Great American Ghost Stories

by Bill Bowers

  “Oh,” said the old man, nodding, “them was made by a big machine that come in here las’ week. You see this house’s bin shet up ’bout ten years, ever sence ol’ Jedge Gordon died. B’longs to Miss Jean—her that run off with the Eye-talyin. She kinder wants to sell it, and kinder not—ye see—”

  “Yes,” interrupted Carmichael, “but about that big machine—when did you say it was here?”

  “P’raps four or five days ago; I think it was a We’nsday. Two fellers from Philadelfy—said they wanted to look at the house, tho’t of buyin’ it. So I bro’t ’em in, but when they seen the outside of it they said they didn’t want to look at it no more—too big and too crumbly!”

  “And since then no one has been here?”

  “Not a soul—leastways nobody that I seen. I don’t s’pose you think o’ buyin’ the house, doc’! It’s too lonely for an office, ain’t it?”

  “You’re right, Scudder, much too lonely. But I’d like to look through the old place, if you will take me in.”

  The hall, with the two chairs and the table, on which a kitchen lamp with a half-inch of oil in it was standing, gave no sign of recent habitation. Carmichael glanced around him and hurried up the stairway to the bedroom. A tall four-poster stood in one corner, with a coverlet apparently hiding a mattress and some pillows. A dressing-table stood against the wall, and in the middle of the floor there were a few chairs. A half-open closet door showed a pile of yellow linen. The daylight sifted dimly into the room through the cracks of the shutters.

  “Scudder,” said Carmichael, “I want you to look around carefully and tell me whether you see any signs of any one having been here lately.”

  The old man stared, and turned his eyes slowly about the room. Then he shook his head.

  “Can’t say as I do. Looks pretty much as it did when me and my wife breshed it up in October. Ye see it’s kinder clean fer an old house—not much dust from the road here. That linen and that bed’s bin here sence I c’n remember. Them burnt logs mus’ be left over from old Jedge Gordon’s time. He died in here. But what’s the matter, doc’? Ye think tramps or burglers—”

  “No,” said Carmichael, “but what would you say if I told you that I was called here last night to see a patient, and that the patient was the Miss Jean Gordon of whom you have just told me?”

  “What d’ye mean?” said the old man, gaping. Then he gazed at the doctor pityingly, and shook his head. “I know ye ain’t a drinkin’ man, doc’, so I wouldn’t say nothin’. But I guess ye bin dreamin’. Why, las’ time Miss Jean writ to me—her name’s Mortimer now, and her husband’s a kinder Barrin or some sorter furrin noble,—she was in Paris, not mor’n two weeks ago! Said she was dyin’ to come back to the ol’ place agin, but she wa’n’t none too well, and didn’t guess she c’d manage it. Ef ye said ye seen her here las’ night—why—well, I’d jest think ye’d bin dreamin’. P’raps ye’re a little under the weather—bin workin’ too hard?”

  “I never was better, Scudder, but sometimes curious notions come to me. I wanted to see how you would take this one. Now we’ll go downstairs again.”

  The old man laughed, but doubtfully, as if he was still puzzled by the talk, and they descended the creaking, dusty stairs. Carmichael turned at once into the dining-room.

  The rubbish was still in the fireplace, the chairs ranged along the wall. There were no dishes on the long table; but at the head of it two chairs; and at the foot, one; and in front of that, lying on the table, a folded bit of paper. Carmichael picked it up and opened it.

  It was his prescription for the nitrite of amyl.

  He hesitated a moment; then refolded the paper and put it in his vest-pocket.

  Seated in his car, with his hand on the lever, he turned to Scudder, who was watching him with curious eyes.

  “I’m very much obliged to you, Scudder, for taking me through the house. And I’ll be more obliged to you if you’ll just keep it to yourself—what I said to you about last night.”

  “Sure,” said the old man, nodding gravely. “I like ye, doc’, and that kinder talk might do ye harm here in Calvinton. We don’t hold much to dreams and visions down this way. But, say, ’twas a mighty interestin’ dream, wa’n’t it? I guess Miss Jean hones for them white pillars, many a day—they sorter stand for old times. They draw ye, don’t they?”

  “Yes, my friend,” said Carmichael as he moved the lever, “they speak of the past. There is a magic in those white pillars. They draw you.”

