Читать книгу My Ten Years in a Quandary - Robert C Benchley - Страница 24

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In an ill-advised moment last night I began reading an article called Three Months in a Haunted House. I merely wanted to find out why anyone would stay three months in a haunted house, or three minutes, for that matter. We are supposedly free agents.

The whole thing ended by my putting on my clothes and going over to spend the rest of the night in the waiting room of the Grand Central Terminal. Even over there I had to ask the man to put on a few more lights. They start cutting down on electricity along about 3 a. m., and it gets a little gloomy.

While I was tagging along at the heels of the cleaning men, from one side of the room to the other, I got to thinking in a more or less sane manner about the difference between modern ghosts and those which haunt castles in Europe, or drift up and down deserted wings of large estates in Scotland. Modern ghosts are so rowdy.

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At just what age does a ghost stop being noisy and throwing things and settle down to dignified haunting? It must have something to do with immaturity in the ghost-world, for only the youngsters seem to take delight in crashing about as if they were drunk. You never hear any of the ghosts in the Tower of London behaving like hoodlums. Of course it may be a matter of breeding.

All accounts of haunted houses today tell of sounds of furniture being thrown downstairs, dishes and spoons being clattered together, and sometimes even actual physical violence, with all the ghosts entering the room and spinning the bed around or yanking off the covers. You would think that Jack Oakie was in the house. Ghosts who have died within the past fifty years all seem to have had grudges against people, or else a tendency to practical joking. They all seem to have been people who, when they were alive, went around pushing other people off rafts into the water, or putting rubber frogs into beer-glasses.

You don't catch any of those nice people who haunt Glamis Castle putting on acts like that. They take a little stroll up and down a corridor or along a battlement; sometimes they just appear at a window for a second and then disappear. Once in a great while they clank a chain or two, but not in a spirit of mischief. You can't help clanking a chain if it is attached to you.

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The chief characteristics of a ghost who has attained a certain amount of dignity are repression and beauty. All the lady ghosts are tall and sad, and the men seem to have gone to some good school. Our modern ghosts wouldn't be tolerated in one of those old castles for a minute.

And you will notice that the twentieth-century tin-pan throwers and bed-bouncers never show themselves. If we could see them, I'll bet they wear turtle-necked sweaters and caps. They probably know that once they let anyone catch sight of them they will be so unimpressive that the ghost-racket will be spoiled for them and they will be kicked out into the yard.

Maybe I have gone a little too far. Mind you, I don't say that there can't be ladies and gentlemen among present-day ghosts. I am sure there are. I certainly meant no offense to modern ghosts as a class. They're the ones I'll have to deal with, and I hope that they haven't got me wrong in this little article.

All I meant to say was that times have changed. You know—animal spirits, and boys will be boys. I was really only kidding anyway.