Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1895-03-16

There are any number of haunted houses
about Washington, as everybody knows.
These, however have never appealed to
my love of the weird and arabesque be-
cause to see specters common to the eyes
Of everybody, besides having no especial
interest for the daring mind, is an I'M
trustworthy experience, so far as the
supernatural element is concerned. If
thoughts are things everybody think
ing ghosts about a particular house would
tend, if you know anything about up-to-
Date psychology, to create sort of imita-
ton ghosts that are not phantasms of the
dead, but of the living. When, however, a
man with a mystic and mysterious air said
to me last week, "Oh, I've got dandy
haunted house that nobody knows any
thing about this seemed something re-
SponSiVe to a burning desire / have always
had to see a ghost walk-not in the the
atrical but in the psychical sense of the
words.
The GhOstly FOOTBALLS.
The man went on to say: II found this
house a couple of years ago quite by
chance, and I've kept my eye on it ever
since. l had some friends here looking for
quarters, and. going with them in answer
to ar advertisement of lodgings to let
entered the uncanny place. We learned
nothing then, however, except that the
landlady, who had moved into this house
only two weeks back, was packed up, ready
to move out again. She gave no eXplana-
ton. but oddly enough, the following week,
answering another advertisement. We
struck the same landlady, with whom my
friends subsequently put up, and to them
she diVulged the fact that her sudden de-
parture from the house in question was be-
cause 1t was haunted. The first night they
were in it, just at dusk, her daughter, go
ing up on the top floor, was met by the
ghost-the figure of a small woman shroud-
ed in black This specter was afterward
seen by every member OF the family, and
shostly footballs followed everybody about
the house until there was 10 escape but
to get out.
"Snce then. and during the time this
house has been under by surveillance" the
in, and in week or two they would move
out, which. though 1 never learned any
thing further directly, demonstrated to my
satisfaction that the ghost is not laid
They Want to BE Heard.
Directly I knew this, for a two-fold rea-
son, l was bound to spend a night in that
house-first. as 1 have said. to satisfy the
unholy curiosity concerning ghosts l con-
TESS to having, and then for strictly altru-
istic purposes.
You know that ghosts have come to stand
very well in scientific circles, but on one
foot, SO to speak; that is, men of science
think they have cause for asserting ghosts
to be not personal intelligenceS, that is to
say, not the spirits of dead men, but
single thought of departed soul, which by
virtue Of its intense need of expression
creates form that walks the earth until
the message it contains has been delivered.
You know it is a venerable habit of ghosts
to disappear forever after once finding per-
son courageous enough to challenge them,
and learn what they want to tell. 1t SEEM
ed to me, therefore, that the knowledge of
the existence OF ghost carries with 1t
o11i crnt IN civ no c
opportunity and let 1t disappear,to sleep or
dream. or do whatever is commonly done
by ghosts when they are at home.
The Haunted House.
I tourneyed to the house and found it
still empty. Nay, more, the assertion of
death seemed to extend from it over the
entire neighborhood, that in the midst of
busy quarter was strangely apart from
the world. The house is one of four great
tall, f1at-faced houses, without any sort of
expression, but lucid of the awfulness with
in as the uncovered glass of coffin. All
are empty except one. In the rear is a
church. with it's solemn body and inarticu-
late, loud-crying bell. A vacant space
stretches to one side leaving respectful
distance between the living and the dead
for which the houses across the street
show similar regard, being we'll withdrawn
into their back yards, seeming naturally
to seek to get as far off as possible from
the spectacle of mortality made manifest
in front of them.
1 rang at the bell of the house imme-
diately adjoining the haunted one, which is
occupied. The door was opened by wo-
man, whose malevolent face explained the
choice Of her habitation.
l saw the incarnation of pestilence once
an old bag of ninety-odd years, who had
kept pest house until, when entered her
hovel, she fell back. signing with disap-
pointment, because the promise of my foot
fall had not realized her hope of the plague
ia hoe of
the cholera. and with caressing tones re-
called remembrances Of the smallpox and
yellow fever. No less expressive of her en-
vironment the woman who lives beside
my new-found ghost laughed with the
sound of rafting bleached bones in her
voice when l said timidly, II am thinking
of renting the house next door. and 1 am
told 1t is haunted; do you know?'
The Artist Was Scared.
NO" she answered. II don't know, and
wouldn't believe it If I did'-precisely as
Mr. Mephistopheles hasn't it in him to
know whether the inhabitants of his abode
are or are not warm. It's all the same to
Kim.
At the office of the agent renting the
house 1 made another inquiry concerning
ghosts. The agent was a good man, and
he could not tell lie, though he tried to.
feeling that my victorious entrance into
the realm of the supernatural was for me
to bill on any date 1 chose to make the
venture of one-night stand.
My first plan was to try to get the pho
tograph of the ghost, as well as its auto
graph and a piece Of its winding sheet.
But when I told the man artist what l
wanted of him, and he turned goose flesh
all over, and his hair stood on end, and
his teeth chartered, l had to abandon pic
lures. I knew I never could survive a
night in haunted house with nervous
man. There is an eternal something about
man in the abstract on which a woman
involuntarily depends in case of fire, or
flood, or fright. And when she makes a
desperate grab for this eternal something
and finds it not present in the man at
hand in an extremity, she is simply scared
silly and all is lost. Where she is at she
don't know and can't find out, for having
looked to Baal to help her out of trouble
she has lost sight of heaven and can't SO
much as say her accustomed prayers.
Thus, the man artist was removed from
the program of my evenings performance
before it was everlastingly too late.
And Chewing Gum Also.
Then there was another man to be dis
posed of-the man who has sworn to love
and protect me till I'm dead or divorced.
Right here, at the risk of breaking up
friendship in the family forever, 1 must
tell you that the instinct of self-preserva-