Evening Star Newspaper, December 28, 1930, Page 68

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walking brought a crowd of villagers, fishermen and curious visitors from the great naval base .of Portsmouth to the sinister copse, a mile out, where he had been seen the night before. Re- porters were present, At this spot, scene of a bloody murder, there is a gap in the line of road lamps for a quarter . of a mile and"tHe road is so gloomy that timid people give it a. wide berth on a moonless night. On this particular night, after a couple of hours -had passed, a dog suddenly yelped. “Look!” gasped its frightened mistress. Every one stared hard. There, in the center of the dark path of unlighted road, rose the tall, vague figure of a man. Some of those who saw it . described it as like “a_pillar of fog.” At that instant a car hummed- up the road. Its headlights seemed to throw the ghost into high relief. But evidently the driver saw noth- ing, for he drove right through the specter and when the dazzled watchers looked again there was nothing there. With two exceptions no really alarming ghosts have walked in London so far this sea- son. Odd, this, when you recollect that the capital is sprinkled with very sinisier old buildings, such as the ancient tower murmurous with sighs of the condemned passing under Traitor’'s Gate, the groans of prisoners in the west dungeons, the last gasps of noblemen and : queens expiring under the headsman’s ax, and when you recall that many of the palatial new blocks stand on the site of old public gallows or are built on the obliterated ruins of the wattle huts of Boadicea’s charioteers, the villas of armorers who sweated over re- - pairs to the armor of King Arthur’s knights, the torture chambers used by old kings and - robber barons in the process of avenging them- selves on enemies or extracting loans from Jews. The most recent apparition in the capital is the temple ghost, a white dame who hovers uneasily over the graves of the Templar knights outside the old Temple Church in the inclosed legal quarter opposite the law courts in the Strand (they were sworn to chastity, those knights). The old gnome in brown who peers from a quaint gallery in Ohelsea at pass- ers-by (very badly lit, Chelsea), has also made his ex appearance on several occasions of late. Both, fortunately, are harmiess. The exceptions are the tube ghost I have mentioned at the Tower of London and a mysterious visitant in sedate Bloomsbury, the boarding house district. The Bloomsbury ghost announced his advent by rapping loudly on a landlady’'s bedroom door. On his next visit he tore down a bookcass and threw it on the floor, and suddenly appeared in the vacant wall space, flourishing ghastly bandaged arms and moaning. He was ashen gray and =2ll head and shoulders. The old lady thus rudely intruded upon skidded into the street in her nightgown call- ing for the police. She has since had a nervous . collapse. A professional ghost hunter has spent a might in the room in the hope of seeing the ghost again, and no doubt giving him a piece of his mind. But to date nothing more fearful has happened than strange sounds and odd currents of chill air. Cmmcrms have been among the best haunted places in the island. One of the best authenticated stories in this field comes from All Hallows’ Church, at Barking, in the docks district. The organ master had gone into the choir room for practice with two of the choir boys. The church door, incidentally, was locked, but the door of the practice room was left open. Through this door suddenly came in a queer little old lady in a silk gown and a poke bonnet. The little old lady had vanished into thin air. 8he has reappeared several times since, Sometimes a black cat walks with her, but more usually she is alone. She' never speaks. The first time shé brought the cat along the - verger saw it, and was about to shoo it I?.- e ig ‘ ;;s! H i g Y i i §28” 3 Eggg E ¢ 8 =g ggéag § ggigle Hifs - P E £ g | . B g%i i 8 i i fEoHgae i i " ; H Eiainss M g ggd EE H 3 | 3 5k i ef B : Egg g He P} Es?fi fit Eaééi; g i EE Ed THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. ‘C, DECEMBER 28 1930. In a dim monastery garden at Datchet an intriguing ghost couple have appeared. Drawn for The Star's Sunday Magazine by Joseph Simont, light and starlight, to surprise him, and skeptical chemists have hidden in clumps of alder and waved warning gresn magnesium lights to bamboozle the spiritualists. The ghost is supposed to be that of a priest who used his church for the satisfaction of carnal lusts—to be blunt, as a love nest. There- after the place was accursed, and the church finally abandoned it, by order of the Bishop of Lincoln, in 1750, after a great block of ma- sonry had fallen from the roof and dashed the book out of the hands of a curate who was just starting a marriage service. No one seems to know who the old ruin really