A variety of strange causes, such as secret murder, acts of treachery, unatoned crime, buried treasures, and such-like incidents belonging to the seamy side of family history, have originated, at one time or another, the ghostly stories connected with so many a house throughout the country. Robert Browning has graphically described the mysteries of a haunted house:

Although in some cases centuries have elapsed since a certain house became haunted, and several generations have come and passed away, still, with ceaseless persistency, the restless spirit hovers about in all kinds of uncanny ways, reminding us of Hood’s romance of ‘The Haunted House.’

Corby Castle, Cumberland, was famous for its ‘Radiant Boy;’ Peel Castle had its ‘Mauthe Doog;’ and Dobb Park Lodge was noted for ‘the Talking Dog.’ Cortachy Castle, the seat of the Earl of Airlie, is noted for its ‘Drummer;’ and a noted Westmoreland ghost was that of the ‘bad Lord Lonsdale,’ locally known as Jemmy Lowther, which created much alarm at Lowther Hall; but of recent years this miscreant spirit has been silent, having, it is said, been laid for ever under a large rock called Wallow Crag. Strange experiences were associated with Hinton Ampner Manor House, Hampshire,[264] and when, in 1797, it was pulled down, ‘under the floor of the lobby was found a box containing bones, and what was said to be the skull of a monkey. No regular inquiry was made into the matter, and no professional opinion was ever sought as to the real character of the relic.’ Wyecoller Hall, near Colne, is visited once a year by a spectre horseman; and some years ago Hackwood House, an old mansion near Basingstoke, purchased from Lord Bolton by Lord Westbury, was said to have its haunted room, the phantom assuming the appearance of a woman clothed in grey. Ramhurst Manor House, Kent, was disturbed by weird and mysterious noises, and at Barton Hall, Bath, in 1868, a phantom is said to have appeared, displaying a human countenance, but devoid of eyes.

Allanbank, a seat of the Stuarts—a family of Scotch baronets, has long been haunted by ‘Pearlin Jean,’ one of the most remarkable ghosts in Scotland. On one occasion, seven ministers were called in to lay this restless spirit, but to no purpose. Creslow Manor House, Buckinghamshire, has its ghost, and Glamis Castle has its famous ‘Haunted Room,’ which, it is said, was walled up. At Hilton Castle there was the time-honoured ‘Cold Lad,’ which Surtees would lead us to suppose was one of the household spirits known as ‘Brownies.’ But, according to one local legend, in years gone by a servant-boy was ill-treated and kept shut up in a cupboard, and is supposed to have received the name of ‘Cold Lad’ from his condition when discovered. Sundry apparitions seem to have been connected with Newstead Abbey, one being that of ‘Sir John Byron the Little, with the Great Beard,’ who was wont to promenade the state apartments at night. But the most dreaded spectre was the ‘Goblin Friar,’ previously alluded to, who—

This strange, weird spectre has been thought to forebode evil to the member of the family to whom it appears, and its uncanny movements have been thus pictured by the poet:

Holland House has had the reputation of being haunted by the spirit of the first Lord Holland; and, in 1860, there was published in ‘Notes and Queries,’ by the late Edmund Lenthal Swifte, Keeper of the Crown Jewels, the account of a spectral illusion witnessed by himself in the Tower. He says that in October, 1817, he was at supper with his wife, her sister, and his little boy, in the sitting-room of the jewel-house. To quote his own words: ‘I had offered a glass of wine and water to my wife, when, on putting it to her lips, she exclaimed, “Good God! what is that?” I looked up, and saw a cylindrical figure like a glass tube, seemingly about the thickness of my arm, and hovering between the ceiling and the table; its contents appeared to be a dense fluid, white and pale azure. This lasted about two minutes, when it began to move before my sister-in-law; then, following the oblong side of the table, before my son and myself, passing behind my wife, it paused for a moment over her right shoulder. Instantly crouching down, and with both hands covering her shoulder, she shrieked out, “O Christ! it has seized me!” It was ascertained,’ adds Mr. Swifte, ‘that no optical action from the outside could have produced any manifestation within, and hence the mystery has remained unsolved.’ Speaking of the Tower, we learn from the same source how ‘one of the night sentries at the jewel-office was alarmed by a figure like a huge bear issuing from underneath the jewel-room door. He thrust at it with his bayonet which stuck in the door. He dropped in a fit and was carried senseless to the guardroom.... In another day or two the brave and steady soldier died at the presence of a shadow.’ Windsor Castle, as report goes, was haunted by the ghost of Sir George Villiers, who appeared to an officer in the king’s wardrobe and warned him of the approaching fate of the Duke of Buckingham.[265]

