THE REPUBLICAN

January 29, 1897

 

BRAINARD’S GHOST

Charles Rollin Brainard Tells In a Thrilling Story his Adventure

In a Haunted House while Hunting for a Ghost.

 

                        For a ghost the wide world over,

                                    And a ghost can ne’er hurt, I trow;

                        Aye, a ghost is only a midnight rover,

                                    We’ll drink to his health and let him go.

            I do not care to be regarded as a professional ghost hunter, yet I have hunted ghosts on several occasions and always run them to earth.  There was in my college days a certain old yellow farmhouse some five miles distant that was claimed to be haunted.  “Haunted” was a happy word to me.  It was like a full milk cocoanut.  We, that is, this committee of one, determined to investigate the rumor, and the more we investigated the more the “haunted” grew.  The facts as developed on studied inquiry, were, an old farm house set back in a field, standing by day in a stained yellow and lonely grandeur, and by night a prey to hideous moans and groanings that had driven away during a period of two or three years, every family that had gone into it.

            Where the sounds came from no one had ever been able to tell.  The house was an ordinary two-and-a-half story farm house with various sections and additions built on from time to time, giving it a spread out, setting hen, rambling appearance, which with the emptiness of the landscape, afforded a good field for weirdness of imagination and exaggeration of ghostly ideas.

            The older part of the house dated back to the middle ages, or the time of Charlemagne, or the Fall of the Roman Empire.  I do not know which.  At any rate it was old enough to be either or all.

            Rumor had a murdered peddler, also a dying prisoner in the shape o a British soldier, as the hero of some terrible torture.  Another story was that the bone of infants were buried there, but I did not take any stock in that for infants cannot hurt except when they expectorate too lavishly.  Another was a maiden fair with golden hair, and a dagger in her heart; because in pain she’d lost her swain and they’d been forced to part.

            The story that affected me the most was that of a miser, ill-gotten wealth, a death by fright in the cellar, on whose walls he had drawn outlines of his victims, some of whom had died in his presence, and who rumor also said had been there buried.  It was also currently reported that his own bones rested there under the straw where he had miserably perished, but no one had ever been found with courage enough to go down through the rotten and broken cellar door to investigate.

            This part of the result of my investigation decided me on seeking a companion for the adventure and making a visit at the earliest moment.  The place was avoided by every one.  The feeling of terror with which the farmers in the vicinity had become inspired had caused the removal of a certain school house to another locality, that their children might not be brought within even the horizon of the ill-omened place.  I found it hard work to get any one to join me in my enterprise.  Every blessed nephew of his uncle was ready for a frolic, even with a ghost, but from that particular ghost they begged to be excused.  I was thoroughly determined on hunting the thing down, but frankly, I did not dare go alone and I cautiously canvassed the entire college before I found a companion who had the nerve to pledge his word and then keep it.  For my part, I did not fear anything, but the experience of that night caused me to change my mind.

            I finally got Joe Blank interested.  Poor fellow, he was afterward one of the victims in the Custer massacre.  He was a perfect dare devil if the Lord ever manufactured one, and one, too, who did not fear a groan in the dark.

            There is a great difference in daredevils.  There is the sunlight dare devil who is like a great many soldiers, mighty elegant on parade, but there is no bravery except in the uniform.  The true soldier does not need either sunlight or uniform to make him brave, and the man who needs a crowd to back him up against a ghost I wanted nothing to do with.

            Then there is the bushwhacker dare devil, and that’s the man to hunt ghosts with.  Joe was one of that stamp.  Thin, wiry, a perfect athlete, reticent, but with “business” in his eye, he took in the idea.  His retiring manner had prevented our earlier acquaintance, and so it happened he was the last whom I approached in reference to my project.

            He said:  “Yes, I’ll go with you, but how many fellows in the college know about this project of yours?”

            “Every one,” said I, “but each and every one has positively declined to join the circus.  They gave various excuses ‘study, you know;’ ‘nonsense, you know;’ ‘fool hardy experiment, you know; that’s what they say.”

            “Yet,” said Joe, “they are the very ones to laugh loudest if you back out, and will say ‘I told you so.’”

            “That is the very reason,” said I, “why I am determined to go through and hunt the thing to the bottom by a personal investigation.”

            “All right, I’ll go with you, but let us say nothing about it, so that if we fail there can be no laugh.  If we succeed in solving the mystery, the laugh will be on our side.”

            This conversation occurred on the last day of the year.  As evening approached the sky grew dark; snow filled the air; the wind began rising, and the outlook was a wild, weird night.

            We decided on going immediately and entering the premises, then await development.  For an outfit, Joe carried a dark lantern, an abundance of matches, a revolver and a stout cane.  My weapons were matches, a light club, a dirk knife and a coil of stout rope we could not explain, but we took it.

