Chapter 1
The Start of the Journey
1931
ROSEHALL
THE HAUNTED ROOM
TALES OF ADVENTURE
1932
VISIONS OF ELI
1932-1933
CINEMATIC ESCAPE
1934
THE ABANDONED COTTAGE
LITERARY ENCOUNTER
THE DERELICT MILL
1939
J. M. DENT
1931
8
YEARS
THE HAUNTED ROOM
“Falling asleep quickly after a tiring journey, a visitor and stranger to the area…”
“...awakened in their bedstead…”
“...to hear dogs barking…”
“He went back to sleep...”
“...only to be soon awakened once again...”
“...by an extraordinary pressure upon his feet...”
“…he saw, by the light in the chimney-corner, the figure of a well-dressed man, but the head was not visible because of the bed-curtains...”
“The visitor raised himself upright in the bed - when the figure was suddenly no longer there!”
“Realising that he had locked the door…”
“...and becoming more and more puzzled, he carefully searched the room, but found no trace whatsoever of his mysterious visitor…”
“He noticed that the time was ten minutes after two,
and he returned to bed hoping for some rest,
but he was unable to…”
“…and he lay there until about seven o’clock,
puzzling his brain as to how his visitor could have
entered and left…”
“In the morning when his host asked how he had slept,
the visitor mentioned his curious experience, fully expecting that this would be explained
or laughed at…”
“…but to his surprise the story recieved serious attention
and he was told that there was a tradition
of such a spectre haunting that one room.”
“It seemed that many years before a gentleman
so attired had been murdered in the room
under ‘frightful circumstances’…”
“…with his head cut off…”
“Occasionally people occupying the room
claimed to see the highly coloured figure
- but the head was never seen…”
“At first I always recounted the story
in a fairly light-hearted way,
finding it difficult to accept…”
“…that grown-up people could believe that there really were ghosts!
But soon the reactions,
when I had finished…”
“…often along the lines of
‘Well, we’re not surprised because we have a ghost…’,
caused me to think…”
“…that perhaps there was more in this idea of ghosts
than I had at first thought…”
Underwood discusses his early fascination with the paranormal.
