On December 24th, 1922, the “Weekly Dispatch” carried a Christmas ghost story narrated by the wonderfully named Alexander Peregrine Fuller-Acland Hood, Lord St. Audries.  It is described as a genuine experience of his, but it is certainly colorful enough to fit in with any fictional collection of spooks and apparitions:

Do you believe in ghosts ? Or are you one of those fortunate persons who have no fear of the unseen? Or, again, do you belong to the great majority who keep an open mind, but who like to feel on Christmas Eve that, after all, just round the corner, in the mysterious darkness, something might happen?...

I believe in ghosts, and not only on Christmas Eve, for it was a perfect summer evening, in July, 1920, tranquil and moonlit, that the astounding experience befell me, which the editor of The Weekly Dispatch has requested me to relate.

I was staying in Devonshire with an old Oxford friend who had taken orders. I had been living a delightful, care-free existence in the open air, bathing and playing tennis, in fact, doing everything but think of ghosts.

Then one night at dinner the conversation turned, as it often does, to the psychic, and the usual discussion took place. Paul, my Oxford friend, had been reading stories by Algernon Blackwood, and was still deeply affected by the impression they had made on him. His brother Philip, a clever, cool-headed young man, who was spending his long vacation at home, openly scoffed at his foolishness, and a keen argument took place.

Finally Paul leaned forward and said: "Well, we have an opportunity of testing all these theories." I asked him what he meant.

And then he explained. Not a mile away, on the farthest side of the hill, standing off the road in a desolate and overgrown garden, was a house which I had often noticed. We will call it Weir Court (not its correct name). This house has been empty for years. It had an evil reputation. Grass had grown thick on the deserted drive, bats had built their nests in the blank windows, the roof had fallen in, making the top floor unapproachable. But no workmen would venture to repair the roof, and, though the house was for sale, no tenant could be found for it.

"Why not go there and see and test for yourselves?"

I sat down at the bottom of the stairs--it was the only place to sit--and waited. There was absolute silence. Opposite me were the two large front rooms, and to the right of them a corridor onto which gave the small room from which I had felt all the evil influences coming. The door of the room, which was some twenty feet away, I watched intently.

I buried my head in my hands and fell to wondering what type of people had inhabited this strange house in the past. Weird tales ran through my brain of some of the things which had been seen here which Paul had told me as we walked along, tales of a strange man who had been the last tenant, and who had never ventured outside, but had taken in provisions through the door with his white hands--long, thin, with fingers pale as death. And how those hands had been seen on the wall, tapping, tapping.

Via Newspapers.com

I pulled myself together and thought of more cheerful things. I whistled again, the echoes resounding shrilly against the cold walls. From outside came the answering whistle. That reassured me and I turned my attention again to the little room.

Suddenly I felt that all was not well. Somebody, something, was trying to make me go away. The air was charged with a hostile influence. I knew I was not wanted. And I knew that the force came from the little room with the open door down the corridor which I was watching.

I leant forward and looked into the semi-darkness. As I looked I felt, as though it were a keen wind, this influence growing stronger and stronger. I summoned every effort of will power and tried to rise to my feet.

It happened. Out of the door, down the dark passage, something rushed, like an immense bat, towards me. I say something, because in the few seconds in which the episode lasted I had no time to see clearly. It was black from head to foot, and it seemed to be built in the form of a very powerful man. But two things made me know that it was no human being that sprang towards me. First, I could see no face. There was just a hideous blank, that was all. And secondly, though it came with huge leaps over the rough, rubbled floor, it made no noise. There was absolute silence all the time.

Now, I am not a small man. As a matter of fact, I am six foot two in my socks, and I think I may say that I am built in proportion to my size. Moreover, I was in the best of condition, and seated as I was in a defensive position, I think I may say that it would have taken a pretty powerful man to knock me over.

But when this thing dashed out I was struck backwards with an irresistible force. And as I fell I felt a sensation of incredible evil, as though the forces of Hell were conspiring against me. And with it something warm, not physically warm, but with a psychic warmth that cloyed and enveloped.

The rest is told in a few words. For a moment the whole world was blank, and then I found myself fighting, struggling with I know not what, down the steep stairs. Who or what it was, if it was one or two or a dozen, I do not know. All I know is that I saw nothing, and that I just managed to fight my way outside, where I sank down onto the grass.

The rest is best told by Paul, from whose written narrative I quote.

"When Lord St. Audries first went into the house we naturally felt somewhat anxious as to what would happen. After all, he was our guest, and after my brother's experience I did not feel that I was justified in letting him go in alone. However, when he whistled I felt reassured. I whistled back and waited with interest but without fear.

