Orrin Bosworth listened with a sense of suffocation; he felt as if he were wrestling with long-armed horrors in a dream.
A Weird Storiette
I had entered, in an idle mood, the shop of one of those curiosity-venders, who are called marchands de bric-à-brac in that Parisian argot which is so perfectly unintelligible elsewhere in France.
It is bad enough to find your child’s mind possessed with the conviction that he has seen, or heard, a ghost; but that he should require you to go instantly and help that ghost. . .
It was a day for high adventure, and his heart rose up to meet the mood of Nature.
It was about half-past three on an August afternoon when I found myself for the first time looking down upon All Hallows. And at glimpse of it, fatigue and vexation passed away.
Days will come, and nights, and nothing—they will haunt me—I shall never sleep—I’m cursed.
“Behold!” I cried, “witch or devil of the marsh, you shall come with me! I have known you on the moors, a roving apparition of beauty; nothing more I know, nothing more I ask.
The neighbors talked about the curse with horror; in their minds a fabric of sad fate was spun from the bitter words.
Overcome by the horror of this unexpected revelation, the chairman covered his face with his hand and for a moment or two remained silent.
"Parson Kendall, he made the word, and he locked down a couple o’ ghosts in their graves with it; and when his time came he went to his own grave and took the word with him."
The legend of the Abbey’s ghosts had gone far and wide, and the men would take no risks
