 | THE HAUNTED HOUSE. Legends of New-England |  |
THE HAUNTED HOUSE.
The beautiful river, which retains its Indian name
of Merrimack, winds through a country of almost romantic
beauty. The last twenty miles of its course
in particular, are unsurpassed in quiet and rich scenery,
by any river in the United States. There are indeed,
no bold and ragged cliffs, like the Highlands of
the Hudson, to cast their grim shadows on the water
—no blue and lofty mountains, piercing into the thin
atmosphere, and wrapping about their rocky proportions
the mists of valley and river—but there are luxuriant
fields and pleasant villages, and white church-spires,
gleaming through the green foliage of oak and
elm—and wide forests of Nature's richest coloring,
and green hills sloping smoothly and gracefully to
the margin of the clear, bright stream, which moves
onward to the Ocean, as lightly and gracefully as the
moving of a cloud at sunset, when the light wind
which propels the ærial voyager is unfelt on earth.
It was on the margin of this stream, during the
early times of Massachusetts, that a stranger—a foreigner
of considerable fortune—took up his residence.
which, for elegance and convenience, far surpassed
the rude and simple tenements of his neighbors; and
he had a small farm, or rather garden, which he
seemed to cultivate for amusement, rather than from
any absolute necessity of labor. He had no family,
save a daughter—an interesting girl of sixteen.
Near the dwelling of Adam McOrne—for such was
the stranger's name—lived old Alice Knight—a woman,
known throughout the whole valley of the river,
from Plum Island to the residence of the Sachem
Passaconaway, on the Nashua,—as one under an evil
influence—an ill-tempered and malignant old woman
—who was seriously suspected of dealing with the
Prince of Darkness. Many of her neighbors were
ready to make oath that they had been haunted by
old Alice, in the shape of a black cat—that she had
taken off the wheels of their hay-carts and frozen down
their sled-runners, when the team was in full motion
—that she had bewitched their swine, and rendered
their cattle unruly—nay, more than one good wife
averred, that she had bewitched their churns and prevented
the butter from forming; and that they could
expel her in no other way, than by heating a horse-nail
and casting it into the cream. Moreover, they
asserted that when this method of exorcism was resorted
goodwife Alice was suffering under some unknown
indisposition. In short, it would be idle to attempt a
description of the almost innumerable feats of witchcraft
ascribed to the withered and decrepid Alice.
Her exterior was indeed well calculated to favor
the idea of her supernatural qualifications. She had
the long, blue and skinny finger—the elvish locks of
gray and straggling hair—the hooked nose, and the
long,upturned chin, which seemed perpetually to
threaten its nasal neighbor—the blue lips drawn around
a mouth, garnished with two or three unearthly-looking
fangs—the bleared and sunken eye—the bowed and
attenuated form—and the limping gait, as if the invisible
fetters of the Evil One were actually clogging
the footsteps of his servant. Then, too, she was poor
—poor as the genius of poverty itself—she had no relatives
about her—no friends—her hand was against
every man, and every man's hand was against her.
Setting the question of her powers of witchcraft
aside, Alice Knight was actually an evil-hearted woman.
Whether the suspicions and the taunts of her
neighbors had aroused into action those evil passions
which slumber in the seldom-visited depths of the human
heart—or, whether the mortifications of poverty
and dependence had changed and perverted her proud
credulity and fears of her neighbors. When they in
the least offended her, she turned upon them with the
fierce malison of an enraged Pythoness, and prophesied
darkly of some unknown and indescribable evil
about to befall them. And, consequently, if any evil
did befall them in the space of a twelve-month afterward,
another mark was added to the already black
list of iniquities, which was accredited to the ill-favored
Alice.
With all her fierce and deep-rooted hatred of the
human species—one solitary affection—one feeling of
kindness, yet lingered in the bosom of Alice Knight.
Her son—a young man of twenty-five—her only child
—seemed to form the sole and last link of the chain
which had once bound her to humanity. Her love of
him partook of the fierce passions of her nature—it
was wild, ungovernable, and strong as her hate itself.
Gilbert Knight inherited little from his mother,
save a portion of her indomitable pride and fierce
temperament. He had been a seaman—had visited
many of the old lands, and had returned again to his
birth-place—a grown up man—with a sun-burned
cheek—a fine and noble figure, and a countenance
rude and forbidding, yet marked with a character of
intellect and conscious power. He had little intercourse
the same dwelling with her—and yet, when in her
presence, he was respectful, and even indulgent to her
singular disposition and unsocial habits. He had no
communion with the inhabitants of his native town—
but, stern, unsocial and gloomy, he held himself apart
from the sympathies and fellowship of men, with
whom indeed, he had few feelings in common.