"I think about a quarter-of-an-hour must have passed without anything uncanny happening. I was just about to turn to my brother to suggest that we should call him back and go home, when something so extraordinary happened that I must narrate it in detail.

"The night was absolutely windless. That is an important point. I noticed that a tall belt of poplar trees at the end of the garden were without movement of any sort. It therefore follows that what we heard and felt was, whatever else it may have been, not wind.

"With absolute suddenness, sweeping over our heads, something came. I could not call it a wind, though I felt it. I could not call it a noise, though there was in one's ears a sensation of rushing. A second afterwards there came from the house one of the most terrible cries I have ever imagined, as though somebody had been violently stabbed in the back. It was Lord St. Audries' voice and was followed by the sound of a heavy crash.

"Aghast, I turned to my brother. He rushed to the entrance. Then we realised that we could not get in, for the place was pitch dark, and so blocked up that it was quite impossible to force an entry. A cloud had drifted over the moon, and it was impossible to find our way through the wreckage of the basement without a candle.

"We therefore ran at full speed to the neighbouring house, whose tenants I fortunately knew, in order to obtain a light. As we vaulted the gate the whole house resounded with violent shocks and shouts.

"We secured the candle and tore back. The noise in the house was indescribable. And then it suddenly ceased and we saw Lord St. Audries advancing towards us, covered with dirt and plaster."

That is Paul's narrative.

I offer no explanation for this story beyond saying that it is true in every detail. However, the following points may be of interest :

(1) It has transpired that the small room which was the centre of the trouble was once a bathroom in which some fifty years ago a particularly atrocious murder had been committed by a semi-insane doctor who had afterwards committed suicide.

(2) No dog will venture into the garden of the house, and many refuse even to pass it. 

(3) On the next night to my experience (at midnight to be precise) the inhabitants of the neighbouring house, who are also confirmed sceptics, were awakened by the sound of a violent report which, they allege, came from "Weir Court."

The house is still standing there and it remains without a tenant.

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

One of the Strange Company staffers is on jury duty, and I hear things are going about the way you'd expect.

The glow of life.

The multiple meanings of the word, "fetching."

The Hudson Valley Bigfoot hunters.

In which ancient Athens creates a goddess.

A historic London toilet.

The remains of a 3,000 year old royal menagerie.

Famous writers and their day jobs.

The icky baths of Pompeii.

Australian miners just saw something weird in the sky.

An ancient medieval ship is making archaeologists very happy.

An assortment of literary conspiracy theories.

The Anglo-German blockade of Venezuela.

The DNA of one of the last Siberian shamans.

It's always awkward when a corpse turns up very much alive.

The unsolved murder of Benjamin Nathan.

The saga of a Harlem tramp cat.

When New York City nearly seceded from the U.S.

Some really freaking old canoes.

A prolific grave-robber in Pennsylvania.

Charlie Chaplin in the East End.

A prisoner of the Aboriginal.

The fear of psychic powers.

The long history of men showing off their legs.

The disappearance of a poker player.

The mysterious Green Stone of Hattusa.

The passing of a cat who loved a Japanese museum.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll meet a particularly sinister ghost.  In the meantime, here's a little classical guitar.

Via Newspapers.com

One of the more unusual “death omen” stories appeared in the “Sentinel and Democrat,” April 10, 1844:

Mr. Ponting, a tailor, now residing in Bedfordbury, leading from New street to Chandos street, Covent garden, was in the autumn of the year 1819, accompanied by Mrs. Ponting, at Turnham green, when they called on a friend of the name of Smith, who still resides there. They walked into the garden attached to the house, and their attention was fixed on an apple tree which carried a good show of fruit. Mrs. Ponting was in a thriving way, and, from fatigue or some other cause, was induced to lean against the tree which she and her husband had been looking at., Whether she fell against it, or otherwise shook it with violence. we are not informed, but the tree was shaken, and all the fruit, with the exception of a single apple, was the next moment strewed on the ground. 

Though vexed at the accident, Mr. and Mrs. Ponting attached no vast importance to it, nor did their friends at the moment, but in the course of the day Mrs. Smith took an opportunity of communicating with Mr. Ponting on the subject. The lady spoke to this effect that she was much disturbed at what had happened, and it was her fear that the accident was nothing less than an omen of death. Her impression, which she could not get rid of, was that Mrs. Ponting would not get well through her expected confinement.

