Widnes Examiner. — 1893-12-30 (Widnes, Cheshire, England)

DREADFUL- NIGH  Seen a ghost? No, and I don't want. Ghosts are not in my line. I prefer something more solid. But wasn't I once terribly scared? Oh, .yes ;sand I'll tell you all about it.• It is about twenty years ago that I, then but a stripling of sixteen years ord, was spending my Christmas vacation sa my uncle's place in Shropshire. Uncle John was still but a young man, and a bachelor, his mother keeping house for him. But ' be was of great importance in my eyes, owing to his being the captain of the local cricket club; which was one of more than merely local importance, and ,played an annual two days' match with the „givers of cricket, the famous Marylebone Cricket Xlub. Hence, schoolboy-like, I held him in great awc, and when, on the fourth day of my arrival, which was Christmas Eve, he said to me, " Look •here, Freddy, we shall have a lot of people arrive •to-day, and as we are crowded for room, and your ,getting up early to go skating would disturb the ,people who will sleep along the same corridor &gyms .have been doing, you'll have to shift downstairs 11 Ithe room off the billiard-room" I didn't dare IA iutter a word of remonstrance. But none the less was I greatly troubled in my ' mind • for in this room, in my grandfather's time, one of the footmen used to sleep, and one night burglars had forced the window which opened on the lawn, had found him in bed, and had smothered him with the pillow. Add to these undoubted facts the other one that all the servant firmly believed 'that the ghost of poor Thomas 8611 haunted the room, that they told me so when I asked them to shift.my luggage there, and you can easily believe how the rest of that afternoon was embittered by the thought of the night that was to follow. Well, about ten o'clock p.m. I found myself in bed, and also in. a ea/c/ bath of perspiration, with my eyes tightly closed, and .endeavouring to go to sleep before the adukia of the house should have re. tired. After a time I did deep. But, alas, it was only for a time, and the half clock awoke me by striking twelve. Horror ! Why, that was the hour " when ghosts do walk" flashed upon my brain, and I trembled in every limb. The Moon was shining through the openings in the shutters, and throwing all kinde of queer shadows about the room. A large prese, which stoo& in one corner, and which I had never looked into, began to harass me with anxiety as to its contents. I slipped cautiously out .e bed, and approached the press and with a curios's mixture of fear and ,defiance, 'I flung it open. It a-as empty. Back I went to bed, and had just curled myself up. beneath the clothes, when I thought I heard re. inrati ens from tinder the mattress—l heard groans 'I began to feel the mattress move Under me. ." No, dash it all !" cried I; "I'm not going to be frightened to death like this, and for nothing." The moon was skirting brightly into the room es I leaped out of bed, and lifted the valance. I was in bed again quicker than a flash of lightning, and curled up like a ball in the blankets. A burglar I could have faced, a ghost I bed half expeea fed, bat 'a CO.g7L—au enormous coffin—l was quite unprepared for. But there it was, sure enough, and no doubt with a murdered man inside it. For six mortal hours I lay there trembling, and as soon as it was daylight I bopped out of bed, and attired in my night-gown alone, tore upstairs to my uncle's room and woke him up. "Uncle, undo 1" said I; there's been a murder in the house, and they've put the coffin under my bed !" " Eh, what?" said he, only half awake. Then, bursting into e. fit of laughter, he exclaimed, "Why, you little fool, what are you talking about? Glo back to bed ugairi. That's only the long box in which we keep our practice nets. Couldn't you see A.a.c, on the side ?"