Mary, the daughter of Adam McOrne, seemed alone
to engage the attention of Gilbert Knight. She was
young, beautiful, and, considering the condition of the
country, well-educated. She naturally felt herself
superior to the rude and hard-featured youth around
her—she had tasted enough of the sentiment, and received
enough of the polish of education, to raise her
ideas, at least, above the ignorant and unlettered rustics,
who sought her favor.
Despised and spurned at, as the mother of Gilbert
Knight was, still her son always commanded respect.
There was something in the dignity of his manner,
and the fierce flash of his dark eye, which had a powerful
influence on all in his presence. Then, too, it
was remembered that his father was a man of intellect
and family—that he was once wealthy—and had
suddenly met with reverses of fortune. These considerations
gave Gilbert Knight no little consequence
the idea of witches and witchcraft, received the
occasional visits of Gilbert with as much cordiality as
if his mother had never been suspected of evil doings.
He was pleased with the frank, bold bearing of the
sailor; and with his evident preference of his dwelling,
above that of his neighbors—never so much as
dreaming, that the visits of Gilbert were paid to any
other than himself.
It was a cold, dark night of Autumn, that Gilbert,
after leaving the hospitable fire-side of McOrne, directed
his steps to the rude and lonely dwelling of his
mother. He found the old woman alone;—a few
sticks of ignited wood cast a faint light upon the dismal
apartment—and an old and blear-eyed cat was at
her side, gazing earnestly at her unseemly countenance.
“Mother,” said Gilbert, seating himself, “'tis idle—
'tis worse than folly to dream of executing our project.
Mary McOrne will never be my wife.”
“Ha!” exclaimed Alice, fixing her hollow eye upon
her son—“Have I not told you that it should be so,
and must be? You have lost your courage; you
have become weaker than a woman, Gilbert. I tell
you that Mary McOrne loves you, as deeply, as passionately
as ever man was loved by woman!”
Gilbert started. “I do believe she loves me,” he
said at length, “but she will never be my wife. She
dreads an alliance with our family. She has said so
—she has this night solemnly averred that she had
rather die at once, than become the daughter-in-law
of—of”—Gilbert hesitated.
“Of a witch!” shrieked Alice, in a voice so loud
and shrill that it even startled the practiced ear of
Gilbert. “'Tis well—I will not be stigmatised as a
witch with impunity. That haughty Scotchman and
his impudent brat of a daughter shall learn that Alice
Knight is not to be insulted in this manner! Gilbert,
you shall marry her, or she shall die accursed!”
“Mother!” said Gilbert, rising and fixing his dark
eye keenly on that of his mother—“I understand
your threat; and I warn you to beware. Practice
your infernal tricks upon others as you please—but
Mary McOrne is too pure and sacred for such unhallowed
dealing; and as you dread the curses of your
son, let her not be molested.”
He turned away as he ceased speaking, and instantly
left the dwelling. He had seen little of his
mother for many years—he knew her disposition but
imperfectly; and, while in public he ridiculed the
idea of her supernatural powers, he yet felt an awe—
a fear in her presence—a certainty that she was not
her displeasure operated to appearance like a curse—
that she did, either by natural cunning, or supernatural
power, mysteriously distress and perplex her
neighbors. He saw that her proud spirit had been
touched; and that she meditated evil against McOrne
and his daughter. The latter, Gilbert really loved—
as deeply and devotedly as such a rude spirit could
love; and he shuddered at the idea of her subjection
to the arts of his mother. He therefore resolved to
press his suit once more, and endeavor to overcome
the objections which the girl had raised; and, in the
event of his failure to do so, to protect her from the
wrath of his mother.
But Mary McOrne—much as she loved the dark-eyed
stranger, and his tales of peril and shipwreck in
other climes—could not associate herself with the son
of a witch—the only surviving offspring of a woman,
whom she verily believed to be the bond slave of the
Tempter. And so she strove with the strong feeling
of affection within her—and Gilbert Knight was rejected.
