The Matrimonial Ghost

The Matrimonial Ghost By Jessie Middleton © 2008 by http://www.HorrorMasters.com

The story of a strange honeymoon adventure has been given to me by a friend. She writes: “A very few days after I was married we were honeymooning in Scotland. My husband had some old friends living in a wonderful old castle there, and we were asked to spend a short time with them. I was shown to my room—a weird, old-fashioned apartment, containing an enormous four-poster bed, and opposite the bed, in the left-hand corner, was a door at the top of a small flight of steps. “ ‘You needn’t mind that door,’ said my hostess; ‘it is all locked and barred and leads to nowhere. It’s all empty behind there.’ “All the same, that door rather gave me the creeps, and I said to my husband before dinner, ‘For goodness’ sake, don’t leave me long alone up here!’ ‘But I must go to the smoking-room with the other men,’ he reminded me, ‘though I promise I will not stay longer than I can help.’ “I had gone to bed, but the room was fully lighted 5till, when that door at the top of the steps opened, and down the steps walked a little old lady. She was a quaint little person, wearing an old-fashioned gown1 and I could plainly hear the tap of her high red heels as her tiny feet tripped down the steps. “Terrified, I jumped up, flung on a wrapper, tore down the stairs and beat on the smoking-room door, screaming for my husband. When we got back to our room, there was nothing to be seen, but next morning my hostess apologised. ‘I am so sorry,’ she said, ‘I put you in that room. You have seen our Matrimonial Ghost, as we call her. She always appears directly anyone here is engaged. But I thought you would be immune, being already married—and so very recently. We always think she had a wretched married life herself, and tries to warn people against matrimony. Both our two married daughters saw the ghost directly they became engaged, and, as regards our youngest daughter, we have cause for real gratitude. “ ‘She was flirting with a very undesirable young man. One day she flew down to me, screaming that she had seen the ghost. “Mary,” I instantly said, “you are engaged to that man!” She then confessed she had become secretly affianced to him the day before. Knowledge is power most certainly under these circumstances, and I am thankful to say we persuaded the misguided girl to give up her ill-chosen lover.’