The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

the fact that they were underground and invariably in woods, which always retain moisture, so the ice was preserved right through the summer.”

A dank musty smell filled their nostrils as, almost bent double, they followed Neils inside. Ahead of them in the far corner of the cellar loomed a dark cavity. “This is the way the ghost comes,” Orsen murmured. “Mind how you go; there’ll be one or two holes, I expect.”

The silence seemed to bear down on them as they crept forward through a dark tunnel and the deathly chill penetrated their thick overcoats. No one spoke. On and on they went. The passage seemed to wind interminably before them; occasionally a rat scurried across their path. Suddenly, as they rounded a bend, a bright shaft of light struck their eyes. For a second they stood practically blinded and two of the officers produced revolvers.

Neils let them precede him into the secret cellar, but they did not need their weapons. At its far end, sprawled over the table which held a big telegraphic transmitting-set, was the body of a man.

“There, gentlemen, is your ghost,” Orsen announced quietly. “No, don’t touch him, you fool!” he snapped, as the captain stretched out a hand towards the corpse. “He’s been electrocuted and the current isn’t switched off yet.”

“Electrocuted?” the captain gasped. “But how did that happen?”

“The powerful battery you borrowed for me this morning from the Air Force people,” Neils said. “I attached it to the leads in the bathroom, then came down here and fixed the other end of the wires to the side of the transmitter key.”

“Good God!” exclaimed the colonel. “But this is most irregular.”

“Quite,” Neils agreed, “and, of course, I’m neutral in this war, but I’m not neutral in the greater war that is always going on between good and evil. This man murdered that poor fellow who died in the bathroom. So I decided to save you a shooting party.”

Pink May

Elizabeth Bowen

Location:  Aldershot, Hampshire.

Time:  May, 1942.

Eyewitness Description:  “She was there. And she aimed at encircling me. I think maybe she had a poltergeist that she brought along with her. The little things that happened to my belongings . . .”

Author:  Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) was born in Dublin but spent much of her younger life in England where she began to write novels and short stories in the late twenties. The success of The Last September (1928) marked her out as a sensuous, visual writer destined to enjoy great popularity. The outbreak of the Second World War challenged Elizabeth Bowen’s skill and also revealed her interest in the supernatural. Indeed, in the next five years she wrote a unique series of ghostly tales depicting men and women in London during the Blitz and elsewhere in the country, all enduring the stresses and strains of war. Notable among these are “The Demon Lover”, “Green Holly”, “The Mysterious Kor” and “Pink May” which is set in a garrison town where the war is both far away and very close to home. Bowen’s most successful novel, The Heat of the Day (1949), also about the capital during the war, is reputed to have sold over 45,000 copies in a few weeks after publication. Writing about her wartime ghost stories, Elizabeth Bowen said in 1965, “I do not make use of the supernatural as a get out -it is inseparable, whether or not it comes to the surface – from my sense of life.” Few tales better demonstrate her conviction than this one.

“Yes, it was funny,” she said, “about the ghost. It used to come into my bedroom when I was dressing for dinner – when I was dressing to go out.”

“You were frightened?”

“I was in such a hurry; there never was any time. When you have to get dressed in such a hell of a hurry any extra thing is just one thing more. And the room at the times I’m talking about used to be full of daylight – sunset. It had two french windows, and they were on a level with the tops of may trees out in the square. The may was in flower that month, and it was pink. In that sticky sunshine you have in the evenings the may looked sort of theatrical. It used to be part of my feeling of going out.” She paused, then said, “That was the month of my life.”

“What month?”

“The month we were in that house. I told you, it was a furnished house that we took. With rents the way they are now, it cost less than a flat. They say a house is more trouble, but this was no trouble, because we treated it like a flat, you see. I mean, we were practically never in. I didn’t try for a servant because I know there aren’t any. When Neville got up in the mornings he percolated the coffee; a char came in to do cleaning when I’d left for the depot, and we fixed with the caretaker next door to look after the boiler, so the baths were hot. And the beds were comfortable, too. The people who really lived there did themselves well.”

“You never met them?”

“No, never – why should we? We’d fixed everything through an agent, the way one does. I’ve an idea the man was soldiering somewhere, and she’d gone off to be near him somewhere in the country. They can’t have had any children, any more than we have -it was one of those small houses, just for two.”

“Pretty?”

“Y-yes,” she said. “It was chintzy. It was one of those oldish houses made over new inside. But you know how it is about other people’s belongings – you can’t ever quite use them, and they seem to watch you the whole time. Not that there was any question of settling down – how could we, when we were both out all day? And at the beginning of June we moved out again.”

“Because of the . . .?”

“Oh no,” she said quickly. “Not that reason, at all.” She lighted a cigarette, took two puffs and appeared to deliberate. “But what I’m telling you now is about the ghost.”

“Go on.”

“I was going on. As I say, it used to be funny, dressing away at top speed at the top of an empty house, with the sunset blazing away outside. It seems to me that all those evenings were fine. I used to take taxis back from the depot: you must pay money these days if you want time, and a bath and a change from the skin up was essential -you don’t know how one feels after packing parcels all day! I couldn’t do like some of the girls I worked with and go straight from the depot on to a date. I can’t go and meet someone unless I’m feeling special. So I used to hare home. Neville was never in.”

“I’d been going to say . . .”

“No, Neville worked till all hours, or at least he had to hang round in case something else should come in. So he used to dine at his club on the way back. Most of the food would be off by the time he got there. It was partly that made him nervy, I dare say.”

“But you weren’t nervy?”

“I tell you,” she said, “I was happy. Madly happy – perhaps in rather a nervy way. Whatever you are these days, you are rather more so. That’s one thing I’ve discovered about this war.”

“You were happy . . .”

“I had my reasons – which don’t come into the story.”

After two or three minutes of rapid smoking she leaned forward to stub out her cigarette. “Where was I?” she said, in a different tone.

“Dressing . . .”

“Well, first thing when I got in I always went across and opened my bedroom windows, because it seemed to me the room smelled of the char. So I always did that before I turned on my bath. The glare on the trees used to make me blink, and the thick sort of throaty smell of the may came in. I was never certain if I liked it or not, but it somehow made me feel like after a drink. Whatever happens tomorrow, I’ve got tonight. You know the feeling? Then I turned on my bath. The bathroom was the other room on that floor, and a door led through to it from one side of the bed. I used to have my bath with that door ajar, to let light in. The bathroom black-out took so long to