomplished nothing else—had effectually taught the children to be RUDE. The pretty simplicity and deferential mannerism described as characteristics of these villagers by mid-Victorian writers had become obsolete; courtseying was now regarded as infra dig: no one touched their hats to or moved aside for ladies, and the colloquial ‘sir’ and ‘mam’ had long since given place to a familiar and condescending ‘Mr.’ or ‘Mrs.’ as the case might be.

“In Cornwall, we were informed, the manners of the people are even worse, and if that is a fact, one can hardly believe it possible, I am quite certain we shall never cross the Tamar.

“Fortunately we had taken two of our favourite servants with us, namely, Marie and Eugenie—the latter my mother’s own maid, a capable person who could turn her hand to anything, the former a clever little cook we had imported from our own country. But for this foresight on my part, I do not know how my mother could have managed to exist.

“She is even more fastidious than I. She cannot bear anything coarse or uncouth—in comparison a local servant would have made purgatory seem pleasant.

“I am afraid you will conclude we are rather hard to please: perhaps we are somewhat exacting, but we cannot help it; we are women of the old school, may I add, of gentle birth, who claim to the full all the privileges of our sex and station; besides we offered a good sum for the house: we expected to be treated fairly.

“According to the advertisement, ‘The Hall’ was furnished: it was, in reality, nothing of the sort. Can any house in which there is neither bookcase nor bathroom be said to be furnished? Though standing alone on a fairly large piece of ground—I cannot truthfully say a garden—it might well have been called semi-detached, for we searched in it in vain to find a whole piece of furniture.

“Marie and Eugenie are smart young women: they pride themselves on being slim and elegant. Imagine then their disgust when the kitchen chairs actually collapsed under them.

“I, too, had a grievance. Without conceit I may say that it is not in my nature to be clumsy. How was it then that I broke three cups, a saucer, and a cream-jug within the short space of half an hour? The reason was obvious enough! The cups were all cracked, the saucers damaged, and the jugs should have been labelled ‘beware of the handle.’ Even moderately disfigured china is my mother’s pet aversion. How she suffered under these circumstances I will not attempt to describe.

“But the plate! I have heard of gold plate, silver plate, copper plate, brass plate, and electro plate, but with none of these could I associate this mongrel species, these odds and ends we were called upon to use. It was, indeed, an enigma, and I hate enigmas, especially when they are not worth the trouble of solving. Luckily, substitutes were easily obtainable. I wired for a complete supply of plate from home, after which the motley crew of hirelings were no longer in evidence.

“And the carpets! I have always thought such luxuries, even the most costly, a doubtful blessing; these were undoubtedly an unmixed evil. Fortunately, we were able to dispense with them. The floors underneath were of polished oak, and with these we were greatly taken. True, we were somewhat puzzled to account for certain irregularities in the boards, but, on the whole, I think we should have been more astonished had we found them intact.

“Could we, by any means, make the place tenantable? Marie and Eugenie are brave and forgiving girls! In spite of their recent adventure—they had never been so insulted in their lives—they thought it possible; mother and I were doubtful.

“We hired all the furniture there was to be hired from the village, we engaged by the day the only prepossessing and respectable woman it contained, and we tried to settle down and pretend we enjoyed it. From the beginning it was a fiasco—we were miserable! and to add to our distress, or rather, to fill to overflowing our cup of misfortune, the weather became miserable, too; it began to rain.

“What was there to hope for now? Nothing! What was there to do now? Nothing! Nothing but sit at the window and gaze at the dreary lawn, shut off from the road by a hideous wall, or to flit about from room to room wringing one’s hands like a distracted phantom.

“A phantom! I did not believe in phantoms when I came to Thurlow; I treated the Unknown with the blind levity of a Voltaire; I was inconsequently sceptical; I had been born psychic.

“Though I was sublimely unconscious of it, the dawn of my awakening was at hand.

“Though the house was undesirable in so many ways—cold, bare, comfortless, dilapidated—it was not without interest. It was old—old with the antiquity of two or more centuries—and age is always interesting.

“There were rooms in it, narrow, rectangular rooms darkened by Virginian creeper that dropped their crimson foliage over diamond panes, rooms the very air of which seemed charged with the shades of old-world wits and savants.

“In my imagination the house had once been a school: the severity of the walls, the coldness of their neat yellow stones suggested it; I even went so far as to fancy I could discern ink-stains on the skirting-boards; and who but schoolboys ever desecrate a floor with ink-stains?

“The predominating feature in the house was undoubtedly the staircase.

“It was the first thing one noticed on entering; there was no escaping it. Confronting the door in the very middle of the hall, it stood there like some grey and massive sentinel—and barred the way. One wondered how it had ever got there, it was so disproportionately large for the house. It was masterful, aggressive, FASCINATING (Marie declared ‘there was no getting away from it—that it LIVED’)—and—it was made of STONE. There was no doubt about it now ‘The Hall’ had indeed been a school; would any one but a pedagogue have a stone staircase? Eugh! my mother felt a twinge of rheumatism the moment she set eyes on it.

