The Mannikins’ Castle
I don’t pretend, Brother Rhine, to have as many haunted castles upon my banks as you have on and about the sides of your famous river. I have always denied that the chief merit of a castle consists in its being haunted, and the simple-minded people who inhabit this old England of ours look to the circumstance of their houses being comfortable to live in, free from draughts and bad smells, large enough to entertain their friends, and possessed of good kitchen arrangements, rather than to their being the residence of any supernatural beings such as those of which you and your castles appear to be so proud. Moreover I have often observed that the presence of such creatures is constantly connected with the commission of some frightful crime at a distant period of time, the perpetrator of which appears desirous to perpetuate its memory by haunting the place where it was performed as much as he or she conveniently can. We islanders, on the contrary, when any of us happen to commit a crime, prefer that it should be forgotten as soon as possible, and think it very indecent and improper of any member of a respectable family who may have distinguished himself in the paths of vice if he seeks to keep up the remembrance thereof, and throw a stain upon the escutcheon of his house by coming back again to earth after he has once left it for the benefit of the survivors. There are exceptions, of course, to this rule, but I state what I believe to be the popular feeling here upon the subject; and although I am going to tell you a story which concerns a castle, and also beings not strictly mortal or ordinary, I may at once tell you that, so far as I know, no murder was ever committed there, and no ghost or demon of an unpleasant character ever entered the place, except under the casual circumstances which I shall presently relate.
It was an old castle, however; a very old castle, built much more massively than the structures of modern times, and full of curious old bits of wall, over which antiquaries would puzzle nowadays to determine their date, and having here and there wonderful windows with huge stone mullions set into the great, deep walls, and apparently built with the intention of lasting until the end of the world. In the chief window of this old ruin—for a ruin it was at the time of my story—there habitually sat a large black owl, who was generally supposed to be the lord and ruler of the place.