Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1916-01-03
EXPERIENCES WITH
MIDNIGHT PROWLERS
The Subject of Ghosts Raises a Regi-
ment of Questions, but Also
Goodly Number of Ghost
Stories-Haunted Houses

ARE there any ghosts? Ask yourself in
"A stead, IL there is anything more real
than the ghost of Banquo, or Hamlet's
ghost, or the ghost that walks payday,
the ghost of n chance, or the spirit that
haunts the last hours of the year, or even
of those numerous political spectres
like one term ghost?
Everybody has a ghost story to tell-some
yarn of personal experience. That's how
we know there are ghosts. If the following
stories don't correspond with strict inter-
probation of the word GHOSTS" why, then,
you'll have to assLme a liberal interpreta-
tion
The Castlereagh Ghost
Lord Castlereagh, whom the historian
Fortescue has described as the best War
Minister England ever had, figured in
ghost story In 1922 he visited Bulwer
Lytton's father at Knebworth. He was as
signed to a room seldom used, owing to its
being haunted by the appariton of a boy,
which appeared to any sleeping in the
apartment, and by pantommlc gestures re-
vealed the manner of his approaching death.
Castlereagh did not know the legend. He
was tired after his journey and sank into
deep sleep soon as he went to bed. About
two o'clock in the morning he awoke with
a violent start. He saw by the fire a
quantity dressed boy with long yellow hair.
AS Castlereagh stared the boy turned
toward him. glidee to the foot of the bed,
and, drawing his hand three times across
his throat, vanished. Castelreagh got out
of bed and made a memorandum of the oc-
currence. few weeks afterward Castle
reagh committed suicide. A blographer
says: whether the idea was actually sug-
gested to him by the apparition-there have
been several authentic instances of ghosts
having connved at murder and suicide
must of course, remain matter of conJec-
ture."
A benefcent ghost pursued the author of
Sherlock Holmes" Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
was travelling in Switzerland and had oc-
casion to cross the Gemmi Pass. On the
top of it was lonely inn which looks down
upon a populous valley on either side, but
is itself entirely isolated during the winter.
He supposed that it was deserted at that
time but was told upon inquiry that
the family laid in a supply OF wood and re-
mained there utterly cut off from the people
below them. The singularity of such a posi-
tion arrested his attention and a story began
TO form itself in his mind. 1t rested on the
desperate position of group of characters
strongly antagonistic and reacting upon
each other, who had no refuge from each
others company and were rresistibly i'm
PEELED toward black tragedy while the golden
lights of happy human life twinkled in the
valleys beneath them.
Doyle worked the story over in his mind
until it assumed fairly definite shape. One
day on his return journey he bought book
of De Maupassant's He had never read 1t
before The first story was "The Inn," and
in it was the whole of his own conception.
Doyle breathed a sigh of gratitude at the
thought that a guardian angel had impelled
him TO buy at just the right time the one
book in all the world that could save him
from making himself ridiculous. For other
wise he would have written and published
the story as 1t had developed in his own
mind.
A New England clergyman relates that one
night he dreamed Of being called TO the long
distance telephone and asked to attend the
funeral of one of his parishioners in former
parish. For years he had heard nothing of
this parishioner The morning after the
dream he was called TO the phone. informed
of her death and asked to attend the funeral.
Nights in Haunted Room
Robert Hugh Benson is another credible
witness to incidents and events that are
stranger than fiction. He wrote in 1912:
THE very house 1 am inhabiting at this
moment has recently begun to Justify its
rustic reputation When 1 acquired the
place four or five years ago / slept
each night for about two years in a
smallsh bedroom at the top Of the stairs on
the first floor. One or two small incidents
happened on which lay no stress; they are
easily explicable on natural grounds.
Since that date, when the room became a
guest chamber, it has three times altogether,
asserted itself in these ways. The first two
experiences were those of perfectly fearless
man. who on two out Of the three nights
when he slept there was aware OF the en-
trance OF a tall old woman. who, after COM
ing audibly up the stairs, opening the door
ana entering, spoke sentence to him Of
which he could not distinguish the words