A Tale of Two Families: A Grim Christmas Ghost Story

Via Newspapers.com

This odd little story--a holiday tale that’s anything but festive--was published in the British paper “The Norwood News” on December 24, 1954:

It was Christmas. and when the party picked on me I knew they wanted again the real ghost story I was mixed up in about 20 years ago. 

It's all very well to say that the old red-bricked house is no more. The Germans blasted it out of existence with their bombs in 1944. 

So the haunted house isn't there any longer. There is a large block of luxury flats in its place now. 

Twenty years ago I was asked to report on the mysterious death of a family. They had been out for their Christmas Eve celebration: mother, father and their grownup son and two daughters. The daily maid had left them their supper and gone home, leaving a “Merry Christmas" message and saying she would be in good time in the morning. 

And when she came they were sprawled over the supper table--dead. 

I was just thinking of my own Christmas dinner when a crowd of Fleet-street reporters arrived. I was the best man, they said, to tell them about it. 

But all I knew was where the house was. It was the first I heard of what later proved to be a family suicide pact. By the time we had got the details, Christmas Day was anything but a happy, restful one for us.

I lived quite close to that house. Year after year it stood empty, and I noticed that time took down the curtains; decay made the shutters rattle on windy nights as I passed; and the owls from Streatham Common seemed to like the place. 

As the years passed. and the place got more neglected, the memory of that tragedy faded. The "To Let'' board had long been replaced by one "For Sale.” Then one day that went, too.

Then neighbours heard that a family, recently returned from South Africa, were to move in. 

Within a few hours of the Marchby’s arriving I was on that doorstep again. As a newspaper man I thought there may be a story about South Africa. 

Hugo Marchby, as I presently found the husband’s name to be, showed me into the room on the right…the very room where, years ago, I had described that first tragedy.

So I met the wife, and presently there were the girls, Yolanda and Edis. Things were looking much the same as in the old days . . . and when they told me that Denny, their son, had gone to London, but would be back in time for dinner, I gave a silent “Phew," but whispered not a word. It was just like that other family) dead round the table in that very room so many years ago. Only now there was no table, tables had gone out when dining-rooms became lounges.

All I hoped was that no one would ever tell them what had happened and dare not tell them.

But somebody did. 

Yes, they got to know all about it. 

And the ghost story begins there. For them the place was haunted, as it had been for me in all those years, although I saw no ghost. 

They did. 

In a few weeks I saw the faces of the girls blanch and their eyes lose that "home again” expression which delights us when people come back from abroad. 

They were not missing South Africa. I knew that.  They had learned—discovered something. 

Something…something. But what? 

Nobody will ever know.  All I know is that the past did not bury the dead for them.  Edis was the first to go.  I followed her in the last carriage to the crematorium.  Not many months after Yolanda went out of her mind.  I never knew what became of her.  Then the mother died.

For the boy there was another end…And the bomb on that fateful November night in 1944 killed the father.

Funny how things happen on our own doorstep and we think nothing of them until we piece the bits of the jig-saw together at Christmas, when the wind blows eerily, the fire sparkles up and dies down again, and it’s an early time for bed.