Magazine Clipping of the Day

Mihaly Zichy, "The Ghost Hour," 1880

It's Haunted Wardrobe Week at Strange Company! While reading up on the subject of Monday's post, I came upon this similar tale from France. It appeared in "The Annals of Psychical Science," Volume 7 (1908.) It is to be noted that the Meraud family took their resident ghost in a far more blasé spirit than Mrs. Barclay.

The Progress, a Lyons daily paper, relates the following extraordinary history, not of a house, but of a haunted wardrobe. The editor of the Progress expresses his opinion on the incident in the following terms:— 

"It is a tram-ride from Lyons—a long ride, it is true—on the road to Meysieux; it is about three hundred yards from Genas' house. The straight line of the humble frontages is riddled with holes, like a sort of pattern, as is found in old ramparts. You arrive at a large farmyard—dogs yelping, fowls pecking, a hayrick, a steaming manure heap, a scullery-maid and a laundress at work on the edge of two wells, green with creepers. 

"Our arrival causes quite a commotion. Scarcely had we time to introduce ourselves to Mme. Meraud, when already the neighbours had gathered round us. The neighbours know all about the extraordinary phenomenon which was the object of our visit, and they looked as though they believed we had come to give them the key to the mystery straightway! 

"M. Meraud takes the whole affair very gaily. Blithely he gave us the following relation: 

"It is a jolly tale, if you like! I believe neither in a God nor in a devil nor in spirits; but I would cheerfully, and with right good will, pay for a good dinner to the man who could tell me who or what it is that raps in my wardrobe. 

"It is just fifteen days since it began. We were having dinner when we heard a noise as though someone had given two loud knocks on wood—tap, tap—then several quick little raps, but much feebler. 

"We went to the door, to the window: nothing, no one to be seen! A moment afterwards, again—tap, tap, tap! This time I made no mistake. The noise did not come from the door, but from the wardrobe or the wall. 

"I went and opened the wardrobe, looked all about it, and examined the wall; I sounded the wall, examined the tools, the dove's cage; I searched everywhere. Nothing! 

"About an hour afterwards, another rapping; but this time the raps sounded at longer intervals; they were more sonorous. And it lasted like that all night long, from hour to hour, until five o'clock in the morning. 

"And every night since then it goes on, sometimes loud, sometimes soft, but at regular intervals. The first tap-taps begin at ten minutes to six. Once only had we to wait until half-past seven . . . 

"Then I invited the neighbours to come. Every night the house is filled with people, and yet, in spite of that, when the hour comes, the same tapping begins in the wardrobe. I did something better still. In order to try and get at the root of the mystery, I drew the cupboard away from the wall, leaving the doors wide open; everyone stood round the wardrobe, holding it in their hands—and still that tap-tap! tap-tap-tap!—as usual! 

"The room above this is an attic. I took away everything that was in it in order to be sure that no animal was in hiding anywhere. 

"The room next to it is my daughter's. She has perceived nothing." 

"'What!' I said to the young girl, a pretty, buxom lass of seventeen, with honest, merry eyes —'What, mademoiselle, you sleep there and you are nor afraid to be all alone!' 

"Why should I be afraid? The devil or spirits would be wasting their time if they tried to stop me from sleeping." 

"'True,' said her father. 'Moreover, it can't be denied; the neighbours are here who have heard it as well as ourselves. We have looked well, we have searched everywhere — we have found nothing. It is funny, but there it is. I removed the wardrobe — it was close to the door. I put it near the staircase. Still the noise continued. The odd thing is that when we have gone to bed, there, right in our bedroom, which looks on to the street, it is no longer in the wardrobe that the tapping resounds, but in the street, against the panes of the window. I can't make it out at all.' 

"Whilst he was talking, M. Meraud showed me the bewitched wardrobe. It is a modest pine wardrobe, with two doors, full of neatly folded house-linen. I inspected the thin sides, the cornice, the bottom of the wardrobe. No trickery seemed to me possible in that very commonplace piece of furniture.  The wardrobe stands beside the wooden staircase which leads to the floor above, where, close to the attic, is the bedroom of the daughter, her young brother, and her little sister, a child of ten years. . . . 

"We enquired if these tappings were not perhaps sounds conveyed from some neighbouring workshop, or due to water pipes. 

"But, within a distance of about sixty yards, there is only a tile-kiln, which does not work at night, and it possesses no motor which can propagate such sounds. No water or gas pipes passes near the house. The cables for the tramway are more than 600 yards away. 

"Let us hasten to say that we ourselves have not observed the facts which we have just related. We have these facts only from numerous worthy eye and ear witnesses."

I would love to know if this wardrobe eventually found its way to England, where it appeared at an estate sale near Carterton Manor...

Nah. I'm guessing Ikea just makes a special line of haunted furniture.

