LONDON GHOSTS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 228, 19 May 1932, Page 3

LONDON GHOSTS

ORTHODOX AND RARE REAL AND AUTHENTIC EXAMPLES OF SPOOKS. __ ANNOUNCER'S STORY. London's ghosts (if we are to believe all we are told) are like its people — a strange mixture, with a liberal sprinkling of the rare and unconventional, writes Trevor Allen in John o' London's Weekly. The ortho'dox type abounds, of course; ghosts in old-time eostume that walk through walls and up and down stairs, ghosts that have hollow, nxocking laughs, ghosts that grope at one's neck with bony fingers and try to strangle. Holland House, Kensington, has even heen credited with the most spectacular type of all — the bloody ghost that carries its head under its arm and is of-noble lineage, having once called itself the first Lord Holland. But it is the nnconventional spooks that make Mr. Elliott O'Donnell's "Ghosts of London" sueh entertaining eompany for the witching hour when the fire is low, and the announcer with the golden voice has said "Good night, everyhody; good night!" Take your choice!

The Right Spirit. A house in Jones Street, Mayfair, is said to be haunted by a spirit which tempts people to drink. People of the most abstemious habits who stay there for any length of time, says Mr. O'Donnell, invariahly become obsessed with the mania. The honse, in fact, has seen a whole series of drunken tenants. The British Mnseum is haunted by a cough, and Mr. O'Donnell has himself heard it. He had heen looking at the mummy of Katebit, one-time priestess at the College of Amen (Amun) Ra at Thebes. Suddenly he heard a cough immediately behind him. No one was there. Then he heard another cough, and later, while descending the staircase, a third "almost in my ear." He has not cared to visit the Oriental Department since; a spectral cough can indeed be disconcerting even to one who finds almost as many ghosts in London as there are policemen and writes of them so graphically. The Ghost-Maid. At a house in the Buekingham Palace Road there is said to be a ghost which is apparently that of a repentant maids'ervant, for its particular task is to light firss, sweep carpets, dust the furniture, and put the kettle on. The tenant, a Miss Stanhope, told Mr. O'Donnell that she often heard sounds in the kitchen as of someone moving the fire irons and cleaning the range. One morning she crept down and saw the ghost-maid actually performing the humble task, and exclaimed: "Who are yon — why are you here?" whereupon "the girl turned round, and Miss Stanhope saw her face for the first time. It was ghastly white and the Iarge dark eyes had sueh a mad glitter in them that Miss Stanhope sprang back in alarm. The girl then got up and, with a horrible grin, crept towards Miss Stanhope, who shrieked with terror. Fortunately at this juncture there was the sound of a key being inser'ted in the front door of the flat, and, upon Miss Stanhope's woman entering, the strange girl turned round and ran into the back kitchen, closing the door behind her. . . Her woman marched to the back kitchen door, opened it, and looked inside. No one was there, and there is no way out, save through a skylight, twelve feet from the floor."

Perhaps this ghost-maid did not approve of her mistress. Ghosts certainly have their likes and dislikes; is there not an impression of a huinan foot in the stone of one of the cloisters of old Christ's Hospital, supposed to have heen cansed by the ghost of a beadle's wif e stamping angrily when addressed by some living person in an unbeadlelike f ashion ? We expect old houses to he haunted sometimes with the delicate music of a spinet. A friend of Mr. O'Donnell's was once looking over an empty house in Blackfriars when she heard the music, unmistakably, followed by sounds of a struggle, a piercing scream, a heavy thud, and "a noise like someone being choked to death." Syncopated Music. But modern jazz! Well, there is a house at Ealing, of all suburbs in the world, in which "a lady who spent most of her evenings at London night clubs recently died. The night after her funeral, sounds of syncopated music and dancing were heard proceeding from the roorn in which she breathed her last and these sounds are rumoured to have been heard there, periodically, ever since."

There is no possibility, apparently, of the lady in question having failed to switch off the wireless dance band before she breathed her last; it is not even suggestcd that she had a receiving s'et. Just — enigma. Zoologieal ghosts figure also in Mr. O'Donnell's remarkable narrative. A sentry pacing the yard in front of the Jewel House at the Tower once saw a creature creeping towards him in the moonlight with "a horrible glitter in its eyes." It was a bear, an enormous bear! Paralysed with fear, he struck at it furiously with his bayonet. The bayonet passed right through it and hit the wall. The bear, unharmed, came on. With a wild shriek of terror the sentry fell to the gr'ound in a fit. That was over a century before the hirth of the popular mnsic-hall ditty with the refrain: "It's a bear, it's a bear, it's a bear!" The Phantom Bird. Another doughty fighter, a Captain this time, took a room in an apartment house, fell asleep, but was soon "awalcened by a noise like the flapping of wings, and a sensafci n of extreme coldness. He sat up and saw just in front of him 'an immense black bird, with outstretehed wings, and red eyes flashing as if with fire.' It made vicious pecks at him, which he had great difficulty in parrying. Snatching up a .pillow, he hit at it, but it always got out of his way, and he never once succeeded in touch" tg it." The Captain tried bard — but ho didn't get the bird; not that time, anyway. In a third case the ghostly visitant was a dog. A film artist named Dickinson encountered it several times on the stairs of thq Motley Cluh in Soho, and offered it biscuits and meat in vain. Eventually he aimed a slight blow at it with his stick. "The

stick passed - right through the dog, which at once faded away into nothingness, leaving Dickenson amazed and aghast. He narrated the story to me himself one. night at the cluh, and introduced me to another film artist, who also testified to having seen the dog." Mr. O'Donnell mentions some intoresting open-air ghosts, including a phantom boat that is sometimes seen passing under Westiminster Bridge, a headless woman in St. James' Paf x, a Man in Dress Clothes in the Green Park, Cromwell in Red Lion Square, a Devil Tree feared by tramps and down-and-outs in Hyde Park, and a tall woman in mourning who periodically falls off Blackfriars Bridge.