Nothing else happened until Mrs. Gordon returned. The evening after she got back, as she was preparing to go to bed, the door to her bedroom swung open. Standing there was the figure of a man. He was short, with huge shoulders and long arms. He was wearing a pea jacket (a king of boat commonly worn by seamen), baggy trousers, and heavy boots. His large head was covered with a tangled mass of yellowish hair. But of his face Mrs. Gordon could see almost nothing, for he was standing in the shadows. He was carrying what appeared to be a small bundle of red and white rags in one hand.

While Mrs. Gordon was staring at this strange and terrifying figure, it suddenly swung around, rushed to the landing, and, in a series of jumps, disappeared up the staircase.

That was it! Unlike the characters in so many horror films who stay in the haunted house after repeated warnings and encounters with the ghost, Mrs. Gordon did not want to chance another encounter. She and her daughters packed up and moved out that very next morning. As the report spread that the house was haunted, Mrs. Gordon got a series of indignant and threatening letters from her former landlord. That is why she would never give the address of the house in which she had lived.

Mrs. Gordon also got letters about the early history of the house and possible reasons for the haunting. Only one of these letters sounded plausible. It said that some years before, the rooms she had rented had been occupied by a retired captain in the Merchant Service.

He was a strange man, the letter said, who continued to wear nautical clothes despite the fact that he had not been on a ship in years. He was also a very heavy drinker. The drink was rapidly destroying his mind.

At the time, the rooms above the captain’s were rented to a couple who had a small infant. The baby’s crying annoyed the captain. He warned the baby’s mother that if she did not keep her child quiet, he would not be answerable for the consequences. But the warnings appeared to have no effect. One day, in a drunken rage, he ran upstairs when the mother was temporarily away, and killed the infant with a knife he found on the kitchen table. He then stuffed the body into a large clock that stood in a corner of the room.

Of course, the crime was discovered almost immediately and the captain was found in his own rooms, drunk and unconscious. He was arrested on a charge of murder, but was found to be insane and was committed to a lunatic asylum.

Within a few years he killed himself.