A GHOST STORY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3763, 2 May 1907, Page 3

A GHOST STORY.

A ghost which was said to have haunted a house occupied by the poet, Mr Stephen Phillips, has been a source of some expense to the London Daily Mail. A few years ago Mr Phillips moved into a house at Egham, in connection with which previous tenants had noticed nothing extraordinary. But the poet had not been long in residence before strange, supernatural manifestations are alleged to have taken place. Unexplained knockings and rappingswere heard, accompanied by footfalls, soft and loud, hasty and stealthy, and doorhandles were seen to turn and doors to glide open without human agency. It was said that a little child had been strangled near the house half a century before, and people in the neighbourhood who learned of the disturbances attributed them to the ghost of this poor victim. Mr Phillips’ servants left the house in terror, and at the end of a year the poet also left, though he had taken a threeyears’ lease. A sensational story to this effect was published in the Daily Mail, and proved such an obstacle to the future letting of the house that the owner sued the newspaper for damages, and received judgment for the amount of ,£2OO. A year ago the story was revived by the Daily Mail, and a second prosecution has just taken place as the result. The owner represented that though other properties in the neighbourhood were in good demand, he had found it quite impossible to let the house since the ghost had been resuscitated in the newspaper. Evidence was given that an expert who had been sent to solve the mysteries of the dwelling had attributed the phenomena to the visitations of the strangled child. The Daily Mail proprietary did not take much trouble to support the allegations that had been made, and it is significant that Mr Phillips himself, whose evidence might have been very interesting on the subject, was not called by them as a witness. The plaintiff was awarded damages to the amount of ,£9O, and damages in a smaller sum were given against another paper which had printed the story. It is disappointing that the ghost itself should have dropped out of the case so quietly. One would like to know whether it was entirely the Daily Mail’s ghost, or whether Mr Phillips, who had been acting in Mr Beerbohm Tree’s company the part of the apparition in “ Hamlet,” was really a prey to ghostly imaginings when off the stage.