Told After Supper | Page 5

you are the murdered one,
because then you can show your wounds and do groans.
Then there is the sceptical guest--it is always 'the guest' who gets let in
for this sort of thing, by-the-bye. A ghost never thinks much of his own
family: it is 'the guest' he likes to haunt who after listening to the host's
ghost story, on Christmas Eve, laughs at it, and says that he does not
believe there are such things as ghosts at all; and that he will sleep in
the haunted chamber that very night, if they will let him.
Everybody urges him not to be reckless, but he persists in his
foolhardiness, and goes up to the Yellow Chamber (or whatever colour
the haunted room may be) with a light heart and a candle, and wishes
them all good-night, and shuts the door.
Next morning he has got snow-white hair.
He does not tell anybody what he has seen: it is too awful.
There is also the plucky guest, who sees a ghost, and knows it is a
ghost, and watches it, as it comes into the room and disappears through
the wainscot, after which, as the ghost does not seem to be coming
back, and there is nothing, consequently, to be gained by stopping
awake, he goes to sleep.
He does not mention having seen the ghost to anybody, for fear of
frightening them--some people are so nervous about ghosts,--but
determines to wait for the next night, and see if the apparition appears
again.
It does appear again, and, this time, he gets out of bed, dresses himself

and does his hair, and follows it; and then discovers a secret passage
leading from the bedroom down into the beer-cellar,- -a passage which,
no doubt, was not unfrequently made use of in the bad old days of yore.
After him comes the young man who woke up with a strange sensation
in the middle of the night, and found his rich bachelor uncle standing
by his bedside. The rich uncle smiled a weird sort of smile and
vanished. The young man immediately got up and looked at his watch.
It had stopped at half-past four, he having forgotten to wind it.
He made inquiries the next day, and found that, strangely enough, his
rich uncle, whose only nephew he was, had married a widow with
eleven children at exactly a quarter to twelve, only two days ago,
The young man does not attempt to explain the circumstance. All he
does is to vouch for the truth of his narrative.
And, to mention another case, there is the gentleman who is returning
home late at night, from a Freemasons' dinner, and who, noticing a
light issuing from a ruined abbey, creeps up, and looks through the
keyhole. He sees the ghost of a 'grey sister' kissing the ghost of a brown
monk, and is so inexpressibly shocked and frightened that he faints on
the spot, and is discovered there the next morning, lying in a heap
against the door, still speechless, and with his faithful latch-key clasped
tightly in his hand.
All these things happen on Christmas Eve, they are all told of on
Christmas Eve. For ghost stories to be told on any other evening than
the evening of the twenty-fourth of December would be impossible in
English society as at present regulated. Therefore, in introducing the
sad but authentic ghost stories that follow hereafter, I feel that it is
unnecessary to inform the student of Anglo-Saxon literature that the
date on which they were told and on which the incidents took place
was--Christmas Eve.
Nevertheless, I do so.

NOW THE STORIES CAME TO BE TOLD

It was Christmas Eve! Christmas Eve at my Uncle John's; Christmas
Eve (There is too much 'Christmas Eve' about this book. I can see that
myself. It is beginning to get monotonous even to me. But I don't see
how to avoid it now.) at No. 47 Laburnham Grove, Tooting! Christmas

Eve in the dimly-lighted (there was a gas-strike on) front parlour,
where the flickering fire-light threw strange shadows on the highly
coloured wall-paper, while without, in the wild street, the storm raged
pitilessly, and the wind, like some unquiet spirit, flew, moaning, across
the square, and passed, wailing with a troubled cry, round by the
milk-shop.
We had had supper, and were sitting round, talking and smoking.
We had had a very good supper--a very good supper, indeed.
Unpleasantness has occurred since, in our family, in connection with
this party. Rumours have been put about in our family, concerning the
matter generally, but more particularly concerning my own share in it,
and remarks have been passed which have not so much surprised me,
because I know what our family are, but which have pained