The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

Author:  Sir Arthur Gray (1852–1940) who wrote under the pseudonym “Ingulphus” for The Cambridge Review, Chanticlere and other literary periodicals of the early years of the 20th century, was the Master of Jesus College and another important figure in the “James Circle”. He, too, was an antiquary, though his interests focused very much on his own college with its long, lurid and occasionally bloody history. The stories which he wrote under his pen-name were often given intriguing titles like “To Two Cambridge Magicians”, “The Necromancer” and “The Burden of Dead Books”. However, Sir Arthur’s rich and mellifluous tones were apparently best heard at the Christmas gathering in 1918 when he presented the grisly story of “The Everlasting Club” – and, after reading it, one can only guess at the effect it might have had on the circle of men in James’ candle-lit room. This tale, like several of the best works by “Ingulphus”, was subsequently collected in a volume curiously entitled, Tedious Brief Tales of Granta and Gramarye (1919), now one of the rarest volumes of ghost stories from its period.

There is a chamber in Jesus College the existence of which is probably known to few who are now resident, and fewer still have penetrated into it or even seen its interior. It is on the right hand of the landing on the top floor of the precipitous staircase in the angle of the cloister next the Hall – a staircase which for some forgotten story connected with it is traditionally called “Cow Lane”. The padlock which secures its massive oaken door is very rarely unfastened, for the room is bare and unfurnished. Once it served as a place of deposit for superfluous kitchen ware, but even that ignominious use has passed from it, and it is now left to undisturbed solitude and darkness. For I should say that it is entirely cut off from the light of the outer day by the walling up, some time in the eighteenth century, of its single window, and such light as ever reaches it comes from the door, when rare occasion causes it to be opened.

Yet at no extraordinarily remote day this chamber has evidently been tenanted, and, before it was given up to darkness, was comfortably fitted, according to the standard of comfort which was known in college in the days of George II. There is still a roomy fireplace before which legs have been stretched and wine and gossip have circulated in the days of wigs and brocade. For the room is spacious and, when it was lighted by the window looking eastward over the fields and common, it must have been a cheerful place for a sociable don.

Let me state in brief, prosaic outline the circumstances which account for the gloom and solitude in which this room has remained now for nearly a century and a half.

In the second quarter of the eighteenth century the University possessed a great variety of clubs of a social kind. There were clubs in college parlours and clubs in private rooms, or in inns and coffee-houses: clubs flavoured with politics, clubs clerical, clubs purporting to be learned and literary. Whatever their professed particularity, the aim of each was convivial. Some of them, which included undergraduates as well as seniors, were dissipated enough, and in their limited provincial way aped the profligacy of such clubs as the Hell Fire Club of London notoriety.

Among these last was one which was at once more select and of more evil fame than any of its fellows. By a singular accident, presently to be explained, the Minute Book of this Club, including the years from 1738 to 1766, came into the hands of a Master of Jesus College, and though, so far as I am aware, it is no longer extant, I have before me a transcript of it which, though it is in a recent handwriting, presents in a bald shape such a singular array of facts that I must ask you to accept them as veracious. The original book is described as a stout duodecimo volume bound in red leather and fastened with red silken strings. The writing in it occupied some 40 pages, and ended with the date 2 November 1766.