Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 January 1889 — A TALE OF TERROR. [ARTICLE]

A TALE OF TERROR.

BY JAMES SEYMOUR.

Some years ago (said my friend, a real estate agent) I had an office on La Salle street, Chicago. To it came Mrs. Capel, whom I had known in Boston. She wanted a house. I had one on my list in Halsted street. Her family consisted of herself, a child between 6 and 7, and a servant. I rented the dwelling, but was astonished in about ten days to liud her back. She stated that a port.on of the promises which she did not require she had locked. By some supernatural cause the doors would fly open. She had heard some rumors iu the neighborhood that the house was haunted, but paid no attention to such superstitious gossip. Then she proceeded to tell the following singular story, which I will give in her own words: “One night as Margaret, the servant, and I went up stairs I saw the door at the head j i stood open. We went into the extension. All was quiet, the dust lay thick on the floor and tho spiders had spun the r webs across the wall, and ono huge mesh work lay directly across the narrow, crooked stairs that led downward. I remember thinking as we descended that it would be a terrible place for anyone to fall. At tho foot was a bit of cracked and broken Hugging, and as I looked at it I fancied involuntarily the dull, sickening thud of a heavy body thrown from above the stones. The thought was so re 1 that it madq me shudder in spite of myself, but I shook it off as unhealthy and morbid. We securely fastened both doors and I began to hope that we should be troubled by no more mvstenes. “On Saturday evening, wishing to finish a piece of work with which I was busy, I sent Margaret to put Alice to bed instead of goiug myself as usual. The room iu which I was sitting was not directly beneath my bed-ioom, and I fi d not hear the girl’s footsteps when she left the chamber tb come down. I noticed that she remained away for a longer time than common, but 1 supposed that the child had proved wakeful and difficult to get, tq sleep, and i thought little of her absenco. The souud of a heavy' fall on the stairs suddenly startled me. Bushing out I saw the door at their head again wide open, a blackness so dense that it seemed like a curtain, palpable to the touch, shut off all that might be beyond, and at the foot of the steps lay Margaret in a swoon. It was* the sound of her fall that I had heard. As I approached her I found that her consciousness was beginning to return, and, at the same instant, my ears caught a faint, soft rustle in the darkness above, and the dcor closed with a hard slam that resounded through the house. My foot was on.the lowest step. I would Lave reopened it in another second, but Margaret caught my dress. “ ‘For the love of God, don’t go,’ she whispered; ‘what you’ll see there isn’t what He meant should ever be,’ and she held me with a force of which I would not have believed her capable in her weakness. “ ‘Promise mo, promiso me,’ she whispered. And seeing that it was the only ’way to calm her, I promised not to attempt to enter the extension that night. “1 helped her into her own room, shocked at the state in which I found one usually so calm and self-controlled, and I passed the hours till daylight iu watching alternately with her and with Alice, who was restless and feverisfti and muttered to herself iu her sleep. Once more that night the door opened and 6hut with the same loud noise as before, but otherwise we were undisturbed. The strangeness of our situation did not frighten me. I felt myself mystified, defiant, enraged by the events which had taken place since I entered the house, and I was glad that Margaret did not seem inclined to speak or to tell me of the cause of her downfall. She did not close her eyes, but lay with her eyes fixed on the opposite wall. Toward dawn she suddenly broke the long silence by sayiDg, musingly: “ ‘We don’t know whafchas been done in the old time by them that lived here, nor what their punishment is.’ “ ‘Hush, hush!’ I answered, unwilling to encourage her talking, and to change the unwholesome current of her thoughts I drew aside the window-curtain. A faint, pallid light was already tingeing the east, the token of the coming day. The night seemed to calm the girl’s worn-out nerves. She drew a long, we ary sigh like a tired child, and in a few moments dropped into a deep sleep. When Alice awoke on Sunday morning she proved so feverish that I kept her in bed, and a question which she asked me in the course of the morning frightened me with the jdea that she muss be worse than I had thought her. “ ‘Mamma,’she asked, ‘who is the pretty young lady that stands sometimes m the door at the head of the stairs, and looks at me so with her great dark eyes? I kept thinking of her all the time; she seems so sad and.sor#owful that I can’t forget about her.’ “I supposed the child was light-headed from fever, and gave her some trifling gnawer. About ten o’clock, as I was passing through the upper hall, I saw that mysterious door swing back upon its hinges flat against the wall, exposing the palllike blackness of the evening before. I did not hesitate. Fortunately my feet were clad in slippers which muffled my - footfall, and, making as little noise as

