Of An Outhouse in Autumn (1)

The following is taken from the journals of Dr. Marina Fitzgerald of the Society for Psychical Research whose notes were recently recovered by Mr. Seymour Mulligan, editor of New Ireland Studies.  Mr. Mulligan wishes to express that he cannot guarantee the genuineness of any incident described in Dr. Fitzgerald’s reports and only publishes out of the desire to educate, and also to some extent amuse.   

May, 1975

In the time I have been adding to these journals, I have been precise in my attendance to them and comprehensive in my approach to each case I have encountered.  But I confess that there is one case which I chose not to write about in the weeks and months following its closure.  Perhaps I was afraid to put it into words as events in the case deeply disturbed me.  I have now decided that it was gravely unprofessional to have omitted this particular case from my records.  I must not in future allow my emotions to get in the way of fair diligence to science. 

In the autumn of last year, I learned of an elderly widow, Mrs. F. Weymouth of Glasnevin, who had reported a series of disturbances in her home that were notable in their oddness and might have interested the typical charlatan of spiritual matters, but sadly did not interest me in the slightest.  However I happened to be in North Dublin at the time of receiving word of her troubles, so I decided I would pay a visit to Mrs. Weymouth in her home in the leafy streets between Glasnevin and the Finglas Village and review her situation anyway.

Where Mrs. Weymouth lived was an old red-bricked terraced house with a roof of weathered ash tile which would have struck anyone as picturesque and attractive were it not for a dismal mood suffusing the street unlike any I had come across before in all the towns of Ireland I had been to.  Turning onto it, I was passed by a man who gave me an unwelcoming look that the tourist board would not have sought to photograph for billboards.  Further along the street, there were some children playing with a ball and I swear one of them tried to hit me with it for it was given an almighty kick as I walked past them and though it just missed me the wallop it made against the wall had me fearing I would not get off the street alive.  A mother calling to one of the children shot an unsympathetic look at me from her doorway when she saw which house I had arrived at for visiting.  I nodded cheerily to her, forwarded a slight wave, but she ignored me and retreated to her homestead. 

Mrs. Weymouth was hysterical already by the time she came to the door to meet me, but this had arisen not from any paranormal phenomena she might presently have been witnessing, but because she had not been expecting me to arrive at that time and was deeply ashamed she had no pot of tea on.  Upon entering her home, I was confronted by a sitting room of slatternly warmth: a black-spotted beige carpet, papers that were yellowed with age strewn all about, careless cup stains scattered across furniture surfaces.  The room showed the hallmarks of someone who lived intensely alone in the house, perhaps rarely coming out from behind its walls, and who rarely too was visited upon.  But the fire I must say was extremely radiant and comforting. 

Mrs. Weymouth was an elderly woman, in her late seventies; she reminded me of my own mother in her later years – somewhat weary and crestfallen in the face, yet unfeasibly nimble in body and mind.  I immediately predicted it was the customary return of a dead husband I would have to deal with, as a journey along the years of wedlock could be seen in pictures all over the room – Mrs. Weymouth standing next to a tall affable fellow continuously from young adulthood to middle-age – but this was not to be the case.  There was no human phantom to consider as Mrs. Weymouth sincerely believed her neglected outhouse was haunted by the frenzied spirits of a great many poisoned rats – rats which she had in fact poisoned in an act of desperation some months before. 

‘I’d had it up to here with them,’ she told me.  ‘It was a constant fear I had of them getting into the house one day through the walls.  So one day I mixed about some milk and bread and poison in a bowl and left it just inside the doorway of the outhouse and then locked it up.  I haven’t opened the door since.  I imagined inside was laid out with their little corpses in the weeks afterwards and couldn’t bring myself to look.’

‘I take it there is no use at all for the outhouse anymore?’

‘Oh God, no, I had a modernised bathroom of conveniences installed some years ago, long after my Brucie passed on.  A beautiful room, it is.  If only my Brucie had lived on to see it.  He would have loved sitting in there.  You can go up and try it for yourself if you want.’

‘Maybe later,’ I told her. 

After she fetched tea for the pair of us and laid out a plate of custard creams, I asked Mrs. Weymouth to detail the events which had led her to believe her outhouse was haunted.

‘There are noises.  Nightly, there are noises.  I rarely hear anything in the daytime.  But during the night...scratching, banging.  And it’s all coming from that outhouse.  Sometimes I feel it even creeping through the walls.  There’s wee crannies all about this house and in the night more than just the draught gets through.’

