It seems that the negroes of Kentucky, among whom Jeff. was born and raised, have a singular superstition that a sudden death, which is about to take place in the family, will be announced by the clock, at or about midnight, striking a number of times corresponding to the years of age at which the doomed person will die, and as Jeff. is about 58 years and 6 months old, this striking of the clock had anything but a musical or amusing sound to him.
Nearly every night since he has occupied the building peculiar noises have been heard. Sometimes like the sound made when the earth is thrown upon a coffin, sometimes like the gutteral [sic] gurgle heard in the throat of a man who is hung, and sometimes it has seemed as if a score of ladies were drawing their heavy silk trails over the marble floors in the halls above. But
last Saturday night
Occurred a scene, compared with which the performances at the haunted house at Dixboro, which many old citizens of the county will remember, sing into insignificance–a scene which Jeff. will remember to his dying day. At precisely half-past one o’clock on awakening from a short nap, Jeff. saw, through the opening in the floor over the boiler, a pale, bluish and flickering light. The light seemed to come and go as if it were thrown from a lantern in the hands of someone moving about the hall upstairs. The fire had got low, the gas flickered lazily in its single burner as if about to go out, and the building was wrapt [sic] in a silence that was almost painful, when all at once, the door leading from the boiler room into the hall way, opened with a terrific slam.