C. Arthur Pearson struck success when he published two series of ghost stories as “Real Ghost Stories” by E and H. Heron in 1898 and 1899 in Pearson’s Magazine. The real authors were Hesketh Prichard and his mother, Kate. These tales starred a psychic detective named Flaxman Low, one of the first and most famous ghostbreakers.
In 1905, Pearson tried again, this time with a series of five stories called “The Ghost Hunters” by Allen Upward. These appeared in The Royal Magazine. He would follow this with another “True Ghost Stories” by Jessie Adelaide Middleton in 1907.
Mike Ashley wrote about George Allen Upward (1863-1926) is his Occult Detective collection, The Fighters of Fear (2020): “A barrister by training but with a yearning to be a politician…He enjoyed exploring secret histories and perhaps was best known for the series “Secrets of the Courts of Europe” that ran in Pearson’s Magazine during 1896…His death was itself a mystery. he was found dead of a gunshot wound at his cottage but his adopted son, Richard, who was in bed upstairs, heard no shot, and both he and Upward’s sister did not believe Upward was depressed. A verdict of suicide while of unsound mind was recorded, but was it an accident or something more sinister?”
The illustrator of the series was Benjamin Edward Minns, an Australian artist. From 1895 to 1905 he lived in England and worked on magazines like The Strand, St. Paul’s Magazine and Punch. Most important, he was the artist who had illustrated the Flaxman Low stories in 1898. The images he created for “The Ghost Hunters” are similar, indeed!
The opening story was called “The Story of the Green House, Wallington” and bore the standard top illustration for all five parts of the series. In this episode we meet Hargreaves of Mortimer & Hargreaves, buyers of haunted houses. When a Mr. Gillstrap offers the Green House for five hundred pounds, though it costs fifteen hundred to build it, Hargreaves is interested. He takes his assistant, the young and intelligent woman, Miss Alwyne Sargent, along.
The house-agent is reticent as to why the house has a bad reputation except to say that the lower bedroom seems to be the focus of the trouble and the maid’s bedroom above it is also reputedly an ill place to sleep. Hargreaves allows Sargent to bring her family along, her widowed mother and three sisters. They sleep in the downstairs bedroom because Miss Sargent is also a “sensitive” or medium. Mr. Hargreaves takes the upstairs room.
That night Hargreaves sleeps poorly. He wakes to hear loud voices. He runs downstairs and finds Miss Sargent moaning and unable to wake. Hargreaves bodily carries her out of the room and the wailing stops. Her eyes open and Alwyne says: “The-blood-the-blood- the-blood-the-blood-dripping-dripping-dripping-dripping-from-the-red-leak-in-the-ceiling -the-red-leak-in-the-ceiling-the-red-leak-in-the-ceiling-dripping-on-me-dripping-on-ME-on-ME!”
After this, Hargreaves gets some tools and breaks open the floor in the room above. He finds evidence of lime, probably used to dissolve a body. He also finds a stilletto. He reports this to the police. He fixes the floor and rents the house and eventually sells it for a profit. His last piece of information is:
Into the details of this terrible case I do not mean to enter. It is sufficient to say that the victim had perished while asleep in the attic, and that his blood had actually soaked through the ceiling into the room below, which was that of his murderer–Gillstrap!
A caption under the top banner reads: “This is the first of a New Series of Exciting Ghost Stories. They are entirely Different in Conception from anything of the Kind that has ever been Published before. Each Story is complete in itself.” Some of this is true but the grand claim of being “Different in Conception from anything of the Kind” is sadly hype. The details of this first story are little different than those of “To Sura” by Pliny the Younger in 1st Century AD, where Athenodorus does pretty much the same.
The second story was “The Tapping on the Wainscot” (as Mike Askhley says, is a much better story). Hargeaves has another house to sell when he hears that it might be haunted. The house had belonged to Sir Christopher Weetman, but having died without a will, the property reverted to his son, Henry. Sir Christopher also had an adopted daughter, Miss Alice, who Henry threw out of the house. She had to take a job as a waitress.
Alone, Hargeaves investigates. He talks to Mrs. Musgrave, the housekeeper. The haunting takes form as a series of knockings that can start anywhere but always end up in the master bedroom. They stop at a certain stop in the wainscotting. Hargreaves spends the night and experiences the tapping himself. He is so shaken by the noises he can’t sleep there that night and leaves.