‘What gets through?’

‘I couldn’t tell you precisely.  But I can tell you that sometimes as I try to sleep I hear a sound like it is their little feet running beneath me...and... strange shadows too.  Sometimes from my bed I might open my eyes and see on the wall in front of me a great shadow.  Like that of a giant rodent.  Almost like all the rat-spirits have coalesced as one great big one.’

‘Have you ever seen anything?  A manifestation?  Outside of shadows?’

‘Nothing---except what I’ve said.  But I know they will reveal themselves soon.  I can feel things getting worse.  You must understand, Miss. Fitzgerald, I have no cruelty in my heart.  I have never hurt a fly once.  It was a moment of madness in me, I believe.  The killing of things I have never in my life promoted as a means to an end.  But in this instance, I could imagine no other means, you see.  And now, I think they’re coming to get me.  I really do.  Pests will be pests through and through to eternity.’ 

‘You think they are malevolent?’

‘Whoever heard of a benevolent rat, Miss. Fitzgerald?’

‘Well, I’m not sure if they are known to operate purely out of malevolence either.’

Scepticism is a useful thing to have in my line of work as it enables me to identify and eliminate falsehoods swiftly but I feel that perhaps my lack of experience and general understanding of animal spirits had me entertaining more scepticism in Mrs. Weymouth’s case.  From my reading, such cases almost always involved anthropomorphism as in the fox-ghosts of Asian folklore, or if not they were represented as spectral hounds, phantom dogs – canines all, the preferred animal companions for humans.  Never had they appeared as rodents.  The only previous animal haunting I had investigated had involved a man in County Monaghan who believed his beloved and lately deceased beagle continued to reside in the home, yelping when the doorbell rang, leaving little puddles by the stairs; needless to say, I found no evidence of supernatural activity in his home, but as is common in all these cases, animal or human, the homes were inundated with grief.  Mrs. Weymouth was no exception.  When later we rose to inspect the outhouse, I watched her stop at a picture of the late Brucie Weymouth and weep and bless herself miserably.

‘Can I ask you, Miss. Fitzgerald, what would you have done if your own place had been infested?’

‘I am not sure.  I would probably have called for pest control.’

‘Well, didn’t I do just that?  I had the ratcatcher called but he never came.  I think the neighbours got to him.  They have a bad impression of me around here, you know.  They don’t care for me at all.’

‘And why is that?’

‘It used to be a nice street.  But all these new families – dreadful.  I know the children think I’m a witch.’

‘That’s typical of kids.  I wouldn’t worry.  The young will often fear the elderly.’

‘It should be us that are rightfully afraid of them.  I know those children get into my garden sometimes.  And mess about. Throw mud at the windows.  It all trickles down from the parents, I’d swear on that.’

From my own travels around the country, I had seen an increase in unkindness towards the elderly, or even just those who lived in solitary conditions near or in the very midst of younger families.  The women were thought of as witches, and the men proverbial ‘boogymen’ and molesters.  For some reason, in recent times, these prejudices had extended their reach somewhat and were now held also by parents who in prior generations would have been far more rational.  There seemed to be a growing tension in society which I had yet to comfortably understand.      

‘Do you think perhaps the noises you hear in the night are just children messing about?’

‘Lord, no.  These sounds...these sounds...Miss. Fitzgerald, you must hear for yourself.  Please stay the night here and you can be the judge of it.  There is a second bedroom up the stairs.’

An earlier indifference to the case had faded.  And I liked Mrs. Weymouth.  So I agreed. 

The old woman smiled appreciatively. 

‘You know, none of this would have happened if Brucie’d been around,’ Mrs. Weymouth said, going to the mantelpiece and looking at a framed photo of her dead spouse with his arm held in a sling.  ‘I wouldn’t have done what I did if he’d been here.  Because he used to take care of all that for me.  The creepie-crawlies and all that.  He’d whack them.  He’d bash them, swat them, flush them.  And yes, poison them.  So you can blame him, not me.’

‘What happened to him in this picture?’ I asked.

‘Ah, he fell out of bed one evening.  He was prone to accidents, he was.’

Then Mrs. Weymouth broke down crying.  The tears were not uncontrollable however, and soon we were on our way through the kitchen towards the back door to examine the notorious outhouse.

PART TWO: https://www.abctales.com/story/sean-mcnulty/outhouse-autumn-2