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Chapter fourteen. Things That Go Bump in the Night. |
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haunted rest-house at Hangrum |
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There was a parallel in another Zemi poltergeist, that haunting, or reputed to haunt, the rest-house at Hangrum. This, a violent sprite, had, too, no apparent connection with any human being and manifested itself in a bungalow and outbuildings; once, when we were there, scaring the men severely. The bungalow caretaker and his family had had to leave the compound and settle outside, the creature's activities proving so frequent and such a nuisance. It was a ghost of long standing, and its occupation went back over ten years or more. Yet, though I stayed at Hangrum a dozen times, I never heard or saw any of the reported phenomena and have never heard of any European who has. The bungalow was, it is true, a creepy place after dark. All bamboo houses let off raps and bangs as temperatures change at nightfall, but Hangrum would at times go off for minutes on end in a perfect fusillade - so violent, one night, that the walls vibrated and the shotguns leaning in the corner clinked together. And Khamba, oddly enough, though he never turned a hair at Laisong, bogy or no, would never on any pretext sleep in the bungalow at Hangrum. He howled and whined from dusk onwards, till sent away to sleep with the men in the lines. |