“It was curiously wanting in proportion; consisting of barely a dozen steps, it was most uncomfortably steep and of a most unnecessary width. I compared it with some strange, squatting animal—a comparison that grew on me the longer I remained in the house.

“At the top of the staircase was a gallery, protected by high rails, which I discovered connected the used and disused portions of the house. In the latter there were some rooms we did not care to inhabit; there were a few we were even unable to explore—they were locked.

“I felt no curiosity about them; they were certain to be both commonplace, prosaic and dusty: every time I passed them I smelt dust—and I cannot endure a particle of dust. If I had believed any of them to be a library, I might have been tempted to pick the lock; I am passionately fond of books—that is to say, of some books—when I am exiled in the country and it is always raining.

“I was in search of a book which I had laid down somewhere, when I crossed the hall one afternoon, and left my mother dozing in a big armchair before the drawing-room fire.

“Marie said she had seen it on the oak settle; most likely, for I often took my book and lounged on it. You see I had grown fond of the oak settle naturally, for it was the only piece of furniture in that monster house that stirred in me any friendly feeling whatever. But Marie must have been dreaming, it was certainly not there. I would have called to Marie to come and help me search for it, had I not remembered that she and Eugenie had gone into the village to do a little shopping on their own account. They laugh in their grandest manner at those ‘silly little shops,’ but with a true woman’s instinct they cannot resist ‘buying.’

“I felt indignant, provoked, angry! never had I wanted to read so much and never had I been at such a loss to find a book.

“Oh! I recollected there was one upstairs—an ancient and musty edition of ‘Eugene Aram’—(proof positive, this, that the place was once a school; would any one save a schoolmaster read ‘Eugene Aram’)? I had seen it lying on the floor of a disused cupboard—alone and forsaken: a solitary relic of the Academical bookshelf.

“Were I in a library, ‘Eugene Aram’ would probably be the last book I would choose to read; Lytton’s tales are horrible; I abominate horrors. I thought of the staircase, I glanced at it; it was really very dark. I shuddered!

“I did not understand why I shuddered, unless it was on account of a draught! Of course, a draught. The house was full of draughts. The hour was late, the afternoon was cold, it was March, and undoubtedly a door was open somewhere; the book was not worth the trouble, I was over-tired, I would return to my mother. This I was actually preparing to do when the sudden appearance of a light made me pause—it came from the disused wing overhead.

“I can assure you I wanted very much to go to my mother; I would have given all I possessed to have gone to my mother; I could not: I could not stir; that light enthralled me.

“I had never seen such a light—such a queer, unaccountable light—a light that to anyone less sceptical might have seemed an ‘UNNATURAL’ Light! Perhaps it was an unnatural light—and I laughed. But what—what in the name of Heaven could it be?

“Drawing rapidly nearer and quickly assuming the appearance and proportions of a FIRE, it filled me with the most unusual, the most preposterously unusual, doubts and fears.

“And now for the first time I detected it was accompanied by incongruous though perfectly intelligible sound—the sound of someone tapping with all their might, tapping with a pair of high-heeled shoes.

“Aghast at this discovery, my perplexities increased, and I was vainly endeavouring to extricate myself from a chaotic quagmire of unpleasant thoughts, when a scream, the very intensity of which made me tremble, echoed and re-echoed throughout the house.

“‘Fire! Fire! Bring me Fire!’ These words, apparently so strangely paradoxical, were repeated with renewed vigour and anguish, the voice after each effort dying away into the most appalling and piteous wail.

“The screams were coming nearer, but before I had time to realise the tumult was so close at hand, or to fortify myself against the tableau I now had every reason to anticipate, a girl, her hair and dress a mass of lurid flames, came rushing frantically into the gallery.

“The spectacle she presented was so satanically awful that I immediately crossed myself. An indescribable thrill of terror ran through me. I felt—I KNEW—I was actually in the presence of an apparition; nothing ‘earthly’ could possibly have produced a similar or in any way equivalent effect.

“Staring at me through the yellow inferno of flames was a woman’s face that, despite its horribly contorted features, was amazingly and uniquely beautiful, the perfect regularity of the Jewish lineaments being strikingly enhanced by the whiteness of the teeth, the blueness of the eyes.

“The latter came upon me as a further shock. Though very lovely both in their excessive length and hue, they did not match that style of face; to have done so they should have been black or brown—and their expression was repellent.

“I say repellent; I might with great accuracy say ‘hellish,’ for I saw in them the mirror of a sinful soul—of a VERY sinful soul.

“I could form no idea as to her dress, the blaze effectually hid everything save her face; but from the partial glimpse I caught of a pair of satin shoes, I surmised she was in some sort of ball-room costume. The duration of her transit, though to me an eternity, could not, I fancy, have occupied more than a very few seconds.

