Strange Story of a Haunted House: A peculiar ghost; blows from invisible hands.
Some time ago Nice was in a ferment. A house in Le Port, at the foot of the quarries, in a terrace that has not the faintest look of the uncanny, was said to be haunted. Crowds often gathered outside it, though, I believe, the “experiences” were strictly confined to those within. Sometimes there were two thousand “encumbering” the road, as the inhabitants put it. Sometimes there were three thousand! Mounted police were employed to prevent a hopeless block.
Arriving at Nice the other day (writes a correspondent of the Daily Graphic), the first person I asked, “Where is the haunted house?” said, “Why, to be sure, it is just at the corner of the harbour.” I found that every cabman knew his way there. My “cocher” said, “You want to take views. No portraits of ghosts by daylight, te! Besides, he’s not there now.” “Where is he?” I asked. “Who knows?” said cabby. “What was the explanation of the occurrences?” I enquired, for I fancied my man might be a sceptic. But he was no doubter at all. He averred that explanation there was none.
The ghost’s conduct in this house was, to say the least, peculiar. Darkness would descend upon everything, and then the inmates would be beaten. No assailants were ever visible, and it was not the darkness which “could be felt,” but blows – blows, too, which left bruises. The excitement caused by the recurrence of these mysterious assaults led to an organised inquiry by the police, but no explanation was ever satisfactorily established.
Once twelve policemen searched the premises from roof to basement, while twelve other men of the force watched the house from the outside. No one left the house which was so carefully guarded, and inside nothing rewarded the search till the twelve men had examined everything, and were congregated at the foot of the stairs, on the point of leaving, when suddenly an ink-jar fell among them. They thought by the sound that it came from the very top of the house; and attached to the jar was a paper bearing the words, “Try as you will, you’ll never catch me,” or something to that effect.
The police having utterly failed to unravel the mystery, and the nightly blows and unexplained darkness recurring, some of the bravest and strongest young men banded themselves together to investigate the matter. They prepared to sit up all night in the haunted house, and provided themselves with many lamps, and with cards to while away the vacant hours. Suddenly, all the lamps throughout the house were extinguished, and blows were rained upon the hardy youths, without their being able to guess whence they were assaulted, or who were the assailants.
No one was any the wiser for this experiment, except the doughty champions – who were certainly sadder and sorer, if wiser, men next morning. Of course the usual explanations – coiners, illicit still, burglars’ place of meeting – were offered to account for the mystery, but the premises do not lend themselves to any of these theories. One thing seems clear; there is now no ghost at the place, which is the factory of a marble worker. But the manner of his passing is as little understood as was the manner of his coming; and it is not one ghost in a hundred that sets a city, the civic fathers, and their police all agog.
South Wales Echo, 17th April 1891.