Three Strange Stories

Three Strange Stories Footsteps on the Stairs—The Orange Girl—Gravediggers

By Jessie Middleton © 2008 by http://www.HorrorMasters.com

A well-known composer—I regret I am not allowed to mention his name—has given me the following true stories: “When at Cambridge I had rooms not far from the Market Place. I shared them with a friend. He had a bedroom on the third floor. Once, when he was very ill, I sat up with him. Between two and three in the morning I heard a bell tolling. It was a deep-toned bell, and I did not recognise the tone. “My friend, who had been asleep, woke up and asked what bell it was. It tolled for about twenty minutes, and then stopped. I opened the window, but could not hear it outside. It sounded as if it were inside the house. Each night that I sat up with him, through his recovery, I heard it, and so did he. I learnt afterwards that the house was built on the site of an old monastery. “In the same house I used to hear footsteps at night, and one evening, having been talking about them to a friend, we agreed to sit up and listen. At the same hour as the bell, between two and three in the morning, there were distinct sounds of someone walking upstairs. The footsteps came right up to my door—the third floor—which had three steps leading to it, and then there were two knocks at the door, which we at once opened. There was nothing there, and no sound. We sat up the second night and left the door open, sitting in the dark. The same thing happened, but without the knock at the door. I have never heard an explanation of this. *** “The man I sat up with at Cambridge told me a story of a friend of his—a barrister—who took some rooms in, I think, Clement’s Inn. He used to sit up late at night reading. “The first night he was there he noticed late at night a strong smell of oranges, which he could not explain. He noticed it particularly in his sitting-room. The next morning there was no smell there, but in the evening he noticed the smell again, which seemed to get stronger until about eleven-thirty, and then diminish. He got quite accustomed to this. One evening, after he had been in the rooms for about a month, he fell asleep in his chair, and waking up was astonished to see a little girl, rather poorly dressed, sitting at his table eating an orange. The smell was very strong. “He jumped up and asked her what she was doing there. As he got up the figure disappeared. On making inquiries, he learnt that some time previously a little girl had been found strangled in the room, which had been empty. She had never been identified. She was poorly dressed, and answered in every way the description of the figure he had seen. When the body was found, tightly clutched in its hand was a portion of a half-eaten orange. As soon as possible after that my friend changed his rooms. ***

“A clergyman who worked with my father in New Zealand told me that he once took a wooden shanty in New Zealand—a one-floor affair with a passage up the centre, and a door at each end and rooms on each side of the passage. He heard many very odd sounds while he stayed there, one of which was constantly repeated, and he never heard any explanation of it. It was as follows: “Early after sunset he would hear a sound as if several persons were dragging something heavy up to one of the doors. The door would apparently be opened, and several people would walk along the passage dragging something with them. Frequently he went into the passage while this was going on, and though the sounds seemed quite close to him, he saw nothing. “The ‘something’ which was being dragged along would apparently be left, and the footsteps went out at the other door, and for some fifteen minutes or longer he distinctly heard, just outside the room which he used as a study, the sound of pick and shovel, apparently digging a hole. “The footsteps would then return to the house, and dragging out the ‘something’ to the hole, would drop it in. He always heard the thud, followed by the sound of the earth being filled in. He heard this so many times that he became quite accustomed to it. He never learnt any explanation of it.”