The second night after my arrival – I remember, the rest of the family had all gone to bed – George and I retired to the study for a drink and a chat before bed. The study was upstairs and next to his bedroom. We sat down and I remembered that I had left my pipe in the billiard room. The house was now in darkness, so I lit a candle and made my way down through the house. The house looked weird in the flickering light of the candle and the stairs creaked in an awful way as I made my way down them. It sounded like someone was following me down them. I found my pipe where I had left it in the billiard room. I returned upstairs in more of a hurry than was needed and I stumbled on the stairs and dropped my candle. It went out. After a few moments, I found it, but I had no matches and I had to make my way along by feeling the cold wooden banister of the stair. It was so dark that I could not see my own hand. As I made my way slowly up the stairs, with my hand sliding along the cold smooth wood, it suddenly slid over something cold and clammy. I stopped dead and closed my fingers around it. It was another hand, a thin, bony hand that pulled itself slowly away from the grip of my own. And although I could see and hear nothing, I could feel something going past me on the stairs.
‘What’s that? Who are you?’ I called.
There was no answer.
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