Why haven't I heard about her before?" He spoke lightly enough, for a night's sleep had convinced him that life…
- Date of account
- Published 1911
- Source
- Stranger Than Fiction: Being Tales from the Byways of Ghosts and Folk-lore
- Reference
- Stranger Than Fiction: Being Tales from the Byways of Ghosts and Folk-lore · selected passage 63
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
Why haven't I heard about her before?" He spoke lightly enough, for a night's sleep had convinced him that life in the country had made him fanciful, and that the impression made upon him by the silent child was due to morbid imagination
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyWhy haven't I heard about her before?" He spoke lightly enough, for a night's sleep had convinced him that life in the country had made him fanciful, and that the impression made upon him by the silent child was due to morbid imagination. So what was his astonishment to see the clergyman appear greatly agitated by his question, and apparently unable to reply at once. Presently he said to Shadwell: "That was no living child that entered your room, but an apparition which has been seen before; and I beg of you not to mention the matter to my wife, for she always reproaches herself with being partly to blame for the death of that little girl, who was our eldest-born." He then told the artist that a few years previously they had had workmen in the house, doing some plastering and papering. One day, while the work was going on, the Rector's wife had wished to pay somebody some money, and remembering that she had just left half a crown on her dressing-table, she told her eldest girl to run upstairs and bring down this coin. But after rather a long interval, the child returned saying the money was not there.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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