Cranbrook.
Mysterious.
To the residential inmates of one of our country residences, occupying a pleasant position within Cranbrookian precincts, the past week, and part of the present one, has been a time of curiously mixed mystery and strange annoyance. Just prior to the time indicated those responsible for the conduct of household management connected with the establishment in question found it necessary to discharge an employe, which evoked from the dismissed one the singular remark that the severance brought about would be followed by something mysterious, and recent events certainly point to an extent the correctness of the forecast.
Unaccountable and somewhat mysterious knockings at the doors, both to the front and rear of the establishment, together with the repeated ringing of the door bells, causing groups of curiously inclined young people to gather about, have taken place nightly, and when the doors have been answered, no one is to be seen as the active agent in the strange operations.
To solve the inexplicable cause, the detective powers of the local police have been called in, and, in addition, the voluntary services of a gallant son of Mars has been tried, but so far the wily foe has escaped detection.
At the witching hour of midnight, too, it is said, the silent watches of the night are not altogether tranquil, while the busy tongue of rumour has the latest phase in the visit of a white owl upon the scene, whose weird cry, as a bird of the night, gives an eerie aspect to the otherwise pleasant surroundings of the place, and Cranbrookians who live in “Sleepyhollow”, and lean to the supernatural, fancy they hear in the leafless branches of the trees surrounding the confines of a neighbouring churchyard, as they bend and creak in the night wind, uncanny and disturbing sounds of evil oemn.
But, no doubt, the searching enquiries that are being rigidly instituted as to the cause concerning this so-called strange Cranbrookian puzzle will ere long be elucidated, and the principal town in the Weald of Kent freed from the taint of having within its pleasant borders anything approaching to hobgoblins, ghosts, or devil
.Sussex Agricultural Express, 18th January 1896.