The Canterville Ghost The sale of the Haunted House

Mr. Hiram B. Otis, the American ambassador, bought an old house. It was calledCanterville Chase. Everyone told him he was doing a very foolish thing, because everyone knew that there was a ghost in the house. Even though he was selling the house, Lord Canterville felt that he really should tell Mr. Otis about the ghost before he brought the house. Lord Canterville was an honest man, and he did not want to hide anything. Lord Canterville said `We have not wanted to live in the house since my mother's aunt, the Dowager Duchess of Bolton, was frightened by the ghost. It put its hands (they were just bones!) on her shoulders while she was getting ready for dinner. The dutchess was very scared and she never really got better. I have to tell you, Mr. Otis, that many people in my family have seen the ghost. Even the priest, the Rev. Augustus Dampier, has seen it, and he is a member of King's College, at Cambridge University. After the ghost frightened the Duchess, none of our younger servants wanted to stay in the house. My wife often couldn't sleep at night, because of the strange noises that came from the passage and the library.'

What to do with a ghost.

`Sir,' Mr Otis answered Lord Canterville, `I will take the furniture and the ghost if the price is fair. I come from a modern country, where we have everything that you can get with money. All our young fellows are exploring and travelling around in Europe, and taking your best actors and singers back to America with them. I think that if there really was a ghost antwhere in Europe, our young men would take it back home to America. We would have the ghost in one of our publicmuseums, or maybe we would take it around the country for people to look at for money.' `I am afraid that the ghost is real,' said Lord Canterville, smiling, `though it may not listen when your young men ask it to go to the United States. People have known about the ghost for three hundred years, since 1584. The ghost always appears before someone in my family dies.' `Well, the family doctor also appears at that time, doesn't he? Lord Canterville, there is no such thing as a ghost! Ghosts don't exist in nature and I don't believe that nature is going to change just so that a British Lord can have a ghost.'

The Otis Family

Lord Canterville did not know what Mr Otis was talking about. He said "Well I thought that I should tell you about the ghost, but if you want to have the house even with the ghost in it, then that's fine." After a few weeks Canterville Chase was sold to Mr Otis. When he had finished meeting and having parties with important people in London, the Ambassador and his family went to live at the house. Before she married Mr Otis, Mrs. Otis was Miss Lucretia R. Tappen, who lived at West 53rd Street. She had been one of the most beautiful girls in New York. Now she was a very good-looking woman who was about 35 years old. She had lovely eyes, and was not too fat or too thin. Many American ladies who go to Europe act as though they are not very healthy, because they think this is how well-educated ladies should behave. Mrs. Otis had never pretended to be sick when she was not. She was very healthy and she had lots of energy. Sometimes she almost seemed to be English. This is because today England and America are almost the same, except, of course, the language is very different. Mrs Otis' oldest son was named Washington. His parents had wanted to show respect for that great American, but their son always wished that they had called him something else. He was a good-looking young man who had fair hair. Everyone knew that he would be a good American diplomat, because he danced so well. He liked some kinds of flower, and he was always impressed byaristocrats. Except for these two things, he was very sensible.

The Otis Children

Miss Virginia E. Otis was a girl who was fifteen years old. She did a lot of exercise and she was as lovely as a baby deer. Her eyes were very big and blue. She liked to do sport. Once she had a horse race against old Lord Bilton. The race was twice around Hyde park in London. Virginia won the race which finished just in front of the famous Achilles statue in the park. One of the people who was watching was the young Duke of Cheshire. He thought Virginia was really delightful and he asked her to marry him. Because of this, the Duke was sent back to Eton, his boarding school, which made him so upset that he cried. Virginia's two younger brothers were twins. Sometimes they were called The Stars and Stripes. This is because the United States flag is on the end of a stick, and so were the twins, because they were very naughty and their father often beat them. They were delightful boys. They were like their father, the Ambassador, because they did not think people were special just because they were aristocrats. Canterville Chase is seven miles from an English town called Ascot. From the railway station at Ascot the family had to travel to their new home in a vehicle pulled by a horse. Everyone was in a good mood as they started the journey. It was a lovely evening in July. The air had a lovely smell of pine trees. Sometimes the birds called softly, or the family saw a beautiful bird deep in the bushes.