            The dismal howl of the wintry blast as it swirled the snow in our faces, was our greeting as we entered the enclosure, or rather field, where the old house stood.  The night was closing in and we walked around the rambling structure and tried each door and window.  Everything was securely fastened.  We were doubtful about effecting an entrance without breaking a window, when Joe suggested there might be an outside cellar trap which, covered by the snow, we had missed.  We searched and sure enough we found it, covered by a growing snowdrift, a badly broken cellar door.

            Joe held the lantern in his left hand and grasping his revolver entered while I held the door open.  I followed with my club ready for use and dirk knife between my teeth.  We searched every apartment.  Sounds were abundant.  The storm outside had increased and there were evidently broken or open windows somewhere for we felt the cold gusts and could easily construe the wailings of the wind into anything not pleasurable.  That, however, was not what we were after.  We knew the sound of the wind when we heard it, and we did not intend to let our imaginative faculties get the better of us especially as it was not more than eight or nine o’clock in the evening.

            The rooms were empty.  What doubtless had been the general sitting room occupied about the middle of the house and had an enormous fireplace.  We tried to examine the interior of the chimney but the fierceness of the gusts that drove into our faces convinced us that it would be a cold place for ghosts and we turned in another direction.

            A few odds and ends were in the pantry and an occasional rat hole showed a place of exit for the rodents when the supplies of food had failed.  The kitchen, woodshed and closets gave abundant evidence of non-occupancy for a long time; the windows and doors were all securely locked or hooked and nailed on the inside, and we felt sure we could go with safety into the rooms above unless the ghost came through a rat or key hole, or perhaps down the chimney.

            The chamber stairway door opened readily and we ascended.  The wind had risen to a tempest and snow gusts were abundant.  Lines and curves of snow were scattered fantastically here and there on the floor and with every twist and swirl of the wind there was a sigh or a moan as the raw air soughed through ragged holes in the glass.

            An uncanny crevice in the roof of a back chamber caused a sound that under other circumstances would have chilled the marrow.  It came like the piercing cry of a lost soul from the outside night and grew in intensity as we waited.  We turned to retrace our steps when there came a shriek from the wind that stayed us where we were.  It rose and fell with a peculiar sadness. Joe turned and whispered “close up.”  I pressed up close behind him and he shut off the light.  We were in total darkness and in the midst of a pandemonium of sighs and groans and shriekings varied by moans and demonic laughter that no orchestral power ever equaled, nor could even approach.  There was fascination in it, but there was also terror.  We stood in the garret, and in the very midst of the wild hubbub.  To be frank we enjoyed it for we knew what it was.

            Without turning the light on, Joe moved slightly forward and I pressed his body in a lock step.  We had not taken more than three or four steps when a wilder chorus burst upon us, a gust of wind swept a cold snowfall into our faces, and for the first time I had a sensation of chill down the back.

            “We’ll turn on the light,” said Joe, “and go into the outer part.”  But Joe didn’t turn on the light.  Something had happened to the slide. Either Joe was nervous and would not own it or else a hidden imperfection in the working gear had suddenly put a stop to our lighted pathway.

            “Match,” said Joe.  I struck a match and the wind blew it out.  “Feel for the other room,” said Joe.  And we felt.  Reaching out our hands we sought in various directions for something to touch.  Joe felt in one direction, I in another.  Unfortunately, Joe made a misstep and one leg went down a stove pipe hole and the lamp went out and also out of Joe’s hand.  As if enjoying our mishap, the wind and snow and the accompanying ragings in the music of the tempest increased to apparently ten-fold their former fury.

            There was no help for it.  As Joe attempted to withdraw from the unfriendly aperture he tore his trousers and scratched his leg rather unpleasantly; but we were in for it – at least he was – and he made the best of it to get out.

            “There’s the dickens in this adventure,” whispered Joe, “but let us get this lantern lighted as soon as possible.  My leg is bleeding like blazes, I know it is, for there is a warm trickle, and it will be best to look after it.”

            We tried match after match and made every effort to find the lantern, the lost and sleeping beacon to our safety.

            The lamp was gone, and evidently gone “for keeps” down between the clapboards and the plastering. We had to give up the search, concluding to carefully utilize our matches in the prosecution of the ghost search and let the lamp go.

            We sat for a long time and when thoroughly reconciled to our loss, we locked step again and set out for the front room.  In each one we investigated what we were able with a carefully shielded match and then passed on.

            On coming to the door leading to the staircase we found the door open.

            “Did we not shut it?” asked Joe.

            “Yes, and the wind blew it open.”

            “Never,” said Joe, “I know I latched it.”

            I seized him by the arm while my teeth fairly clattered out a “Hush!”

