Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/391

 Rh at least six of my relatives, including my mother and two of my brothers. Those who stayed in the house rarely rested undisturbed, for whisperings and mutterings, footsteps down the passages, low sobbing, and strange shrieks and laughter were usual. Sometimes grimmer visitors came. My mother told how she and my father were awakened by the clang of a door and heavy footsteps. Someone then entered their room, though the door was afterwards found locked, and they both felt a horrible sense of some fearful presence in the darkness, seeing,—but unseen. After a few long minutes of suspense "It" passed back through the door and up the corridor, another door crashed to, and nothing more was heard. The clanging door was believed to be the one clamped up. My sisters also had a tale to tell. The curtains of their great bed had been carefully drawn and tucked in all round, but in the night my eldest sister awoke, and, feeling a gust of air and hearing a rustle, called to the others. She found the curtains drawn back, and all heard a horrible mocking laugh, but nothing was found in the room when the candle was lit. Noises and rustlings, with groans, sobs, and hurrying feet in the corridor, were heard for four nights. My brothers attested most of the noises, and I believe that most occupants of the place told similar tales.

(To be continued.)

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The following tale was taken down almost word for word from the lips of a charcoal-burner in a Tuscan roadside inn at Le Bagnore on the edge of the great forest on the slopes of Monte Amiata, which raises its cone-shaped summit 5500 feet above the plains and swamps of Maremma. This district formed the border-land between Tuscany and the old Papal States, and has retained a distinctive character of its own. The teller was a tall lean fellow with glittering eyes and high cheekbones, and with the wild and uncivilised aspect common to the men who live an