The Banshee Part 15

Some years later, just before the death of my mother, at about the same time of day and in precisely the same place, the head was again seen, this time by my younger sister, the one who had heard the ghostly chuckle.

I think, without doubt, that the chuckle, no less than the head, must be attributed to the malignant Banshee. I may add, perhaps, without digressing too much, that supernatural happenings, apart from the Banshee, were a.s.sociated with both my parents' deaths. On the night following my father's murder, and on every subsequent night for a period of six weeks, my mother and the servants were aroused regularly at twelve o'clock by a sound, as of someone hammering down the lids of packing-cases, issuing from the room in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the house, which my father had always used as a study. They then heard footsteps ascending the stairs and pausing outside each bedroom in turn, which they all recognised as my father's, and, occasionally, my old nurse used to see the door of the night nursery open, and a light, like the light of a candle outside, whilst at the same time she would hear, proceeding from the landing, a quick jabber, jabber, jabber, as of someone talking very fast, and trying very hard to say something intelligible. No one was ever seen when this voice and the footsteps, said to be my father's, were heard, but this circ.u.mstance may be accounted for by the fact that my father, just before leaving Ireland, had remarked to my mother that, should anything happen to him abroad, he would in his spirit appear to her; and she, growing pale at the mere thought, begged him to do no such thing, whereupon he had laughingly replied:

"Very well then, I will find some other means of communicating with you."

Many manifestations of a similar nature to the foregoing, and also, like the foregoing, having nothing to do with the Banshee, occurred immediately after the death of my mother, but of these I must give an account on some future occasion.

Years pa.s.sed, and nothing more was seen or heard of the Banshee till I was grown up. After leaving school I went to Dublin to read with Dr Chetwode Crawley, in Ely Place, for the Royal Irish Constabulary, and I might, I think, have pa.s.sed into that Force, had it not been for the fact that at the preliminary medical examination some never-to-be-forgotten and, as I thought then, intensely ill-natured doctor, rejected me. Accordingly, I never entered for the literary, but returned home thoroughly dispirited, and faced with the urgent necessity of at once looking around for something to do. However, in a very short time I had practically settled on going to America to a ranch out West (a most disastrous venture as it subsequently proved to be), and it was immediately after I had reached this decision that my first actual experience with what I believe to have been the malevolent family Banshee occurred. It happened in the same house in which the other supernatural occurrences had taken place. All the family, saving myself, were away at the time, and I was the sole occupant of one of the landings, the servants being all together on another floor.

I had gone to bed early, and had been sleeping for some time, when I was awakened about two o'clock by a loud noise, for which I could not account, and which reverberated in my ears for fully half a minute. I was sitting up, still wondering what on earth could have produced it, when, immediately over my head, I heard a laugh, an abrupt kind of chuckle, that was so malicious and evil that I could not possibly attribute it to any human agency, but rather to some ent.i.ty of wholly satanic origin, and which my instinct told me was one of our attendant Banshees. I got out of bed, struck a light, and made a thorough investigation, not only of the room, but the landing outside. There was no one there, nothing, as far as I could see, that could in any way explain the occurrence. I threw open the bedroom window and looked out. The night was beautiful--the sky brilliantly illuminated with moon and stars--and everything perfectly still, excepting for the very faintest rustling of the leaves as the soft night breeze swept through the branches and set them in motion. I listened for some time, but, the hush continuing, I at last got back again into bed, and eventually fell asleep. I mentioned the incident in the morning to the servants, and they, too, had heard it.

A short time afterwards I went to the United States, and had the most unhappy and calamitous experience in my whole career.

My next experience of the Banshee happened two or three years later, when, having returned from America, I was living in Cornwall, running a small preparatory school, princ.i.p.ally for delicate boys.

The house I occupied was quite new, in fact I was the first tenant, and had watched it being built. It was the last house in a terrace, and facing it was a cliff, at the foot of which ran a steep path leading to the beach. At this particular time there was no one in the house but my aged housekeeper, by name Mrs Bolitho, and myself, and whilst Mrs Bolitho slept in a room on the first floor, I was the sole occupant of the floor immediately above it.

One night I had been sitting up writing, rather later than usual, and, being very tired, had dropped off to sleep, almost immediately after getting into bed. I woke about two o'clock hearing a curious kind of tapping noise coming along the pa.s.sage that ran parallel with my bed.