According to Johnson, the ‘Old Hummums’ was the scene of the ‘best accredited ghost story’ that he had ever heard, the spirit of a Mr. Ford, said to have been the riotous parson of Hogarth’s ‘Midnight Conversation,’ having appeared to a waiter; and Boswell, alluding to a conversation which took place at Mr. Thrale’s house, Streatham, between himself and Dr. Johnson, thus writes: ‘A waiter at the Hummums, in which house Ford died, had been absent for some time, and returned, not knowing that Ford was dead. Going down to the cellar, according to the story, he met him; going down again, he met him a second time. When he came up he asked some of the people of the house what Ford could be doing there. They told him Ford was dead. The waiter took a fever, and when he recovered he said he had a message from Ford to deliver to some women, but he was not to tell what, or to whom. He walked out, he was followed, but somewhere about St. Paul’s they lost him. He came back, and said he had delivered the message, and the women exclaimed, “Then we are all undone.”’ There is the so-called ‘Mystery of Berkeley Square,’ No. 50 having been reputed to be haunted. But a long correspondence on the subject in the pages of ‘Notes and Queries’ proved this to be a fallacy, the rumour, it would seem, having arisen from ‘its neglected condition when empty, and the habits of the melancholy and solitary hypochondriac when occupied by him.’ Lord Lyttelton, however, wrote in ‘Notes and Queries’ of November 16, 1872, thus: ‘It is quite true that there is a house in Berkeley Square (No. 50) said to be haunted, and long unoccupied on that account. There are strange stories about it, into which this deponent cannot enter.’ What these strange stories were may be gathered from ‘Mayfair’ of May 10, 1879—an interesting illustration of how rapidly legendary stories spring up on little or no basis. ‘The house in Berkeley Square contains at least one room of which the atmosphere is supernaturally fatal to body and mind. A girl saw, heard, and felt such horror in it that she went mad, and never recovered sanity enough to tell how or why. A gentleman, a disbeliever in ghosts, dared to sleep in it, and was found a corpse in the middle of the floor, after practically ringing for help in vain. Rumour suggests other cases of the same kind, all ending in death, madness, or both, as the result of sleeping, or trying to sleep, in that room. The very party walls of the house, when touched, are found saturated with electric horror. It is uninhabited, save by an elderly man and woman who act as caretakers; but even these have no access to the room. That is kept locked, the key being in the hands of a mysterious and seemingly nameless person, who comes to the house once every six months, locks up the elderly couple in the basement, and then unlocks the room and occupies himself in it for hours.’

Berry Pomeroy Castle, Devonshire, was long said to be haunted by the daughter of a former baron, who bore a child to her own father, afterwards strangling the fruit of their incestuous intercourse; and all kinds of weird noises are heard at Ewshott House, Hampshire. Bagley House, near Bridport, is haunted by the ghost of a Squire Lighte, who committed suicide; and at Astwood Court, once the seat of the Culpepers, was an old oak table, removed from the side of the wainscot in 1816, respecting which tradition declares that it bore the impress of the fingers of a lady ghost who, it has been suggested, probably tired of appearing to no purpose, at last struck the table in a rage and vanished for ever. Holt Castle was supposed, in bygone years, to be haunted by a mysterious lady in black who, in the still hours of the night, occasionally walked in a certain passage near the attics. It was likewise said that the cellar had been occupied by an ill-favoured bird like a raven, which would sometimes pounce upon any person who ventured to approach a cask for drink, and, having extinguished the candle with a horrid flapping of wings, would leave its victims prostrate with fright. A solution, however, has been given to this legend that ‘would imply a little cunning selfishness on the part of the domestics who had the care of the ale and cider depÔt.’[266]

