Research source

This story rather resembles the tale of a much more interesting ghost which inhabited an old manor-house in…

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 68
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

This story rather resembles the tale of a much more interesting ghost which inhabited an old manor-house in Somersetshire, and which succeeded for many years in keeping human beings out of the place

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 only

This story rather resembles the tale of a much more interesting ghost which inhabited an old manor-house in Somersetshire, and which succeeded for many years in keeping human beings out of the place. Time after time the house would be let, people always making light of its haunted reputation, or else determining to brave its terrors. But they never stayed more than a few weeks, when they invariably went away, declaring that one or more members of the household had seen an apparition on the main staircase. The description--and rather horrible it was--was always the same. The figure of a woman would come gliding downstairs, carrying her head under her arm, and on arriving at the foot of the stairs she invariably vanished.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This 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 only

Lattice 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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