A Ghost Story
by Mark Twain
(public domain)
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I took a large room, far up Broadway, in a huge old building whose upper
stories had been wholly unoccupied for years, until I came. The place
had long been given up to dust and cobwebs, to solitude and silence. I
seemed groping among the tombs and invading the privacy of the dead,
that first night I climbed up to my quarters. For the first time in my
life a superstitious dread came over me; and as I turned a dark angle of
the stairway and an invisible cobweb swung its slazy woof in my face and
clung there, I shuddered as one who had encountered a phantom.
I was glad enough when I reached my room and locked out the mould and
the darkness. A cheery fire was burning in the grate, and I sat down
before it with a comforting sense of relief. For two hours I sat there,
thinking of bygone times; recalling old scenes, and summoning
half-forgotten faces out of the mists of the past; listening, in fancy,
to voices that long ago grew silent for all time, and to once familiar
songs that nobody sings now. And as my reverie softened down to a sadder
and sadder pathos, the shrieking of the winds outside softened to a
wail, the angry beating of the rain against the panes diminished to a
tranquil patter, and one by one the noises in the street subsided, until
the hurrying foot-steps of the last belated straggler died away in the
distance and left no sound behind.
The fire had burned low. A sense of loneliness crept over me. I arose
and undressed, moving on tiptoe about the room, doing stealthily what I
had to do, as if I were environed by sleeping enemies whose slumbers it
would be fatal to break. I covered up in bed, and lay listening to the
rain and wind and the faint creaking of distant shutters, till they
lulled me to sleep.
I slept profoundly, but how long I do not know. All at once I found
myself awake, and filled with a shuddering expectancy. All was still.
All but my own heart -- I could hear it beat. Presently the bed- clothes
began to slip away slowly toward the foot of the bed, as if some one
were pulling them! I could not stir; I could not speak. Still the
blankets slipped deliberately away, till my breast was uncovered. Then
with a great effort I seized them and drew them over my head. I waited,
listened, waited. Once more that steady pull began, and once more I lay
torpid a century of dragging seconds till my breast was naked again. At
last I roused my energies and snatched the covers back to their place
and held them with a strong grip. I waited. By and by I felt a faint
tug, and took a fresh grip. The tug strengthened to a steady strain --
it grew stronger and stronger. My hold parted, and for the third time
the blankets slid away. I groaned. An answering groan came from the foot
of the bed! Beaded drops of sweat stood upon my forehead. I was more
dead than alive. Presently I heard a heavy footstep in my room -- the
step of an elephant, it seemed to me -- it was not like anything human.
But it was moving FROM me -- there was relief in that. I heard it
approach the door -- pass out without moving bolt or lock -- and wander
away among the dismal corridors, straining the floors and joists till
they creaked again as it passed -- and then silence reigned once more.
When my excitement had calmed, I said to myself, "This is a dream --
simply a hideous dream." And so I lay thinking it over until I convinced
myself that it WAS a dream, and then a comforting laugh relaxed my lips
and I was happy again. I got up and struck a light; and when I found
that the locks and bolts were just as I had left them, another soothing
laugh welled in my heart and rippled from my lips. I took my pipe and
lit it, and was just sitting down before the fire, when -- down went the
pipe out of my nerveless fingers, the blood forsook my cheeks, and my
placid breathing was cut short with a gasp! In the ashes on the hearth,
side by side with my own bare footprint, was another, so vast that in
comparison mine was but an infant's! Then I had HAD a visitor, and the
elephant tread was explained.
I put out the light and returned to bed, palsied with fear. I lay a long
time, peering into the darkness, and listening. Then I heard a grating
noise overhead, like the dragging of a heavy body across the floor; then
the throwing down of the body, and the shaking of my windows in response
to the concussion. In distant parts of the building I heard the muffled
slamming of doors. I heard, at intervals, stealthy footsteps creeping in
and out among the corridors, and up and down the stairs. Sometimes these
noises approached my door, hesitated, and went away again. I heard the
clanking of chains faintly, in remote passages, and listened while the
clanking grew nearer -- while it wearily climbed the stairways, marking
each move by the loose surplus of chain that fell with an accented
rattle upon each succeeding step as the goblin that bore it advanced. I
heard muttered sentences; half-uttered screams that seemed smothered
violently; and the swish of invisible garments, the rush of invisible
wings. Then I became conscious that my chamber was invaded -- that I was
not alone. I heard sighs and breathings about my bed, and mysterious
whisperings. Three little spheres of soft phosphorescent light appeared
on the ceiling directly over my head, clung and glowed there a moment,
and then dropped -- two of them upon my face and one upon the pillow.
They spattered, liquidly, and felt warm. Intuition told me they had
turned to gouts of blood as they fell -- I needed no light to satisfy
myself of that. Then I saw pallid faces, dimly luminous, and white
uplifted hands, floating bodiless in the air -- floating a moment and
then disappearing. The whispering ceased, and the voices and the sounds,
and a solemn stillness followed. I waited and listened. I felt that I
must have light or die. I was weak with fear. I slowly raised myself
toward a sitting posture, and my face came in contact with a clammy
hand! All strength went from me apparently, and I fell back like a
stricken invalid. Then I heard the rustle of a garment -- it seemed to
pass to the door and go out.
When everything was still once more, I crept out of bed, sick and
feeble, and lit the gas with a hand that trembled as if it were aged
with a hundred years. The light brought some little cheer to my spirits.