The next day he returns to Hailesbury Manor with Alwyne Sargent. The three come to the conclusion that something is hidden behind the wainscotting, perhaps Sir Christopher’s missing will. Hargreaves hires a workman to remove the boarding but there is nothing there. Mrs. Musgrave insists that the tapping is Sir Christopher wanting the return of a portrait of Miss Alice at seventeen. The painting was sold off along with all the rest of the house’s contents. Only the four poster bed that once belonged to Charles I was not sold, being too big and attached to the floor.
Miss Sargent insists on sleeping in the bed, knowing her occult gifts work while she sleeps. Hargreaves allows it only if Mrs. Musgraves sleeps nearby. Hargreaves waits downstairs, not sleeping. Later Mrs. Musgrave calls him to the room. Miss Sargent is again talking in that strange fashion: “Leave-it-alone-leave-it-alone-leave-it-alone-put-it-back-put-it-back-put-it-back-Ah, he’s taken it!” Once again, Hargreaves removes her from the room. She wakes and tells of seeing the workman taking the painting down and Sir Christopher’s ghost trying to stop him.
This experience leads Hargreaves and Sargent to want to see the painting. Using the information from the auctioneers, Hargreaves finds the new owner and concocts a story about wanting to show it. After coming to a fairly high price, the man agrees. While Hargreaves is taking the picture down he drops it. Inside the frame is the missing will, which leaves everything to Alice. When the owner hears the truth he donates the picture to Miss Alice for free. She hangs it back in its place in her new home.
The third episode “The Secret of Horner’s Court” revolves around Horner’s Court, a new prospective purchase. A Mr. Roseveare of Rosevear & Grimson agrees to Hargreaves terms, but while papers are being done up, Roseveare asks if he has met “the Miss Sargent”, whose reputation has grown. Hargreaves brushes him off, not wanting to lose a valuable employee and perhaps some other reason.
Horner’s Court is supposedly haunted but when Hargreaves goes alone to see the place, the help, a Mr. Stiles, is reticent on most topics. He tells his wife thought she saw a child ghost in the haunted room but he doubts it. Hargreaves looks the place over and suggests that the pool outside his window needs to be drained as it is a nasty looking reservoir. Hargreaves keeps pressing and eventually learns that the last owner was a Lady Maria Cruikshank, who remarried and moved to Italy.
After spending a night in a room (not the haunted one), he decides it is time to bring in Miss Sargent. He has instructed the Stiles couple that he wants a bed set up in the haunted room. This they do not do, but in another, filling the haunted room with lumber. Hargreaves isn’t fooled and moves the bed. Hargreaves brings a Scotland Yard man, Mayhew, with him, passing him off as a valet. The two men stake out the hall outside the room. Miss Sargent spends the night, rising during the night. She is in a somnambulent trance. The men follow her until a door stops her. It has been locked by Mr. Stiles. Mayhew kicks the door in with Hargreaves permission.
Miss Sargent continues on her sleep walk. She heads for the pool, running, and is about to throw herself in when Hargreaves catches her. She wakes, frightened in Hargreaves’ arms. They go back to bed and in the morning the Stileses have disappeared, never to be seen again.
The pool is dragged the next day. The skeleton of an eight year old boy is found. Hargreaves does some digging and the entire story comes out. When Lady Maria remarried, her husband had not cared for her son. The boy had been neglected unto death. His body was placed in the pool so that Maria’s wealth would not be reduced to a widow’s third. An elaborate set of lies were created around his going abroad to school to make it look as if the boy survived. The Stileses had been in on the secret. The police are informed and Lady Maria’s money is reduced by the amount she was not entitled to, leaving her in penury.
The fourth tale is “The Two Roses”, a disappointing tale, largely because of its construction. Another house, this one called Bewley Hall, has an old section that has been sealed up for decades. Hargreaves brings Miss Sargent along from the beginning. For a chaperone, Hargreaves’ sister, Jane joins them. Being a daft man he doesn’t understand the tension between the two, though he does admit by the end he may have feelings for his efficient secretary.