Arriving at Canterville Chase

Little squirrels looked out at them through the trees as they went by. The rabbits ran quickly away with their white tails in the air, running through the bushes and over the grass . However, as the Otis family came nearer Canterville Chase, suddenly the sky was dark with clouds. The air became strangely still. Big, black birds flew silently over their heads, and, before the Otis family reached the house, some big drops of rain were falling. An old woman was standing on the steps to meet them. She wearing black and white clothes that were clean and neat. This was Mrs. Umney, the housekeeper. She had only stayed at the house because Lady Canterville, the previous owner, had asked her to. She went to meet the Otis family as they arrived, and said in, `Welcome to Canterville Chase.' The family followed her through the a lovely, very old, hall into the library. This was a long, low room, with walls of dark wood. At the end of the library was a large window madeof coloured glass. Here the Otis family found Mrs Umney had made tea for them. The Otis family took off their outdoor clothes, sat down and began to look around.

'Blood has been spilt here'.

Suddenly Mrs. Otis saw a red stain. It was on the floor near the fireplace. She did know the importance of the stain, so she said to Mrs. Umney, `I am sorry to see that something has been spilt there.' `Yes, madam,' replied the old housekeeper in a quiet voice, `blood has been spilt there.' `Oh. That's horrible,' said Mrs. Otis; `I really don't like blood-stains in my sitting-room. It must be cleaned away at once.' Mrs Umney smiled. Then, in the same quiet, mysterious voice she said, `That blood you see is the blood of Lady Eleanore de Canterville. She was murderedright there in 1575 by her own husband, Sir Simon de Canterville. Sir Simon lived for another nine years. Then suddenly he disappeared and no-one knows where he went. No-one has ever found his body. But the ghost of Sir Simon has never left this house where he mudered his wife. Tourists and other people have seen that blood-stain. It cannot be cleaned away.'

Removing the stain.

`That is not true,' Washington Otis said loudly; `Pinkerton's Champion Stain Remover and Paragon Detergent will clean it up easily'. The housekeeper was very scared, but before she could do anything, Washington fell to his knees, and quickly cleaned the floor with a small black stick. After a few seconds, the blood-stain had completely gone.

`I knew that my cleaner would clean it,' said Washington happily to his family. But as soon as he said these words, there was a terrible flash of lightning which lit up the dark room, and a frightning bang of thunder made them all jump to their feet. Mrs. Umney fainted. `What a bad climate there is in England!' said the American Ambassador calmly. He lit a long cigar for himself. `I think that there are so many people in England that they don't have enough good weather for everybody. I have always thought that the best thing that people can do to help England is to leave the country.' `My dear Hiram,' said Mrs. Otis, `Mrs Umney has fainted. What can we do about a woman who faints?'

The mysterious stain.

`Take money from her pay every time she does it,' answered the Ambassador; `she won't faint if you do that'. Almost at once, Mrs Umney sat up. But everyone could see that she was very unhappy about everything. She told Mr. Otis that they should all be very careful, because something terrible would happen in the house. `My eyes have seen things,' she said, `that are so frightening they would make any woman's hair stand on end . There have been very many nights when I could not sleep because of all the horrible things that happen here.' Mr. Otis and his wife were not worried. They told Mrs Umney not to be upset, and they said that they would not worry about the ghost. The old servant thanked them for their help, and then she and the family agreed that she deserved more money for working in the house. Then the old housekeeper went off to her own room because she was still too scared to walk properly. There was a fierce storm all that night, but nothing very strange or surprising happened. The next morning, however, when the family came down to have their breakfast, they found that the terrible stain of blood was back on the floor . `I don't think that the stain can be the fault of the Paragon Detergent,' said Washington, `because it works with everything. It must be the ghost.' He rubbed out the stain again, but the second morning it was back on the floor. The same thing happened on the third morning, even though the library had been locked by Mr. Otis himself, and he had taken the key upstairs with him for the night.