At Althorp, the seat of Earl Spencer, is said to have appeared the ghost of a favourite groom, and Cumnor Hall, the supposed scene of the murder of Lady Amy Bobsart, was haunted by her apparition. According to Mickle—

Powis Castle had once its ghost, and Cullaby Castle, Northumberland, the seat of Major A.H. Browne, is haunted. According to a correspondent,[267] in the older part of the castle, which was the pele-tower of the Claverings, there was known to be a room walled up, ‘which Mrs. Browne, during her husband’s absence, had broken into;’ but the room was found to be quite empty. She says, however, that ‘she let a ghost out who is known as “The Wicked Priest.” Ever since they have been annoyed with the most unaccountable noises, which are sometimes so loud that one would think the house was being blown down. I believe the ghost has been seen—it is a priest with a shovel hat.’ The seat of the Trevelyans is haunted with the incessant wailing of a spectral child, and the ruins of Seaton Delaval Castle are said to be haunted. Churton Hall, at one time the seat of the Duke of Argyll, ‘has marked Tyneside with the ghost of the Duke’s mistress, who is locally known as “Silky.”’ ‘Tyneside,’ writes Mr. W.T. Stead, ‘abounded with stories of haunted castles; but, with the doubtful exception of Dilston, where Lady Derwentwater was said to revisit the pale glimpses of the moon to expiate the restless ambition which impelled her to drive Lord Derwentwater to the scaffold, none of them were leading actors in the tragedies of old time.’

Bisham Abbey, report says, is haunted by the ghost of Lady Hoby, who treated her son by her first husband so unmercifully, on account of his antipathy to study, that he died. As a punishment for her unnatural cruelty she glides through a certain chamber, in the act of washing blood-stains from her hands. One of the rooms at Combermere Abbey, Cheshire, formerly known as the ‘Coved Saloon,’ is tenanted by the ghost of a little girl, the sister of Lord Cotton, who had died when fourteen years old.[268] Then there was the famous ‘Sampford Peverell’ ghost, which created much interest at the commencement of the present century,[269] and Rainham, the seat of the Marquis Townshend, in Norfolk, has long been haunted by the ‘Brown Lady.’ At Oulton House, Suffolk, at midnight, a wild huntsman with his hounds, accompanied by a lady carrying a poisoned cup, is said to take his ghostly walk; and Clegg Hall, Lancashire, long had its restless spirits, and the laying of these ‘Clegg Hall boggarts,’ as they were called, is described elsewhere. At Samlesbury Hall, near Blackburn, a lady in white attended by a handsome knight is seen at night;[270] and a headless lady walked about Walton Abbey. Hermitage Castle, one of the most famous of the Border keeps in the days of its splendour, has for years past been haunted, and has been described as—

The story goes that Lord Soulis, ‘the evil hero of Hermitage,’ made a compact with the devil, who appeared to him in the shape of a spirit wearing a red cap, which gained its hue from the blood of human victims in which it was steeped. Lord Soulis sold himself to the demon, and in return he could summon his familiar whenever he chose to rap thrice on an iron chest, on condition that he never looked in the direction of the spirit. Once, however, he forgot or ignored this condition, and his doom was sealed. But even then Lord Soulis kept the letter of the compact. Lord Soulis was protected by an unholy charm against any injury from rope or steel; hence cords could not bind him, and steel could not slay him. When, at last, he was delivered over to his enemies it was found necessary to adopt the ingenious and effective expedient of rolling him up in a sheet of lead and boiling him to death:

This was the end of Lord Soulis’s body, but his spirit still lingers on the scene. Once every seven years he keeps tryst with Red Cap on the scene of his former devilries:

