Category: Pulp Media

From The Day Book, Chicago IL, April 11, 1912

The tall angular ghost smacked its thin lips in gleeful anticipation as it passed through the solid oaken door of the house in which it had lived when on earth. Down the ancient hall it floated, a malignant grin distorting its face. Up the broad stairs it mounted and finally paused before a bed room door. Upon this door it gave three sepulchral knocks and then, in its horrible mirth, laughed aloud, a long, raucous laugh.

There was a stirring within, as of one fearsomely roused from sweet slumber.

“Who’s there?’ came in quavering tones, at last, from the other side of the door.

For answer the ghost passed through the door and into the room. Sitting in the middle of a big bed, with the bedclothes drawn closely around him, was a stout Englishman, an expression of abject fear upon his face. At this man the ghost pointed a bony filmy finger.

“James,” the ghost muttered in awesome tones, “for 30 years you were my man servant and for 30 years you lorded it over me. For 30 years I lived in daily fear of you. You owned me body and soul, and now that I am dead and a spook I’ve returned to haunt you to hau-u-u-nt you.”

The last words the ghost drew out in tones- that would bring the cold shivers to the sturdiest spine.

James shuddered, as though he felt a draft from the regions of the aurora borealis. His teeth chattered. His hair stood on end, in the meantime turning a snowy white before the ghost’s very eyes.

“I – I served you faithfully,” James muttered at last. ‘Too faithfully,” the ghost declared. “You companionship was insufferable to me. When I was on the same plane with yourself you were my master! If we were again on the same plane you would again be my master and I would again be afraid of you. But, now that I am transported, I am YOUR master, and from’ now on I, shall haunt you nightly.”

“Have mercy ! Have mercy !” pleaded the wretched James.

“No,” cried the ghost, “for your sins in forcing me to wear a white cravat when I wished to wear a red one, for you sins in making, me appear in evening clothes punctually at 6 o’clock, I shall haunt you. Good-bye for the present.”

The ghost passed through the bedroom door, noting with satisfaction as he went that the very rafters of the substantial building were shaking with the fearful shivering of James. The ghost floated down the stairs, through the hall and passed through the front door. Outside it paused for a moment to smack its lips. It turned for another look at its former home and was filled with dismay. Hurrying toward it was the form of James, now diaphanous and ghostly like itself.

“What – what is it, James?” questioned the ghost, a mighty fear struggling at its heart.

“You scared me to death!” the ghost of James replied, with a huge laugh, “and I’ve brought your pink pajamas to put on instead of that nightrobe!”

As it spoke the ghost of James walked forward.

But the ghost’ of the master stopped to hear no more. With a wild shriek of dismay, it picked up its long skirts and ran like the wind out into the realms of space.