jrossible, I stepped to the landing, mounted (he half a dozen stairs on Che opposite side, and advanced some paces iu the darkness along the. hallway of the extension, when I could touch with my hand the casing at the top of tho narrow, crooked stairway I have before mentioned. I paused, and, leauing against i the wall, turned so as to command a view of the door which I judged must still be open, since I had not heard it shut. Strangely enough, I could see nothing in any direction. I knew that a lamp was burning dimly in our upper hall, in a straight Hue from my standing place, but not a gleam penetrated to me. The darkness hung upon me like a corpoieal weight, and 1 gasped for breath w.th a sense of suffocation in its density. “I stood thus for some moments. I wished I had brought a light. The beating of my heart seemed like a companion in my solitude, and I remember laying my hand upon it to feel its pulsations. Then slowly, slowly, out of the thick air, there grew upon me a horror, on unspeakable, awful consciousness of the presence of the Invisible which froze my blood, and chilled my life at its core. My body seemed turned to stone. All its activity was piralyzed, and had I sought to turn and flee, i knew my musclss would have failed to do my bidding, and my feet havo sunk under me. I was powerless to open my lips. Only my mind was free as air to receive in every fiber this sense of unutterable terror for that instant. Fear held dominion over me. Fear, such as I had never dreamed of, ruled in every atom of my being. • The sound of the shutting of a door resounded iu my ears like an unexpected thing, a faint light flitted for an instant along the wall, and in its momentary gleam I saw a woman’s face, a wicked face, and a girl’s form, a shadow crouched at my side. The light was gone, but there still rung in my ears a long, low sob, like the cry of a lost soul, and the sickening noise of a fall on the stones below. “It must have been some time after this that Margaret found me sitting on our stairs below the closed door. How I came there Ido not know. She did not spe ik to me, for I think Bhe knew by my face what h id happened,, and sho followed her instinct in treating me much as I had treated her. As soon as any power of act.oa returned to me, I resolved upon quitt.ng the house instantly, and set about irepaiations for our departure with a feverish activity. 1 could not be easy so long as we remained in the building, and we s) ent the few days necossary for the epacking of the furniture at Leland’s Hotel, visiting the house as little as possible and never remaining over night. Margaret went to her mother’s to stay till she could recover from the shock to her nerves and be fit for work. ’’

I knew it Avould be useless to try and peisuade Mrs. Capel that all she had related was but tbe illusions of an overwrought imagination. I released her, thereiore, from the engagement, and determined to inspect the building for my own satisfaction. An old doctor who res dod on West Monroe stroet, in the neighborhood, to d me that the last perinaftent occupants of tLe house, before it began to bear so evil a roputatiox, had been two women, a mother and daughter. The mother, a widow, owned the place. She was a lierce-tempered, hard woman, who seemed possessed, as the gossips said, by a spirit of unnatural hatred toward her daughter, a girl with a ceitaiu sad beauty of her own, as the doctor described her to me, but not r ght in her mind. She Avas not an idiot, but “lacking,” the doctor termed it. As she grew into womanhood her mental deficiencies increased, and the mother, fiercely proud in her Avay, could not endure the spectacle of hor child’s misfo tune. She would have hidden her away from the Avorld, but the girl rebelled. There were taunts, quarrels, sometimes blows, between the two, and the mother, dofiant and furious, locked her daughter in the rear part of the building. Here the tragedy of her life played itself out, and here she Avas found one morning by the servant, Avho slept in a i enrol e attic, lying dead at the foot of the stairs. How she came by her death no one knew. There was nothing to directly criminate the mother, and the inquest that was held resulted in a verdict of “accidental death.” Tho mother herself died soon after, leaviug her property to a distant cousin, who reaped little benefit from the house, since it soon became impossible to let it. The doctor’s account seemed to lend weight to tbe statement of Mrs. Capel. I entirely disbelieve in the supernatural, and, after making an examination of the premises, was on the point of leat'ing, Avhen I noticed a panel in the open door that had a peculiar surface. As I stood Avatching it, Avhile night-shades were falling, the outlines of two figures became more and more visible. One was that of a middle-aged womau, with a hard, fierce face, while the other was that of a young girl in a crouchiug attitude. When the door was closed tne pnnel could not be seen except from the extension. I examined the frameAvork of the door, and found it lobe in a rickety condition. A gust of wind from a special quarter striking tho framework threAv the door sufficiently aslant to free the bolt from the clasp and allow the door to swing open into the hall, and reveal the painted panel. On subsequent inquiry, I found that the extension had at one time been occupied by an artist, Avho, doubtless, hearing of the tragedy as related by the doctor, had painted tho scene on the panel. I also discovered that tho artist had been making experiments Avith phosphorescent paint, and also with a paint that changed color at various degrees of temperature. I had the framework of the door repaired and the panel taken out, and since then no tenant has come to me with ghost stories. I have the panel at home in my parlor. In the dark, Avhen the weather is slightly damp, the two figures come out v.ery distinctly, but at times they are invisible. The luminous paint used is now quite common, but the artist who invented it has no idea of the supernatural sensation this early experiment made on the tenants of the Halsted Street Haunted House. “Remember to keep the Sabbath holy” should be impressed upon all. The folloAving lines of Sir Mathew Hale show that making it a day of rest if productive of good results: A Sabbath veil spent Brings a week of content And health for. the toils- ot to-morrow; But a Sabbath profaned. Whatsoe'er may be gained, la a certain forerunner of sorrow.