Told After Supper | Page 4

for a
mere local event--to celebrate, for instance, the anniversary of the
hanging of somebody's grandfather, or to prophesy a misfortune.
He does love prophesying a misfortune, does the average British ghost.
Send him out to prognosticate trouble to somebody, and he is happy.
Let him force his way into a peaceful home, and turn the whole house
upside down by foretelling a funeral, or predicting a bankruptcy, or
hinting at a coming disgrace, or some other terrible disaster, about
which nobody in their senses want to know sooner they could possibly
help, and the prior knowledge of which can serve no useful purpose
whatsoever, and he feels that he is combining duty with pleasure. He
would never forgive himself if anybody in his family had a trouble and
he had not been there for a couple of months beforehand, doing silly
tricks on the lawn, or balancing himself on somebody's bed-rail.
Then there are, besides, the very young, or very conscientious ghosts
with a lost will or an undiscovered number weighing heavy on their
minds, who will haunt steadily all the year round; and also the fussy
ghost, who is indignant at having been buried in the dust-bin or in the

village pond, and who never gives the parish a single night's quiet until
somebody has paid for a first-class funeral for him.
But these are the exceptions. As I have said, the average orthodox ghost
does his one turn a year, on Christmas Eve, and is satisfied.
Why on Christmas Eve, of all nights in the year, I never could myself
understand. It is invariably one of the most dismal of nights to be out
in--cold, muddy, and wet. And besides, at Christmas time, everybody
has quite enough to put up with in the way of a houseful of living
relations, without wanting the ghosts of any dead ones mooning about
the place, I am sure.
There must be something ghostly in the air of Christmas--something
about the close, muggy atmosphere that draws up the ghosts, like the
dampness of the summer rains brings out the frogs and snails.
And not only do the ghosts themselves always walk on Christmas Eve,
but live people always sit and talk about them on Christmas Eve.
Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet round a fire on
Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories. Nothing
satisfies us on Christmas Eve but to hear each other tell authentic
anecdotes about spectres. It is a genial, festive season, and we love to
muse upon graves, and dead bodies, and murders, and blood.
There is a good deal of similarity about our ghostly experiences; but
this of course is not our fault but the fault ghosts, who never will try
any new performances, but always will keep steadily to old, safe
business. The consequence is that, when you have been at one
Christmas Eve party, and heard six people relate their adventures with
spirits, you do not require to hear any more ghost stories. To listen to
any further ghost stories after that would be like sitting out two farcical
comedies, or taking in two comic journals; the repetition would become
wearisome.
There is always the young man who was, one year, spending the
Christmas at a country house, and, on Christmas Eve, they put him to
sleep in the west wing. Then in the middle of the night, the room door
quietly opens and somebody--generally a lady in her night-dress--walks
slowly in, and comes and sits on the bed. The young man thinks it must
be one of the visitors, or some relative of the family, though he does
not remember having previously seen her, who, unable to go to sleep,
and feeling lonesome, all by herself, has come into his room for a chat.

He has no idea it is a ghost: he is so unsuspicious. She does not speak,
however; and, when he looks again, she is gone!
The young man relates the circumstance at the breakfast-table next
morning, and asks each of the ladies present if it were she who was his
visitor. But they all assure him that it was not, and the host, who has
grown deadly pale, begs him to say no more about the matter, which
strikes the young man as a singularly strange request.
After breakfast the host takes the young man into a corner, and explains
to him that what he saw was the ghost of a lady who had been
murdered in that very bed, or who had murdered somebody else
there--it does not really matter which: you can be a ghost by murdering
somebody else or by being murdered yourself, whichever you prefer.
The murdered ghost is, perhaps, the more popular; but, on the other
hand, you can frighten people better if