Wondering what it could be, I sat up and listened. There were only bare boards outside, and the noise was very clear and resonant, but difficult to a.n.a.lyse. It might have been produced by the very high heels of a lady's boot or shoe, or the bony foot of a skeleton. I could compare it with nothing else. On it came, tap, tap, tap, till it finally seemed to halt outside my door. There was then a pause, during which I could feel somebody or something was listening most earnestly, making sure, I thought, whether I was awake or not, and then a terrific crash on one of the top panels of the door. After this there was silence. I got up, and, somewhat timidly opening the door, for I more than half expected to find myself confronted with something peculiarly dreadful and uncanny, peeped cautiously out. There was nothing to be seen, however; nothing but the cold splendour of the moon, which, s.h.i.+ning through a window nearly opposite me, filled the entire pa.s.sage with its beams. I went into each of the rooms on the landing in turn, but they were all empty, and there was nothing anywhere that could in any way account for what I had heard. In the morning I questioned Mrs Bolitho, but she had heard nothing.

"For a wonder," she said, "I slept very soundly all through the night, and only awoke when it was time to get up."

Two days later I received tidings of the death of my uncle, Colonel John Vize O'Donnell of Trough.[17] He had died almost suddenly, his death occurring a few hours after I had heard the footsteps and the knock.

Three years after this experience I had moved into another house in the same town--also a new house, and also the last in a terrace. At the rear, and on one side of it, was a garden, flanked by a hedge, beyond which were fields that led in almost unbroken succession to the coast. It could not be altogether described as occupying a lonely position, although the fields were little frequented after dusk.

Well, one night my wife and I were awakened about midnight by a series of the most agonising and heart-rending screams, which, if like anything earthly at all, seemed to us to be more like the screams of a woman in the very direst distress. The cries were so terrible and sounded so near to us, almost, in fact, in the room, that we were both horribly alarmed, and hardly knew what to say or think.

"Whatever is happening?" my wife whispered, catching hold of me by the arm, "and what is it?"

"I don't know," was my reply, "unless it is the Banshee, for there is n.o.body else that could make such a noise."

The screams continued for some seconds, and then died away in one long-drawn-out wail or sob. I waited for some minutes to see if there was a repet.i.tion of the sounds, and, there being none, I at length got up, and not, I confess, without considerable apprehensions, went out on to the landing, where I found several of the other inmates of the house collected together discussing with scared faces the screams which they, too, had heard. An examination of the house and grounds was at once made, but nothing was discerned that could in any way account for the sounds, and I adhered to my opinion that it must have been the Banshee; which opinion was very considerably strengthened, when, a few days later, I received the news that an aunt of mine, an O'Donnell, in County Kerry, had pa.s.sed away within twenty-four hours of the time the screaming had occurred. It is, perhaps, a dozen years or so since we left Cornwall, and my latest experience of the Banshee took place in the house in which we are now living near the Crystal Palace.

The experience occurred in connection with the death of my youngest sister. On the night preceding her decease I dreamed most vividly that I saw the figure of a female dressed in some loose-flowing, fantastic garment come up the path leading to the house, and knock very loudly several times, in quick succession, at the back door. I was going to answer, when a sudden terror held me back.

"It's the Banshee," a voice whispered in my ear, "the Banshee. Don't let her in, she's coming for one of you."

This so startled me that I awoke. I then found that my wife was awake also, trembling all over, and in a great state of excitement.

"Did you hear that tremendous knock?" she whispered.

"What!" I replied. "You don't mean to say there really was a knock? Why, I fancied it was only in my dream."

"You may have dreamt it," she said, "but I didn't--I heard it; it was at this door, not at the front door. I say knock, but it was really a crash--a terrific crash on the top panel of the door."

We anxiously waited to see if there would be a repet.i.tion, but, nothing happening, we lay down again, and eventually went to sleep.

On the following day we received a telegram informing us that at ten o'clock that morning my sister had pa.s.sed away.

Since then, I am glad to relate I have not again come in contact with the Banshee. At the same time, however, there are occasions when I feel very acutely that she is not far away, and I am seldom, if ever, perhaps, absolutely free from an impression that she hovers near at hand, ready to manifest herself the moment either death or disaster threaten any member of my family. Moreover, that she takes a peculiar interest in my personal affairs, I have, alas, only too little reason to doubt.