From one apple being left on the tree uninjured, she concluded that the child would live, but the mother she mournfully predicted would not recover. A few months set the question at rest. Mrs. Ponting gave birth to an infant and died: the child lived to grow up. But this is not all.

Our informant goes on to add that the tree, though up to that period it had in most years brought a good crop, since the year 1819 has never in any season borne more than a single apple. The tree, which was named “Elizabeth," after the lady whose early departure it was supposed to shadow forth, is still standing, and may be seen by the curious.

Arlene Hoffman

“Death by crossbow” sounds like something you’d see in medieval records, or an episode of “Midsomer Murders,” not in a modern-day upscale Southern California neighborhood.  But as the following case will show, life is full of surprises.

Arlene Hoffman led a busy life in the background of California’s often-twisted, but admittedly rarely dull, political scene.  She began her involvement with politics  when she worked for the millionaire industrialist and art-collector Norton Simon, who made a failed Senate run in 1970.  She participated in Jesse Unruh’s unsuccessful 1973 campaign to become mayor of Los Angeles, and went on to become the secretary for Fred Harper, a well-known political consultant who disappeared off the coast of Baja California in 1974.

In 1976, Hoffman was called as a witness before the Orange County Grand Jury.  The hospital she was then working for was run by Dr. Louis Cella, who at the time was California’s largest campaign contributor.  Cella was being investigated for billing Medi-Cal for phantom patients, and then steering the money to numerous political campaigns.  Cella was eventually convicted of income-tax evasion, Medicare and Medi-Cal fraud, embezzlement, and conspiracy.  Investigators suspected that Hoffman was assisting Cella in his dodgy political schemes, and then lying about it to try to protect her employee, but apparently they could not prove any criminal activity on her part.  Probably the most notorious campaign Cella and Hoffman were involved in was when they helped to elect Robert Citron to the position of Orange County Treasurer-Tax Collector.  Citron subsequently pleaded guilty for his role in Orange County’s 1994 bankruptcy, which was, at the time, the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history.

One might be pardoned for thinking that Mrs. Hoffman was something of a political jinx.  However, despite her involvement in an impressive list of political misadventures, in December 1994, the 57-year-old Hoffman was hired as personal secretary to Jim Silva, who had just been elected to the Orange County Board of Supervisors.  Hoffman, who was recently widowed (her husband Joel died of cancer in March 1994,) appeared to be getting her life back on track.  The medical costs from Joel’s long illness forced the couple into bankruptcy, but those proceedings had recently concluded, and Arlene had just received a $500,000 life insurance payment.  Those who knew Arlene described her as a kind, eminently trustworthy and dependable person.  She was devoted to her only child, 25-year-old Charles, whom the Hoffmans had adopted when he was in his mid-teens.  (After serving four years in the Marine Corps, in 1994 Charles was a student at Fullerton College.)

On December 30, 1994, Hoffman unaccountably failed to show up for work.  Calls to her cell phone went unanswered.  When nightfall began to arrive with no word from Hoffman, Jim Silva became concerned enough to call Sheriff Brad Gates to have deputies visit Hoffman’s Laguna Niguel condo.  When the officers entered her residence, they found Hoffman’s body lying in the hallway, with a fatal wound in her chest caused by a “hunting-type arrow,” possibly fired by a crossbow.  (The arrow was never recovered.)  Sometime between 7:30 p.m. on December 29 and 7:30 the following morning, someone committed a very unusual murder.

Hoffman’s front door was found unlocked, and there was no sign of a break-in.  Nothing appeared to be missing from the condo.  Hoffman’s poodle was found wandering around the entryway, but a previous owner had arranged for the animal’s ability to bark to be surgically removed.  The dog was still wearing a leash, suggesting that Hoffman had been attacked immediately after taking her pet for a walk.  Police found partial fingerprints on a stairway that they believed belonged to the killer, but no match was ever made.

This proved to be one of those murders where the investigation hit an immediate brick wall.  Despite her proximity to some shady political dealings, police found no obvious link between them and her murder.  Everyone who had even the slightest contact with Hoffman was interviewed.  Every archery and sporting goods store in the area was investigated for possible leads.  At every turn, investigators came up empty-handed.  As far as anyone could tell, no one had a motive to kill Arlene Hoffman--except, someone did.

To date, the case remains one of those unsettling mysteries.

Welcome to this week's Link Dump, where our hosts will be the cats of Manx!

An ancient "party boat."

An important incident in George Washington's early military career.

The life of a British High Court Judge in India.

A WWI massacre at sea.