Hugh Miller, in his ‘Schools and Schoolmasters,’ says that, while working as a stonemason in a remote part of Scotland, he visited the ruins of Craighouse, a grey fantastic rag of a castle, which the people of the neighbourhood firmly believed to be haunted by its goblin—a miserable-looking, grey-headed, grey-bearded old man, who might be seen, late in evening and early in the morning, peering out through a narrow slit or shot-hole at the chance passenger. He further adds that he met with a sunburnt herd-boy who was tending his cattle under the shadow of the old castle wall. He asked the lad whose apparition he thought it was that could continue to haunt a building whose last inhabitant had long been forgotten. ‘Oh, they’re saying,’ was the reply, ‘it’s the spirit of the man who was killed on the foundation-stone, soon after it was laid, and then built intil the wa’ by the masons that he might keep the Castle by coming back again; and they’re saying that a’ varra auld hooses i’ the country had murderit men builded intil them i’ that way, and that all o’ them hev their bogie!’

Among Irish haunted houses may be noticed the castle of Dunseverick, in Antrim, which is believed to be still inhabited by the spirit of a chief, who there atones for a horrid crime; while the castles of Dunluce, of Magrath, and many others are similarly peopled by the wicked dead. In the abbey of Clare the ghost of a sinful abbot walks, and will continue to do so until his sin has been atoned for by the prayers he unceasingly mutters in his tireless march up and down the aisles of the ruined nave.

The ‘Cedar Room’ at Ashley Hall, Cheshire, was said to be tenanted by the figure of a white lady, reminding us of similar so-called apparitions at Skipsea and Blenkinsopp Castles. At Burton Agnes Hall, the family seat of Sir Henry Somerville Boynton, there is a spirit of a lady which haunts the ancient mansion, known in the neighbourhood as ‘Awd Nance.’ The skull of this lady is preserved at the Hall, and so long as it is left quietly in its resting-place all goes well, but should any attempt be made to remove it, all kinds of unearthly noises are raised in the house, and last until it is restored.[272] Denton Hall has for many years past attracted interest from being inhabited by a spirit known by the names of ‘Old Barbery’ and ‘Silky,’ and Waddow Hall, Yorkshire, is haunted by a phantom called ‘Peg O’Nell.’ Bridge End House, Burnley, was said to have its ghost; Crook Hall, near Durham, has its ‘White Ladie;’ South Biddick Hall, its shadowy tenant, ‘Madam Lambton;’ and Netherby Hall, a ‘Rustling Lady’ who walks along a retired passage in that mansion, her dress rustling as she moves along.[273] There was the famous Willington Mill, alluded to in the previous chapter, which some years ago became notorious in the North of England, having been haunted, it is said, by a priest and a grey lady who amused themselves at their victims’ expense by all kinds of strange acts.[274] A correspondent of ‘Notes and Queries’ (4th S. x. 490) referring to the Willington ghost says: ‘The steam flour mill, with the house, was in the occupation then of Messrs. Proctor and Unthank; the house was separated from the mill by a space of a few feet, so that no tricks could be played from the mill. The partners alternately lived in the house. A relation of mine asked one of those gentlemen if there was any truth as to the current rumours. He remarked, “Well, we don’t like to speak of it; my partner certainly cannot live comfortably in the house, from some unexplained cause, but as to myself and family we are never disturbed.”’

Several parsonages have had their ghosts. Southey, in his ‘Life of Wesley,’ speaking of Epworth parsonage, which appears to have been haunted in the most strange manner, and alluding to the mysterious disturbances that happened in it, says: ‘An author who, in this age, relates such a story, and treats it as not utterly incredible and absurd, must expect to be ridiculed, but the testimony upon which it rests is far too strong to be set aside because of the strangeness of the relation.’ In the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ is recorded an account of an apparition that appeared at Souldern Rectory, Oxfordshire, to the Rev. Mr. Shaw, who had always ridiculed the idea of ghosts, announcing to him that his death would be very soon, and very sudden. Suffice it to say that shortly afterwards he was seized with an apoplectic fit while reading the service in church, and died almost immediately. This strange affair is noticed in the register of Brisly Church, Norfolk, under December 12, 1706: ‘I, Robert Withers, M.A., Vicar of Gately, do insert here a story which I had from undoubted hands, for I have all the moral certainty of the truth of it possible.’