ADDENDA

In reply to a letter of mine asking for particulars of the Banshee alleged to be attached to the Inchiquin family, I received the following:

"I think the name (of the Banshee) was OBENHEIM, but I am not sure.

Two or three people have told me that she appeared before my grandfather's death, but none of them either saw or heard her, but they had met people who did say they had heard her."

Writing also for particulars of the Banshee to a cousin of the head of one of the oldest Irish clans, I received a long letter, from which I will quote the following:

"I have heard 'the Banshee' cry. It is simply like a woman wailing in the most unearthly fas.h.i.+on. At the time an O'Neill was in this house, and she subsequently heard that her eldest brother had died on that night between twelve a.m. and three a.m., when we all of us heard the Banshee wailing. I heard her also at my mother's death, and at the death of my husband's eldest sister. The cry is not always quite the same. When my dear mother died, it was a very low wail which seemed to go round and round the house.

"At the death of one of the great O'Neill family, we located the cry at one end of the house. When my sister-in-law died I was wakened up by a loud scream in my room in the middle of the night. She had died at that instant. I heard the Banshee one day, driving in the country, at a distance. Sometimes the Banshee, who follows old families, is heard by the whole village. Some people say she is red-haired and wears a long flowing white dress. She is supposed to wring her long thick hair. Others say she appears as a small woman dressed in black.

"Such an apparition did appear to me in the daytime before my mother-in-law died."

The writer of this letter has asked me not to publish her name, but I have it by me in case corroboration is needed.

In reference to the O'Donnell Banshee, Chapter XIII., my sister, Petronella O'Donnell, writes:

"I remember vividly my first experience of our Banshee. I had never heard of it at the time, and in fact I have only heard of it in recent years.

"It happened one day that I went into the hall, in the daytime, I forget the exact hour, and as I climbed the stairway, being yet a small child, I happened to look up. There, looking over the rails at the top of the stairway, was an object so horrible that I shudder when I think of it even now. In a greenish halo of light the most terrible head imagination could paint--only this was no imagination, I knew it was a real object--was looking at me with apparently fiendish fire in its light and leering eyes. The head was neither man nor woman's; it was ages old; it might have been buried and dug up again, it was so skull-like and shrunken; its pallor was horrible, grey and mildewy; its hair was long. Its mouth leered, and its light and cruel eyes seemed determined to hurt me to the utmost, with the terror it inspired. I remember how my childish heart rebelled against its cowardice in trying to hurt and frighten so small a child. Gazing back at it in petrified horror, I slowly returned to the room I had come from. I resolved never to tell anyone about it, I was so proud and reserved by nature.

"I had then two secret terrors hidden in my Irish heart. The first one I have never till recently spoken of to anyone; it happened before I saw this awful head. I was asleep, but yet I knew I was _not_ asleep. Suddenly, down the road that led to our home in Ireland came an object so terrible that for years after my child's heart used to stand still at the memory of it. The object I saw coming down to our house was a procession--there were several pairs of horses being led by grooms in livery, pulling an old coach with them. It was a large and awful looking old coach! The horses were headless, and the men who led them were headless, and even now as I write, the awful terror of it all comes over me, it was a terror beyond words. I _knew_, I felt certain they had come to cut off my head! This procession of headless things stopped at our door, the men entered the house, chased me up to the very top of it, and then cut off my head! I can remember saying to myself, 'Now I am dead, I am dead, I can suffer no more.'

"They then went back to the coach, and the procession moved away and was lost to view.

"Night after night I lay s.h.i.+vering with terror, for months, for years, there was such a _lurid_ horror about this headless procession.

"Some weeks after I saw the head, we heard that our father had been killed about that time in Egypt, murdered it was supposed. My mother died some years afterwards.

"One evening, when I was grown up, we were sitting round the fire with friends, and someone said:

"'I don't believe in ghosts. Have you ever met anyone who has seen one? I have not!'

"A sudden impulse came over me--never to that moment had I ever mentioned the head--and, leaning forward, I said:

"'I have seen a ghost; I saw the most terrible head when I was a child, looking over the staircase.'

"To my astonishment my sister, who was sitting near me, said:

"'I saw a most terrible head, too, looking over the staircase.'