Haunted houses, or – more correctly speaking – houses reported by superstitious people to be haunted, are to be heard of in many parts of the world; but the manner in which the ghosts are behaving in a house in which they have taken up their abode at Woodstock, in America, is positively disgraceful.
It is a two-storied house, we read, inhabited by a respectable picture dealer and his family, consisting of a wife, five children, and two nieces, all of whom are kept in a great state of great mental alarm by the pranks of the phantoms. These pranks, it appears, are of an incendiary description, for in so short a space of time as twenty-four hours no fewer than forty fires broke out in various parts of the building; and furniture, bedding, clothing, and household articles have been partially consumed – only constant and untiring vigilance preventing the premises from being burnt to the ground.
These fires, the wiseacres of the locality have decided, can be traced to no human agency, and even the ost sceptical, we read, are staggered. With no lamps lighted and no stoves in use, the flames burst out now in a curtain high up and out of reach, even on a bed quilt in another room, or in the baby’s cot, or in clothing hanging up in a cupboard, or in a feather bed.
The neighbours – who sympathise sincerely with the troubles of the picture dealer and his family – take it by turns to be ready with a plentiful supply of water in order to extinguish the flames as they break out; but, seeing the continuance of these “ghostly pranks,” the victim of them is looking about for another house wherein he may dwell in peace.
London Evening Standard, 1st September 1887.