Interest in ghosts.
Now everybody in the family was interested in what was happening. Mr. Otis started to think that maybe there were such things as ghosts after all. Mrs. Otis said that she wanted to join a club of people who were interested in ghosts, and Washington wrote a long letter to a detective agency telling them about how difficult it was to remove blood stains that were connected with crimes. Then, that night something happened which made them all completely certain that ghosts existed. Before that night, it had been a warm and sunny day, and in the cool of

the evening, the whole family went out of the house. They did not come home till nine o'clock, and then they had a small meal. They did not talk about ghosts. Sometimes, people see ghosts because they have been talking about ghosts, and they are expecting to see something. But this was not true about the Otis family that evening. Mr. Otis told me later that the things that they talked about were ordinary things. The sort of things that you might expect from Americans who have travelled and been well educated. For instance, they discussed the fact that the American actress Miss Fanny Davenport was so much better than Sara Bernhardt, the English actress. They talked about how difficult it was to get their favourite foods - green corn, buckwheat cakes, andhominy - even in the best English houses. They discussed why the city of Boston made the world a better place; why railway travel was done much better in the United States; and why the New York accent sounded so much nicer than the London one.

Mr Otis and the Ghost

Nobody talked about ghosts and monsters, and they did not talk about Sir Simon de Canterville at all. At eleven o'clock the family went to bed, and by half-past eleven all the lights in the house had been turned out. But later in the night Mr. Otis was awakened by a strange noise outside his room. It sounded like something metal hitting against something else, and the sound was coming nearer to his door every second. Immediately, Mr Otis got out of his bed and lit a light. He looked at the time. It was exactly one o'clock. He was quite calm, and his heart was not going faster than usual. The strange noise was still continuing, and now he could also could clearly hear the sound someone walking. Mr Otis put on his slippers, and picked up a small bottle from next to his bed. He opened the door. In the moonlight, he saw a terrible old man who was standing right in front of him. The man's eyes were burning red as fire; he had long , dirty grey hair which grew down over his shoulders. His clothes were dirty and ragged, and they looked very old-fashioned. There were heavy chains hanging from his wrists and ankles. `My dear sir,' said Mr. Otis, `Please would you put some oil on those chains. You can do this easily, because I have here a small bottle of the Tammany Rising SunLubricator oil. It works very well, and you only have to use it once. If you don't believe me, you can read the label of the bottle. You will see that all the top experts say that it is really good oil. I shall leave the bottle for you here by the bedroom candles, and if you need any more oil I will be very happy to give it to you.'

An upset Ghost
After he had said this, Mr Otis put the bottle down on a stone table near his door. Then he closed the door, and went back to bed. The Canterville Ghost could not believe what had just happened to him. He stood completely still for several seconds, and then he threw the bottle on to

the floor as hard as he could. He ran off along the corridor, making a horrible noise and lit up by a terrible green light. Soon he reached the wooden stairs at the end of the corridor. A door opened suddenly, and the ghost saw two boys wearing white sleeping clothes. Suddenly the boys threw a large pillow at his head. The ghost decided that he had to escape very quickly, so he jumped into the fourth dimension, and vanished through the wall. After he had gone, the house became quiet again. The ghost went to his small secret room in the west part of the house. He stopped there, and tried to get his breath back. He really did not understand what had happened to him. He had been a ghost for more than three hundred years, and he had been a very good and frightening ghost. He had never had anyone behave so badly to him as had happened that evening.

