The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

That evening I was hard at work trying to trace an obscure coat-of-arms on a German binding. I never could find my way about Rietstap. It was about half-past seven, and I assumed that Merton had gone home, although I usually heard the door when he let himself out. It was, of course, quite dark outside. Suddenly I heard a cry from downstairs. It was Merton’s voice, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard such a degree of fear infused into a single scream; it expressed the very essence of terror. I opened my door quickly and looked down over the bannisters into the well of the staircase. The switch is at the foot of the stairs and the light was off. I could hear him pulling the door handle of his room, and as I watched the door was flung open. His room too was in darkness so I got only a glimpse of what happened then; for the light coming over my shoulder from the open door behind me shone only halfway down the stairs. Merton ran through the shop, and I heard the bell ring as he opened the outer door. I was going to shout after him, when I saw something else emerge from his room. At least I can’t say that I saw it; I thought I discerned a shadowy figure come through the doorway, but apart from an impression of grey colouring I could not describe it. But it wasn’t what I saw that made me shudder, it was a smell – one that I had met only once before in my life, and that was forty years ago. When I was a boy, we had an exhumation in the village churchyard, and being an inquisitive child I crept up between the tombstones as the grave-diggers were raising the coffin. I only got a glimpse because the village policeman spotted me, and I got a clout on the side of the head for my pains. But I smelt a smell that I didn’t meet again until it floated up the well of these stairs on the night before last – a dank, sickening, f?tid reek of rottenness and decay. I nearly fainted with revulsion. In a second I was back in my room with the door shut. I sat here for a few minutes, and then I thought of Merton and wondered what had become of him. I plucked up courage and went downstairs – the place was deserted and the shop door still open. I went outside and hurried down the passage towards Holborn. I remember thinking, as I did so, how quiet everything seemed. When I emerged into Holborn I discovered the reason. The traffic was stationary and in the middle of the road a group of people were gathered round a prone figure. I pushed my way through the crowd and saw that it was Merton. A policeman told me that he had run headlong from the passage straight under the wheels of a bus, and had been killed instantly.

“You can imagine how shaken I was when I came back to the shop. I went into Merton’s room and there on his desk was that damned manuscript. From the place at which it was open and from some notes on his pad, it was obvious that the poor devil had been experimenting with one of the formula: set out there. Something had occurred to frighten him out of his wits, and in his nervous state this wasn’t perhaps surprising. I suppose that some obscure telepathy communicated his panic to me – at least I prefer to believe that than credit the implications of what I thought I sensed at the foot of the stairs. Anyhow, I was taking no chances, and before I went home I burned every particle of the manuscript and of Merton’s notes. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but there it is. And although I’ve always found occult books a lucrative sideline, it’s a class of literature that I shall be avoiding for the future.”

2

Ghost Writers

The “Golden Era”

Playing With Fire

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Location:  Badderly Gardens, Merton, Surrey.

Time:  14 April 1900.

Eyewitness Description:  “Then suddenly a sound came out of the darkness – a low, sibilant sound, the quick, thin breathing of a woman. Quicker and thinner yet it came, as between clenched teeth, to end in a loud gasp with a dull rustle of cloth . . .”

Author:  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930), the creator of Sherlock Holmes, gave the detective story genre one of its enduring masterpieces, The Hound of the Baskervilles, just as the 20th century dawned. The fame of the Great Detective has, of course, overshadowed much of his other writing, in particular his contribution to the modern ghost story. Doyle had been fascinated by “ghosts, haunted houses, sepulchral voices, materializations and mysterious sounds and lights since his early days as a doctor,” according to his biographer, Hesketh Pearson, and he turned this fascination into a number of short stories that featured scientific enquiry into the supernatural, especially the new cult of spiritualism. “Playing With Fire”, was one of the first of these tales and it was to inspire a number of similar tales by ghost story writers as well as challenge other distinguished literary figures to tackle the genre. Collectively, the stories by these luminaries helped to create what is now regarded as a “Golden Era” of the ghost story. This tale of a medium, Mrs Delamere, and what she conjures up in a suburban house is told with Conan Doyle’s typical skill, added to which is the kind of detail only he as someone who had been an actual eyewitness to seances could possibly offer.

I cannot pretend to say what occurred on the 14th of April last at No. 17, Badderly Gardens. Put down in black and white, my surmise might seem too crude, too grotesque, for serious consideration. And yet that something did occur, and that it was of a nature which will leave its mark upon every one of us for the rest of our lives, is as certain as the unanimous testimony of five witnesses can make it. I will not enter into any argument or speculation. I will only give a plain statement, which will be submitted to John Moir, Harvey Deacon, and Mrs Delamere, and withheld from publication unless they are prepared to corroborate every detail. I cannot obtain the sanction of Paul Le Duc, for he appears to have left the country.

It was John Moir (the well-known senior partner of Moir, Moir, and Sanderson) who had originally turned our attention to occult subjects. He had, like many very hard and practical men of business, a mystic side to his nature, which had led him to the examination, and eventually to the acceptance, of those elusive phenomena which are grouped together with much that is foolish, and much that is fraudulent, under the common heading of spiritualism. His researches, which had begun with an open mind, ended unhappily in dogma, and he became as positive and fanatical as any other bigot. He represented in our little group the body of men who have turned these singular phenomena into a new religion.

Mrs Delamere, our medium, was his sister, the wife of Delamere, the rising sculptor. Our experience had shown us that to work on these subjects without a medium was as futile as for an astronomer to make observations without a telescope. On the other hand, the introduction of a paid medium was hateful to all of us. Was it not obvious that he or she would feel bound to return some result for money received, and that the temptation to fraud would be an overpowering one? No phenomena could be relied upon which were produced at a guinea an hour. But, fortunately, Moir had discovered that his sister was mediumistic – in other words, that she was a battery of that animal magnetic force which is the only form of energy which is subtle enough to be acted upon from the spiritual plane as well as from our own material one. Of course, when I say this, I do not mean to beg the question; but I am simply indicating the theories upon which we were ourselves, rightly or wrongly, explaining what we saw. The lady came, not altogether with the approval of her husband, and though she never gave indications of any very great psychic force, we were able, at least, to obtain those usual phenomena of message-tilting which are at the same time so puerile and so inexplicable. Every Sunday evening we met in Harvey Deacon’s studio at Badderly Gardens, the next house to the corner of Merton Park Road.

Harvey Deacon’s imaginative work in art would prepare anyone to find that he was an ardent lover of everything which was outre and sensational. A certain picturesqueness in the study of the occult had been the quality which had originally attracted him to it, but his attention was speedily arrested by some of those phenomena to which I have referred, and he was coming rapidly to the conclusion that what he had looked upon as an amusing romance and an after-dinner entertainment was really a very formidable reality. He is a man with a remarkably clear and logical brain – a true descendant of his ancestor, the well-known Scotch professor – and he represented in our small circle the critical element, the man who has no prejudices, is prepared to follow facts as far as he can see them, and refuses to theorize in advance of his data. His caution annoyed Moir as much as the latter’s robust faith amused Deacon, but each in his own way was equally keen upon the matter.