ard and seen, during many years of loneliness, in this weird
old building.

For a couple of centuries, this house has had a reputation, a bad one,
and, until I bought it, for more than eighty years no one had lived
here; consequently, I got the old place at a ridiculously low figure.

I am not superstitious; but I have ceased to deny that things happen
in this old house--things that I cannot explain; and, therefore, I must
needs ease my mind, by writing down an account of them, to the best of
my ability; though, should this, my diary, ever be read when I am gone,
the readers will but shake their heads, and be the more convinced that
I was mad.

This house, how ancient it is! though its age strikes one less,
perhaps, than the quaintness of its structure, which is curious and
fantastic to the last degree. Little curved towers and pinnacles, with
outlines suggestive of leaping flames, predominate; while the body of
the building is in the form of a circle.

I have heard that there is an old story, told amongst the country
people, to the effect that the devil built the place. However, that is
as may be. True or not, I neither know nor care, save as it may have
helped to cheapen it, ere I came.

I must have been here some ten years before I saw sufficient to warrant
any belief in the stories, current in the neighborhood, about this
house. It is true that I had, on at least a dozen occasions, seen,
vaguely, things that puzzled me, and, perhaps, had felt more than I had
seen. Then, as the years passed, bringing age upon me, I became often
aware of something unseen, yet unmistakably present, in the empty rooms
and corridors. Still, it was as I have said many years before I saw any
real manifestations of the so-called supernatural.

It was not Halloween. If I were telling a story for amusement's sake, I
should probably place it on that night of nights; but this is a true
record of my own experiences, and I would not put pen to paper to amuse
anyone. No. It was after midnight on the morning of the twenty-first day
of January. I was sitting reading, as is often my custom, in my study.
Pepper lay, sleeping, near my chair.

Without warning, the flames of the two candles went low, and then
shone with a ghastly green effulgence. I looked up, quickly, and as I
did so I saw the lights sink into a dull, ruddy tint; so that the room
glowed with a strange, heavy, crimson twilight that gave the shadows
behind the chairs and tables a