Part 24 (2/2)
I had no difficulty in finding out what sort of reputation the castle bore. Every one agreed that it was haunted. I asked one elderly woman who had lived all her life in St. Andrews, and who knew the whole country intimately, what she thought of S. Castle.
”Horrible, haunted old place. I can't think how the Youngs could have taken it,” she replied.
”But what sort of ghosts haunt it?” I asked.
”Old Sir James and his son. They were in league with the Devil, and the son, another James, used to murder people and throw them down into the dungeon. He was beheaded in the reign of Charles the First.”
”Have you known any one who has ever seen anything?” I persisted.
”No, but my father remembered as a young man seeing a pile of human bones being removed from the dungeon, and buried in the churchyard. The late people lived to be very old, and always kept Sir James' wing shut up. Now the place has changed hands, and probably the Youngs will never be disturbed. They are installed in the most modern part of the house, and won't need to use the haunted wing.”
It must not be supposed that all haunted houses or rooms are unpleasant to live in. People in the flesh are either pleasant or unpleasant, disturbing or tranquil to live with, and so it is with their astral counterparts. When they elect to haunt the scenes of their old activities some ghosts are so inoffensive that they can be lived with under the most tranquil conditions.
One autumn we took a shooting lodge in the far North of Scotland, and though I recognized at once that it was frequented by an ent.i.ty from the ”other side,” I experienced no uneasy feelings whatever.
We had not been in residence longer than three hours before this ghost put in an appearance.
We were in a lively confusion of unpacking and settling down. Several large trunks had been carried upstairs, and set down on a wide corridor on to which the bedrooms opened.
I was on my knees unpacking one of those trunks, our dog ”Pompey” was seated beside me superintending matters, and my maid was standing at my side waiting to carry various articles into the different rooms. The hour was midday, and the early autumn suns.h.i.+ne flooded the house.
Suddenly ”Pompey” growled, and turned towards the staircase, with all his hair bristling. I also looked round and saw a tall, quite ordinary man mounting the staircase.
I thought nothing of this, supposing him to be the factor whom we expected, and I rose to my feet at once. He came on along the corridor straight towards us, and looking directly at us, but when within about ten feet from where we stood he suddenly vanished.
I heard my maid give a sharp exclamation, and at the same instant ”Pompey” made a furious dash at the spot, and growling angrily began to pursue something invisible to us, down the stairs.
I followed as quickly as I could. I feared ”Pompey” would be lost if he ran out into the deer forest surrounding us on all sides. I caught him at the deer fence, edging the vegetable garden, and induced him with some difficulty to return to the house.
My maid and I compared notes. What I had seen accorded exactly with what she had seen. She soon got over her uncomfortable experience, and though I never saw this ent.i.ty again, I often felt him near me. He was, however, of so colorless a personality, that he never proved in the least disturbing to any one in the house.
At the time of which I write the Astral Plane was not so generally recognized as an actual residential quarter as it is now. In these days a halfway house for the soul was not considered necessary for Protestants. They either went direct to heaven or h.e.l.l, according to their manner of life on earth. The Catholics alone had their Purgatory, to which the departed souls repaired, there to slough off the pa.s.sions of earth and fit themselves for higher realms.
Purgatory and the Astral Plane mean the same thing now to the vast majority of thinkers. A halfway house for the soul. A condition of consciousness interpenetrating this earth, which may actually be visited under certain conditions by those still possessing a physical body, an abode so contiguous to this world as to make the words of the Poet literally true--
”All houses wherein men have lived and died are haunted houses.”
In these days I used to get severely chaffed on the subject of the Astral Plane. Frivolous young things would say to me, ”h.e.l.lo! been on the Astral Plane lately?”
One day I was undergoing a certain amount of good-natured chaff from a number of young people at Dunrobin Castle. I defended my beliefs vigorously, and at last the present Lady Londonderry, then Miss Chaplin, the Duke's niece, challenged me to pick out the haunted room in the Castle.
I had never at that time been in any part of the building save in one bedroom, and the public rooms. I at once took up the challenge, and the Duke remarked that I had my work cut out for me, as several of the rooms had a reputation for being haunted.
I replied that I would undertake to pick out a room where life was still actively carried on by those who had suffered something terrible on that spot in the past, and who were now denizens of the Astral Plane.
A small crowd of us then started, led by Miss Chaplin, and we went from room to room. She opened the door and remained with the others on the threshold. I walked into each room alone and gathered impressions.
In several of the rooms I felt the presence of astral ent.i.ties, but nothing of a strong or unpleasant nature. At last we came to a room occupied by a maid, sitting alone, sewing, and I felt instantly that my quest was at an end.
There was a sharp atmosphere of anguish that was quite unmistakable; some ghastly tragedy had taken place within those four walls, but I said nothing before the sewing woman. I felt drawn towards the window, the trouble was centered there. If I remember rightly, the room was high up, and overlooking, not the sea, but a paved courtyard.
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