The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall

The trouble with Harrowby hall was that it was haunted. And what was worse, the ghost was not satisfied with simply appearing at the bedside of the poor person who saw it. No, the ghost insisted on staying there for one whole hour before it would disappear.

It never appeared except on Christmas Eve, and then just as the clock was striking twelve. The owners of Harrowby Hall had done their best to get rid of the damp and dewy lady who rose up out of the floor of a guest bedroom at midnight, but with no luck. They had tried to stop the clock, so that the ghost would not know when it was midnight. But she had made her appearance just the same. She had stood there until everything around her was thoroughly soaked with water.

Then the owners of Harrowby Hall filled every crack in the floor with black tar, and over this placed layers of heavy cloth. The walls were made waterproof, and the doors and windows also. The owners hoped that the liquid lady would find it difficult to leak into a room, which no water could enter. But even this did no good. The following Christmas Eve she appeared as easily as before. She frightened the guest in the room out of his senses by sitting down beside him and gazing with her deep blue eyes into his. In her long, bony fingers were bits of dripping seaweed, the ends hanging down. She drew these ends across the guest's forehead until he became like one insane. And then he fainted away, and was found in his bed the next morning, soaked with seawater and fright.

The next year the owner of Harrowby Hall decided not to have the best guest bedroom opened at all. He hoped that perhaps the ghost would be satisfied by haunting the furniture. But the plan was as useless as the many that had gone before it.

The ghost appeared as usual in the room that is, it was supposed she did, for the curtains were dripping wet the next morning. Finding no one there, she immediately set out to learn the reason why. She chose to haunt none other than the owner of the Harrowby himself. She found him in his own room drinking whiskey and congratulating himself upon having fooled the water ghost. All of a sudden the curl went out of his hair, his whiskey bottle filled and overflowed, and he was himself dripping wet. When he had recovered from the shock, which was a painful one, he saw before him the lady with the deep blue eyes and the seaweed fingers. The sight was so unexpected and so terrifying that he fainted. But the huge amount of water in his hair, trickling down over his face, made him immediately come to.

Now it so happened that the owner of Harrowby was a brave old man. Although he did not particularly like talking to ghosts, especially such a liquid ghost as the one now before him, he was not to be stopped. He had paid the lady the compliment of fainting from his first surprise. And now that he had come to, he intended to find out a few things he felt he had a right to know. He would have liked to put on a dry suit of clothes first, but the ghost refused to leave him for an instant until her hour was up. Every time he would move she would follow him, with the result that everything she came near got a soaking. In an effort to warm himself up, he walked to the fireplace‑a bad move as it turned out, because it brought the ghost too near the fire, which immediately went out. The only thing he could do for himself was to swallow two small cold pills, which he managed to put into his mouth before the ghost had time to interfere. Having done this, he turned quickly to the ghost, and said:

"Far be it from me to be impolite to a woman, madam. But I'm hanged if it wouldn't please me better if you'd stop these visits of yours to this house. Go sit out on the lake, if you like that sort of thing. Please do not, I beg you, come into a gentleman's house and soak him and his furniture in this way. It is disagreeable."

"Henry Hartwick Oglethorpe," said the ghost, in a gurgling voice, "you don't know what you're talking about."

"Madam," returned the unhappy man, "I only wish that remark were true. I was talking about you. It would be money‑much money‑in my pocket, madam, if I did not know you."

"That is a bit of silly nonsense," replied the ghost, throwing about a quart of sudden anger into the face of the owner. "You do not know that I am forced to haunt this place year after year by a fate I cannot escape. It is no pleasure to me to enter this house and ruin everything I touch. I never wanted to be a shower bath, but so it must be. Do you know who I am?"

"No, I don't," returned the owner of Harrowby. "The Lady of the Lake?"

"You're a funny man for your years," said the ghost. "Well, I have been doing this highly unpleasant job for two hundred years tonight."

"How the devil did you ever get started?" asked the owner.

"Through a suicide," replied the other. "I am the ghost of that fair young woman whose picture hangs over the fireplace in the living room. I should have been your great‑great-great‑great‑great aunt if I had lived, Henry Hartwick Oglethorpe. You see, I was the sister of your great‑great‑great-great‑grandfather."

"But what made you decide to haunt this house?"

"I was not to blame, sir," returned the lady. "It was my father's fault. He it was who built Harrowby Hall, and the haunted bedroom was to have been mine. My father had it done up in pink and yellow, knowing well that blue and gray were the only two colors I could stand. He did it simply to anger me! And when I refused to live in the room, my father said I could live there or on the lawn, he didn't care which. That night I ran from the house and jumped over the cliff into the sea."

"That was unnecessary," said the owner of Harrowby.

"So I now know," returned the ghost. "If I had known what the results were to be, I would not have jumped. But I really never realized what I was doing until after I was drowned. I hadn't been drowned a week when a sea spirit came to me and said that I must haunt Harrowby Hall for one hour every Christmas Eve throughout the rest of time. I was to haunt that room on Christmas Eve if I found someone in it; and if not, I was to spend the hour with the head of the house."

"I'll sell the place."

"That you cannot do, for it is also required that I shall appear in front of anyone who might buy the house, and tell him the awful secret."

"Do you mean to tell me that every time I don't happen to have a guest in that room, you are going to haunt me, wherever I may be?" demanded the owner.

