Nell Gwynn's Ghost - And Other Mysterious Visitors

Nell Gwynn’s Ghost—And Other Mysterious Visitors By Jessie Middleton © 2008 by http://www.HorrorMasters.com

An old friend of mine, who lives in one of the several houses once inhabited by Nell Gwynn, has sent me the following: “You know Nell Gwynn built this house and lived in it herself for a time,” she writes. “About three years ago we had a very confidential elderly maid here called Maria, and a new housemaid, Lizzie—both since gone. “One day Maria said to me, ‘Isn’t it odd, ma’am? Lizzie says she has just seen, in her bedroom, such a lovely lady, all bright against the wall, with a low dress round her shoulders. She was so beautiful that when she looked at Lizzie, Lizzie was quite sorry when she faded away.’ “The description of the low neck struck me. I remembered I had put away, in the boxroom, a framed photograph of the Hampton Court Palace painting of Nell Gwynn. I thought suddenly, ‘Perhaps Nell Gwynn doesn’t like being hidden away in the boxroom,’ so I said to Maria, ‘Do fetch that photograph and’ lay it down in the kitchen and say to Lizzie, “Isn’t that a pretty face?” Directly Maria did so, Lizzie exclaimed, ‘That is the lady I saw . . . yes, that’s her dress—just the same.’ “So I think it undoubtedly must have been.” *** Mrs. Drayson, a lady living at Hanwell, is very psychic, and has told me some really curious things that have happened to her. Only the other day she was standing near the edge of a platform of some station, thinking hard, when suddenly she was aware of somebody walking towards her. She took no notice until the person got very close, and then she slowly looked from the feet upwards to be confronted by HERSELF. She says she stared and blinked her eyes, and then she was gone—or, rather, the other part of her was. She said it made her feel very queer to look slowly up from the feet of another person and find her own face at the top! *** When a girl of fifteen she was staying with some friends and sleeping alone. She woke suddenly with an odd sensation, and on looking up saw a woman ía grey with long hair standing by her bed. At first she thought it was a maid in her dressing-gown, but suddenly she realised that she could see right through the woman. With a shriek she slid under the clothes ~nd lay shivering with fright. When she looked again later the figure was gone. In the morning she told her hostess, who said: “Well, we knew there was a ghost, exactly as you describe, but we never knew before which room it was in!” ***

The following experience occurred to a friend who was living in a certain garrison town in Kent. One morning she opened the staircase window to let in, as she thought, her own pet cat, but instead, in came a beautiful white one that made at once for the dining-room, where her husband was at breakfast. She was surprised, for she knew of no white cat in the neighbourhood; it made straight for her husband, and would notice no one else. “This happened,” she tells me, “nine mornings running. The cat always went for my husband, and somehow disappeared later in the morning. After those visits it was never seen again, nor could I ever discover anyone who owned it. Very shortly afterwards my husband died most unexpectedly, and later on I was told that the servants had commented on this mysterious visit, saying they knew something would happen to their master.” *** There is a house in one of the Channel Islands which is haunted by the figure of a lady. Sometimes she walks through the rooms, and on one occasion so frightened a visitor who was staying there by appearing as she was going to bed that she fainted. On another occasion she opened a door, and a friend who was in the room distinctly felt her touch her arm. When the same friend was leaving there was violent knocking on the window of a room above; no one was in that part of the house at the time, and they only remarked it was the ghost. This was told to a Catholic lady who had a prayer said for the ghosts in the island, and this particular one has not been seen since.