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night. Nevertheless, it made me very nervous, and I wondered it did not wake James.

In the morning he made light of my fears, and indeed they did seem ridiculous in the salutary light of the sun.

But for days the Black Nun haunted me. I would sit down to read and, suddenly looking up from my book, would see her beside me; I would go to my room and find her standing by my bed; I would look in the glass and her pale, sweet face would be reflected in the mirror. I feared that I was going insane, yet would not see a doctor lest he confirm my fears. James, who never saw the Black Nun but the once, insisted that we were dreaming.

The constant presence of tie Black Nun, the continued nightly sawing, and my utter isolation—for no white woman would make a friend of a hated "Yankee"—made life unbearable. Finally I asked Mother to make us a long visit.

My mother was a "medium"; she often received "spirit" messages through automatic writing, and she occasionally heard rappings and other sounds for which there seemed to be no material explanations. She was the last woman in the world to fear a ghost.

The morning after her arrival she looked tired and unrefreshed. Each succeeding morning for a week she looked worse, and then she packed her trunk, declaring her intention of going home. Hesitatingly—for I had hitherto avoided the topic—I mentioned the Black Nun.

"It isn't what I've seen," exclaimed Mother. "It's what I've heard and felt. It's driving me crazy.

"Did you hear the sawing?" I ventured.

"Sawing? No, it was the rustling—and the whispering—and the moaning—and hands laid on my forehead, cool hands—you know how hands feel when you’ve a fever—and hands patting the pillow—and hands feeling my wrists—it was dreadful—and I’m going to get out of this house today, and I advise you to do the same."

But James and I couldn't camp out in the street—so I had to stay.

In time the neighbors grew friendly. Ladies began to call at the Old Penitentiary House. I shall never forget Mrs. Willing, the first who came.

"This isn’t my first visit here," she informed me. "I was at the house often during the war. It was a hospital then, you know."

A hospital. And Mother had spoken of moanings, and cool hands laid on her fore head.

"It was in charge of a nursing sisterhood," continued Mrs. Willing.

There was the Black Nun—and Mother had heard rustlings as of voluminous robes.

"There was a romantic story connected with the hospital," my caller went on. "It seems that about ten years before the war a lovely Creole girl was betrothed to a young man of this city. They quarrelled—and he joined the army, she a nursing order. The war brought both of them to this house, he as a patient, she as a nurse. They met, they found that they still loved each other—and it was forever too late. Well, the young man died, and Sister Theresa, when she heard them sawing the boards for his coffin— there was a coffin-maker's shop in the back yard—went quite mad, and died a week later. Sad, wasn't t?"

So ended the tory of the Black Nun. I have never been able to account for her appearance, although I have read many theories explaining "ghosts"; but I do know that I saw her as plainly as ever I saw anyone in my life.

THOUGH I am not in the least superstitious, still I have had good cause to be as the result of a strange occurrence I witnessed about twenty-five years ago and which I will relate here.

This "apparition," if I might so call it, was also seen by many persons besides myself, and many of them have expressed their opinions as to its cause, yet I have never heard any convincing explanation.

At that time I was a boy in my early ’teens and always spent my summer holidays with an uncle who was station agent on a small branch of a Canadian railway. This branch, after switching off from the main road, was laid over a swampy waste on which there was very little vegetation except spongy moss, long faded grass, and occasionally a few clusters of decayed trees. At the end of this swamp there was a river, spanned by a high bridge, on the other side of which my uncle’s station was situated.

A small village, back in the mountains, was located about fifteen miles from here, and a little old-fashioned train would run up there about three times a week for the accommodation of passengers, mostly farmers, residing in the village and district.

One summer, as I traveled out from town to visit my uncle, the train stopped at a switch to take on a few box-cars. On this particular day the brakeman had great difficulty in coup ling the cars to the train. In fact, he failed four or five times, and this aroused the anger of the engineer, a man of quick temper and picturesque vocabulary.

