The Severed Head

The Severed Head By Jessie Middleton © 2008 by http://www.HorrorMasters.com

The following story was told at the time by Mr. Walter Herries Pollock, the well-known author and critic, and former editor of the Saturday Review, and I am indebted to his kindness in allowing me to reproduce it here. Apropos of the story, Mr. Pollock writes to me: “It is the only instance I know of two people, without any collusion, seeing exactly the same strange appearance in the same way.” “This ghost has certain advantages. It is not the cut and dried ghost familiar to fiction, and especially in old-fashioned Christmas numbers. I am able to repeat it at first hand, and I have an independent and impeccable witness to do the same kind office for it. “And then it had the privilege—a privilege surely granted to few ghosts in a theatrical audience—of dividing the attention of at least two devoted playgoers between itself and a great actor in the front of whose theatre it made its first appearance. “Was it its first appearance? Or its last, or its first and last, or is it there every night and never visible twice running to the same person or persons? This last would be good ghostly behaviour, and it is certain that my friend and I have only seen it once, though, not unnaturally, we have been on the look out for it since that once. “This is how it was seen. One night I went with a very intimate friend to a certain London theatre, where we had booked a box. We were to have been a party of four or five, and we had the second box from the stage on the O.P. side of the second tier. “As it happened, only my friend and myself turned up, and we sat at opposite corners of the box—a fact which is by no means unimportant ‘with regard to the ghost’s appearance. The play was one in which both of us were always deeply interested, but on this particular night there was something that distracted my attention from the play— something off the stage that I could not help looking at. “This something was in the audience part of the house, and when it first caught my eye I could not help starting, so singular, so vivid, and so terrifying in its nature was the illusion, which I thought would vanish as soon as I could make up my mind to take my eyes off it. “This I accordingly did. I looked closely at the stage for some minute or so and then looked back at the place where I had seen it, fully expecting that my vision would light either on an empty space or in some convolution of a dress or a cloak, which had assumed the fantastic shape I had seen. Not at all; there it was, as vivid, as real, as startling as before. Strangely enough, considering what it was there was nothing revolting or horrible about it; but it was tremendously impressive, and it held the attention chained. “While I was gazing and wondering, the curtain fell and the lights in front went up; and, with the vanishing of the semi-darkness, it vanished also. Half a second before its complete disappearance I glanced round unintentionally at my companion, and saw that he, too, was gazing in the direction where I had seen it. “Had he seen it, too? “Our eyes met, and I saw in his the same doubt and wonder that he had, no doubt, discerned in mine. Then, during the interval, ensued between us a conversation in which

each, feeling nearly certain that the other had shared his strange experience, tried hard to get the other to confess first to his belief in the incredible sight which, it so happened, we both had witnessed. “As thus: “ ‘See anybody you know in the stalls?’ “ ‘Yes; Mrs. , young —, and one or two others. Did you?’ “ ‘Yes. Very hot and oppressive in the theatre to-night, isn’t it?’ ‘It is, rather.’ “Then there was a silence, in which we eyed each other suspiciously, and then again our eyes met, just as each of us was on the point of examining closely with an opera glass the spot where the amazing appearance had been seen. Then we both spoke, almost simultaneously, and the burden of the speech of both was: “ ‘What did you see in the third row?’ “Then said one: ‘What stall were you looking at?’ “And the other replied: ‘At the fifth. So were you. “At this the first speaker nodded, and then the curtain went up, the lights in front went down, and there, just as before, was the strange presence. “This time there was no attempt on the part of either of us to bide the weird fascination which the thing had. When again the curtain fell and the lights went up, the vision immediately vanished. We both gave a little sigh of relief from the tension of watching and wondering. Then we compared notes. “ ‘What did you see?’ “ ‘Tell me first what you saw. What I saw is so strange! “ ‘Very well. It is no use beating about the bush. I feel morally certain that we have seen the same thing. The lady in the fifth stall of the third row is holding a dead man’s head, cut off at the neck, on her lap.’ “ ‘Precisely so,’ said my companion, and seldom have commonplace words had a more incongruous significance. “ ‘Somehow it is not shocking,’ I replied. “ ‘Not the least, but it’s awful in the old sense of the word.’ “ ‘Yes; it is, of course, some arrangement of the dress or the cloak.’ “ ‘So one would think; but how, then, should both of us, from different angles of vision, and without any kind of collusion, have seen the folds take the same shape, and that so very strange a shape?’ “ ‘True. Remark, also, that the lady has moved slightly, and the slightest movement should be enough to—Ah! she has moved again. We shall see no more of the ghost. By the by, you said just now we had seen the same shape. That is not yet certain. Draw me an outline of the head; there is a pencil.’ “My friend took the pencil and drew exactly the same outline—a fine profile with a Vandyke beard— that I had seen, and that I can see in my mind’s eye now. “ ‘This,’ I observed, ‘is strange indeed. But, as I said, the lady has moved twice, and we shall see no more of the ghost.’ “The curtain rose for the last act, the lights in front went down again, and as they sank the dead man’s head cut off at the neck reappeared again as vivid as ever and in exactly its old position on the lap of the lady in the fifth stall of the third row. Nor did it seem to

waver or change in the slightest degree, until, the curtain falling for the last time, the lady rose, readjusted her cloak and went out of the theatre. “That is the story, so far as it has gone as yet, of the ghost at the Theatre. Whether there is ‘more to come’ remains to be seen. So far I have set down the facts and the conversation within a few words, exactly as they occurred. I was talking of the matter only this morning to my friend, and, oddly enough, neither of us can in the least recall the features of the lady. But here are the features of the ghost, in case anybody should recognise them and have an explanation of the mystery of the fifth stall in the third row.”