            There was no need.  He had heard what I heard and felt what I felt.  A low sad tone that came from – well, where?  We waited.  Again it rose amid the shriekings of the tempest, and we heard it too, in the between times. It was terribly sad, floating like a wail and losing itself in a sob which had no connection with the wind or the snow or ourselves.

            “By the eternal,” said Joe “we have business before us now.  This is no child’s play.”

            “It certainly is not up here,” said I, “let’s go down to it.”

            We slowly descended to the first floor and determined to search every room as before.  On entering the room with the great fireplace, we trod upon crusted particles of soot that had become dislodged from the interior of the chimney and scattered over the floor.  It was not a pleasing addition to the cadences of the night.  Its rasping crush grated unpleasantly on the nerves.

            Joe felt his way with the cane in his left hand, feeling as a blind man feels, his revolver in his right, while I left handed my club and clung tenaciously to my knife with my right.

            The soughings of the wind up stairs had lost some of their fierceness, owing to distance, but the groan, the death like moan, the agonizing sob which was not born of the tempest and which we could not locate, was increasing.  We were in the large room, as we afterward reckoned, but our stock of matches was getting low and we were obliged to use the greatest caution.  Yet we satisfied ourselves that it was time to investigate the cellar and toward the cellar we went.

            As I had put the brace against the door, I felt it my duty to remove it.  The removal was silently made; in fact every move we made was in silence.  Every nerve was strained to the utmost to distinguish and locate the mysterious sounds where so far, baffled our keenest surmises.

            Joe was probably half way down the cellar stair way and I was just closing the door when a rush of air was felt with a swish and a whirl most cold and powerful; the door was thrown violently open and something either fell or was struck across my neck.  The involuntary and spasmodic action caused by my sudden fright threw me against Joe, and we both fell in a heap to the bottom of the cellar steps.  Neither spoke.  Neither could speak.  We were frozen with terror, at least I was, and Joe said afterward that he was.

            We did not dare to even straighten up but lay in a heap and trembling in every nerve.  The tempest was behind us.  We knew that.  But the death rattle, the marrow freezing groan, the demonic laughter, the incomprehensible something was there near us.

            We felt that we were in the presence of a death of some horrible kind that as an atonement for dastardly crime was here repeated night after night in all its horrible agony.  No wonder people fed the house.  We would gladly flee ourselves but we could not.  We were in a bleak hole and surrounded by sounds that appalled us.  There was no denying it.  We had dared to consider ourselves brave men, had been called daredevils.  We had dared the devil and now he had us and we lay cowering on the ground.

            Joe clung to my hand and I to his.  Finally he whispered:  “Watch carefully, I am going to fire my pistol.”

            He leaped to his feet; there was a flash, a loud report and a death-like silence.

            We stood in the midnight silence of that devil pit for an indefinite time, when Joe began feeling for the door with his cane.  We fixed upon the direction and worked our way slowly forward.

            Taking a match, it was our last one, from my pocket, I determined on lighting it and bearding the devil in his den, whether I left the place alive or not.   It cracked and flashed, filled the place for an instant with a sickly light and then went out.

            It proved our fateful moment.  There was a swish, a rush of cold air, a mighty grown, such as I never had heard and never want to hear again; and a heavy body forced itself between us.  Joe was knocked one way and I another.  There was a crash, a gleam of gray light and all relapsed into silent darkness.

            How long we each lay in the respective positions where we were hurled by the mysterious power neither of us could tell, but after an interval the silence became oppressive.  Joe lost his pistol and cane; I lost my knife.  Slowly, however, we came to a realization that we were not dead and began to pull ourselves together, and each one independently of the other to grope for the doorway.  Fortunately I found it and in a few moments was outside.  I called to Joe and guided by my voice, he too, emerged.

            We went home and after breakfast next morning concluded to take three or four trusted friends and investigate by daylight.

            What was it?  Well, you have not guessed and you cannot guess.  It was none other than a member of the large family of the Suidae of which the genius Sus is the type; in other words the ghost was a large and friendly pig who had taken up his quarters in the abandoned cellar.  His entrance was by the broken door which he could lift with his snout and when he had crawled through it would close again; the nerve destroying groanings were his delectable snorings; the ghostly utterances that carried terror to the frightened sol were his audibly rendered dreams in the quiet of his straw bed in the corner, and the demoniac laughter was his laughing in his sleep at the fun he was having playing ghost.  He had no thought of seeing a ghost himself until the night when Joe and I appeared and then he scampered away.  For two years that ghost had terrorized the community.

            Now here’s to the ghost with a bumper brim full,

            And here’s to the rattling fun he had,

                        Zounds!  Cheers for the ghost the wide world over,

                                    For the ghost is mens sunus, it is man that’s run mad.