  9

  Tom Toothacre’s Ghost Story

  By Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Known in her day as a devoted abolitionist and women’s rights activist as well as an author, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, the daughter of a famous Calvinist preacher. She and her husband, Calvin Stowe, participated in the Underground Railroad, helping fugitive slaves escape the U.S. to Canada. She is most famous today as the author of the novel (later also a play) Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which detailed and condemned the mistreatment of black slaves. But she also wrote many other novels and stories. “Tom Toothacre’s Ghost Story” appeared in 1871.

  “What is it about that old house in Sherbourne?” said Aunt Nabby to Sam Lawson, as he sat drooping over the coals of a great fire one October evening.

  Aunt Lois was gone to Boston on a visit; and, the smart spice of her scepticism being absent, we felt the more freedom to start our story-teller on one of his legends.

  Aunt Nabby sat trotting her knitting-needles on a blue-mixed yarn stocking. Grandmamma was knitting in unison at the other side of the fire. Grandfather sat studying “The Boston Courier.” The wind outside was sighing in fitful wails, creaking the pantry-doors, occasionally puffing in a vicious gust down the broad throat of the chimney. It was a drizzly, sleety evening; and the wet lilac bushes now and then rattled and splashed against the window as the wind moaned and whispered through them.

  We boys had made preparation for a comfortable evening. We had enticed Sam to the chimney corner, and drawn him a mug of cider. We had set down a row of apples to roast on the hearth, which even now were giving faint sighs and sputters as their plump sides burst in the genial heat. The big oak back-log simmered and bubbled, and distilled large drops down amid the ashes; and the great hickory forestick had just burned out into solid bright coals, faintly skimmed over with white ashes. The whole area of the big chimney was full of a sleepy warmth and brightness just calculated to call forth fancies and visions. It only wanted somebody now to set Sam off; and Aunt Nabby broached the ever-interesting subject of haunted houses.

  “Wal, now, Miss Badger,” said Sam, “I ben over there, and walked round that are house consid’able; and I talked with Granny Hokum and Aunt Polly, and they’ve putty much come to the conclusion that they’ll hev to move out on’t. Ye see these ’ere noises, they keep ’em awake nights; and Aunt Polly, she gets ’stericky; and Hannah Jane, she says, ef they stay in the house, she can’t live with ’em no longer. And what can them lone women do without Hannah Jane? Why, Hannah Jane, she says these two months past she’s seen a woman, regular, walking up and down the front hall between twelve and one o’clock at night; and it’s jist the image and body of old Ma’am Tillotson, Parson Hokum’s mother, that everybody know’d was a thunderin’ kind o’ woman, that kep’ every thing in a muss while she was alive. What the old crittur’s up to now there ain’t no knowin’. Some folks seems to think it’s a sign Granny Hokum’s time’s comin’. But Lordy massy I says she to me, says she, ‘Why, Sam, I don’t know nothin’ what I’ve done, that Ma’am Tillotson should be set loose on me.’ Anyway they’ve all got so narvy, that Jed Hokum has ben up from Needham, and is goin’ to cart ’em all over to live with him. Jed, he’s for hushin’ on’t up, ’cause he says it brings a bad name on the property. Wal, I talked with Jed about it; and says I to Jed, says I, ‘now, ef you’ll take my advice, jist you give that a
re old house a regular overhaulin, and paint it over with tew coats o’ paint, and that are’ll clear ’em out, if any thing will. Ghosts is like bedbugs,—they can’t stan fresh paint,’ says I. ‘They allers clear out. I’ve seen it tried on a ship that got haunted.’”

  “Why, Sam, do ships get haunted?”

  “To be sure they do!—haunted the wust kind. Why, I could tell ye a story’d make your har rise on e’end, only I’m ’fraid of frightening boys when they’re jist going to bed.”

  “Oh! you can’t frighten Horace,” said my grandmother. “He will go and sit out there in the graveyard till nine o’clock nights, spite of all I tell him.”

  “Do tell, Sam!” we urged. “What was it about the ship?” Sam lifted his mug of cider, deliberately turned it round and round in his hands, eyed it affectionately, took a long drink, and set it down in front of him on the hearth, and began:—

  “Ye ’member I telled you how I went to sea down East, when I was a boy, ’long with Tom Toothacre. Wal, Tom, he reeled off a yarn one night that was ’bout the toughest I ever hed the pullin’ on. And it come all straight, too, from Tom. ’Twa’n’t none o’ yer hearsay: ’twas what he seen with his own eyes. Now, there wa’n’t no nonsense ’bout Tom, not a bit on’t ; and he wa’n’t afeard o’ the divil himself; and he ginally saw through things about as straight as things could be seen through. This ’ere happened when Tom was mate o’ ‘The Albatross,’ and they was a-runnin’ up to the Banks for a fare o’ fish. ‘The Albatross’ was as handsome a craft as ever ye see; and Cap’n Sim Witherspoon, he was skipper—a rail nice likely man he was. I heard Tom tell this ’ere one night to the boys on ‘The Brilliant,’ when they was all a-settin’ round the stove in the cabin one foggy night that we was to anchor in Frenchman’s Bay, and all kind o’ layin’ off loose.

