Chapter I
When Mr. Hiram B. Otis, the American Minister, bought Canterville Chase, every one told him he was doing a very foolish thing, as there was no doubt at all that the place was haunted. Indeed, Lord Canterville himself, who was a man of the most punctilious honour, had felt it his duty to mention the fact to Mr. Otis when they came to discuss terms.
'We have not cared to live in the place ourselves,' said Lord Canterville, 'since my grand-aunt, the Dowager Duchess of Bolton, was frightened into a fit, from which she never really recovered, by two skeleton hands being placed on her shoulders as she was dressing for dinner, and I feel bound to tell you, Mr. Otis, that the ghost has been seen by
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They were delightful boys, and with the exception of the worthy Minister the only true republicans of the family.
As Canterville Chase is seven miles from Ascot, the nearest railway station, Mr. Otis had telegraphed for a waggonette to meet them, and they started on their drive in high spirits. It was a lovely July evening, and the air was delicate with the scent of the pinewoods. Now and then they heard a wood pigeon brooding over its own sweet voice, or saw, deep in the rustling fern, the burnished breast of the pheasant. Little squirrels peered at them from the beech-trees as they went by, and the rabbits scudded away through the brushwood and over the mossy knolls, with their white tails in the air. As they entered the avenue of Canterville Chase, however, the sky became suddenly overcast with clouds, a curious stillness seemed to hold the atmosphere, a great flight of rooks passed silently over their heads, and, before they reached the house, some big drops of rain had fallen.
Standing on the steps to receive them was an old woman, neatly dressed in black silk, with a white cap and apron. This was Mrs. Umney, the housekeeper, whom Mrs. Otis, at Lady Canterville's earnest request, had consented to keep on in her former position. She made them each a low curtsey as they alighted, and said in a quaint, old-fashioned manner,'I bid you welcome to Canterville Chase.' Following her, they passed through the fine Tudor hall into the library, a long, low room,
¨You can't hide from crime.¨ This book is called Ghost by Jason Reynolds. This book is a very well thought out and not that long 180 pages. This book is written in first person, and is realistic fiction.
The steam from the kettle had condensed on the cold window and was running down the glass in tear-like trickles. Outside in the orchard the man from the smudge company was refilling the posts with oil. The greasy smell from last night’s burning was still in the air. Mr. Delahanty gazed out at the bleak darkening orange grove; Mrs. Delahanty watched her husband eat, nibbling up to the edges of the toast, then staking the crusts about his tea cup in a neat fence-like arrangement.
The Haunting by Joan Lowery Nixon is a mystery novel about how a teenage girl learns about the brave women in her family who did not even go near their famous haunted plantation, Graymoss. Fifteen year old Lia Starling just received the message that her great grandmother is giving her mother Anne, the property of Graymoss plantation. It has been kept in good care since Charlotte Blevin’s, (Lia’s great, great, great grandmother) grandfather died during the Civil War. Her parents dreamed of having a large family with a dozen unadopted children. But her parents refuse to listen to anyone about the evil spirits that haunts Graymoss. Lia gives her all to find out who or what the spirits wants even when she is scared to death. In the end, she solves
Many Elizabethan bedsides were haunted from “the terrors of the night”. Back then their ghosts were nothing like the pasty blobs we call ghosts now. Theirs were quite gruesome. Ghostly visitations were claimed to have been very unpleasant. Not only this, but they claimed it cast them into a state of spiritual confusion.
6. “We swarmed along down the river road, just carrying on like wildcats; and to make it more scary the sky was darking up, and the lightning beginning to wink and flitter,
“Mrs. May’s bedroom window was low and faced on the east and the bull, silvered in the moonlight, stood under it, his head raised as if he listened- like some patient god come down to woo her- for a stir inside her room. The window was dark and the sound of her breathing too light to be carried outside. Clouds crossing the room blackened him and in the dark he began to tear at the hedge. Presently they passed and he appeared again in the same spot, chewing steadily, with a hedge-wreath that he had ripped loose for himself caught in the tips of his horns. When the moon drifted into retirement again, there was nothing to mark his place but the sound of steady chewing. Then
As the women walk through the house, they begin to get a feel for what Mrs. Wright’s life is like. They notice things like the limited kitchen space, the broken stove, and the broken jars of fruit and begin to realize the day-to-day struggles that Mrs. Wright endured. The entire house has a solemn, depressing atmosphere. Mrs. Hale regretfully comments that, for this reason and the fact that Mr. Wright is a difficult man to be around, she never came to visit her old friend, Mrs. Wright.
