The Alleged Haunting of B---- House | Page 8

to efface
the ties of earthly memory, connecting the feelings with particular spots
on earth.
Such thoughts not infrequently include repentance, a desire for the
remedy of acts of injustice, and an eagerness for the compassion and
sympathetic prayers of those whom we call the living.
It is natural, therefore, to suppose that haunting, such as that met with
at B----, would be connected with persons who had died within some
such period as a century at the outside. Now the number of the
members of the S---- family and others, whose thoughts, memories,
feelings, and affections may presumably have dwelt largely at B----,
and who have died within the last hundred years, is very considerable;
but--saving the tradition referred to by Dr. Menzies (see p. 22), only to
be dismissed--there seems to have been no idea of the place being
haunted before the deaths of Sarah N---- and of Major S----, whereas
since that time the peculiar phenomena have been constantly attested.
John S----, his successor, was, as stated, the second son of Major S----'s
sister Mary, and assumed the name of S---- upon succeeding to the
property. He was a Roman Catholic; he was married, and had several

children, of whom the eldest son is the present proprietor. One of the
younger sons is a Jesuit, but not yet a priest.
In January 1895 Mr. S---- went to London on family business, and was
there killed by being run over by a cab in the street. It was stated on the
authority of three persons, not counting members of his own family,
that on the morning on which he left B---- for the last time, while he
was talking to the agent in his business-room, there were raps so
violent as to interfere with conversation. The earliest written notice of
this circumstance, so far as can be discovered, is the following entry in
Lord Bute's journal for January 17, 1896:--
"I hear that the morning the late S---- of B---- left home for the last
time, spirits came and rapped to him in his room--doubtless to warn
him--so that his death was really owing to the cruel superstition which
had prevented him allowing them to be communicated with."
Lord Bute's informant appears to have been the Rev. Sir David Hunter
Blair, as the journal mentions his arrival at Falkland on that day, and
none of the other guests in the house were people who were likely to
have heard anything about it.
Mr. S---- was succeeded by his eldest son, Captain S----, who showed
no hesitation in throwing the house into the public market, with its
4400 acres of shooting. The alleged haunting was not mentioned
beforehand to the first tenant, as it afterwards was to Colonel Taylor.
This tenant was Mr. J.R. H---- of K---- Court, C----, in G----shire, and
the following is the account of experiences during his visit, as given by
his butler:--
ON THE TRAIL OF A GHOST
To the Editor of "The Times"
"SIR,--In your issue of the 8th, under the above heading, 'A
Correspondent' tries at some length to describe what he calls a most
impudent imposture. I having lived at B---- for three months in the

autumn of last year as butler to the house, I thought perhaps my
experience of the ghost of B---- might be of interest to many of your
readers, and as the story has now become public property, I shall not be
doing any one an injury by telling what I know of the mystery.
"On July 15, 1896, I was sent by Mr. H----, with two maidservants, to
take charge of B---- from Mr. S----'s agents. I was there three days
before the arrival of any one of the family, and during that time I heard
nothing to disturb me in any way; but on the morning after the arrival
of two of the family, Master and Miss H----, they came down with long
faces, giving accounts of ghostly noises they had heard during the night,
but I tried to dissuade them from such nonsense, as I then considered it
to be; but on the following two or three nights the same kind of noises
were heard by them, and also by the maidservants, who slept in the
rooms above, and they all became positively frightened. I heard nothing
whatever, though the noises, as they described them, would have been
enough to wake any one much farther away than where I slept, for the
noises they heard were made immediately over my room. I suggested
the hot-water pipes or the twigs of ivy knocking against the windows,
but no--nothing would persuade them but that the house was haunted;
but as the noises continued to be heard nightly, I suggested that I
should sit up alone, and without