  “Tom, he said they was having a famous run up to the Banks. There was a spankin’ southerly, that blew ’em along like all natur’; and they was hevin’ the best kind of a time, when this ’ere southerly brought a pesky fog down on ’em, and it grew thicker than hasty-puddin’. Ye see, that are’s the pester o’ these ’ere southerlies: they’s the biggest fog-breeders there is goin’. And so, putty soon, you couldn’t see half ship’s length afore you.

  “Wal, they all was down to supper, except Dan Sawyer at the wheel, when there come sich a crash as if heaven and earth was a-splittin’, and then a scrapin’ and thump bumpin’ under the ship, and gin ’em sich a h’ist that the pot o’ beans went rollin’, and brought up jam ag’in the bulk-head; and the fellers was keeled over,—men and pork and beans kinder permiscus.

  “‘The divil!’ says Tom Toothacre, ‘we’ve run down somebody. Look out, up there !’

  “Dan, he shoved the helm hard down, and put her up to the wind, and sung out, ‘Lordy massy! we’ve struck her right amidships!’

  “‘Struck what?’ they all yelled, and tumbled up on deck.

  “‘Why, a little schooner,’ says Dan. ‘Didn’t see her till we was right on her. She’s gone down tack and sheet. Look! there’s part o’ the wreck a-floating off: don’t ye see?’

  “Wal, they didn’t see, ’cause it was so thick you couldn’t hardly see your hand afore your face. But they put about, and sent out a boat, and kind o’ sarched round; but, Lordy massy ye might as well looked for a drop of water in the Atlantic Ocean. Whoever they was, it was all done gone and over with ’em for this life, poor critturs!

  “Tom says they felt confoundedly about it; but what could they do? Lordy massy! what can any on us do? There’s places where folks jest lets go ’cause they hes to. Things ain’t as they want ’em, and they can’t alter ’em. Sailors ain’t so rough as they look: they’z feelin’ critturs, come to put things right to ’em. And there wasn’t one on ’em who wouldn’t ’a’ worked all night for a chance o’ saving some o’ them poor fellows. But there ’twas, and ’twa’n’t no use trying.

  “Wal, so they sailed on; and by ’m by the wind kind o’ chopped round no’theast, and then come round east, and sot in for one of them regular east blows and drizzles that takes the starch out o’ fellers more’n a regular storm. So they concluded they might as well put into a little bay there, and come to anchor.

  “So they sot an anchor-watch, and all turned in.

  “Wal, now comes the particular curus part o’ Tom’s story; and it was more curus ’cause Tom was one that wouldn’t ’a’ believed no other man that had told it. Tom was one o’ your sort of philosophers. He was fer lookin’ into things, and wa’n’t in no hurry ’bout believin’; so that this ’un was more ’markable on account of it’s bein’ Tom that seen it than ef it had ben others.

  “Tom says that night he hed a pesky toothache that sort o’ kep’ grumblin’ and jumpin’ so he couldn’t go to sleep; and he lay in his bunk, a-turnin’ this way and that, till long past twelve o clock.

  “Tom had a ’thwart-ship bunk where he could see into every bunk on board, except Bob Coffin’s; and Bob was on the anchor-watch. Wal, he lay there, tryin’ to go to sleep, hearin’ the men snorin’ like bull-frogs in a swamp, and watchin’ the lantern a-swingin’ back and forward; and the sou’westers and pea-jackets were kinder throwin’ their long shadders up and down as the vessel sort o’ rolled and pitched,—for there was a heavy swell on,—and then he’d hear Bob Coffin tramp, tramp, trampin’ overhead,—for Bob had a pretty heavy foot of his own,—and all sort o’ mixed up together with Tom’s toothache, so he couldn’t get to sleep. Finally, Tom, he bit off a great chaw o’ ’baccy, and got it well sot in his cheek, and kind o’ turned over to lie on’t, and ease the pain. Wal, he says he laid a spell, and dropped off in a sort o’ doze, when he woke in sich a chill his teeth chattered, and the pain come on like a knife, and he bounced over, thinking the fire had gone out in the stove.