Contrary to rules, he got down from the cab of the engine, leaving the fireman in charge of the throttle and rushed down to the uncoupled cars. Yelling to the fireman to back the train up, he stepped in to make the couplings himself, tripped, and, before he could escape, was caught between the couplings.

Strange to say, he did not lose consciousness immediately although he was fatally injured. He raged and swore and with many an oath declared he would run that train again even if he was in hell. Three minutes later he died.

About eleven o’clock one night, a week after this gruesome accident, I was sitting reading near a window at the station, when the glean of an engine's headlight caught my eye. It was coming toward the station through the swamp and I thought I had better let my uncle know about it, as it was his duty to report all trains that passed. He was greatly surprised, however, when I told him and said that it must be a special as no train was due that night.

Peering out into tho night, we both watched the train slowły approaching. A full moon had just risen, and cast a silvery lustre over the landscape, heightened here and there where it glinted upon small ponds.

The headlight came steadily on and, upon rounding a bend, we could see the lights shining through the car windows. It looked like an ordinary passenger train as it appears at night, but there was a strange vagueness in its outlines, and it appeared to float rather than roll over the tracks. This, however, did not occur to me until afterwards.

On and on it came, nearer and nearer to the bridge, and with a dull, thundering noise went a short way over it and then, like a flash—disappeared into thin air.

I cannot describe the utter awe that overwhelmed me at this instant upon beholding what I then thought to be a great tragedy. A picture of demolished cars, shapeless masses of twisted steel and scores of dead and injured passengers flushed through my mind and filled me with horror. I thought the train had plunged down upon the jagged rocks and into the swirling waters of the river.

My uncle hastily lighted a lantern, and we ran over to the bridge expecting to see a horrible sight, but only the stillness of the night, broken by the splash of the river against the shore greeted us. We were convinced that what we had seen had been some kind of a phantom.

The next day we questioned people who were living in the vicinity: Many of them declared that they had seen a train passing at the time we saw the strange manifestation, but had failed to see it crossing tho bridge. They were greatly surprised when we told of its disappearance.

After this the "Phantom Train," as it came to be called, was seen many times, and for a period of nearly five years it appeared at intervals, but always dissolved into nothingness at the bridge. It has been almost eighteen years now since the "Phantom Train" made its last ghostly, nocturnal pilgrimage, and this branch of the railway has been in disuse for years on account of the bridge being pronounced unsafe for the modern heavy steel train.

The spectral mystery is still unsolved and has passed into legend, but it shall always live in my memory as the strangest thing I have ever seen.

The dead engineer had apparently kept his word.

SINCE the war, thousands of persons have taken a great interest in everything directly connected with or pertaining to the occult. Many have become fanatics on the subject.

Believing that it might be of interest to readers of The Cauldron to have the particulars of an authentic occurrence, I am submitting a short account of a strange manifestation that actually happened to me. The inexplicable incident I have to tell, occurred in Cleveland, Ohio, some years ago.

I was on my way to Detroit, and decided, to go by boat from Cleveland. I arrived by train in that city in the evening and engaged a room for the night in an unpretentious house on a quiet street. Leaving my suitcase, I strolled off to see the town, had tea, went to a movie and returned about 10:30 p. m.

My room was on an upper floor. There were two other tenants who occupied the adjoining room. Aside from these, there was only a small parlor—the door of which was always open—on that floor. A gas light burned on the landing outside my door, and gave light to the staircase, which was a single flight and led down to the small entrance hall. I noticed that the door was without a key.

"My wife has gone to bed," the proprietor said, "and I don’t know where she has put the key, but you will not be disturbed. The young men have been asleep a long time now, and there is no one else in the house but my wife and I, with the exception of yourself."

Assuring him that everything was highly satisfactory, I bade him good night, and he withdrew.

The bed was against the side of the room, with a window near the head, and the door at the foot. There were the usual furnishings; bureau, wash-stand and so forth. I placed a