by Cole Herrold
When people are attempting to find places to stay, most of the issues people concern themselves with are the price of stay, cleanliness, the view and other features many would consider necessary for their decision to stay in such an accommodation. For those of a more Fortean mindset, there is another element that can confirm a booking into that locale, and that is the building's haunted history. A haunted location is often extremely sought after as a place to stay for those with the mindset of communicating with the spirit world. Hotels such as the Shanley Hotel in New York and the similarly named Stanley Hotel have people who come in droves to stay in the most haunted rooms, some of which are booked for months without an opening. These individuals hope to have an experience with the unknown and, in some cases, to prove to themselves and others that such phenomena do exist. However, while most believe spirits to be innocent lost souls who have not passed on to the next plane of existence, there are those who have such violence associated with them that even a spectral encounter is something not to wish to experience.
Elliot O'Donnell, in his book Animal Ghosts, Or Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter, describes several encounters with bizarre ghosts, but one of the most terrifying and violent hauntings would appear in this little-known tome. This violent encounter was given to Elliot O'Donnell by his spiritualist friend and colleague Martin Tristram. Martin Tristram, one dark night arrived at O'Donnell's house. It was late, and Martin did not seem like himself as though he was an entirely different person; the pair proceeded to sit down in his study, and Martin began to discuss the various updates in the occult circle. While sitting, Martin looked over at Elliot and said, "I need to tell you an encounter I had.”
Martin, while traveling through Belgium, had arrived in Bruges after traveling from Antwerp. As he stepped into the cobblestone streets of Bruges, a storm proceeded to amass in the distance. The darkness swelled over the city, and the wind picked up, swirling in a tumultuous cyclone. Tristram, exhausted from his travel, was in dire need of a place to rest for the night. Tristram looked out in the ever-shrinking crowd of people and proceeded to see a coach traveling down the street, picking up the last stragglers before the storm engulfed the city. He hailed the coach stepping closer to the wooden frame and called the coach driver to find him a clean place with reasonable prices. The coach driver gave him a nod, and Tristram clambered into the wooden vehicle upon finally sitting down, the driver gave a whip, and the horses moved down towards a dark narrow street. The street called La Rue Croissante was poorly lit with gas lamps. Tristram half expected the carriage to of been overtaken by some maniac like Jack the Ripper; however, after a short ride, the carriage came to a shifting stop in front of an old medieval-looking tavern.
Tristram looked at the establishment and questioned whether it would be kept up to the decent quality he asked the coach to look for. However, exhaustion had almost overtook him, and it got to the point as he looked at the antediluvian exterior that perhaps that he could, in fact, sleep anywhere. Tristram went to the front door and proceeded to knock on the heavy wooden door. A girl answered the door, and Tristram was struck down by the girl's appearance. The girl had lovely blonde locks that curled down to her shoulders and had bright carmine lips; she had a very sharp smile that melted the man's disposition. He proceeded of following her into the tavern and looked down at her long legs, which were covered in scarlet stockings. She went behind the counter, and Martin proceeded in booking a room. The girl leaving the counter beckoned Martin to follow as she ambled herself up the stairs. Tristram watched her scarlet stockings as he followed behind.
The girl proceeded in leading him down the hall to an old, rugged door. She reached out the old cast iron key in hand and unlocked the door. She pushed the door open and led Tristram in. Tristram observed the oak-panelled room held up by large oak beams and found it rather gloomy. There was an old fireplace that was in the center of the room, and on one side of it was an oak settee and on the other side of it was an old black chest. The entire room seemed to have a "funereal character". However, the most garish element of the room was a colossal four poster which was placed in the exact middle of the room, and it faced a giant mirror that reflected the bed and Tristram as he looked at the room. The girl gave Tristram one last smile and bid him "good night" before wandering out of the room.
Tristram, still reeling from the charming girl but still exhausted, proceeded in undressing and getting between the sheets inching over towards the right side of the bed. Tristram was dead tired, but he would undergo something that almost everyone would at one point experience, that being a slight touch of insomnia. He laid in the darkness, taking in all the footsteps, creaks, and sighs that came from the other rooms; his overtiredness already made it difficult to sleep, but these extra nuisances managed to keep him up with a minor headache and semi bloodshot eyes. He laid there listening to these sounds until they started to deafen as the cohabitants began to nestle themselves into dreamland. Soon all was quiet, and he laid there staring in the sepulchre engulfing darkness. This silence would then be broken by the large ringing of the towns clock tower as one loud solitary "bong" echoed in the city. As if on cue, his insomnia was cured, and he nestled off into a deep sleep. This sleep, while deep, was not restful, for Tristram was filled with horrific nightmares that made him toss and turn in bed. His dreams, however, would not plague him the entire night, for he woke up right at the sound of the city's clock ringing two.
