THE SPOOK HOUSE
by Ambrose Bierce
On the road leading north from Manchester, in eastern
Kentucky, to Booneville, twenty miles away, stood, in
1862, a wooden plantation house of a somewhat better
quality than most of the dwellings in that region. The
house was destroyed by fire in the year following--probably
by some stragglers from the retreating column of General
George W. Morgan, when he was driven from Cumberland Gap
to the Ohio river by General Kirby Smith. At the time of
its destruction, it had for four or five years been vacant.
The fields about it were overgrown with brambles, the
fences gone, even the few negro quarters, and out-houses
generally, fallen partly into ruin by neglect and pillage;
for the negroes and poor whites of the vicinity found in
the building and fences an abundant supply of fuel, of
which they availed themselves without hesitation, openly
and by daylight. By daylight alone; after nightfall no
human being except passing strangers ever went near the
place.
It was known as the "Spook House." That it was tenanted
by evil spirits, visible, audible and active, no one in
all that region doubted any more than he doubted what he
was told of Sundays by the traveling preacher. Its owner's
opinion of the matter was unknown; he and his family had
disappeared one night and no trace of them had ever been
found. They left everything--household goods, clothing,
provisions, the horses in the stable, the cows in the field,
the negroes in the quarters--all as it stood; nothing was
missing--except a man, a woman, three girls, a boy and a
babe! It was not altogether surprising that a plantation
where seven human beings could be simultaneously effaced
and nobody the wiser should be under some suspicion.
One night in June, 1859, two citizens of Frankfort, Col.
J. C. McArdle, a lawyer, and Judge Myron Veigh, of the
State Militia, were driving from Booneville to Manchester.
Their business was so important that they decided to
push on, despite the darkness and the mutterings of an
approaching storm, which eventually broke upon them just
as they arrived opposite the "Spook House." The lightning
was so incessant that they easily found their way through
the gateway and into a shed, where they hitched and
unharnessed their team. They then went to the house,
through the rain, and knocked at all the doors without
getting any response. Attributing this to the continuous
uproar of the thunder they pushed at one of the doors,
which yielded. They entered without further ceremony and
closed the door. That instant they were in darkness and
silence. Not a gleam of the lightning's unceasing blaze
penetrated the windows or crevices; not a whisper of the
awful tumult without reached them there. It was as if
they had suddenly been stricken blind and deaf, and
McArdle afterward said that for a moment he believed
himself to have been killed by a stroke of lightning as
he crossed the threshold. The rest of this adventure can
as well be related in his own words, from the Frankfort
Advocate of August 6, 1876:
"When I had somewhat recovered from the dazing effect
of the transition from uproar to silence, my first
impulse was to reopen the door which I had closed, and
from the knob of which I was not conscious of having
removed my hand; I felt it distinctly, still in the
clasp of my fingers. My notion was to ascertain by
stepping again into the storm whether I had been
deprived of sight and hearing. I turned the doorknob
and pulled open the door. It led into another room!
"This apartment was suffused with a faint greenish
light, the source of which I could not determine,
making everything distinctly visible, though nothing
was sharply defined. Everything, I say, but in truth
the only objects within the blank stone walls of that
room were human corpses. In number they were perhaps
eight or ten--it may well be understood that I did
not truly count them. They were of different ages,
or rather sizes, from infancy up, and of both sexes.
All were prostrate on the floor, excepting one,
apparently a young woman, who sat up, her back
supported by an angle of the wall. A babe was clasped
in the arms of another and older woman. A half-grown
lad lay face downward across the legs of a full-bearded
man. One or two were nearly naked, and the hand of
a young girl held the fragment of a gown which she
had torn open at the breast. The bodies were in
various stages of decay, all greatly shrunken in face
and figure. Some were but little more than skeletons.
"While I stood stupefied with horror by this ghastly
spectacle and still holding open the door, by some
unaccountable perversity my attention was diverted
from the shocking scene and concerned itself with
trifles and details. Perhaps my mind, with an instinct
of self-preservation, sought relief in matters which
would relax its dangerous tension. Among other things,
I observed that the door that I was holding open was
of heavy iron plates, riveted. Equidistant from one
another and from the top and bottom, three strong
bolts protruded from the beveled edge. I turned the
knob and they were retracted flush with the edge;
released it, and they shot out. It was a spring lock.
On the inside there was no knob, nor any kind of
projection--a smooth surface of iron.
"While noting these things with an interest and
attention which it now astonishes me to recall I
felt myself thrust aside, and Judge Veigh, whom in
the intensity and vicissitudes of my feelings I had
altogether forgotten, pushed by me into the room.
'For God's sake,' I cried, 'do not go in there! Let
us get out of this dreadful place!'
"He gave no heed to my entreaties, but (as fearless
a gentleman as lived in all the South) walked quickly
to the center of the room, knelt beside one of the
bodies for a closer examination and tenderly raised
its blackened and shriveled head in his hands. A
strong disagreeable odor came through the doorway,
completely overpowering me. My senses reeled; I felt
myself falling, and in clutching at the edge of the
door for support pushed it shut with a sharp click!
"I remember no more: six weeks later I recovered my
reason in a hotel at Manchester, whither I had been
taken by strangers the next day. For all these weeks
I had suffered from a nervous fever, attended with
constant delirium. I had been found lying in the road
several miles away from the house; but how I had
escaped from it to get there I never knew. On recovery,
or as soon as my physicians permitted me to talk, I
inquired the fate of Judge Veigh, whom (to quiet me,
as I now know) they represented as well and at home.
"No one believed a word of my story, and who can
wonder? And who can imagine my grief when, arriving
at my home in Frankfort two months later, I learned
that Judge Veigh had never been heard of since that
night? I then regretted bitterly the pride which
since the first few days after the recovery of my
reason had forbidden me to repeat my discredited
story and insist upon its truth.
"With all that afterward occurred--the examination
of the house; the failure to find any room corresponding
to that which I have described; the attempt to have
me adjudged insane, and my triumph over my accusers--the
readers of the Advocate are familiar. After all these
years I am still confident that excavations which I
have neither the legal right to undertake nor the
wealth to make would disclose the secret of the
disappearance of my unhappy friend, and possibly of
the former occupants and owners of the deserted and
now destroyed house. I do not despair of yet bringing
about such a search, and it is a source of deep grief
to me that it has been delayed by the undeserved
hostility and unwise incredulity of the family and
friends of the late Judge Veigh."
Colonel McArdle died in Frankfort on the thirteenth
day of December, in the year 1879.
~~~~~~~ THE END ~~~~~~~
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