“Still gazing at me and beating the air with its hands, the phantom rushed shrieking onwards, disappearing with the impetus of a tornado in the inhabited portion of the house.

“I had no further ‘use’ for ‘Eugene Aram.’ I returned to my mother.

“The same phenomena was witnessed by Marie and Eugenie respectively within the next three days—on the fourth we left. Had we remained, there might have been a fatality; we were all genuinely frightened—and mother is an invalid—a very nervous invalid.

“Perhaps you feel inclined to say it was all a matter of nerves. What more likely! We were an isolated quartet of over-imaginative women! Or you might say that some story we had heard in connection with the house suggested these occult demonstrations.

“Do not be premature! We only heard a few weeks ago that ‘The Hall’ had a reputation for being haunted, and it is now several months since we left Thurlow. Our informant, a former tenant, was, we have every reason to believe, a person of indisputable veracity and common sense, in short, a person quite incapable of inventing any such story as the following which he kindly narrated for our satisfaction.

“It appears from what he told us (his MS. is still in my bureau) that Thurlow Hall once belonged to Mrs. Purvis, an old lady with one child, Charles.

“Charles was, of course, the apple of her eye; Charles ruled the house; every one must obey Mr. Charles; Mr. Charles could do nothing wrong. Nothing wrong until, in the heyday of his youth, in the season of wild oats, he unexpectedly fell in love with a Gaiety girl—Phyllis (no one remembered her other name)—and married her—and THAT was very wrong.

“His mother was indignant—FURIOUS—not with Charles, of course—but with that creature—Phyllis.

“Phyllis had inveigled him into marrying her; Phyllis would bring eternal disgrace on the family; Phyllis would run away with another man and ruin him.

“Ruin HIM—ruin Charles—and the fond mother grew despondent, very despondent, so despondent indeed that unkind neighbours said she was mad. They were wrong; the despondency was only a reaction, she suddenly cheered up, all was apparently forgiven and forgotten. Charles and Phyllis were invited to spend Christmas at Thurlow.

“They went, very naturally they went—Charles overjoyed at the prospect of displaying the Purvis estate to his charming wife.

“His mother welcomed Phyllis effusively; she made her feel thoroughly at home; she expressed an ardent desire to see her in her bridal robes.

“Phyllis consented—what else could she do? She had been a Gaiety girl! she had lived for admiration.

“Arrayed in her wedding garments she entered Mrs. Purvis’s room, surprising the old lady in the act of lighting an oil lamp—a rather ‘shaky’ old lamp filled to the brim with oil.

“Phyllis was radiant; her sole thought was of the sensation she would create at the coming Christmas festivities. Had she been less absorbed she might have noticed how the hand trembled that raised the lamp; she might even have been on her guard.

“But vanity as well as love is blind. Phyllis accepted Mrs. Purvis’s profuse expressions of admiration and delight in good faith; they were, of course, both genuine and natural; they were, moreover, her due. The bride was intent on examining herself in the mirror; her mother-in-law approached her from behind, and, bending suddenly forward, deliberately hurled the lamp on to the train of her dress. There was a loud crash—an explosion—and the wedding dress was on fire.

“No one was at hand to render assistance, Charles and the servants having been slyly inveigled out of the house, and the only response to her screams were loud peals of laughter from her now wholly insane mother-in-law.

“It was small wonder that the poor girl lost her head, and, craving water, cried in her agony, ‘Bring me fire, oh! bring me fire!’

“In that mad rush from the room along the disused corridors her one endeavour would appear to have been to reach her bedroom—perhaps she had forgotten that Charles had gone OUT—but her efforts were frustrated by the fiendish fury of the flames. The amount of oil on her dress must have made it blaze like a furnace.

“She had barely crossed the gallery into the opposite wing of the house before her scorched and smouldering limbs gave way, and falling to the ground she was speedily burned to ashes; her supreme and final agony being summed up in a despairing cry, so loud and piercing that it was even heard outside by Charles.

“Not daring to approach the house alone, Charles summoned some villagers, and keeping well in their rear, gingerly accompanied them across the lawn to the front entrance.

“There they were met by Mrs. Purvis, chuckling horribly.

“Corridors, gallery and staircase were in flames, and had it not been for the opportune arrival of the vicar the whole place would have been consumed; thanks, however, to his vigour and level-headedness the fire was eventually extinguished, and although the damage done was considerable, the bulk of the property remained unscathed.

“No trace of the unfortunate Mrs. Charles Purvis being found, the precise manner of her death for many years remained a mystery. But the erratic babblings of her mother-in-law supplied material for certain conjectures, which were afterwards confirmed by the lucid and exhaustive confession of the old lady, who regained her reason on her deathbed.

“Though a thorough restoration of the property was effected, Charles would never live at the Hall. A long series of unsatisfactory tenancies succeeded the events I have just related, and the story of a ghost has at length come to stay.

“N.B.—I have good reason for believing the house is still (August 1908) haunted; most probably this will always be the case.”