The Windsor Ghost Outdone in Dublin.
The following piece of ghostly intelligence appears in the Dublin Freeman’s Journal of Thursday. The Windsor mystery is but a China orange to Lombard-street as compared with the metropolitan dish of horrors served out to feed the morbid appetites of the lovers of the marvellous : –
‘Even at the risk of publishing what might be called by some a second edition of the recent Windsor ghost story, we give the following statement of some very extraordinary and unaccountable circumstances which have come to our knowledge within the last week, and for the perfect accuracy of the following version of which we can vouch on unquestionable authority. A reluctance to bring the parties concerned before the public prevents us from mentioning their names at present, but we again repeat that we can pledge ourselves for the authenticity of the statement:-
“On Thursday night a respectable family, consisting of a lady and gentleman, with two female domestics, and residing in an isolated house surrounded by a small garden in the southern suburbs of the city, were suddenly roused by a loud and unusual noise, consisting of a violent knocking at the door, and sounds resembling heavy footsteps in a room on the drawing-room floor and along the lobby stairs. An immediate search was made, and no cause for the noise having been discovered, it may easily be imagined that no slight alarm was the consequence.
Persons residing in an opposite house were called in, and every conjecture was used to account for the noise, but it still remained a mystery. The mysterious sounds were repeated on the following night still louder than before; and again on the nights of Saturday and Sunday, on which occasions two or three friends remained up with the family, and made every effort to discover the cause from which the sounds originated, suspecting that some artifice was practised, but every attempt to detect such was utterly baffled.
Monday night the family and their friends formed a party of seven persons, who were resolved to watch until morning, and give the unravelling of the mysterious circumstance the chance of a further and final experiment. All the doors were locked, with the exception of those of two rooms between which the party was divided, viz., the servants’ appartment upstairs, and a room on the ground floor.
It had been found that the knocking only took place when the candles were extinguished, a circumstance, by the by, which seemed rather suspicious; the lights were therefore put out on this occasion, but matches were held in readiness to relight them at a moment’s notice. A few minutes after the room was in darkness the elder servant, who was sitting on the bed, screamed, and exclaimed that she saw a face which she thought she had seen before, and could recognise if it appeared again; at that moment, however, the candles were lighted, and the figure disappeared, but at the same time three loud knocks were given at the door of the room from the outer side, and the party below stairs, attracted by the loudness of the noise rushed up and entered the room, but no trace could be found of any stranger being present, or indeed at all in the house.
The lights were then a second time extinguished, and the servant immediately exclaimed that she saw the figure again, and that it was that of her brother, who had been dead for the last ten months. The sensation that followed this announcement may be better imagined than described.
The lady of the house conjured the servant to speak to what she thus thought to be her brother’s spirit, and sure enough a conversation did ensue, but one of the speakers only was heard by the rest of those present, the woman, however, repeating the words which she imagined she heard from the lips of the spectre, and expressing her astonishment that they were not also audible to every one as to herself.
The ghost, according to her interpretation, said that he could not enter heaven until he settled some affairs here below, and, having obtained leave to speak to her, had been obliged for that purpose to proceed in the way he had done. He then mentioned a few trifling debts, which he required to have paid, but which amounted on the whole to only about seven shillings, due among seven different persons. He finally said that that matter being arranged, he woul dnot trouble her any more in future, and then disappeared; the poor woman appearing during the scene to suffer dreadfully from the effects of fright, and to require the assistance of two persons to support her in a sitting posture, and the whole party listening in breathless astonishment, mingled, we may believe, with awe and terror.
One of the most singular circumstances in the affair was, that the following morning, inquiries having been made, all the debts were found to be owing in the way described in the mysterious scene of the night before, although they had almost escaped from the memory of the creditors, and had been previously entirely unknown to the sister of the deceased man, according to her own solemn statement.
It may be well to mention that the family in question, including the servant woman, belong to the Established Church. We may also mention that the gentleman himself possesses strong mental powers; that one of those who sat up with him on Monday night last is a medical gentleman of standing in the city, who attended the family; that another is a respectable mercantile man, and an elder in a Presbyterian church in Dublin; and a third, an old soldier in the service of the latter; all persons of nerve, and sceptical enough on supernatural agencies, and yet all, we believe, firmly convinced of the perfect truth of all that we have just mentioned.’
Such is an outline of this very curious case, and the winding up of it has been, that the family removed to another residence on Tuesday last, and that the servant appears still to suffer greatly from the excitement of the occasion.” – Globe.
Morning Post, 29th July 1841.