In 1931, in an autobiographical work called MY LIFE, the American mystery author Mary Roberts Rinehart wrote about a series of peculiar, and possibly paranormal, events that occurred in her life over a period of several years beginning in 1918. The details were covered in Michael Norman’s 2006 book HAUNTED HERITAGE and in his earlier book (with Beth Scott) HAUNTED HOMELAND (2002).
In the summer of 1918, Rinehart, two of her three sons (the eldest was fighting with the AEF in Europe), her disabled mother, and several servants rented a mansion on Long Island. Her husband, Dr. Stanley Marshall Rinehart, remained behind in Washington, DC—their home base—hoping to get an overseas assignment with the army medical corps. His absence must have been a relief to his wife; he was openly contemptuous of her success as a writer of what he termed “trashy” popular fiction. (In retaliation, she created several characters in her mystery novels, thinly veiled versions of her husband, whom we would term “male chauvinist pigs”.) She was hard at work that summer on a psychological thriller about an unhappily married couple called DANGEROUS DAYS.
The odd events began almost as soon as the Rinehart household moved into the mansion, with the cook being the first to report odd sounds: footsteps in an unused room on the floor above her bedroom and, in her room, a rocking chair that rocked by itself, although there were no drafts in the room to cause its motion. Next was the laundress, who let out a shriek of horror one night when, as she was going up to bed, she saw a man who was affirmatively not a member of the household preceding her up the stairs. This was followed by reports of footsteps in other parts of the house, and—the event that first made Mrs. Rinehart take notice—the sound of a lamp on her writing desk being moved when no on was in the room. Eventually, apparitions appeared—one in particular of a man, standing in the pantry doorway during a dinner party.
Her sons, Ted and Alan, were long convinced that the sights and sounds were made by a burglar, especially after a dog they were caring for for the home’s absent owners was found shot to death. They armed everyone in the house and sat up one entire night, a night on which the whole household was startled by a huge, solid white orb that, oddly, gave off no radiance, rising outside one of the windows, crossing the yard, and vanishing in a a nearby swampy area.
Only then did Mrs. Rinehart learn, from the resident gardener and from a friend of the owners, that the house had been haunted for years, although there seemed to be no story to account for the odd events. Its haunting had, the friend told her, even been featured in a New York newspaper some years before.
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Back in DC, the long and illustrious career of a Republican senator from Pennsylvania named Boise Penrose was coming to an end. Nowadays he’s best remembered as the originator of a twist on Dr. Samuel Johnson’s famous dictum: Penrose changed “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel” to “public office is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” He was a great power in the GOP of the day, dominating the Senate Finance Committee for years. A bachelor, he was wheelchair-bound in his later years, and died at the age of 61 in 1921.
Shortly after Penrose’s death, the Rineharts gave up their now far-too-large DC home and moved into Senator Penrose’s now-vacant apartment. The Rinehart household, with the two older sons—Stanley and Ted—already on their own, now consisted of Dr. and Mrs. Rinehart, youngest son Alan (a cub reporter for a DC paper), Mrs. Roberts (Mary Rinehart’s disabled mother, partially paralyzed and unable to speak following a stroke), and a maid/nurse named Marie, who cared for both Mrs. Rinehart and Mrs. Roberts.
During their time in the Penrose apartment, they were plagued by a series of poltergeist-type events, beginning on their first night there, when Dr. and Mrs. Rinehart were startled by something very like a large black curtain (there was no such curtain, by the way) being jerked in a rush across their bedroom. The next morning, Marie brought coffee to Mrs. Rinehart’s room at the unholy hour of seven AM, insisting that the still-sleeping Mary had rung an electric bell, twice, always before a signal that she was ready for her morning coffee. That phenomenon became so common that Marie habitually checked to make sure Mrs. Rinehart had actually rung the bell before bringing coffee.
More events followed: knocks at bedroom doors, but no one was there when the doors were opened; sounds of a typewriter at two AM, assumed to be Alan Rinehart working on a story, when he wasn’t even in the apartment; heavy furniture moving before the startled eyes of visiting son Stanley; bats and birds that somehow mysteriously appeared in the apartment, despite locked doors and windows; and, strangest of all, a plant that moved by itself when the apartment was empty.
Sadly and horribly, the phenomena in the Penrose apartment ended after Mrs. Roberts was accidentally scalded in the bathtub, dying shortly afterward of her injuries. Mary Rinehart, who was away at the time and had left her mother in the care of the trusted Marie, blamed herself for her mother’s death until the end of her days.
It was only after Mrs. Roberts’s death that Mary Rinehart learned that the staff of the apartment building and those who worked in the Senate office building where Senator Penrose had had his office believed that both his apartment and office were haunted by the late senator. They pointed in particular to his habit, at work and at home, of summoning assistance by two short, sharp rings of electric bells he had had installed in both places.
Mrs. Rinehart never quite believed these phenomena were supernatural in origin, but she never quite dismissed the idea either.
I find it rather a conundrum: were the phenomena caused by the lingering spirit of the late Senator Penrose—or, just perhaps, caused by the disabled and frustrated Mrs. Roberts? Poltergeist phenomena are not, after all, always produced by angry or disturbed teens.
It’s worth noting that some of the events that occurred in Penrose’s apartment, though, turn up in a novel Rinehart wrote more than two decades later, especially the bats and birds that enter where they should be unable to. The novel was called, ironically, THE HAUNTED LADY.
I remember this, and I liked it a lot. Thanks for the reprise. ❤
Most welcome. I’m very, very slowly moving stuff from the archives. It really is kind of turning into a “Fairweather’s Greatest Hits” collection.;) ❤ Fairweather
Well. Your shot selection is pretty good (she said, specifically choosing a basketball metaphor in anticipation of your game tonight). These are very, very good.
Who knew? 😉 ❤
Actually, I thought when I first looked at this pic–which I may have lifted from your Photobucket, but don’t quote me on that–it would fit better with an M.R. James story, although not exactly which one–but it works here too.:) Fairweather
Yes, that’s from my Photobucket. I’ve used it, too. ❤
I THOUGHT so! Thank you for having found it!<3
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Thank you!:) Fairweather