The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

I staggered into the kitchen, the basket in my hand, and set it on the table. Just then some embers of the fire fell in, and a faint little flame rose and glimmered on the bright dishes on the dresser, even revealing a tin candlestick, with a box of matches by it. I was well-nigh mad with the darkness and fear, and, seizing the matches, I struck one, and held it to the candle. Presently it caught, and I glanced round the room. It was just as usual, just as the servants had left it, and above the mantelpiece the eight-day clock ticked away solemnly. While I looked at it it struck two, and in a dim fashion I was thankful for its friendly sound.

Then I looked at the basket. It was of very fine white plaited work with black bands running up it, and a chequered black-and-white handle. I knew it well. I have never seen another like it. I bought it years ago at Madeira, and gave it to my poor wife. Ultimately it was washed overboard in a gale in the Irish Channel. I remember that it was full of newspapers and library books, and I had to pay for them. Many and many is the time that I have seen that identical basket standing there on that very kitchen table, for my dear wife always used it to put flowers in, and the shortest cut from that part of the garden where her roses grew was through the kitchen. She used to gather the flowers, and then come in and place her basket on the table, just where it stood now, and order the dinner.

All this passed through my mind in a few seconds as I stood there with the candle in my hand, feeling indeed half dead, and yet with my mind painfully alive, I began to wonder if I had gone asleep, and was the victim of a nightmare. No such thing. I wish it had only been a nightmare. A mouse ran out along the dresser and jumped on to the floor, making quite a crash in the silence.

What was in the basket? I feared to look, and yet some power within me forced me to it. I drew near to the table and stood for a moment listening to the sound of my own heart. Then I stretched out my hand and slowly raised the lid of the basket.

“I could not give you my life, so I have brought you my death!” Those were her words. What could she mean – what could it all mean? I must know or I should go mad. There it lay, whatever it was, wrapped up in linen.

Ah, heaven help me! It was a small bleached human skull!

A dream! After all, only a dream by the fire, but what a dream. And I am to be married tomorrow.

Can I be married tomorrow?

The Haunted House

Edith Nesbit

Location:  Ormehurst Rectory, Crittenden, Kent.

Time:  December, 1913.

Eyewitness Description:  “I did not say it was a ghost. I only say that there is something about this house which is not ordinary. Several of my assistants have had to leave, the thing got on their nerves . . .”

Author:  Edith Nesbit (1858–1924) was another innovator who, like her friend Rider Haggard, became a popular contributor to the Christmas issues of the Strand magazine. Her work is also regarded as having been an influence on a number of writers, notably J. K. Rowling, who has admitted that Nesbit’s classic fantasies The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904), The Story of the Amulet (1907) and The Enchanted Castle (1908) delighted her in childhood and helped to inspire her to write the phenomenally successful Harry Potter series. Born in Kennington, Edith apparently lived in two haunted houses as child, which undoubtedly gave her a good grounding for some of her later stories and novels. It was, however, a non-fantasy children’s book, The Railway Children (1904), that made her famous and her future seemed secure. Unhappily, the collapse of her marriage brought about by her husband’s philandering meant she had to earn her living by the pen. She followed Rider Haggard’s lead by writing “The Haunted House” for the Christmas 1913 number of the Strand. The story is set in Kent – a county which she loved – and it is interesting to wonder if there is anything of either of the two real haunted houses in which she lived in the sinister Ormehurst Rectory.

It was by the merest accident that Desmond ever went to the Haunted House. He had been away from England for six years, and the nine months’ leave taught him how easily one drops out of one’s place.

He had taken rooms at The Greyhound before he found that there was no reason why he should stay in Elmstead rather than in any other of London’s dismal outposts. He wrote to all the friends whose addresses he could remember, and settled himself to await their answers.