belongs to now, but a well known natu- ralist claims it by virtue of a few dollars paid ’Tis now the apartment of the toad; And there the fox securely feeds; And there the poisomous adder br Concealed in ruins, moss and weeds; While, ever and anon, there falls Huge heaps of hoary, mouldered walls.” AN intriguing ghost couple appear to have settled in the ruins of the monastery of Bt. Helena, at the Thameside village of Datchet. At night they sing in the dimsy monastery down some two years ago. But whether they were lovers in life long ago, or what mysterious tragedy they enacted in their earthly exist- ence, no one can surmise. From a Devonshire house built in Good Queen Bess' time comes the tale of ‘“door handles turned when none was at the door, and bolted doors that opened of themselves.” A Again came the rushing of footsteps, making the old stairs creak. The lady, a Mrs. San- ders, called her son and, receiving no reply, went into his room and found him asleep. Next morning the son told his mother that he had awakened times to find his door and shut it each T Ao R AR A A tion a glimmering hand—a white, beautif: shaped feminine hand—which has takén { drifting about a hunting squire’s house (bui on the site of an old gallows), and has se a well known hunting woman into hysteric What it thinks it is up to no one can sugges A GOOD instance of the aimlessness of man: ghosts reported this Christmas is the browi monk of the Seaforth clan of Scotland. H was definitely reported in December’s first wee as seen by villagers near the -stream whicH turns muddy when a Seaforth is about to die. It was by this haunted stream that—a cording to thé family legend—Alexander IIT King of Scotland, went hunting one day and was attacked by a mighty stag. But a youtl suddenly lgaped between, and struck the stag’ head from its shoulders at one blow. The family crest, a stag’s head, perpetuates the legend. They were mighty men in those days The King gave his savior a grant of land Up went Brahan Castle, and the Seaforths (then the Mackensies; the Seaforth title came later) weie launched in the Four Hundred oZ] the time. Unluckily, one of them fell afou of the Church and got cursed. The brown| monk who laid the curse said that there should| come = deaf head of the clan and, contemporary with him, four great Jairds with marked physic- al defects—and that when this happened the gift land of the family would be lost and tne line become extinct. Centuries passed. - The curse was forgotten, Then the twenty-first chief of the Mackensiesg who had been created Lord Seaforth after a term as Governor of Barbados, lost his four sons and, falling in debt owing to speculation, got his estates hopelessly involved. It was then abruptly realized that the curse was coming literally true. For Lord Seaforth was deaf, and four ot his contemporaries bore marked physical defects. There were Hector Mac- kensie of Gairloch, who was bucktoothed; Chis- holm of Chisholm, who was harelipped; Grant of Grant, who was half-witted, and Macleod of Ramsey, who stammered. Sir Walter Scott :t::euptlwcurseandmthenmwdunm ‘nienneknovexdnct.ntberelmisu out before this century began, and the last Lord Seaforth, known for his affection for a tame cockatoo which he carried about on h oulder, died in 1923. One can only surmis t the monk has been hunting so long that he has fallen a victim to a habit complex, or else that the news service of the spirit world is defective. Water in Scallops. ORDINARY tap water, sold at the price pes pound of scallops, is just a little bit high, in the opinion of Federal Food and Drug Ad- ministration officials, an opinion upheld by a Federal judge with a fine of $1,000 as added emphasis, The case in question originated in New Eng- land, and involved a shipment of the seafood which entered interstate commerce and there-) fore came under the Federal law. It was charged that the shipper had watered the scallops. The drastic nature of the fine was based’ upon the record of thé shipper, who had figured in other Federal cases of a similar nature. In a previous case, he claimed that the scallops were handled in wet and foggy weather, mak« ing necessary a thorough washing. It was pose sible, he conceded, that the washers had been overzealous and had washed them too much. It is inspection work of this type, of which the public hears little, that justifies the ex- penditures made in the Food and Drugs Admin- istration, for the experts of the service are constantly on guard against adulteration in any way of food supplies sold to the public. Awiation in Italy. ITALY is a decidedly up and coming natiom so far as aeronautics is concerned, just as it is an up and coming nation in other ways. The rapid strides that commercial aviation has Paraguay as Customer. AMERICAN automobile factories have the trade of one country just about completely »

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