What the ghost had done

He thought of the Dowager Duchess. She had been standing in her best clothes in front of the mirror when he had frightened her. Four of the girls who had worked in the house had been so frightened that they could not think of doing anything but screaming after they saw him through the curtains of one of the spare bedrooms. One of the men who worked in the local church had been in the library late one night when the ghost blew out his candle. The poor man still needed help from the doctor, and he was easily upset and frightened. And old Madame de Tremouillac woke up early one morning and saw a skeletonsitting in her armchair by the fire reading her diary. The old lady had been so scared that she had to stay in her bed for six weeks after that. When she got better, she started going to church again and stopped speaking to her friend Monsieur de Voltaire who did not believe in things like ghosts. The ghost remembered the terrible night when the evil Lord Canterville was found his room. He was dying because a playing card had been pushed down his throat. Lord Canterville said that he had been playing cards with the famous politician Charles James Fox. He had not been playing fairly, and he had won 50 000. Lord Canterville said that the ghost had made him swallow the card that he had won all the money with.

The ghost remembers.

The ghost remembered all of the great things he had donein the past. One of the servants had shot himself because he had seen the ghost's green hand at the window of one of the rooms. A beautiful woman, called Lady Stutfield, always had to wear something around her neck because the ghost had made a horrible burn on her throat, where his five fingers had marked her white skin. In the end the poor woman killed herself in the pond at the end of the garden.

Like any really good artist, the ghost was only interested in himself and the things that he had done. Now he thought of his very best performances, and smiled to himself, even though he was angry. He remembered some of the ghosts he had been - Red Reuben, or the Strangled Baby. He had pretended to be Gaunt Gibeon, the Bloodsucker of Bexley. And one lovely June evening he had made everyone very upset and excited, just because he was playing ninepins with his own bones on the grass tennis court. And after the ghost had done all this, some horrible modern Americans had come and offered him oil for his chains, and had thrown pillows at his head! Nobody should do this to him. No ghost in history had ever had anything like that done to it. So the ghost decided that he would do something horrible to the family, because of what they had done to him. He stayed in his room until the morning, thinking about what he would do.

The family and the ghost.

The next morning at breakfast, the Otis family talked about the ghost for a long time. Mr Otis was unhappy because the ghost had not taken the oil that Mr Otis had given him. Mr Otis said `I don't want to hurt the ghost, and I must say that, when you think how long he has been in the house, it is not very polite to throw pillows at him'. The ambassador was quite right when he said this, but I am sorry to say that the twins just started to laugh when he said this. `But also' Mr Otis said, `if the ghost really won't use the oil, we will have to take his chains away. otherwise it will be impossible to sleep, with him making all that noise outside the bedrooms.' But for the rest of the week nothing happened. Only one thing reminded them of the ghost - the blood-stain on the library floor kept coming back. This certainly was very strange, because the door was always locked at night by Mr. Otis, and the windows were always tightly closed. The family also talked a lot about the fact that the colour of the blood stain kept changing. Some mornings it was dark red, then it would be light red, then a rich purple. Once when they came down for family prayers, (they were members of of the Free American Reformed Episcopalian Church) they found that the blood stain was bright emerald green. The family thought that these many changes were very funny, and every evening they tried to guess what colour it would be the next morning. Only little Virginia did not play this game. Nobody knew why, but she was always very upset when she saw the blood-stain, and the morning when the blood stain was emerald-green, Virginia almost cried.

The ghost appears again.

The ghost appeared again for the second time on a Sunday night. The Otis family had gone to bed. But soon afterward n they were suddenly woken up by a very loud noise in the hall. They hurried downstairs,

where they found that a large suit of armour had fallen over on to the stone floor. The Canterville ghost was sitting in a chair. He was rubbing his knees and the expression on his face showed that he wasin very great pain. The twins had brought their pea-shooters with them. Now they started to shoot at the ghost. They hit him too, because of the great amount of practice that they had got from shooting the pea-shooters at their teachers. The United States ambassador pointed his gun at the ghost and told him to put up his hands. (This is the correct way to do things in California.) The ghost jumped up and screamed with anger, and floated through them like a mist. As he passed the family, he blew out Washington Otis's candle. This left them all in complete darkness. When he got to the top of the staircase, the ghost turned around. He had decideed to give his famous horrible laugh. He had used this laugh in the past and it had been very useful to him. This laugh had turned Lord Raker's wig grey in a single night. Also the laugh had once made three of Lady Canterville's French teachers leave Canterville Chase in a hurry.