The Haunted Violin

This was a mournful tune, and that night it seemed even more so as we listened to the wavering notes produced by the 61-year old violinist. Townspeople claimed that this gaunt, old gentleman could summon the Devil-or something equally supernatural-at will on his ancient violin.

Seven of us were grouped in the editorial office of the weekly Wareham (MA.) Courier, located on the bottom floor of an otherwise empty three-story building on Main Street in Wareham, Massachusetts.

We were awaiting the arrival of an angry spirit, to be summoned by this doleful tune played on an ancient and possibly haunted violin. Suddenly a door slammed upstairs and the violinist's fingers stiffened on the strings.

The violinist was the late Harold Gordon Cudworth of Wareham. He was playing "The Broken Melody," composed by the English cellist Van Biene, on a violin made around 1769 by Joseph Hornstainer (or Hornsteiner) of Mittenwald, Germany.

For over 20 years, strange and unexplained events had occurred when this piece was played by Cudworth on this and other violins in his collection.

"The first time something odd happened," Cudworth told me, "was over 20 years ago when I was playing "The Broken Melody" on the Hornstainer violin in the kitchen of my mother's home.

"All of a sudden there was a great rumbling sound by the sink. My mother called out, 'What was that?' I thought the noise might have come from a water pipe, but it didn't. Then the racket stopped. When I resumed playing the tune, the noise started again.

"I didn't think too much of it at the time, but I do remember joking that the violin had something to do with the noise. Two weeks later I played "The Broken Melody" again and I heard the same rumble upstairs. I thought it was the cat until I saw her behind the stove.

"I am not superstitious," the violinist told me, "but I began to wonder if there might be a connection..."

The late Gordon Cudworth had a collection of 30 to 40 "good" violins, he said, which he had accumulated over a number of years. There were perhaps 50 violins in his total collection. Two of them were inlaid on their backs, and one of these was the Hornstainer violin which had 365 inlaid pieces.

"It probably was made for a member of the nobility," he explained.

The musician told me of more strange events concerning the old violin and the haunting piece of music. "I used to play the violin two or three hours every evening," he said. "I appeared a lot on the radio and gave many public performances, and I had to practice constantly.

"One night, shortly after the kitchen incident, I had finished practicing in my room and was repairing a lamp. The doors leading from the room had old-fashioned latches on them. As I worked, one of the latches dropped loudly on the door leading to the attic. I looked up. It happened again.

"I felt a little shaken and left the room to go downstairs. I closed the door and was about halfway down the stairs when I heard a loud slam behind me. I looked back. The door was wide open."

The violinist said that another night he came home, went upstairs, and had just taken off his wrist watch preparing to go to bed. Suddenly, the latch of the attic door slammed up and down four times "as though someone was there and wanted me to know it." There was no one in the attic, but the door to the music cabinet was open.

The top sheet of music inside was "The Broken Melody."