  “Wal, sure enough, he see a man a-crouchin’ over the stove, with his back to him, a-stretchin’ out his hands to warm ’em. He had on a sou’wester and a pea-jacket, with a red tippet round his neck; and his clothes was drippin’ as if he’d just come in from a rain.

  “‘What the divil!’ says Tom. And he riz right up, and rubbed his eyes. ‘Bill Bridges,’ says he, ‘what shine be you up to now?’ For Bill was a master oneasy crittur, and allers a-gettin’ up and walkin’ nights; and Tom, he thought it was Bill. But in a minute he looked over, and there, sure enough, was Bill, fast asleep in his bunk, mouth wide open, snoring like a Jericho ram’s-horn. Tom looked round, and counted every man in his bunk, and then says he, ‘Who the devil is this? for there’s Bob Coffin on deck, and the rest is all here.’

  “Wal, Tom wa’n’t a man to be put under too easy. He hed his thoughts about him allers; and the fust he thought in every pinch was what to do. So he sot considerin’ a minute, sort o’ winkin’ his eyes to be sure he saw straight, when, sure enough, there come another man backin’ down the companion-way.

  “‘Wal, there’s Bob Coffin, anyhow,’ says Tom to himself. But no, the other man, he turned: Tom see his face; and, sure as you live, it was the face of a dead corpse. Its eyes was sot, and it jest came as still across the cabin, and sot down by the stove, and kind o’ shivered, and put out its hands as if it was gettin’ warm.

  “Tom said that there was a cold air round in the cabin, as if an iceberg was comin’ near, and he felt cold chills running down his back; but he jumped out of his bunk, and took a step forward. ‘Speak!’ says he. ‘Who be you? and what do you want?’

  “They never spoke, nor looked up, but kept kind o’ shivering and crouching over the stove.

  “‘Wal,’ says Tom, ‘I’ll see who you be, anyhow.’ And he walked right up to the last man that come in, and reached out to catch hold of his coat-collar; but his hand jest went through him like moonshine, and in a minute he all faded away; and when he turned round the other one was gone too. Tom stood there, looking this way and that; but there warn’t nothing but the old stove, and the lantern swing
in’, and the men all snorin’ round in their bunks. Tom, he sung out to Bob Coffin. ‘Hullo, up there!’ says he. But Bob never answered, and Tom, he went up, and found Bob down on his knees, his teeth a-chatterin’ like a bag o’ nails, trying to say his prayers; and all he could think of was, ‘Now I lay me,’ and he kep going that over and over. Ye see, boys, Bob was a drefful wicked, swearin’ crittur, and hadn’t said no prayers since he was tew years old, and it didn’t come natural to him. Tom give a grip on his collar, and shook him. ‘Hold yer yawp,’ said he. ‘What you howlin’ about? What’s up?’

  “‘Oh, Lordy massy!’ says Bob, ‘we’re sent for,—all on us,—there’s been two on ’em: both on ’em went right by me!’

  “Wal, Tom, he hed his own thoughts; but he was bound to get to the bottom of things, anyway. Ef ’twas the devil, well and good—he wanted to know it. Tom jest wanted to hev the matter settled one way or t’other: so he got Bob sort o’ stroked down, and made him tell what he saw.

  “Bob, he stood to it that he was a-standin’ right for’ard, a-leanin’ on the windlass, and kind o’ hummin’ a tune, when he looked down, and see a sort o’ queer light in the fog; and he went and took a look over the bows, when up came a man’s head in a sort of sou’wester, and then a pair of hands, and catched at the bob-stay; and then the hull figger of a man riz right out o’ the water, and clim up on the martingale till he could reach the jib-stay with his hands, and then he swung himself right up onto the bowsprit, and stepped aboard, and went past Bob, right aft, and down into the cabin. And he hadn’t more’n got down, afore he turned round, and there was another comin’ in over the bowsprit, and he went by him, and down below: so there was two on ’em, jest as Tom had seen in the cabin.

  “Tom he studied on it a spell, and finally says he, ‘Bob, let you and me keep this ’ere to ourselves, and see ef it’ll come again. Ef it don’t, well and good: ef it does—why, we’ll see about it.’