A short time after, the tenants of the dwelling of
McOrne were alarmed by strange sounds and unususual
appearances. In the dead of the night they
would hear heavy footsteps ascending the stair-case,
unoccupied rooms of the building. The doors were
mysteriously opened, after having been carefully secured—the
curtains of the beds of McOrne and his
daughter were drawn aside by an unseen hand; and
low whispers of blasphemy and licentiousness, which
a spirit of evil, could only have suggested, were
breathed, as it were, into their very ears. The servants—a
male and female—alike complained of preternatural
visitations and unseemly visions. They
were disturbed in their daily avocations—the implements
of household labor were snatched away by an
invisible hand—they saw strange lights in the neighborhood
of the dwelling. They heard an unearthly
music in the chimney; and saw the furniture of the
room dancing about, as if moving to the infernal melody.
In short, the fact was soon established, beyond
the interposition of a doubt, that the house was
haunted.
The days of faery are over. The tale of enchantment—the
legend of ghostly power—of unearthly
warning and supernatural visitation, have lost their
hold on the minds of the great multitude. People
sleep quietly where they are placed—no matter by
what means they have reached the end of their journey—and
of discontented ghosts—
From out the places where they sleep—
To publish forth some hidden sin,
Or drink the ghastly moonshine in,”—
yet remain, they are a miserable libel upon the diabolical
reputation of those who figured in the days of
Paris and Mather. Haunted houses are getting to be
novelties—and corpse-lights and apparitions and unearthly
noises, and signs and omens and wonders, are
no longer troublesome. Ours is a matter-of-fact age
—an age of steam and railway and McAdamization
and labor-saving machinery—the poetry of Time has
gone by forever, and we have only the sober prose
left us.
Among the superstitions of our ancestors, that of
Haunted Houses is not the least remarkable. There
is scarcely a town or village in New-England which
has not, at some period or other of its history, had
one or more of these ill-fated mansions. They were
generally old, decayed buildings—untenanted, save
by the imaginary demons, who there held their midnight
revels. But there are many instances of “prestigious
spirits” who were impudent enough to locate
yet grown cold—where the big bible yet lay on the
parlor-table; and where, over Indian-pudding and
pumpkin-pie, the good man of the mansion always
craved a blessing; where the big arm chair was always
officiously placed for the minister of the parish,
whenever he favored the family with the light of his
countenance; and where the good lady taught her
children the Catechism every Saturday evening.
This was indeed, a bold act of effrontery on the part
of the Powers of Evil, yet it was accounted for on the
ground, that good men and true were sometimes given
over to the buffetings of the enemy, of which fact, the
case of Job was considered ample proof.
The visitations to the house of McOrne became
more frequent and more terrific. The unfortunate
Mary suffered severely. She fully believed in the supernatural
character of the sights and sounds which
alarmed her; and she looked upon old Alice Knight
as the author: especially after hearing a whisper in
her ear, in the darkness of midnight, that, unless she
married Gilbert Knight she should be haunted as long
as she lived. As for the father, he battled long and
manfully with the fears which were strengthened day
by day—he laughed at the strange noises which filled
his mansion, and ridiculed the fears of his daughter
by the controlling superstitions of the time; and
he yielded slowly to the belief, which had now extended
itself through the neighborhood, that his dwelling
was under the immediate influence of demoniac
agency.
Many were the experiments tried throughout the
neighborhood for the discovery of the witch. The
old, experienced grand-mothers gathered together almost
every evening for consultation, and divers and
multiform were the plans devised for counteracting
the designs of Satan. All admitted that Alice Knight
must be the witch, but unfortunately there was no
positive proof of the fact. All the charms and forms
of exorcism which were then believed to be potent
weapons for the overthrowing of the powers of Wickedness
having failed, it was finally settled among the
good ladies that the minister of the parish could alone
drive the evil spirits from the dwelling of their neighbor.
But Adam McOrne was a sinful man; and his
oaths had been louder than his prayers on this trying
occasion: and, when it was proposed to him to invite
the godly parson to his house, for the purpose of laying
the spirits that troubled it, he swore fiercely, that
rather than have his threshold darkened by the puritan
priest, he would see his dwelling converted into
spirits on the face of the earth or beneath it. And,
with shaking heads and prophetic visages, the good
women left the perverse Scotchman to his fate.
