‘Haunted bookshelf.’
Mystery in London house
Ghost expert is called in.
A bookshelf torn bodily from the wall by an unseen hand lies on the floor of a bedroom in a Bloomsbury boarding house, and the woman who inhabited the room declares that she will sleep there no longer. At the moment of the crash she said the head and shoulders of a man, ashen grey and swathed in bandages, appeared in the darkness of the alcove where the bookshelf had hung. She fled screaming .Her husband, entering the room with a light a little later, saw nothing but the broken shelf on the floo rand the books littered on the bed. The figure had vanished.
The crash was the unnerving climax of a long series of smaller scares all centring on the bookshelf. Mr Elliott O’Donnell, the famous psychic expert and writer of ghost stories, who has been called in to solve what he calls “the case of the haunted bookshelf,” described these strange occurrences to a “Daily Express” representative. Noises began two weeks ago a few days after the man and his wife had taken the room. There were at first a number of simple raps and knocks similar to those heard at night in all old London houses where the furniture, swollen by the heat of the day, contracts noisily under the influence of the cool night breezes.
“Then one night,” said Mr O’Donnell, “there came a sound that could not have been made by the furniture. It suggested to the tense ears of the two listeners that an empty glass tumbler had been laid on top of the bookshelf, which hung in an alcove at the head of the bed. This curious sound was repeated several times, and then the man and his wife, not yet thoroughly frightened, came to see me. They were in my flat relating their experience when all three of us heard a loud knock on the front door. I opened the door and found the staircase empty and the lower door leadin gto the street closed as usual. I left my door open and doubled the carpet under it to prevent its being blown to. I returned to my seat, and our conversation had hardly been resumed when the door was gently closed and the knocking repeated.
“I promised to call at the boardin ghouse and investigate the bookshelf noises during the week. My clients did not wait fo rme to call. They were at my flat two days later, the woman in a state of nervous collapse. She told me of the fall of the bookshelf and the appearance of the bandaged figure. I went to the room that night and heard no more than the rappings which I had heard before, but every now and then, though the window was closed, the air of the room grew suddenly chill.
“I do not know the history of the bookshelf, but I am convinced tha tthe solution to the mystery is there. It was bought years ago, probably second-hand, and the present tenants of th ehouse eithe rhave forgotten or have never known its origin. I am still investigating.”
Mr O’Donnell has written probably more books on the supernatural than any other living author. He is an Irishman, a descendant of Nial of the Nine Hostages, and therefore possesses the O’Brien banshee, as well as the O’Donnell banshee. His father, a clergyman, was murdered at sea, and on the night of the murder the banshee is said to have wailed for hours outside his home in Ireland. Mr O’Donnell is a firm believe rin the spontaneous appearance of ghosts, but is not convinced that they can be called up at will.
Belfast Telegraph, 1st August 1923.