Ghosts I Have Met | Page 5

the very
verge of congealment--"I am sure I am pleased if you like my stories."
"Oh, as for that, I don't think much of them," said the Awful Thing,
with a purple display of candor which amused me, although I cannot
say that I relished it; "but you never lie about us. You are not at all
interesting, but you are truthful, and we spooks hate libellers. Just
because one happens to be a thing is no reason why writers should libel
it, and that's why I have always respected you. We regard you as a sort
of spook Boswell. You may be dull and stupid, but you tell the truth,
and when I saw you in imminent danger of becoming a mere grease
spot, owing to the fearful heat, I decided to help you through. That's
why I'm here. Go to sleep now. I'll stay here and keep you shivering
until daylight anyhow. I'd stay longer, but we are always laid at
sunrise."
"Like an egg," I said, sleepily.
"Tutt!" said the ghost. "Go to sleep, If you talk I'll have to go."
And so I dropped off to sleep as softly and as sweetly as a tired child.
In the morning I awoke refreshed. The rest of my family were
prostrated, but I was fresh. The Awful Thing was gone, and the room
was warming up again; and if it had not been for the tinkling ice in my
water-pitcher, I should have suspected it was all a dream. And so
throughout the whole sizzling summer the friendly spectre stood by me
and kept me cool, and I haven't a doubt that it was because of his good
offices in keeping me shivering on those fearful August nights that I
survived the season, and came to my work in the autumn as fit as a

fiddle--so fit, indeed, that I have not written a poem since that has not
struck me as being the very best of its kind, and if I can find a publisher
who will take the risk of putting those poems out, I shall unequivocally
and without hesitation acknowledge, as I do here, my debt of gratitude
to my friends in the spirit world.
Manifestations of this nature, then, are harmful, as I have already
observed, only when the person who is haunted yields to his physical
impulses. Fought stubbornly inch by inch with the will, they can be
subdued, and often they are a boon. I think I have proved both these
points. It took me a long time to discover the facts, however, and my
discovery came about in this way. It may perhaps interest you to know
how I made it. I encountered at the English home of a wealthy friend at
one time a "presence" of an insulting turn of mind. It was at my friend
Jarley's little baronial hall, which he had rented from the Earl of
Brokedale the year Mrs. Jarley was presented at court. The Countess of
Brokedale's social influence went with the château for a slightly
increased rental, which was why the Jarleys took it. I was invited to
spend a month with them, not so much because Jarley is fond of me as
because Mrs. Jarley had a sort of an idea that, as a writer, I might say
something about their newly acquired glory in some American Sunday
newspaper; and Jarley laughingly assigned to me the "haunted
chamber," without at least one of which no baronial hall in the old
country is considered worthy of the name.
[Illustration: 'THE FRIENDLY SPECTRE STOOD BY ME']
"It will interest you more than any other," Jarley said; "and if it has a
ghost, I imagine you will be able to subdue him."
I gladly accepted the hospitality of my friend, and was delighted at his
consideration in giving me the haunted chamber, where I might pursue
my investigations into the subject of phantoms undisturbed. Deserting
London, then, for a time, I ran down to Brokedale Hall, and took up my
abode there with a half-dozen other guests. Jarley, as usual since his
sudden "gold-fall," as Wilkins called it, did everything with a lavish
hand. I believe a man could have got diamonds on toast if he had
chosen to ask for them. However, this is apart from my story.

I had occupied the haunted chamber about two weeks before anything
of importance occurred, and then it came--and a more unpleasant,
ill-mannered spook never floated in the ether. He materialized about 3
A.M. and was unpleasantly sulphurous to one's perceptions. He sat
upon the divan in my room, holding his knees in his hands, leering and
scowling upon me as though I were the intruder, and not he.
"Who are you?" I asked, excitedly, as in the dying light of