The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

It was after one o’clock when Orsen led the way out of the château. They stumbled through tangled undergrowth, barking their shins on unseen obstacles for nearly twenty minutes until Neils halted in a clearing among the trees which was almost filled by a large grassy mound.

“What’s this?” the captain asked, flashing his torch.

“It’s an ice-house,” the little man replied as he pulled open a thick, slanting wooden trap almost hidden by moss and ivy. “In the old days, before refrigerators were invented, people used to cut blocks of ice out of their lakes when they were frozen in the winter and store them in these places. The temperature remained constant owing to 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?”