The next morning, assigning no very satisfactory reason, he cut
his visit short and went away. Shortly afterwards, a young lady came to
visit the W------'s; but she too went away the next morning,--going first
to make a call, as she said, to a friend, and sending thence for her
trunks. Mrs. W------ wrote to this young lady, asking an explanation.
The young lady replied, and gave a singular account of an apparition,--
how she was awakened in the night by a bright light shining through the
window, which was parallel to the bed; then, if I remember rightly, her
curtains were withdrawn, and a shape looked in upon her,--a woman's
shape, she called it; but it was a skeleton, with lambent flames playing
about its bones, and in and out among the ribs. Other persons have since
slept in this chamber, and some have seen the shape, others not. Mr.
W------ has slept there himself without seeing anything. He has had
investigations by scientific people, apparently under the idea that the
phenomenon might have been caused by some of the Times's work-people,
playing tricks on the magic-lantern principle; but nothing satisfactory
has thus far been elucidated. Mr. B------ had this story from Mrs.
Gaskell. . . . . Supposing it a ghost, nothing else is so remarkable as
its choosing to haunt the precincts of the Times newspaper.
July 29th.--On Saturday, 26th, I took the rail from the Lime Street
station for London, via the Trent Valley, and reached Blackheath in the
evening.
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