Uncanny experiences at Cardiff.
Now that the Kidwelly “ghost” seems to have gone to his rest Cardiff comes along with one equally lively visitant. For reasons that are quite sound names and addresses may not be given in relating the story of this latest mystery, but the Western Mail reporter to whom it was told vouches for the evident sincerity of the people disturbed by the strange visitations.
The house is situate in one of the best residential thoroughfares in Cardiff. Mr — , the tenant, is one of the city’s most prominent business men, who put the matter in this way: – “You know me, and I am certain you do not consider me to be a spiritualist or anything but a matter-of-fact man.” The description fits him, for Mr — is the most unemotional and unsentimental of individuals. “If my friends knew of this,” he went on,”they would chaff me unmercifully, and I am telling you our experiences privately, because they are so inexplicable to us.”
Our reporter was then given details by several members of the family of heavy footsteps being heard in the hall and on the landings, of bedroom and wardrobe doors being mysteriously opened, of strange knockings at various times of the night, and a total absence of evidence of anyone being in the house except members of the family. These footsteps were particularly audible and prolonged on Thursday night, and when the family and some friends, who are staying with them, met at the breakfast table on Friday morning it transpired that the noises had disturbed them all, and that they had all passed a most uncomfortable time.
Mr — has occupied the house for over two years, and these disturbances have been happening periodically throughout that period. It was stated that the previous tenant and his family had been disturbed in the same way, and had left before the expiration of his lease, whilst the story is told that the maid of another former tenant ran out into the adjoining lane one night screaming in terror, because, as she said, she had seen a strange man in the house.
It is this visualisation of the ghostly visitor that makes the cas of unusual interest. Most ghost stories end in noises, sthe opening of doors, and the moving of furniture, but here the “ghost” has been repeatedly seen, and is known to be “a man with a short beard, wearing a hat and a grey suit of clothes.” Mr — has no doubt about it. “If I saw that man on the street I should recognise him instantly,” he said. Putting aside the extraordinary narratives about the footstpes and the fruitless efforts to elucidate their origin, it is interesting to learn that Mrs — left her two sons – one just home from France – in the dining-room at the back in order to see that the windows in the front room were latched. this was about midnight. When at the window she instinctively knew that the door had been opened wider, and, looking round, she saw a figure in the gloom making three or four paces into the room. Thinking it was one of her sons coming to wish her good-night, she said, “Well, are you off, dear,” whereupon the figure vanished, and, rushing into the inner room, she found the young men sitting where she had left them. Mrs — , like her husband, is of a particular cool and collected turn of mind, and, as she said, “I am not nervous at all in this matter, and I would rather face a dozen ghosts than one burglar. This was no trick of the imagination. I saw the man quite distinctly in the room, and there can be no mistake about it.”
Mr — had a still more mysterious visitation. Sitting up in bed one night reading a book his eyes happened to glance over the edge of it, and he was mystified to see one of the folds of a big screen in the room move to an appreciable extent. A moment later the other outer fold moved also, and without hesitation he jumped out of bed and went round the screen, to find that there was no one near it, but that, as he put it, “there was a peculiar stench round it.”
“But that was nothing,” he continued,” to another experience of mine. I was alone in the bedroom, having, as usual, gone upstairs before the others, when I distinctly saw a man walk across the room and go towards the door. I ran after him to the landing and called out to my sons to watch in the hall as there was a strange man coming down. They rushed out of the dining-room and scoured the whole place, but could see no one. There is the simple truth,” he added. “You can believe it or not, as you will, but that I saw that man, or apparition, there is not the slightest doubt whatever. No ghost can shift me, and I am not at all alarmed, but there is something uncanny in this house, and as far as we can gather our experiences have been those of former tenants also. If my friends knew of it they would chaff me, and if you publish my name and address, it would do no good to the house or the neighbourhood. For those reasons keep to yourself my identity.”
Western Mail, 19th May 1917.