A Yankee Ghost.
The Spiritualists of America have become challenged, says the Standard, to investigate some ghostly manifestations in the townland of Chili, near Rochester, U.S. Some six months ago the owner of a house, Mr A., died, leaving all his effects in the possession of his house-keeper, named Mrs Gascoigne, and her children. For a few nights after his demise, says a New York paper, “the stillness of death reigned.”
Scarcely a week had passed, however, when Mrs Gascoigne’s repose was disturbed by “the familiar footsteps” of the deceased. She heard the creaking of the door of the room which had formerly been occupied by A., and presently she was still further alarmed by the slats, which seemed to yield to the pressure of a human body. Then she heard what seemed to her like sounds that would be produced by a person engaged in putting on tight boots. As soon as the last stamp was given to the floor a noise was made as if somebody was ascending the stairs.
On the following night the manifestations were more varied. The chairs and tables in the parlour were tossed about rather freely, and at certain intervals “a single whistle, of an apparently human voice, shrill and distinct,” was heard by every person in the house.
Four men, neighbours of the Gascoignes, it seems, have repeatedly undertaken to solve the mystery. One of the number states positively that a form, which in every respect resembled Mr A. in the flesh, on one occasion passed before him as he lay upon a lounge. He immediately jumped up, and had just begun to propound a number of questions, when “the spectre, if such it were, soon disappeared.”
The New York Herald ought to send a special reporter to interview this ghost, when one or two results would supervene. If the ghost had anything to communicate the Herald reporter would be pretty sure to get it out of him and set his mind at rest; but it is far more likely that, in terror at finding that not even death had released him from the liability to be thus assailed, he would at once eagerly deliver himself up “to sulphurous and tormenting flames,” and never come back again.
Ulster Examiner and Northern Star, 16th January 1874.