Not all ghostbreakers have lengthy careers like Carnacki, Semi-Dual or Jules De Grandin. Often they are single event participants like the unnamed narrator in Bulwer-Lytton’s “The Haunters and the Haunted” or Percival Landon’s “Thurnley Abbey”. Their knowledge and expertise is minimal but their intentions are no different than the professional class of ghost buster. Be they doctor, detective or as is often the case, tourist, they carry the same attitude of investigation into all things outre.
I offer you seven tales from the Victorian magazines, like Beadle’s Monthly, The Continent and The Idler. Many of these tales appeared for the first time in periodicals, for some only there. Others are from book collections from specialists like Algernon Blackwood and H. G. Wells. In every case, a person (occasionally a group of persons) seeks answers to ghostly visitations or other creepy mysteries. Here is where the job of priest and private eye meet.
The Haunted Shanty
The first is an unnamed investigator in the novella “The Haunted Shanty” by Bayard Taylor in Atlantic Monthly, July 1861. A traveler to America has to stay a night in a shack with its three inhabitants, a farmer , his wife and their son. That night the traveler is woken by the sound of an army rushing by. He is not afraid, but explores the phenomenon logically. He hears a ghostly woman accuse Eber Nicholson of holding her soul in limbo. The owner of the shack is Eber Nicholson. His wife is obviously angry with her husband. She tells the visitor to talk to her husband about the female ghost.
The traveler works it so Eber will show him the road the next morning. Now alone, he accuses the man of murder. He is surprised to learn the ghost, Rachel Emmons, is alive and well in Toledo. Eber spills his story. He had wanted to marry Rachel but his father forced him to marry his wife, Mary Ann Jones. Rachel showed up at the wedding, cursing the young man. She insists they were “married in the eyes of God”.
Eber and Mary Ann move away to Illinois, build their shanty. One night the ghost of Rachel appears and for years they have been tortured by these ghostly attacks. Eber goes to Toledo to beg mercy. Rachel can not give it. The traveler advises the man to confront her ghost next time with a determined attitude.
The traveler goes to Toledo after finishing some business. He meets Rachel and learns she has been astrally projecting herself entirely by instinct. She too is tortured by the nightly trips, causing her to age prematurely. The traveler advises her to write to Eber and tell of her forgiveness.
Three years go by. The traveler has told his friends back in New York of the incident (and received some ridicule from one colleague). He finds himself back in Toledo and goes to Rachel’s house. He learns she has died. On her death bed she called out to Eber, telling him she was going away at last. The cousin of Rachel tells him that Eber had moved to Kansas. Rachel left the house to her cousin but her fortune to Eber, who had yet to claim it. The traveler never finds out if Eber Nicholson ever found peace. The traveler’s attempts to help both Rachel and Eber, as well as explain the strange phenomenon, make him an early ghostbreaker.
Hu Hirwan’s Ghost
Robert Pritchard is the narrator in “Hu Hirwan’s Ghost” by Samuel Williams in Overland Monthly, January 1869. His tale is related by a visitor to Wales who stays awhile to convalesce. Pritchard was a well-known skeptic of the supernatural. He had slept in places haunted by Robin Gock, the terrible Bwgan Uch y Mynydd, even the spectral Smuggler of Maen Mellt. The event that changed his mind was when taking a bet for five guineas he slept in the cabin of Hu Hirwan. The old miser had been murdered in his home, and a poor man named Dick Wirion was convicted of his murder and hanged. When Hu shows up, Pritchard demands of him why he lingers on earth. The answer is that he was murdered by his kin, Owen Roberts. Pritchard tells this to the magistrate the next day and Owens is tried and hanged. A very traditional ghost story but unusual for its narrator, a man worthy of Athenodorus.