We all might be breathing wrong.

A medieval anchoress.

The dead signs of London.

A look at "telephone telepathy."

A 7,000 year old underwater wall.

In which old newspapers predict the future.

The madam and the ghostwriter.

A "living laboratory" in Norway.

Rejoice that we now know why Swiss cheese has holes.

The use of poison in hunting goes a long way back.

A strange footnote to the Great Fire of London.

A mystery beast in Michigan.

A 2,000 year old computer?

We might have found traces of Leonardo da Vinci's DNA.

Japan has a new cat stationmaster.

Island-hopping pigs.

The cave with the "eyes of God."

The versatile genius of Hans Holbein.

The fine art of 19th century embalming.

How a winter storm led to witchcraft trials.

A brief history of London's Bishopsgate.

An "unlawful diet."

A 20th century "feudal lord" comes to a bad end.

3I/Atlas may be gone, but it's still being weird.

How servants were recruited in the 18th century.

A man once built an anti-seasickness ship.  And then things went sideways.

The mystery of two disappearances.

The real story of Carthage.

A murder on Crosby Street.

An ancient structure in Ireland has just been discovered, and it's freaking huge.

An explosion in deep space is leaving astronomers befuddled.

The latest theory about the Voynich Manuscript.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at an unusual unsolved murder.  In the meantime, here's some Vivaldi.

Via Newspapers.com

Hey, when a boxing, beer-guzzling cat becomes the subject of litigation, I’m there.  The “San Francisco Examiner,” October 21, 1898:

Life has lost its roseate hue for former Senator W. J. Dunn since Bob disappeared. Dunn keeps a saloon on Third street, near Stevenson, and Bob is a big Russian cat with fur as black as Egyptian night except for his white-tipped paws. Bob was last seen about 10 o'clock Wednesday night in the company of Sidney Perry, who is now dodging a warrant held by the police.

Dunn charges Perry with stealing the cat. Bob came from St. Petersburg and was brought to San Francisco by a seafaring friend of Dunn. He is large and fat, but as gentle as a sofa pillow. On shipboard the sailor taught him to spar, and almost every night for a year past Bob has sat on the end of the bar and made uppercuts and jabs at the patrons of the place.

Perry was formerly in the commission business on Stevenson street and rented his office from Dunn. Incidentally he became well acquainted with Bob and taught him the new blows as they came out. Dunn thought the friendship harmless, but now he swears vengeance on the ungrateful. When last seen Bob was tucked snugly under Perry's right arm.

On that same date, the “San Francisco Chronicle” gave further details:

A black cat has crossed the friendship which formerly existed between ex-Senator William J. Dunn and S. Perry, his former business partner, bringing bad luck to the latter.

Dunn and Perry were associated in the ownership of a saloon and poolroom on the corner of Third and Stevenson streets up to a few days ago. They parted then, evidently with mutual amicable feelings, having satisfactorily divided the assets. Among the items which fell to Dunn was a big black Thomas cat, the pet of the saloon and all its patrons, owing to his strange preference for steam beer over skimmed milk. Dunn still owns the saloon, but the black cat is no longer its main attraction. In fact, Dunn alleges that Perry has stolen the feline beer bibber.

His charge took legal form yesterday in the Police Court, when he applied to Judge Mogan for a warrant for the arrest of Perry on the charge that he "embezzled one cat, value $25.” Judge Mogan instructed Dunn to see Assistant Prosecuting Attorney McGovern of Judge Low's court about the complaint. McGovern hesitated about issuing a complaint, on the ground that a cat could not be considered property. He applied for advice to Acting Prosecuting Attorney Mann of Judge Mogan's court, who drew his attention to a decision of the late Police Judge Campbell, which maintained in a somewhat similar case to that of Dunn and Perry that a house cat was ferae naturae--of wild nature--and could not be claimed as a personal belonging by anybody. Despite this authority the warrant against Perry was issued.

On October 26, the “Chronicle” gave an update on this saga:

Bob, the boxing, beer-bibbing black cat that disappeared about a week ago from the saloon of ex-Senator William J. Dunn, on Third street, has not yet come back to its owner. and Sidney Perry, Dunn's former business associate, must now face a trial in Police Judge Mogan's court on a charge of having embezzled the accomplished feline. His case was called yesterday, but owing to the subtle legal possibilities which it presented a continuance was ordered to October 31st.