I sat down and fell into a dreamy contemplation of that great footprint
in the ashes. By and by its outlines began to waver and grow dim. I
glanced up and the broad gas flame was slowly wilting away. In the same
moment I heard that elephantine tread again. I noted its approach,
nearer and nearer, along the musty halls, and dimmer and dimmer the
light waned. The tread reached my very door and paused -- the light had
dwindled to a sickly blue, and all things about me lay in a spectral
twilight. The door did not open, and yet I felt a faint gust of air fan
my cheek, and presently was conscious of a huge, cloudy presence before
me. I watched it with fascinated eyes. A pale glow stole over the Thing;
gradually its cloudy folds took shape -- an arm appeared, then legs,
then a body, and last a great sad face looked out of the vapor. Stripped
of its filmy housings, naked, muscular and comely, the majestic Cardiff
Giant loomed above me!
All my misery vanished -- for a child might know that no harm could come
with that benignant countenance. My cheerful spirits returned at once,
and in sympathy with them the gas flamed up brightly again. Never a
lonely outcast was so glad to welcome company as I was to greet the
friendly giant. I said:
"Why, is it nobody but you? Do you know, I have been scared to death for
the last two or three hours? I am most honestly glad to see you. I wish
I had a chair -- Here, here, don't try to sit down in that thing!
But it was too late. He was in it before I could stop him, and down he
went -- I never saw a chair shivered so in my life.
"Stop, stop, You'll ruin ev--"
Too late again. There was another crash, and another chair was resolved
into its original elements.
"Confound it, haven't you got any judgment at all? Do you want to ruin
all the furniture on the place? Here, here, you petrified fool--"
But it was no use. Before I could arrest him he had sat down on the bed,
and it was a melancholy ruin.
"Now what sort of a way is that to do? First you come lumbering about
the place bringing a legion of vagabond goblins along with you to worry
me to death, and then when I overlook an indelicacy of costume which
would not be tolerated anywhere by cultivated people except in a
respectable theater, and not even there if the nudity were of YOUR sex,
you repay me by wrecking all the furniture you can find to sit down on.
And why will you? You damage yourself as much as you do me. You have
broken off the end of your spinal column, and littered up the floor with
chips of your hams till the place looks like a marble yard. You ought to
be ashamed of yourself -- you are big enough to know better."
"Well, I will not break any more furniture. But what am I to do? I have
not had a chance to sit down for a century." And the tears came into his
eyes.
"Poor devil," I said, "I should not have been so harsh with you. And you
are an orphan, too, no doubt. But sit down on the floor here -- nothing
else can stand your weight -- and besides, we cannot be sociable with
you away up there above me; I want you down where I can perch on this
high counting-house stool and gossip with you face to face."
So he sat down on the floor, and lit a pipe which I gave him, threw one
of my red blankets over his shoulders, inverted my sitz-bath on his
head, helmet fashion, and made himself picturesque and comfortable. Then
he crossed his ankles, while I renewed the fire, and exposed the
shoulders, inverted my sitz-bath on his head, helmet fashion, and made
him
"What is the matter with the bottom of your feet and the back of your
legs, that they are gouged up so?"
"Infernal chillblains -- I caught them clear up to the back of my head,
roosting out there under Newell's farm. But I love the place; I love it
as one loves his old home. There is no peace for me like the peace I
feel when I am there."
We talked along for half an hour, and then I noticed that he looked
tired, and spoke of it. "Tired?" he said. "Well, I should think so. And
now I will tell you all about it, since you have treated me so well. I
am the spirit of the Petrified Man that lies across the street there in
the Museum. I am the ghost of the Cardiff Giant. I can have no rest, no
peace, till they have given that poor body burial again. Now what was
the most natural thing for me to do, to make men satisfy this wish?
Terrify them into it! -- haunt the place where the body lay! So I
haunted the museum night after night. I even got other spirits to help
me. But it did no good, for nobody ever came to the museum at midnight.
Then it occurred to me to come over the way and haunt this place a
little. I felt that if I ever got a hearing I must succeed, for I had
the most efficient company that perdition could furnish. Night after
night we have shivered around through these mildewed halls, dragging
chains, groaning, whisperhe said. "Well, I should think so. And now I
will tell you all about it, since you have treated me so well. I am the
spirit of the Petrified Man that lies across the street there in the
Museum. I am the ghost of the Cardiff Giant. I can have no rest, no
peace, till they have given that poor
I lit off my perch in a burst of excitement, and exclaimed:
"This transcends everything -- everything that ever did occur! Why you
poor blundering old fossil, you have had all your trouble for nothing --
you have been haunting a PLASTER CAST of yourself -- the real Cardiff
Giant is in Albany!
[Footnote by Twain: A fact. The original fraud was ingeniously and
fraudfully duplicated, and exhibited in New York as the "only genuine"
Cardiff Giant (to the unspeakable disgust of the owners of the real
colossus) at the very same time that the latter was drawing crowds at a
museum in Albany.]
Confound it, don't you know your own remains?"
I never saw such an eloquent look of shame, of pitiable humiliation,
overspread a countenance before.
The Petrified Man rose slowly to his feet, and said:
"Honestly, IS that true?"
"As true as I am sitting here."
He took the pipe from his mouth and laid it on the mantel, then stood
irresolute a moment (unconsciously, from old habit, thrusting his hands
where his pantaloons pockets should have been, and meditatively dropping
his chin on his breast), and finally said:
"Well -- I NEVER felt so absurd before. The Petrified Man has sold
everybody else, and now the mean fraud has ended by selling its own
ghost! My son, if there is any charity left in your heart for a poor
friendless phantom like me, don't let this get out. Think how YOU would
feel if you had made such an ass of yourself."
I heard his stately tramp die away, step by step down the stairs and out
into the deserted street, and felt sorry that he was gone, poor fellow
-- and sorrier still that he had carried off my red blanket and my bath
tub.