The woman showing them around the house seems to know little as they explore the old dusty halls and bedrooms. There is no legend or sense of ghosts until their guide mentions the blood stain on the long oaken table in the hall. The trio spend the day hoping for some psychic signs but nothing happens. They look at an old fashioned pistol with two barrels, one spent. The women go upstairs to sleep. Hargreaves stays back then experiences a strange sense of being slightly out of his body. A beam of light cuts through the darkness and lights up a white rose on the spot of the blood stain.
Hargreaves looks up to see Miss Sargent coming down the stairs. She is wearing a coat she found somewhere, and carrying a pistol. She seems to be walking in a dream state again. She drops to the floor, hiding her head. When she stands again she has the pistol and fires it harmlessly over the balustrade. She drops the weapon.
Hargreaves looks to where it fell, and sees the rose has changed color to red. Alwyne wakes from her dream. Hargreaves goes to her and asks her to make a promise. “With the nature of that promise, and its subsequent fulfillment, the reader has no concern.” Jane appears and they all retire.
Later we are given the story of the two roses. Rosamund married an old man named Hedges for his money but loves a young man. She and young Greville trade roses as a sign of their love. Rosamund leaves a white rose on the table. Greville sneaks into the garden and leaves a red rose. Lord Hedges discovers the tryst and shoots Greville dead with the pistol. Immediately Rosamund sees this and throws herself out a window, breaking her neck. Hedges is distraught and boards up the wing.
The last tale, “The Haunted Woman” begins with a surprise. Alwyne Sargent has agreed to marry Hargreaves. That little promise is no longer a secret. The story has a letter come to the couple now that the Psychical Research Society has been publishing Miss Sargent’s adventures. A Lady Throgmorton wants assistance (in secrecy) on a matter concerning her stepson’s late wife.
Hargreaves is not interested but his fiancee is. Miss Sargent is to go down first, pretending to be a new companion. She meets Lady Throgmorton and is not overly impressed. The woman wears too much make-up and is surrounded by bottles of smelling salts and other remedies. She is also obsessed with the idea of keeping their affair from her stepson, Captain Arthur Throgmorton, a man she describes as frail and ready to snap. Lady Throgmorton has a maid, Madeleine, that Alwyne doesn’t care for either.
That night Miss Sargent is invited to sit in the room where Lady Throgmorton sleeps. A vision of a dead woman’s corpse appears. The ghost lies for a while then slowly rots before her eyes then vanishes. It is the spirit of the dead son’s wife, the late Mrs. Throgmorton. Miss Sargent, the next day, suggests that Lady Throgmorton should not sleep in that room again. Lady Throgmartin leaves for France the next day.
When Hargreaves reads all this he comes down himself, posing as a real estate appraiser. He agrees to join his fiancee in the haunted chamber that night when Captain Throgmartin comes upon them with a gun. He accuses the couple of skullduggery but Hargreaves explain everything. Captain Throgmartin explains too. He does not appear the frail, unstable type his mother described him as. He tells how his wife had a fear of being buried alive and had had a special coffin made. For some time her body did not decompose but finally did.
As they talk a telegram arrives from France. Lady Throgmorton has seen the ghost again, but on the Continent. Captain Throgmorton and the Lady’s doctor will go to France to take care of her. Later a note arrives explaining they have placed her in an asylum. As it turns out, Lady Throgmorton was responsible for the death of the Captain’s wife, using a poison that delayed the rotting of the corpse. Lady Throgmorton had been unwilling to give up her position as matron of the house and the family collection of jewels. The ghost is a morbid guilt that haunts her. Hargreaves and Sargent get married and give up ghost hunting.
And right they should. The author does not explain how Miss Sargent saw the phantom that rotted away. He explains why it appeared, did not seem to rot then melted away but not how another can see the guilt of another. Upward was obviously tired of the series and felt no need to do anything but finish.
In the end, I have to admit I very much enjoyed the romance angles of the five stories but found the ghost stories themselves dull. The best is probably the second tale “The Tapping on the Wainscot”. By the fourth tale, Upward begins to feel constrained, impatient, telling his story in chunks. The complete lack of monsters, or dire supernatural moments, make the entire series a trifle sedate. The last tale ends with: “I have now given up dealing in haunted property, and my wife will never in the future, I trust, be called upon to exercise her extraordinary gift of clairvoyance.” I am not so sure I regret this.