Perry was arrested on Monday night for the alleged cat embezzlement. It is understood that his defense will be a contention that the cat in controversy is not Dunn's property, in fact, but a wild beast. All cats, according to the theory held by Perry's attorney, are wild beasts, subject to capture by whoever chooses to hunt for them. This line of legal reasoning is not unknown to Police Court jurisprudence. An opinion rendered by the late Judge Campbell in a case where a man poisoned three of his neighbor's cats because of their depredations in his spinach bed contained the ruling that the feline species, whether of the forest or house variety, were ferae natural and not amenable to domestication.

As against this argument Dunn will present expert testimony showing that his lost Bob was tamed to such a degree that he could drink steam beer like a brewery wagon driver and give Sharkey points with the gloves.

Frustratingly, I could not find out how this important and instructive moment in legal history was resolved.  What became of the lovely and talented Bob?!?

In the Spring 1988 issue of “Strange Magazine,” Ken Meaux described a very eerie event experienced by someone he had personally interviewed, a friend Meaux named only as “L.C.”  Meaux described it as a “time-slip” story, although it reads to me more like an encounter with a ghost.  (Admittedly, the line between those two types of paranormal phenomena is a very blurry one.)  As the story Meaux relates is not a first-hand account, and possibly falls into the “too good to be true” category, I make no claims about its authenticity.  However, it’s such an intriguing little tale, that I decided to pass it on.

According to “L.C.,” on October 20, 1969, he and a business associate, “Charlie,” had lunch in Abbeville, Louisiana, and then began driving north along Highway 167.  The highway was largely empty, until at about 1:30 p.m. they saw ahead of them an old “turtle-back-type” car.  The auto was moving very slowly, so they soon caught up to it.  Their attention was arrested by the fact that although the car seemed to be a make from decades past, it looked in pristine condition.  They were also puzzled by the fact that the car bore a large orange license plate with the year “1940” printed on it.  They could only surmise that the car was used in parades or other ceremonial occasions which allowed it to sport such an unusual plate.

As they passed the antique car to its left, L.C. noticed that the driver was a young woman wearing 1940s style clothing.  A small child was in the seat next to her.  The windows of the car were rolled up and both the woman and child were very warmly dressed.  L.C. was bemused by this, as it was a warm, pleasant day.   When the two men looked more closely at the woman, they were disturbed to see that the woman seemed panicky, even frightened.  She kept looking back and forth as if she feared danger of some sort.  L.C., who was in the passenger seat, called to the woman and asked if she needed help.  She nodded, “yes,” while looking at their car in a confused manner.  Although her rolled-up window made communication difficult, L.C. was able to motion to her to pull over on the side of the road.  As they saw her begin to do so, the men continued to pass her car so they could pull over ahead of her.  After they parked on the shoulder of the road, the men turned back to look at the vintage auto.  They were stunned to see it was no longer there.  Somehow, on this open highway with no side roads, the car and its passengers had instantly vanished.

As L.C, and Charlie sat there, trying to process what had just happened, a third car pulled over behind them.  The driver ran over to them, demanding to know what had happened to the car that had been ahead of him.  The man explained that he was driving north on Highway 167 when he saw ahead of him a new car (L.C. and Charlie’s) slowly pass a very old car and pull onto the shoulder.  The vintage car began to do the same, when it suddenly disappeared.  

After comparing notes, the three men fruitlessly examined the area for about an hour.  The third man wanted to contact the police to file a “missing person” report.  L.C. and Charlie, however, thought that would do no good.  They had no idea what happened to the woman and child, and trying to explain what had happened would likely just make them all look like lunatics.  The man finally agreed.  The three of them did exchange addresses and phone numbers.  For some time afterwards, the man would periodically contact them to discuss the incident, out of an apparent desire to reassure himself of his sanity.

Meaux concluded, “High strangeness points to ponder over: what if--she was from the past, and went forward in time, and she is now an old lady still living today, and what if on that same day it had been her instead of L.C. and Charlie behind the ‘old car,’ that same now old lady would have met herself. What if--the Earth itself has a super mentality and it creates as a cosmic joke all these anomalies of life on its surface just for its amusement or some other esoteric reason. What if--and this is the final and most depressing of the "what ifs"--she had come from the past, popped into the future and did not return to her past. The newspapers of 1940 would puzzle over a disappearance of a mother and her child one cold October day, foul play suspected, the search continues--while she and the child continue traveling in and out of various time zones forever.”

I suppose one can offer a simpler theory: Imagine a woman driving down a Louisiana highway one day in the 1940s, in a state of great fear for herself and her child, desperate to escape--to somewhere, anywhere.

Perhaps, for a few moments, at least, she managed to do just that.