Retro Magazine of Atari Videogames
noon, eager to satisfy his morbid curiosity. He was surprised to find an "Apartment to Let" sign posted. Hoping to learn more about the house and its occupants, he asked the landlady if he could see the avail- able rooms. She agreed, and showed him to a comfortable apartment. nicely furnished, with many attrac- tive objects decorating it. When he asked about these decorations, the landlady said they belonged to the previous tenant.
When asked why they had been left behind, she hesitated, then admit- ted that the tenant had been away on vacation in Monte Carlo. That very morning, she had received a tele- gram stating that the man had died there at about a quarter to twelve the evening before.
Photo credit The Image Bank
Exactly the time when the ghostly apparition had entered the house!
The spirits which haunt a house may never be seen, but still make their presence felt. Sometimes there are unexplained odors, often limited to a small area of the house. Often researchers discover cold spots in haunted houses-small areas where the temperature is many degrees be- low normal for no apparent reason.
The most common manifestation of a haunting, though, is sound- the things that go "bump" in the night. Ghosthunters frequently find very ordinary explanations for "mys- terious" sounds-a noisy gas heater, or creaking floorboards, for exam- ple. Sometimes, though, the sounds from haunted houses remain strange and unexplained.
This was the case in a lonely coun- try house on the north coast of Corn- wall in England. The Carnsen family had recently gone through a crisis- 11-year-old John had been seriously ill, and the doctors feared he would die. Weeks passed, though, and he appeared to be improving. On a beautiful spring evening in March, the family had just eaten a cheerful dinner downstairs, while John re- mained in his upstairs bedroom with his mother and aunt. John's brothers and sisters were laughing over someone's funny remark when, suddenly, a woman's shriek startled them into silence. There was another heartrending shriek, then a third, louder and longer than the others.
Everyone on the lower floor had heard it-the children, their father, and all the servants in the kitchen. At that moment the doctor arrived- he had been approaching the house from outside, and heard nothing. The sound must have come from inside!
The terrifled listeners raced up- stairs, to find that no one had heard a sound-even though they had heard the dog's faint bark down- stairs as the doctor approached.
All observers agreed that the shriek had been loudest on the stair case, close to John's room-yet no- body there had heard a thing!
The mystery remained, hanging like a black cloud over the family. And three weeks from that memo- rable evening, John Carnsen died.
The ghost made only one more appearance in the house in Com- wall, 15 years later. John's younger sister Emma was gravely ill. Late one night, those gathered in her room heard hysterical wailing and crying echoing throughout the house. The noises went on for several minutes, then stopped abruptly-at the moment Emma Carnsen drew her last breath.
Ghosts have been spotted everywhere from humble shacks to stately man- sions. Even the President's residence has been known to host invisible vis- itors. The spirit of Abraham Lincoln is frequently reported roaming the halls of the White House. Witnesses say that Lincoln has visited every- one from secretaries and valets to Queen Wilhelmina of the Nether lands, who heard a knock late one evening on the door of the Rose Room, where she was staying, and opened it to find Abraham Lincoln standing in the doorway!
So don't be disappointed if you've never seen a ghost-it could happen any day now. One minute you're play- ing the one-player version of an Atari video game, and suddenly the ma- chine switches to two players by itself and there's a very tall man with a beard and a stovepipe hat holding the other joystick!"