Notwithstanding his bold exterior, the heart of Adam
McOrne was daily failing within him. The wild,
nursery tales of his childhood came back to him with
painful distinctness—and the bogle and kelpie and
dwarfish Brownie of his native land, rose fearfully before
his imagination. His evenings were lonely and
long; and he resolved to invite Gilbert Knight—the
fierce sailor, who feared neither man nor fiend—to
take up his residence with him: in the firm belief that
no power, human or super-human, could shake the
nerves of a man, who had wrestled with the tempest
upon every sea; and who had braved death in the
red battle, when his shattered deck was slippery with
blood and piled with human corses.
Gilbert obeyed the summons of McOrne with
pleasure. He had heard the strange stories of the
haunted mansion, which were upon every lip in the
vicinity; and he felt perfectly convinced that his
mother was employed in disturbing the domestic quiet
of the Scotchman and his daughter—whether by natural
means, or othwise, he knew not. But he knew
her revengeful disposition, and he feared, that unless
succeed in irreparably injuring the health and minds
of her victims. Besides, he trusted that, should he
succeed in accomplishing his purpose and laying the
evil spirits of the mansion, he should effectually secure
to himself the gratitude of both father and daughter.
Gilbert was received with much cordiality by Adam
McOrne. “Ye may weel ken,” said the old gentleman,
“that I am no the least afeared o' a' this
clishmaclaver, o' evil speerits, or deils or witch-hags;
but my daughter, puir lassie, she's in an awsome way
—a' the time shakin' wi' fear o' wraiths and witches
and sic like ill-faured cattle.” And Adam McOrne
made an endeavor to look unconcerned and resolute
in the presence of his guest, as he thus disclaimed any
feeling of alarm on his own part. He could not
bear that the bold sailor should look upon his weakness.
Even Mary McOrne welcomed the presence of her
discarded lover. Yet, while she clung to him as to
her only protector, she shuddered at the thought that
Gilbert was the son of her evil tormentor—nay more,
the horrible suspicion would at times steal over her
that he had himself prompted his wicked parent to
haunt her and terrify her into an acquiescence with
proposal to watch all night in a chamber, where the
strange sights and sounds were most frequent, she
could not but trust that her suspicion was ill-founded,
and that in Gilbert Knight she should find a friend and
a protector.
Adam McOrne, secretly overjoyed at the idea of
having a sentinel in his dwelling, ordered a fire to be
kindled in the suspected chamber; and placing a decanter
of spirits on the table, he bade his guest good
night, and left him to the loneliness of the haunted
apartment.
It matters not now what thoughts passed through
the mind of Gilbert, as he sat silent and alone, gazing
on the glowing embers before him. That his mother
was engaged in a strange and dark purpose, in regard
to the family of McOrne, he was fully convinced—
and he resolved to unravel the mystery of her midnight
adventures, and relieve the feelings of the
Scotchman and his daughter—even, although in so
doing he should implicate his own mother, in guilty
and malicious designs.
The old family clock struck one. At that moment
a deep groan sounded fearfully through the room.—
Gilbert rose to his feet and listened earnestly. It
seemed to proceed from the room beneath him; and it
the last murmurs of one in the agonies of death. In
a few moments he heard footsteps on the stair case
ascending to a long, narrow passage at its head, which
communicated with his apartment.
“I will know the cause of this,” said Gilbert, mentally,
as he threw open the door, and sprang into the
passage. A figure attempted to glide past him, appareled
in white, uttering, as it did so, a deep and
hollow groan.
“Mortal or devil!” shouted Gilbert, springing forward
and grasping the figure by the arm—“you go
no further. Speak, witch, ghost, whatever you are—
declare your errand!”
The figure struggled violently, but the iron grasp of
Gilbert remained unshaken. At that moment the
hurried voice of the old Scotchman sounded through
the passage.
“Haud weel, haud weel, my braw lad; dinna let
go your grip—in God's name haud weel!”
“Let me go,” said the figure in a hoarse whisper—
“Let me go, or you are a dead man!” Gilbert retained
his hold, and endeavored to discover by the
dim light which streamed from his apartment, the
countenance of the speaker.
“Die, then, unnatural wretch!” shrieked the detected
aiming a furious stab at her son. Gilbert pressed his
hand to his side, and staggered backward, exclaiming,
as the features of his mother, now fully revealed,
glared madly upon him—
“Woman, you have murdered your son!”
The knife dropped from the hand of Alice, and
with a loud and almost demoniac shriek, she sprang
down the stair case and vanished like a spectre.
