Thursday, March 20, 2014

Scared by the Maid



Christopher Logue, Christopher Logue’s True Stories from Private Eye (London: A. P. Rushton, 1973), p. 55.

No clipping supports this story, but I have found its source reliable on other occasions.

A world-famous mountaineer was asked to pass the weekend in a grand provincial home. Arriving late and last his hostess enquired if he minded sleeping in the haunted room. He did not mind.

The room was small, remote from the others, beamed, and the bed, into which he climbed after a good supper, a curtained four-poster.

At about three in the morning he was awakened by a slurry, shuffling sound which seemed to come from just beyond the bed curtains.

Hoping it would go away he stayed put. It got worse. That is to say it became a strangulated series of gasps.

Surrendering to his fright the mountaineer put his fingers in his ears and his head under the bolster.

Some time later the noises stopped and he went back to sleep.

Next morning he drew the curtains and found that one of the maids had hanged herself from the room’s main beam.