Speaker 1: The True Tale of the Phantom Coach by W. T. Lindskill.
The great curtain had fallen after the pantomime, and I
was standing chatting on the stage of the theater at Cambridge,
when one of the stage men came to tell me
I was wanted at the stage door, and I must
hurry up at once. Thither I proceeded and found a
lot of golfing boys, hunting boys, dramatic boys, and all
sorts of other merry varsity boys who shouted out, come
along quick to the Blue Pig. The Blue Pig is
a Cambridge name for the Blue Boar Hotel. We want
you to meet a fellow called Willie Carson, and there
is to be supper, and he is something to tell us.
The bogey man has gone on there now, so come
right away, well off. We went to the Blue Boar
Hotel and we found Carson sitting over a blazing fire
with a capital supper set in his nice old fashioned room,
lit up with candles, only the picture of comfort. Outside
it was snowing hard and bitterly cold. After a talk
over the merits of the pantomime, we did full justice
to a most excellent supper, and then crowded round the
blazing hearth to hear a story our host wanted to
tell us. Did you ever hear the phantom coach at
Saint Andrew's, He asked, turning to me suddenly and removing
his cigar often. I replied, I have heard most extraordinary
yarns about it from lots of people. But why do
you ask? Because I've seen it, he replied softly and thoughtfully,
some five years ago. It was very, very strange, not
to be forgotten, and quite unexplainable. That is why I
asked you here to night. I wanted to talk to
you about it. He stooped over the fire and was
silent for a few minutes. Tell us all about it,
we all shouted at once. We won't make fun of it.
There is nothing to make fun of. Indeed, it's a
true solemn fact, he said. Listen, and I will try
to tell you what I saw, but I can't half
picture it properly. Five years ago, I had just come
home from America. I went to stay at Saint Andrew's
for some golf. I think it was the latter end
of August, and must have been in the town about
a week at least when one night. It was hot
and stuffy, and about midnight I determined to take a
good long country walk and struck out right along the
road to Strathkinness. It was a hot, dark and stormy night,
not wet. Fitful black clouds floated now and again at
a rapid pace over the moon, which now and then
shone out brightly in the distance. The sea made a
perpetual moan, and at intervals the dark eastern sky was
lit up by flashes of summer wild fire lightning over
the distant cathedral towers. Now and again I could hear
the mutter of far away thunder, and there were incessant
gusts of wind. I must have been about two miles
along the road when I could descend some very large
object approaching me rapidly. As it came nearer, I noticed
it resembled a co dark, heavy primitive. It seemed to
have four large black horses, and the driver was a muffled,
shapeless figure. It approached with a low humming or buzzing sound,
which was most peculiar and unpleasant to hear. The horses
made a hollow kind of ticking sound with their feet.
Otherwise it was noiseless, no earthly coach of the kind
could go without any ordinary sound. It was weird and
aerie in the extreme. As it passed me, the moon
shone out brightly, and I saw for a second a
ghastly white face at the coach window. But I saw
those four strange, silent black horses, the more extraordinary tall,
swallowed up, shapeless driver, and the quaint black, gloomy ole
coach with a coffin shaped box on the roof, only far,
far too well. One most remarkable thing was that it
threw no shadow of any kind. Just as it passed me,
there was terrific roar of thunder and a blaze of
lightning that nearly blinded me. And in the distance I
saw that horrible, ghastly receding coach. Then clouds came over
the moon, and all was black and darkness. One could
fail a darkness of a shut up, smothering vault. I
felt sick and dazed. For a minute or two. I
could not make out if I had been struck by
the lightning or was paralyzed. However, after a bit had
passed off, it was a horrible, deathly failing. While it lasted,
I never experienced a similar sensation before or since, and
I hope I never may again. Another very curious thing
was the behavior of my favorite Collie dog, usually frightened
at nothing, on the approach of the phantom. For phantom
it was, he crouched down, shivering and whining, and as
it drew nearer, fled with a bark like a screech,
and cowered down in the ditch at the roadside and
gave forth low growls. Tell you boys, it's all right
in this room to talk about it, But none of
you would have liked to be in my place that queer,
uncanny night on that lonely road. That it was supernatural.
I am convinced it is a very thin veil between
us and the unseen world of spirits. They say I
possess a seventh sense, namely second sight, and I know
I shall never forget that night's experience. But listen, the
story has not yet ended. Next morning, a telegram arrived
from my brother in Kent. Are you all right? I
wondered much, and whired back that I was very well.
The following day a letter came from my brother giving
me a curious explanation. The following afternoon, of the day
I saw the coach. My brother was looking out of
the old manor house windows in Kent when he and
several others noticed a large bird having most peculiar plumage,
seated on the garden wall. No one had ever seen
a bird of the king before. He was rushing off
for a gun to shoot it, when her father, who
looked very white and scared, stopped him. Do not shoot,
he said, it would be of no use. That is
the bird of ill Omen to all our race. It
only appears before a death. I have only once seen
it before that week your dear mother died. My brother
was so alarmed at this that he sent the wire
I have mentioned to me at Saint Andrew's. By the
next maile from Australia, we learned that our eldest brother
had died there the very day I saw the coach
at Saint Andrew's and my brother saw the bird at
her old home in Kent. Very odd, is it not?
But what do you know about that coach? Only tales,
I said. Many people swear they have heard it or
seen it on stormy nights. I know a girl who
swears to it, and also a doctor who has passed
it on the road, and it nearly frightened his horse
to death, and him too. The tale of the two
tramps is funny. They were trudging into Saint Andrew's one
wild stormy night when this uncanny coach overtook them. It stopped,
the door opened, and a white hand beckoned towards them.
One tramp brushed up and got in. Then suddenly the
door noiselessly shut and the coach moved off, leaving the
other tramp alone in the pitiless wind and rain. I
never saw my old mate again, said the tramp when
he told the tale, and I never shall that their
old coach was nothing of this here world of ours.
It took my old mate off to Davy Jones's locker.
Mighty smart, poor fellow. They say his body was found
in the sea some months afterwards, And the taiale goes
that the phantom coach finishes its nocturnal journey in the
waves of Saint Andrew's Bay. Whose coach is it asked
all that were in the room, I cannot say. Some
say Bethune, others Sharp and others Haxton. I do not
know who is supposed to be the figure inside? And
let it is his satanic majesty himself. At all events.
It seems a certain fact that a phantom coach has
been seen from time to time on the roads round
Saint Andrew's. I have never seen any of these things myself,
well said Carson, that awful coach does appear. It appeared
to me, and doubtless, in the course of time, will
appear to many others. It bodes no one any good,
and I pity with all my heart anyone who meets it.
Beware of those roads late at night, or like me,
you may some day, to your injury, meet that ghastly,
uncanny old phantom coach. If so, you will remember it
to your dying day. Curious thing that about seeing the
coach and the bird at the same time, and in
two places so far apart, murmured the golfing Johnny, and
then Carson's brother dying too. I'd sooner say the bird
than the coach, said one guess. I'd rather not see
ither of them, said an American present. Glad we have
no phantom coaches in Yankee Land. This is the end
of the true Tale of the Phantom Coach by W. T.
Linskill