The Case of the Haunted Wardrobe

On August 19, 1937, London's "Morning Post" carried its usual array of personals ads. One of them read: "FOR SALE--Haunted wardrobe.--Advertiser will be glad to deliver same to anybody interested, complete with ghost, which would also no doubt feel more at home if welcomed.--Write Mrs. B. Barclay, Carterton Manor, Oxon."

This caught people's eye.

Amid the flood of eager telegrams, letters, and telephone calls from would-be buyers eager to acquire their very own ghost, Mrs. Barclay found time to share the story behind her ad with inquisitive reporters. It seems that three years earlier, she visited a sale of various items at a home in Berkshire. She noticed a 7' high Victorian wardrobe. Although there was nothing remarkable about the piece, it appealed to Mrs. Barclay, and she paid £10 for it. She placed it in the guest room of her house, and life went on its usual uneventful course.

A little over two years later, she and her servants began to hear odd knocking sounds throughout the house. They were unable to find the source. Several of her houseguests tentatively commented that there was something...well, odd about the wardrobe. Throughout the night, its doors would loudly open and shut. After her guests had left, Mrs. Barclay monitored the wardrobe and found that, sure enough, those doors had a mind of their own. When she tied string around the doors, they would break their bonds and continue unabated. She thought there must be some sort of hidden mechanism causing the strange activity. However, when she tried to examine the wardrobe, one of the doors flew off, smashing a mirror. After that, she decided the thing was best left alone.

Although Mrs. Barclay was leaving the wardrobe in peace, it wasn't returning the favor. The banging noises intensified in volume and frequency. Then, she began seeing the figure of an elderly man in old-fashioned clothing and a deerstalker hat emerging from the wardrobe and walking out of the house. Her secretary and her brother saw him too.

This uninvited visitor was really beginning to get on Mrs. Barclay's nerves. As she later complained, "I am not psychic, nor am I nervous, but this wretched ghost will make such a noise. He clatters across the landing, and shuffles down the stairs, and the noise is often exasperatingly loud."

Her friends, not wishing to share a guest bedroom with a noisy ghost, began to refuse her invitations. After the spirit kicked her butler in the shins, he gave his notice and left. Her surviving household staff muttered about quitting en masse. Mrs. Barclay herself had to resort to sleeping outdoors, just to get a little quiet.

After her cook walked out on her, Mrs. Barclay--rather late in the day, one might think--realized that this damned--in every sense of the word--wardrobe just had to go. Hence the soon-to-be famous "Morning Post" ad.

After her notice appeared, Mrs. Barclay soon realized that ghosts are not the only noisy pests. She was continually harassed by ghost-hunters, self-described psychics, aggressive looky-loos, and cranks of every variety. Visitors came from as far away as America.  Morons kept themselves entertained by dressing in white sheets and prancing around her grounds. She received offers for the wardrobe from a college of astrology. From a quartet of spinsters who said they wanted the ghost to guard their house during the night. (A watchghost?) "Can you guarantee ghosts?" one message said. Another asked if the spook would be happy in a "small modern house."

Mrs. Barclay was showered with unsolicited advice from self-appointed Ghost Experts. One opined, "I should say it's doubtful if the ghost will go with the wardrobe. He shows himself to you as you are sympathetic, but he may not do so to others...Leave the door open at night so that he can come in and out, and put a nice comfortable chair beside it for him, as he clings so to the wardrobe...Never mind the cook, cooks are plentiful, but you can never get another wardrobe like this."

By now, Mrs. Barclay was desperate to just put the whole mess behind her. She sold the wardrobe--and, she sincerely hoped, the ghost as well--to a Mr. Rundle for £50. He owned an inn in nearby Clanfield, and no doubt shrewdly assumed the famed wardrobe would attract visitors. "My inn is being rebuilt," he told a reporter. "At the moment there is no room large enough for the haunted wardrobe, but I am having my own bedroom enlarged, and then I shall have it put in there. Anyone who wants to sleep in that room will be at liberty to do so. But personally, I do not believe in ghosts."

Rundle temporarily lodged his new acquisition in the rather undignified setting of an outhouse. Unfortunately, by buying the wardrobe, he also acquired the same crowd of pranksters who had so bedeviled Mrs. Barclay. Boys and young men came from miles around to hoot, catcall, throw brickbats at the outhouse, and generally raise hell.

Although Rundle maintained his skepticism about the supernatural, even he soon had to admit that this was one peculiar wardrobe. On the first night it was on his property, the doors of the wardrobe began shaking violently, from no discernible cause. His wife noticed that it sometimes emitted curious bangings and a "noise like an aeroplane."

As many of the letters sent to Mrs. Barclay had theorized that the ghost was searching for something hidden in the wardrobe, Mr. Rundle took it apart. He found nothing unusual.

Oddly enough, disassembling the wardrobe appears to have broken its curious spell. After it was put back together, the wardrobe became just another dull piece of Victorian furniture. The strange noises and shakings ceased, and the old man in the deerstalker hat was never seen by anyone ever again.