As he laid in the bed profusely sweating from the night terrors he had just faced, he suddenly felt that he was not alone. He had while lying there the feeling that someone was lying on the unoccupied left side of the bed; however, he did not attempt to look over. While lying still, his first thought was that the tavern girl with her crimson stockings had come for a late-night romantic rendezvous with him. Yet this clearly would not be the case, and as if on cue to dismiss his wishful fantasy, the room suddenly seemed to grow insanely cold, and a strange eerie phosphorescent glow seemed to emanate in the room. Even with the sudden drop of temperature and change of lighting, he was trying to reassure himself that the presence in the room was his bedfellow was, in fact, the blonde vixen he had been scoping out from earlier in the night. While he was attempting to calm himself and maybe think of something to say to his would-be lover, a terrible sense of dread came over him, resulting in him shaking and trembling as if he was in mortal peril. This feeling of dread as he continued to lay there proceeded to escalate into more than just unsettlement but full-blown terror; he felt compelled to get to the answer to this feeling to answer the unnerving question of who this nightly guest was that was laying in bed with him, and so he finally sat up in the illuminated darkness.
Tristram proceeded to slowly turn his head, expecting the worst, but as his face came into the direct sight of the left side of the bed. He saw the most peculiar thing there was no one there. He was confused, for he had the exact impression that someone was, in fact, sleeping or laying right next to him. Laughing at his foolishness but still unnerved, Martin proceeded in looking at his environment; everything seemed to be in place. The heavy wooden door was shut as he had left it, and all of his belongings were untouched. Tristram continued to scan the area, and it was just as he was about to lay back down and return to sleep when a shock ran down his spine. As he reached with his eyes the mirror, he noticed that there was, in fact, somebody or, more appropriately, something lying in bed next to him. The bed seemed to cast an ungodly glow, and as he looked into the mirror there, he saw the translucent form of a man sleeping deeply. The figure was a bronzed and bearded man who appeared to be middle-aged. He appeared to of been dressed in sleeping garments, and Tristram could see the chest rise up and down rhythmically as if the figure was snoring.
Tristram trying to figure out if this was not some trick of the light or some hallucination caused by his exhaustion, proceeded to look over at the left side and again saw nothing and then back over at the mirror where the spectral sleeper supernaturally snored silently. He did this many times, trying to figure out if this encounter actually had occurred. Tristram eventually felt that what he was experiencing was not a trick of the mind or light and that he was, in fact, lying next to a ghost. Tristram seemed petrified he was unable to move further or shout or even scream and continued to watch the mirror. He waited for this apparition as in many spectral cases to simply vanish or dissipate, but this was not to be the case, and in fact, something even more horrible would be witnessed by Tristram and experienced by his spectral compatriot.
As Tristram stared at the mirror at his ghostly guest, he soon noticed that the eerie glow was growing and becoming brighter. This glow, however, was not coming from the slumbering specter but from an alternative area. Tristram watched in the mirror as his room's door proceeded to open. Thinking that maybe the scarlet damsel had, in fact, come to check in on him, he waited in bated breath but what peeked its head in at Tristram was nothing like the blonde beauty he had wanted. There staring into the room was a pair of glowing eyes shrouded in darkness. The eyes were not staring at him or anything else in the room except for one spot being the left side of the bed. Tristram watched as the door creaked open even further and shambled in a dark form. The door seemed to close on its own fruition, and it was in the phosphorescent glow in the mirror Tristram had realized that this strange figure was not human. The creature walked on four legs with dark reddish-brown hair and seemed to silently glide towards the left side of the bed. The giant shadowy figure glared down at the fellow specter with glowing eyes and rose up on two feet, raising its extraordinarily long arms above its head. Tristram watched the entire spectacle from the reflection of the mirror; his heart pumped faster and faster as he watched the colossal creature. There was a moment of quiet as the creature seemed frozen in its movements, that is until it proceeded in jumping onto the sleeping spirit and, using its outstretched hairy hands, started to unfurl its long slender fingers and proceeded in strangling the ghost as it continued to sleep. Tristram watched in horror as the spirit seemed to convulse and feel the great hold that the creature had on his neck. As Tristram watched the spectacle for some time, it appeared the victim finally gave up the ghost releasing one final breath and in doing so, both the appalling ape and violated victim disappeared. It was at that moment that Tristram seemed to regain his faculties and, in doing so, fell back onto the pillow and realized in the same delight that Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol felt that the apparitions had left him.