The old parsonage at Market, or East, Lavington, near Devizes—now pulled down—was reputed to be haunted by a lady supposed to have been murdered, and, it has been said, a child came also to an untimely end in the house. Previous to 1818, a correspondent of ‘Notes and Queries’ (5 S. i. 273) says: ‘A witness states his father occupied the house, and writes “that in that year on Feast Day, being left alone in the house, I went up to my room. It was the one with marks of blood on the floor. I distinctly saw a white figure glide into the room. It went round by the washstand by the bed, and there disappeared.”’ It may be added that part of the road leading from Market Lavington to Easterton, which skirts the grounds of Fiddington House, used to be looked upon as haunted by a lady, who was known as the ‘Easterton Ghost.’ In 1869, a wall was built round the road-side of the pond; and, close to the spot where the lady was seen, two skeletons were disturbed—one of a woman, the other of a child. The bones were buried in the churchyard, and no ghost, it is said, has been seen since.

Occasionally, churches have been haunted. The famous phantom nun of Holy Trinity Church, Micklegate, York, has excited a good deal of interest—an account of which is given by Mr. Baring-Gould in his ‘Yorkshire Oddities.’ The story goes that during the suppression of religious houses before the Reformation, a party of soldiers came to sack the convent attached to the church. But having forced an entry they were confronted by the abbess, a lady of great courage and devotion, who declared that they should only pass it over her body, and that should they slay her and succeed in their errand of destruction, her spirit would haunt the place until the time came that their sacrilegious work was expiated by the rebuilding of the holy house. Many accounts have been published of this apparition, the following being from the ‘Ripon and Richmond Chronicle’ (May 6, 1876): ‘In the middle of the service,’ writes a correspondent, ‘my eyes, which had hardly once moved from the left or north side of the [east] window, were attracted by a bright light, formed like a female, robed and hooded, passing from north to south with a rapid gliding motion outside the church, apparently at some distance. There are four divisions in the window, all of stained glass, but at the edge of each runs a rim of plain transparent glass, about two inches wide, and adjoining the stone-work. Through this rim especially could be seen what looked like a form transparent, but yet thick (if such a term can be used) with light. The robe was long and trailed. About half an hour later it again passed from north to south, and, having remained about ten seconds only, returned with what I believe to have been the figure of a young child, and stopped at the last pane but one, and then vanished. I did not see the child again, but a few seconds afterwards the woman reappeared, and completed the passage behind the last pane very rapidly.’ It is said to appear very frequently on Trinity Sunday, and to bring two other figures on to the scene, another female, called the nurse, and the child. Likewise, on one of the windows of the Abbey Church, Whitby, was occasionally seen—

According to a correspondent of the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine,’ a ghost appeared for several years, but very seldom, only in the church porch at Kilncote, Leicestershire. Folk-lore tells us that ghosts are occasionally seen in the church porch, and, in years gone, it was customary for young people to sit and watch here on St. Mark’s Eve, from 11 at night till 1 o’clock in the morning. In the third year, for the ceremony had to be gone through three times, it was supposed the ghosts of all those about to die in the course of the ensuing year would pass into the church. It is to this piece of superstition that James Montgomery refers in his ‘Vigil of St. Mark’:

A strange illustration of this superstition is found among the Hollis manuscripts in the Lansdowne collection. The writer, Gervase Hollis, of Great Grimsby, Lincolnshire, was a colonel in the service of CharlesI., and he professes to have received the tale from Mr. Liveman Rampaine, minister of God’s word at Great Grimsby, Lincolnshire, who was household chaplain to Sir Thomas Munson of Burton, in Lincoln, at the time of the incident.[275]

A curious and somewhat unique advertisement of a haunted house appeared some years ago, and ran thus: ‘To be sold, an ancient Gothic mansion, known as Beckington Castle, ten miles from Bath, and two from Frome. The mansion has been closed for some years, having been the subject of proceedings in Chancery. There are legends of haunted rooms, miles of subterranean passages, &c., affording a fine field of research and speculation to lovers of the romantic.’ It was no doubt true of the ghost of this, as of most other haunted houses—