The Ghost That Ran, 1912

On: By: Romeyn

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.

When the Moon Comes Down, 1936

On: By: Romeyn

ASTRONOMERS like to scare their hearers from time to time, like the old-fashioned nurse telling children about ogres, with pictures of the end of the world. It may be burnt up by the exploding sun, or frozen by the sun’s extinction (though the latter is less probable); it may lose all its air by radiation into space, and chemical absorption into the earth. But, at the close, the audience is reassured that their fear of its happening in a million years is baseless—that the earth has at least ten million years of existence ahead—and they go away relieved.

Mysterious Attacks, 1917

On: By: Romeyn

FATE PLAYED THIS GIRL GRIM TRICKS IN MYSTERIOUS ADVENTURES OF NIGHT

Miss Arline Coldwater. Victim Mysterious Attacks

Salt Lake City, Jan. 12.

In what weird web of fate has Arline Coldwater, 16, become entangled?

A grim, whimsical nemesis has three times sought out the girl in her bed in the dead of night and two times the hunt has been successful. There followed a most terrifying experience, the fearsome operation being exactly the same on both occasions.

All Salt Lake is agog trying to solve the riddle of these peculiar attacks.

Recently the girl was awakened at 4 in the morning to find the dark forms of two men at-her bedside. Before she could scream’ a hand closed over her lips. A gag was placed roughly between her teeth and bound around her head. In spite of her struggles she was carried to a granary in the rear of the Coldwater home.

Then came the intensely fiendish feature of the mysterious assault. The men bound her ankles, tied her wrists together with a rope, throwing the loose end over a rafter. The rope was tightened slowly. The girl was drawn upward until her toes barely touched the floor. The entire procedure was carried out in silence. The two men looked at each other, broiled and disappeared.

Four hours later the girl managed to work the gag loose. Her cries attracted her father. She was hysterical and half conscious when released. This was the second visit. A few nights before the mysterious pair had attempted to capture her, but she escaped, her screams arousing the neighborhood.

A week or so later she endured a similar experience. Her room was entered again at 4 in the morning. She was awakened by a man at her bed side. Again a hand stopped her cries. Again the gag was put in her mouth. Then the “unscrupulous assailants carried her to the granary and left her hanging by the wrists, her body, covered only by a night dress, exposed to the cold weather.

Hours later she once more slipped the gag from her mouth. Her screams attracted a neighbor. She collapsed when she was cut down.

The police are puzzled. The nature of the knots and the peculiar way in which she was drawn up from the floor preclude the possibility of the girl having tied herself. No violence beyond that necessary to subdue her struggles has been offered her. Robbery is not the motive of the attacks Nothing was touched in the house, except the girl.

The Coldwater home, which stands in a lonely spot beyond the edge of Salt Lake, is now being carefully guarded.

The Ferocious Man-eating Tree of Madagascar

On: By: Romeyn

It is from seven to ten feet high and something like a grape fruit in shape, with rough, ugly tendrils stretching out in all directions. The trunk is black and hard as stone.

At the top of. the tree are six palpi, six feet high, that rear straight up and twine and whirl about incessantly. There is a cup also at the top which contains a clear, appetizing looking fluid. But alas for him who drinks it. He becomes peculiarly crazed and unable to get down.

Then it is that the whirling palpi twine themselves slowly but surely about the helpless man until all life is gone. This species of tree is naturally avoided as a deadly serpent would be, and the natives consider that it is actually alive and possessed of an evil and terrible spirit. (Arizona Republican, October 19, 1913)

Sacrificed to a man-eating plant. American Weekly. September 26, 1920