We had not gone a rod when we found ourselves in a heap, in a heavy drift of snow. We took hold of each others’ hands, pulled ourselves out, got into the road, and the cold north wind blew us down the road a half mile south, where the Strelow boys and John Conrad had to go west a mile or more. When they reached a bridge in a ravine, the little fellows sheltered a while under the bridge, a wooden culvert, but Robert, the oldest, insisted that they push on thru the blinding storm for their homes. In the darkness they stumbled in, and by degrees their parents thawed them out, bathed their frozen hands, noses, ears and cheeks, while the boys cried in pain. “My brothers and I could not walk thru the deep snow in the road, so we took down the rows of corn stalks to keep from losing ourselves ’till we reached our pasture fence. Walter was too short to wade the deep snow in the field, so Henry and I dragged him over the top. For nearly a mile we followed the fence ’till we reached the corral and pens. In the howling storm, we could hear the pigs squeal as they were freezing in the mud and snow. Sister Ida had opened the gate and let the cows in from the field to the sheds, just as the cold wind struck and froze her skirts stiff around her like hoops. The barn and stables were drifted over when we reached there. The roaring wind and stifling snow blinded us so that we had to feel thru the yard to the door of our house. “The lamp was lighted. Mother was walking the floor, wringing her hands and calling for her boys. Pa was shaking the ice and snow from his coat and boots. He had gone out to meet us but was forced back by the storm. We stayed in the house all that night. It was so cold that many people froze.” Although most of the information that was collected or the stories that were told were in South Dakota, Nebraska, North Dakota the temperatures took
During the Communist regime in the former Soviet Union, life was very difficult. The people who lived within the countries controlled by the Soviet government experienced levels of oppression akin to slavery. They could not express themselves through any means and had to conform both body and soul to the views of the Communist Party. People could be arrested, imprisoned, shipped off to exile or executed often without trial. Some twenty million people died while Joseph Stalin led the USSR and for many years after his death it was still dangerous to dare criticize his regime, although some scholars put that number closer to forty million people who died. Now that the Soviet Union has broken up and Russia is its own country there is more freedom, but the people still live under the yoke of an oppressive leader who does not tolerate political or social challenges. The people do nothing to stand up to this government because they have all been scarred by the decades they lived under Stalin.
“It’s not everyday we get company around here,” I reminded myself, “we haven’t shown our chateau in ages.” As we walked down the elegant staircase, each step creaked one by one. My hand-held lamp with the bright, burning fire was in clutch as we walked around the dusty furniture until we saw some of my men. They were silent, but you could see the fear in their eyes - almost like the fear in Rainsford’s. One had the guts to come up, and offer another light looking for a way to impress me with his concern, but I quickly declined.
Colonel Smith Johnson rode on his horse towards Pine Ridge, armed with his service rifle and a small pouch of gunpowder. The past few months, everyone had been worried about the Ghost Dance spiritual movement the natives were performing. The natives believed they were confined to specific reserves as a kind of punishment from their gods for disobeying them. They were no longer listening to the government, and everyone was in fear at the thought of a possible rebellion..
A review of the house itself suggests that an architectural hierarchy of privacy increases level by level. At first, the house seems to foster romantic sensibilities; intrigued by its architectural connotations, the narrator embarks upon its description immediately--it is the house that she wants to "talk about" (Gilman 11). Together with its landscape, the house is a "most beautiful place" that stands "quite alone . . . well back from the road, quite three miles from the village" (Gilman 11). The estate's grounds, moreover, consist of "hedges and walls and gates that lock" (Gilman 11). As such, the house and its grounds are markedly depicted as mechanisms of confinement--ancestral places situated within a legacy of control and
When they first arrive at the colonial house the narrator is happy about the house. It it the most beautiful house as it “stand[s] well back from the road, quite three miles from the village” and it makes her “think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little housed for the hardeners and people” (88). She arrives at the house and deems it to be just like the haunted houses society reads about at the time. The house is in some legal troubles over who rightly owns the house, which is why they were able to get the house so cheap. While the narrator wanted to take a room downstairs with a view of the gardens, her husband places her in a room upstairs. She describes the room upstairs as “a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and
In the short story Ghosts written by Edwidge Danticat a young man named Pascal and his family (mother, father, and a brother once a police officer, immigrated to Canada) live in an underprivileged area of Haiti called Bel Air. His parents once pigeon breeders, now own a restaurant in the neighborhood. The eatery caters to the working-class citizens as well as the local gang members. When Pascal is not working at the restaurant he is either attending computer programming school or working at the local radio station as a news writer. Pascal has the desire to have a program on the radio station, that he will use as a platform to discuss and alleviate the numerous issues within his community with guest such as; gang members, community leaders,