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A Haunted Antique Chest

Stanbury Manor contains a chest that is thought to have come to this country with the Spanish Armada. The owner had bought it from an antique shop whose proprietor was glad to be rid of it, as he was convinced that it was haunted. When the chest was first taken to the manor it was placed temporarily in the armoury. On the morning of the day following delivery, the owner, passing through the armoury, saw six guns, which had been held to the walls with heavy wire, fall to the floor. Neither the wire nor any of the fixings were broken. The chest was moved to the bedroom one day and on the same evening, the owner was in an adjacent room hanging pictures on the wall, when one of them fell and struck him on the head. The picture was quite heavy but there was virtually no force behind it when it hit him, as though it had been controlled by some mysterious force.

The next day, three more pictures fell to be followed by four more two days later. These last four were in the drawing room adjacent to the bedroom where the chest stood. The day after this another picture fell in the drawing room, and on none of these occasions were the wires or fixings damaged in anyway. On hearing, two days later, of the death of a relative the owner thought that there might have been a connection between this and the falling pictures, as there were no further incidents in connection with the chest. These strange events were reported in the press and the following tale was told by a former curate, someone familiar with the phenomenon. The chest was once owned by two elderly ladies who lived nearby. Both were deaf and would communicate by writing notes. They kept themselves to themselves and were hardly known to their neighbours or to other local people. They had amassed a large collection of furniture during their lives, and the curate went to look at the pieces when the women put them up for sale, but bought nothing as he found the continual writing and passing of notes too frustrating. He discovered some time later that the sisters had both been struck deaf one morning

when they had gone to stay with friends. They had arrived late at night and gone to bed without unpacking and had, next morning on waking, seen the lid of a chest which was weighed down by others opening of its own accord. On looking into the chest they saw something so dreadful that they were both struck deaf on the spot. In another story, a surgeon, in the Midlands, went to stay with a friend. His bedroom was large but drab and had a large carved wooden chest standing in a corner. His curiosity made him open the top and he was confronted with the corpse of a man lying with his throat cut from ear to ear. In his shqck he let the lid of the chest fall closed, but on recovering his composure, re-opened it to find the chest empty. The next morning he mentioned this terrible experience to his host who, astonished, told him that a previous occupant of the room had killed himself and the body had been in the chest covered in blood. Bedfordshire | British Isles | Cornwall | Dorset | Howfield Manor | Penzance | Ramhurst | Sandford | Somerset |