Madam Crowl's Ghost and the Dead Sexton
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Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) was an Irish writer of Gothic horror. Born in Dublin, Le Fanu was raised in a literary family. His mother, a biographer, and his father, a clergyman, encouraged his intellectual development from a young age. He began writing poetry at fifteen and went on to excel at Trinity College, Dublin, where he studied law and served as Auditor of the College Historical Society. In 1838, shortly before he was called to the bar, he began contributing ghost stories to Dublin University Magazine, of which he later became editor and proprietor. He embarked on a career as a writer and journalist, using his role at the magazine as a means of publishing his own fictional work. Le Fanu made a name for himself as a pioneer of mystery and Gothic horror with such novels as The House by the Churchyard (1863) and Uncle Silas (1864). Carmilla (1872), a novella, is considered an early work of vampire fiction and an important influence for Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897).
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Madam Crowl's Ghost and the Dead Sexton - Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
The Project Gutenberg EBook of Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton
by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu
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Title: Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton
Author: Joseph Sheridan LeFanu
Release Date: March 17, 2004 [EBook #11610]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MADAM CROWL'S GHOST / DEAD SEXTON ***
Produced by Suzanne Shell, Gregory Margo and PG Distributed Proofreaders
MADAM CROWL'S GHOST and THE DEAD SEXTON
By Joseph Sheridan LeFanu
Both stories were originally published in 1871.
CONTENTS
Madam Crowl's Ghost
The Dead Sexton
MADAM CROWL'S GHOST
Twenty years have passed since you last saw Mrs. Jolliffe's tall slim figure. She is now past seventy, and can't have many mile-stones more to count on the journey that will bring her to her long home. The hair has grown white as snow, that is parted under her cap, over her shrewd, but kindly face. But her figure is still straight, and her step light and active.
She has taken of late years to the care of adult invalids, having surrendered to younger hands the little people who inhabit cradles, and crawl on all-fours. Those who remember that good-natured face among the earliest that emerge from the darkness of non-entity, and who owe to their first lessons in the accomplishment of walking, and a delighted appreciation of their first babblings and earliest teeth, have spired up
into tall lads and lasses, now. Some of them shew streaks of white by this time, in brown locks, the bonny gouden
hair, that she was so proud to brush and shew to admiring mothers, who are seen no more on the green of Golden Friars, and whose names are traced now on the flat grey stones in the church-yard.
So the time is ripening some, and searing others; and the saddening and tender sunset hour has come; and it is evening with the kind old north-country dame, who nursed pretty Laura Mildmay, who now stepping into the room, smiles so gladly, and throws her arms round the old woman's neck, and kisses her twice.
Now, this is so lucky!
said Mrs. Jenner, you have just come in time to hear a story.
Really! That's delightful.
Na, na, od wite it! no story, ouer true for that, I sid it a wi my aan eyen. But the barn here, would not like, at these hours, just goin' to her bed, to hear tell of freets and boggarts.
Ghosts? The very thing of all others I should most likely to hear of.
Well, dear,
said Mrs. Jenner, if you are not afraid, sit ye down here, with us.
She was just going to tell me all about her first engagement to attend a dying old woman,
says Mrs. Jenner, and of the ghost she saw there. Now, Mrs. Jolliffe, make your tea first, and then begin.
The good woman obeyed, and having prepared a cup of that companionable nectar, she sipped a little, drew her brows slightly together to collect her thoughts, and then looked up with a wondrous solemn face to begin.
Good Mrs. Jenner, and the pretty girl, each gazed with eyes of solemn expectation in the face of the old woman, who seemed to gather awe from the recollections she was summoning.
The old room was a good scene for such a narrative, with the oak-wainscoting, quaint, and clumsy furniture, the heavy beams that crossed its ceiling, and the tall four-post bed, with dark curtains, within which you might imagine what shadows you please.
Mrs. Jolliffe cleared her voice, rolled her eyes slowly round, and began her tale in these words:—
MADAM CROWL'S GHOST
"I'm an ald woman now, and I was but thirteen, my last birthday, the night I came to Applewale House. My aunt was the housekeeper there, and a sort o' one-horse carriage was down at Lexhoe waitin' to take me and my box up to Applewale.
"I was a bit frightened by the time I got to Lexhoe, and when I saw the carriage and horse, I wished myself back again with my mother at Hazelden. I was crying when I got into the 'shay'—that's what we used to call it—and old John Mulbery that drove it, and was a good-natured fellow, bought me a handful of apples at the Golden Lion to cheer me up a bit; and he told me that there was a currant-cake, and tea, and pork-chops, waiting for me, all hot, in my aunt's room at the great house. It was a fine moonlight night, and I eat the apples, lookin' out o' the shay winda.
"It's a shame for gentlemen to frighten a poor foolish child like I was. I sometimes think it might be tricks. There was two on 'em on the tap o' the coach beside me. And they began to question me after nightfall, when the moon rose, where