Adam McOrne hurried forward, the moment he saw
the white figure disappear, and followed Gilbert into
his apartment. “Are ye hurt?—are ye wraith-smitten?”
asked the Scotchman; and then, as his eye fell
on the bloodied dress of Gilbert, he exclaimed—
“Waes me—ye are a' streakit wi' bluid—ye are a
dead man!”
Gilbert felt that his wound was severe, but with his
usual presence of mind, he gave such directions to
McOrne and his daughter, as to enable them to prevent
the rapid effusion of blood, while a servant was
despatched for the nearest physician. Mary McOrne
seemed to forget the weakness of her sex, while she
ministered to her wounded lover with a quick eye and
a skillful hand. It is on occasions like this—when
even the strong nerves of manhood are shaken—that
the feeble hand of woman is often most efficient. In
daring may blaze out, with sudden and terrible
power—but in the deep trials of suffering humanity—
in the watchings by the bed of affliction—then it is
that the courage of woman predominates—the very
excess of her sympathy sustains her.
The arrival of the physician dissipated in some degree
the fears of McOrne and his daughter. The
wound of Gilbert was not considered as dangerous;
and he was assured that a few days of confinement
would be the only ill consequence resulting from it.
The kind hearted Scotchman and his kinder hearted
daughter watched by his bed until morning, at which
time Gilbert was enabled to explain the singular circumstances
of the night; and at the same time he expressed
a wish that McOrne should visit the dwelling
of his mother, who, he feared would resort to some
violence upon herself, in the belief that she had, in
her frantic passion, murdered her son.
Adam McOrne, convinced by the narration of Gilbert
that human ingenuity and malice, instead of demoniac
agency, had disturbed his dwelling, sallied
out early in the morning to the rude and crazy dwelling
of his tormentor.
He found the door open—and on entering, the first
object that met his view was the form of Alice Knight,
spoke to her, but she answered not—he lifted her arm,
and it fell back with a dead weight upon her side.—
She was dead—whether by terror or suicide, he knew
not. “Ugh!” said Adam McOrne, in relating the
discovery—“there she was—an ill-faured creature—
a' cauld and ghaistly, lookin' for a' the world as if she
wad hae thankit any Christian soul to hae gie'n her a
decent burial.”
She was buried the next day in the small garden
adjoining her dwelling, for the good people of the
neighborhood could not endure the idea of her reposing
in their own quiet grave-yard. The minister of
the parish indeed attended her funeral, and made a
few general remarks upon the enormity of witchcraft
and the exceeding craftiness of the great necromancer
and magician, who had ensnared the soul of the ill-fated
Alice—but when he ventured to pray for the repose
of the unhappy woman, more than one of his
hearers shook their heads, in the belief that even their
own goodly minister had no right to interfere with
the acknowledged property of the Enemy.
It is said that Alice did not sleep peaceably, nathless
the prayers of the minister. Her house was
often lighted up in the dead of the night, until
“Through ilka bore the flames were glancing,”
herself, crossed more than once the paths of the good
people of the neighborhood. At least, such is the
story, and it is not our present purpose to dispute it.
The manner in which old Alice contrived to perplex
the Scotchman and his daughter, was at length
revealed by the disclosures of the servants of the
family. They had been persuaded by the old woman
to aid her in the strange transactions—partly
from an innate love of mischief, and partly from a
pique against the worthy Scotchman, whose irritable
temperament had more than once discovered itself in
the unceremonious collision of his cane with the heads
and shoulders of his domestics.
Gilbert recovered rapidly of his wound: and a few
months after, the house, which had been given over
to the evil powers, as the revelling-place of demons,
was brilliantly illuminated for a merry bridal. And
the rough, bold sailor, as the husband of Mary McOrne,
settled down into a quiet, industrious and soberminded
citizen. Adam McOrne lived to a good old
age, stoutly denying to the last that he had ever admitted
the idea of witchcraft, and laughing, heartily
as before, at the superstitions and credulity of his
neighbors.
Note.—
The preceding story is founded on a passage in the writings of
Dr. Mather. “In 1679 a house,” says the Doctor, “in Newbury, (on the
Merrimack,) was infested with demons in a most horrid manner.” Here
follows a long and curious recital of the infernal doings of the ill-natured
spirits. The same story is recorded on the records of the court at Salem, where
a seaman, by the name of Powell, was tried for witchcraft, on the ground that
he had been able to put to flight the demons of the haunted house, by means of
the black art—or astrology.
| THE HAUNTED HOUSE. Legends of New-England | |