"You have spoken the truth, Oglethorpe. And what is more," said the water ghost, "it doesn't make the slightest difference where you are. If I find that room empty, wherever you may be I shall soak you with my-"

Here the clock struck one, and immediately the ghost faded away. It was perhaps more of a trickle than a fade, but it was a complete disappearance. And as for the owner of Harrowby, when Christmas Eve came again he was in his grave, never having gotten over the cold he caught that awful night. Harrowby Hall was now the property of the dead owner's son, who lived in London. That night in his bedroom he had the same experience that his father had gone through. But the son, being younger and stronger, survived the shock. Everything in his room was ruined. His clocks were rusted, and a fine collection of water‑color paintings was ruined. What was worse, the apartment below his was soaked with water dripping through the floor. He had to pay for the damage, and his landlady asked that he leave the rooms immediately.

The story of the curse upon his family had become known, and no one would invite him anywhere in the evening. Fathers of daughters would not permit him to remain in their houses later than eight o'clock at night. Nor would the girls themselves have much to do with him, fearing the watery lady with whom, it was said, he held midnight meetings.

So the young owner of Harrowby Hall decided, as all the Oglethorpes before him had, decided, that something must be done. His first thought was to make one of his servants sleep in the haunted room. But the servants knew the history of the room and refused. None of his friends would agree to sleep in the room, nor was there to be found in all England a person so poor as to stay in the haunted room on Christmas Eve for pay

Then the new owner thought about having the fireplace in the ‑room made bigger, so that he might dry up the ghost at its first appearance. But he remembered what his father had told him‑that no fire could stand up to the lady's dampness.

It was then that the natural action of his mind, in going from one opposite to the other, suggested a plan. It was the way in which the water ghost was finally defeated, and happiness once more came to the house of Oglethorpe.

The owner found himself a warm suit of long underwear. Putting this on, he placed over it a tight‑fitting rubber suit. On top of this he placed another set of long underwear made of wool, and over this a second rubber suit like the first. Upon his head he placed a light and comfortable diving helmet. Dressed this way on the following Christmas Eve, he awaited the ghost's coming.

It was a bitterly cold night. The air outside was still, and. the temperature was well below zero. Inside the quiet house the owner lay on the bed in the haunted room dressed as has already been described, and then

The clock clanged out the hour of twelve.

There was a sudden banging of doors, a blast of cold air swept through the halls, the door leading into the haunted room flew open, a splash was heard, and the water ghost was seen standing at the side of the owner of Harrowby. His rubber suit was already streaming with water. But deep down under his clothing, he was as dry and as warm as he could have wished.

"Ha!" said the young owner of Harrowby. "I'm glad to see you."

"You are the most original man I've met, if that is true," returned the ghost. "May I ask, where did you get that hat?"

"Certainly, madam," returned the owner politely. "It's just a little nothing in the new style that I picked up for emergencies. But, tell me, is it true that you are going to follow me about for one whole hour‑to stand where I stand, to sit where I sit?"

"That is my fate," returned the lady.

"We'll go out on the lake," said the owner, starting up.

"You can't get rid of me that way," returned the ghost. "The water won't swallow me up. In fact, it will just make me all the wetter."

"Nevertheless," said the owner firmly, "we will go out on the lake."'

"But, my dear sir," returned the ghost, "it is very, very cold out there. You will be freezing before you've been out ten minutes."

"Oh, no, I'll not," replied the owner. "I am very warmly dressed. Come!" This last word was said in a tone of command that made the ghost ripple.

And they started.

They had not gone far before the water ghost showed signs of alarm.

"You walk too slowly," she said. "I am nearly frozen. My knees are so stiff now I can hardly move. I beg you to quicken your step."

"I should like to please a lady," returned the owner, "but my clothes are rather heavy, and a hundred yards an hour is about my speed. Indeed, I think we would better sit down here on this snowdrift, and talk matters over."

"Do not! Do not do so, I beg!" cried the ghost. "Let me move on. I feel myself growing stiff as it is If we stop here, I shall be frozen-"

"That, madam," said the owner slowly, seating‑ himself on a cake of ice‑"that is why I have brought you here. We have been outside just ten minutes; we have fifty more. Take your time about it madam, but freeze, that is all I ask of you."

"I cannot move my right leg now," cried the ghost, in despair. "And my skirt is a solid sheet of ice. Oh, good, kind Mr. Oglethorpe, light a fire, and let me go free from these icy chains."

"Never, madam. It cannot be. I have you at last."

"Alas!" cried the ghost, a tear freezing on her icy cheek. "Help me, I beg. I'm freezing!"

"Freeze, madam, freeze!" returned Oglethorpe coldly. "You have soaked me and my family for two hundred and three years, madam. Tonight you have had your last haunt."

"Ah, but I shall thaw out again, and then you'll see!" cried the lady. "Instead of the really good ghost I have been in my past, sir, I shall be ice water!"

"No, you won't, either," returned Oglethorpe. "For when you are frozen quite stiff, I shall send you to a cold storage warehouse, and there you shall remain an icy work of art forever."

"But warehouses burn."

"So they do, but this warehouse cannot burn. It is made of asbestos and surrounding it are fireproof walls. Inside those walls the temperature shall forever be 416 degrees below zero; low enough to make an icicle of any flame in this world‑or the next," the owner added, with a little laugh.

"For the last time let me beg of you. I would kneel to pray for your kindness, Oglethorpe, but my knees are already frozen. I beg of you do not doo-"

Here even the words froze on the water ghost's lips, and the clock struck one. There was a little quiver throughout the icy form. The moon, coming out from behind a cloud, shone down on the statue of a beautiful woman in clear, transparent ice. There stood the ghost of Harrowby Hall, defeated by the cold, a prisoner for all time.

The owner of Harrowby had won at last. And even today, in a strange warehouse in London, stands the frozen form of one who will never again flood the house of Oglethorpe with sorrow and seawater.

As for the owner of Harrowby, his success in dealing with the ghost has made him famous, although his victory took place some twenty years ago. And far from being unpopular, as he was when we first knew him, he has not only been married twice, but is to lead a third bride to the altar before the year is out.