The next day after the restless night in the haunted room, Tristram proceeded in going out on the town. While out and about, he ran into his old school friend Heriot. The two proceeded in spending the rest of the day together, catching up on their current comings and goings, and it was in this conversation that Heriot had claimed great distress with his living situation and has raised the proposition that the two share accommodations for the time being. Tristram was not hesitant on the offer even after the supernatural showdown the occurred the night before, and so the two proceeded to head to the tavern.
The Tavern Maiden was more than happy that the two had decided to room together, and the two proceeded to put their belongings in their room. Heriot and Tristram then went down to the bar and ordered some drinks; all the while, Heriot was even more obsessed with the scarlet stocking tavern girl than Tristram had been. Heriot was following her around like a lost puppy cracking jokes making chit chat trying to learn as much as he could about her. Tristram was annoyed at this, but when the strike of twelve hit, he had with great difficulty managed to get Heriot to accompany him to his room for the night. As the pair had begun to ascend the stairs, the Tavern Girl cried to Heriot, "Make sure you don't sleep on the left side of the bed!". Tristram's heart fluttered, for he knew the terrible secrets the room held, and Heriot smiling said he wouldn't.
As Heriot and Tristram made their way up the steps and the two entered the room, he asked Tristram, "I wonder why she told me not to sleep on the left side". Tristram simply shrugged and said, "I don't know", all the while, he stared at the mirror. Tristram, while almost 100% sure that what he had seen was, in fact, a paranormal encounter he still could not rule out that it was a nightmare or a hallucination and, in doing so, wanted to put this to the test. Tristram decided not to tell Heriot of his supernatural spectacle from the night before because Heriot was, in fact, a sceptic of ghosts and all things that go bump in the night, so he certainly would have been laughed off anyways. Also, Heriot was a very physically strong man; surely, if what he had seen was a true experience, Heriot could fight off whatever malevolent monster he might encounter.
With these thoughts in his head, he decided to test his hypothesis and immediately claimed the right side of the bed. Heriot felt some discourtesy about this as he would not want to disobey the beautiful tavern maiden, but he did have a preference for the left side of the bed, and so it was no great hardship for him. So, with the sleeping arrangements all set, the two proceeded to undress, change into their nightclothes and get under the sheets to go to sleep; unlike the night before, Tristram fell asleep almost instantly, and so too did Heriot. The two proceeded to sleep peacefully, that is until the strike of two when Tristram almost instinctively managed to wake up.
Tristram was sweating profusely but unlike the night before, not from some nightmare but almost as in the expectation of the supernatural spectacle he had expected to occur. As his eyes peeled open, he saw the same ominous glow that he had seen the night before, and just like the night before, he rose up sitting on the bed and staring in the mirror. To his alarm on the left side of the bed was not his sleeping companion but the same bronzen middle-aged, bearded specter he had seen the other night. Worried for his compatriot, he looked at the left side of the bed where there snoring was his friend in the same spot where in the mirror he had seen the spirit. He continued to look over at the mirror and as if by clockwork, he watched as the room brightened once more by the opening of the door and in peered the glowing-eyed face of the perplexing paranormal primate. The figure in the same repetitious habit made the exact same motions as the night before as it silently floated over the floor. Tristram, however, did not look over at his friend during this entire event and continued to monitor the mirror. The apparitions made the exact same motions, the ape apparition stopping at the left side of the bed and staring down at the sleeping specter only to jump up and continue to choke the deceased dreamer. The strangling spectral simian continued to choke the spectral man, but there was one major difference from this night to the night previous, and that was that the sound of choking, gurgling, and struggling of breath seemed to be louder and echo through the room. Just like the night before, however, the final gasp of life was the end of the apparitional experience, and just like that, the louder than the previous gasp seemed to dissipate the entities.
Tristram, in almost orgasmic excitement, proceeded just like in the night prior to falling back on his pillow after the glowing ghouls left, and after realizing that what he had seen was not a hallucination but a reoccurring supernatural occurrence, he fell asleep. It was early in the morning when Tristram awoke, and he felt energized more than he ever had been in the past. He was still giddy from last night's encounter and sought to capture every inch of the ecstasy of it. He, in turn, wanted to see if Heriot had also seen the phosphorescent phantasms and proceeded in nudging his nestled bedfellow. He shook him several times, calling his name, attempting to wake him from some deep slumber. After this failed, he proceeded in looking over his friends' shoulder and found his eyes open and his mouth too. Heriot was dead.