The Mystery of the Cathedral of Chihuhua
“The Mystery of the Cathedral of Chihauhau” by Eliot Ryder in Ballou’s Monthly, November 1882 has a visitor to Mexico look up the priest, Father Ambrosio Martinez. The cleric tells a story of his first year in Chihauhau. The priest and his assistant Placido and a dog enter the old part of the cathedral that is not used because of spirits. They see mild things at first, ghostly footprints of a child, but later the ghosts become meaner, with pokings and proddings. The Padre finds two letters that an invisible hand later steals. His helper, Placido, sees something horrible and flees. Then the priest sees a dark cloud with bright eyes but is saved by the moon’s light. In the morning he finds his dog is dead from fear. This tale is a poor imitation (a plagiarized version really) of Bulwer-Lytton’s “The Haunters and the Haunted”.
The Red Room
An unnamed narrator in “The Red Room” by H. G. Wells in The Idler, March 1896 gives us Wells’ take on ghostly phenomenon. The man first meets the three wards of the red room, two old men and a women. Wells spends a long time describing them as they prepare us for the atmosphere necessary for a ghost story. After this, he gives us a long, convoluted way to the room, with a sculpture of Ganymede and an eagle. (Perhaps meant to be symbolic of being carried off to a fantastical place?) And finally, we arrive in the red room, where he lights a fire and many, many candles. The ghostly presence snuffs them just as fast as he can relight them. In the end, he loses the race, with all the light snuffed out, even the fireplace. He runs and strikes his head. He wakes in the morning to see his three wards. They want to know if he saw a specific spirit. The investigator denies this, saying the room is haunted by fear. Wells did write other stories with the spirits in “The Stolen Body”, “The Inexperienced Ghost” and “The Plattner Story”.
The Ghost of the Grate
Mr. Curtis in Sarah P.E. Hawthorne’s “The Ghost of the Grate” in Ballou’s Monthly Magazine (February 1888) is a detective in Orange County. He investigates the death of Solomon Rothmore. The man disappeared and a new will, leaving the fortune to his brother, James, is found. The daughter of Rothmore fears he has been murdered and the will a forgery. Curtis takes up a bed in the house and lights the grate in the room. A ghostly vision comes from that fire. He checks the grate and finds evidence of the burning of a body. He studies the will and finds the signature two years old on a six year old will. Armed with this evidence, he arrests James Rothmore. Rothmore’s niece inherits and marries the detective.
The Woman’s Ghost Story
An unnamed narrator in “The Woman’s Ghost Story” by Algernon Blackwood in The Listener and Other Stories (1907) tells her story “without unessentials”. She goes to a haunted room and encounters the ghost. He calls himself “the man who frightened himself to death”. The ghost needs love to pass over to the other side. Since all the others who had come to the room to see the ghost were men, they failed in this. She hugs the ghost and then he is gone. Not Blackwood’s best.
The Toll-House
Lester, White, Meagle, and Jack Barnes seem like a comedic team in the opening of “The Toll-House” by W.W. Jacobs from Sailors’ Knots (1909). Jack is an ardent unbeliever in ghosts. The four men hear of a haunted house and leave the inn to talk to the landlord. Getting permission, they go to the shabby house. Three of the men fall asleep (perhaps by unnatural causes?) leaving Barnes to freak out when something comes to him. The others wake up to find their friend has fallen down a flight of stairs to his death. Jacob’s is famous as the writer of “The Monkey’s Paw” but he actually wrote mostly humorous tales, some ghost stories.
Conclusion
The history of the occult detective does not alone belong to the detective with file drawers filled with cases of the unusual and unknown. These individual stories feature amateurs who, in their way, moved along the concept of the ghostbreaker. Many are unnamed or anonymous. What is important is the way in which they tackle what would frighten most of us to death. Where we would run, they stay and dig deep into the mysteries of the undead. Not so different than all the supernatural Sherlocks to follow.
I selected all these stories from Brom Bones Book’s list of early ghostbreakers. Many of these elder tales can be found online at Archive.org, in their magazine collections. I hope you have good vision for some of these old pages are hard on the eyes. Enjoy the hunt for more obscure and fascinating ghost hunters.