A doctor was called to the room, and as the tavern girl led him to the room, he immediately shook his head. He went over to the recently deceased Heriot and immediately went to work. He checked the body, and there were no signs of anything violent but no sign of any pre-existing medical issue. The doctor went over to Tristram and uttered, "I don't get it; this is the fourth death in that bed in the last twelve months that I can attest to". Tristram proceeded in asking the doctor what befell his colleague, and as far as the doctor could tell, as with all the other cases, it was a failure of the heart due to sudden shock.
The tavern girl looked in the room with tears streaming from her eyes. Tristram, in an air of concern, ushered her outside for a walk, and the two began to talk to clear the air and to rationalize the death. The girl, as they began to walk, began to stammer up, "I can't tell you all I know, but I wouldn't sleep a night in that room for a fortune, though I believe its quite safe if you keep on the right side of the bed. I wished your friend had done, so he was so handsome". Tristram seizing the opportunity, proceeded in reaching his hand out to hold it and while the two's fingers entwined bent inwards for a kiss. Immediately after receiving that which he had desired from the first step into the establishment, he unfurled his hand from hers and wandered off to make arrangements for Heriot's funeral.
Tristram was even more curious after the horror as to why such an awful apparition would remain or even manifest in the tavern, and as he dug deeper into the history of the location, he came across his answer. A music-hall artist had resided in the room where he had spent his time and where Heriot and at least four others had lost their lives. The music hall artist had lived there with a performing orangutan which he treated rather poorly but left the creature free to roam around the establishment. The music hall artist one night proceeded in treating the stage simian rather cruelly, but this would be his downfall for that night; the ape crept into the musician's room and proceeded to strangle him on the left side of the bed. Once the crime had been discovered, a posse stormed the tavern, and they proceeded in tracking and encircling the primate. The orangutan in the corner was fired upon by the mob and, in doing so, set loose in spiritual form upon the establishment.
This case is extremely obscure, even in the annals of animal ghosts. Many are familiar with the black dog Black Shuck or Gef the talking mongoose, the ghost mongoose from the Isle of Mann, and some are familiar with the Washington DC Demon Cat, a spectral cat that transmogrifies into a colossal cat that roars in the lower halls of the senate. This case is not as dramatic as those as they show the almost cartoonish possibilities that such entities are capable of. This case is very much akin to a phenomenon known as residual hauntings or the stone tape hypothesis. This is that an environment can playback images from the past which are infused into the environment. These spirits are not intelligent, and they go through the same motions over and over and over again if actual souls a true purgatorial existence. While I stated this case is very similar to the stone tape hypothesis, there is one element that proves that it is something more than that, and that is the string of corpses this Para natural primate has left in its wake. The Stone Tape hypothesis is that ghosts are more like films that simply are images trapped within stones or other minerals in the environment that then, much like a film, are replayed into the area resulting in the phenomenon witnessed. While this can explain some apparitional experience, it cannot explain poltergeist activity or apparitions that can interact with their surroundings. The spectral serial killer orangutan ostensibly continues its murderous rampage way after its death which, if the stone hypothesis is to be believed, should not happen.
I cannot even truly speculate this encounter as to how something can interact with its environment but behave in the same manner even when no official subject is in the area. If this account is authentic, it is something that is entirely different from almost every account of hauntings and spectral activity that I've at least come across. This might imply that there is some liminal space where Stone Theory oriented spirits and intelligent haunting spirits might branch off. Or to that, there might be a level in between the two categories of hauntings that could explain the phenomenon.
Perhaps in speculation, this was the primates most significant moment. It was not the time spent performing a captive slave before a bunch of ignorant spectators only to be beaten and berated when the curtain was down but to finally liberate itself from the individual who controlled and beat him that proved to be most meaningful. The animal, somewhat adjusted to human interaction, continued to dwell in the hotel, not knowing that the other tenants and citizens would view his murder as a crime against humanity and so that his life was not worth the man who beat and berated him. Ultimately ending in him scared and huddled in a corner as the barrel of a gun was the last thing it would see. When thinking about it in that way, it makes perfect sense why the spirit would continue to dwell there and why it would continue to attack anyone who it would think is the man that proceeded in torturing it for all those years.
While this is a possibility and also extremely depressing as most ghost stories tend to be, there is, of course, the chance that that is all that this is a very tavern girl-oriented ghost story. In the book, Martin Tristram seemed not like himself; in fact, in an extremely peculiar manner, when he told the tale to Elliot, he told it in the third person, which was transcribed in his book in the same way. A peculiar way to tell an encounter that both the author and the teller claim to be authentic. Perhaps Tristram felt it was easier to portray what went through in his mind at the time and to hold off any judgement from Elliot as Tristram basically claims he set the stage for Heriot's death. Or Tristram perpetrated a sort of fanfiction about himself since it featured him getting the girl in the end and encountering spirits, something he was already interested in as a spiritualist.
Another avenue sceptically to look at this case is that Martin Tristram, in fact, does not exist. Paranormal investigator and spiritualist Elliot O’Donnell is a rather muddied figure in the world of Fortean researchers. Some view him as a legitimate researcher with an air of eccentrics to him, not unlike John Keel, whereas others feel he is a hoaxer, and his various tomes are, in fact, embellishments and lies used to propagate the belief in the supernatural. With this possibility, there is the chance that Martin Tristram might not have existed outside of the world of Elliot O'Donnell's mind palace. In fact, a lot of this story is very reminiscent of gothic horror, and even the spectral serial killer orangutan is almost like an unofficial sequel to Edgar Allan Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue. Even the street in the story where Martin Tristram’s tavern where this encounter took place on features Rue in the name. A sceptic clearly can look at these points and say that O'Donnell or if Tristram existed, he might have concocted the tale.
While in my research, I have never come across anything to validate the existence of Martin Tristram or even, for that matter, the existence of La Rue Croissante; it is interesting to note that a simple google search of La Rue Croissante, Bruges immediately pulls up La Cle Guesthouse. The street and nearby buildings seem almost to be ripped from Tristram's encounter and the Guesthouse being the only building updated building on the street. On the La Cle Guesthouse page, it states that the building was a recently renovated 16th-century building, so one has to wonder whether this might have been the building that once housed a supernatural simian. There is also the chance that the old tavern if it did exist, might not stand anymore or might be an entirely different building. Yet, it is interesting that the Guesthouse is the first thing to pop up when searching for this street.
Returning once more to a supernatural explanation to this manifestation this tale reminds me of the schlocky low budget Ulli Lommel film The Boogeyman and its sequels for in the films a girl sees a horrific murder solely through a mirror and ultimately unleashes the spirit of the murderer. While there are some obvious differences between the film and the encounter reported in O’Donnell’s book, but it is comparable to a reportedly real and commonplace phenomenon known as haunted objects. There is a belief that spirits, or energies can attach themselves to objects and in doing so either live or be trapped therein. These objects are a dime a dozen and can be anything from dolls to rocking chairs to a brick. In many ways, this is very similar to the stone tape theory except that some spirits connected with objects are intelligent whereas others do seem to simply be some kind of residual energy. Now if all this is an actually occurring phenomenon it's safe to say that perhaps some of the objects in the room have contained this energy and in doing so have become unsuspecting death traps for visitors to the hostel. There are two big candidates for this the first and most obvious being the bed. If the bed is in fact the same one in which the musician perished on it's very possible that this could explain why there is a continuous nightly manifestation in that spot and why any who sleep on that side might pass away. The second possible haunted object is one that is often believed to be a door to the spirit world and much like Ulli Lommel’s B-movie spirits are alleged to get captured in it more than any other object. This object is of course the giant mirror that Tristram reportedly watched the paranormal pantomime of the crime. There is a long-standing tradition that when someone dies or right before someone dies that mirrors need to be covered up due to the fact that they allegedly can trap spirits. If this mirror was there at the point of the musician’s death perhaps his spirit was captured therein and hence the reoccurring manifestation only being able to be seen in detail in the mirror itself. With this idea it raises all kinds of possibilities then about the ghost of the ape for it might not be an actual ghost but some sort of psychic playback from the actual ghost of the sleeping musician. This then might explain why anyone who sleeps on the side of the bed that he died on has the same fate they are experiencing the same events as the ghost in an almost pseudo possession like way and that the ghost ape once more is harshly judged. However, all of this is merely speculation.
My opinion of this case is very much neutral. I want this very much to be an authentic animal apparition with a penchant for murder, but outside of O'Donnell's book, I have not found anything that confirms or denies the existence of the tavern or the events that took therein. Perhaps this is because the events were kept hushed up to keep business flowing and that those who knew about the haunting passed away before some folklorist could account the tale, or perhaps the haunted hostel was shut down and demolished and, in doing so, stopping the serial simian from strangling sleepers anymore. While the jury is out on this case, it is weirdly one of my favorites because how many would be like Tristram go full Ahab and test something anomalous for the sole purpose of their own confirmation and acceptance of the unknown phenomena around us. It's a scary thought in itself and something that while there might be things crawling in the dark, the most dangerous and sadistic monsters are those that walk around in the daylight.
Works Cited:
Animal Ghosts or Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter by Elliot O’Donnell
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