Mr M’s Experience – Cambridge

In her 1848 publication ‘The night side of nature, or, Ghosts and ghost seers’, Catherine Crowe describes an apparition witnessed at the apartment of a Cambridge University student. Unfortunately in the account repeated below there is no indication as to the exact location where this experience took place or when it happened.

Three young men, at Cambridge, had been out hunting, and afterwards dined together in the apartments of one of them. After dinner, two of the party, fatigued with their morning’s exercise, fell asleep, whilst, the third, a Mr. M., remained awake. Presently the door opened, and a gentleman entered and placed himself behind the sleeping owner of the rooms, and, after standing there a minute, proceeded into the gyp-room a small inner chamber, from which there was no egress.

Mr. M. waited a little while, expecting the stranger would come out again; but as he did not, he awoke his host, saying, “There’s somebody gone into your room ; I don’t know who it can be.”

The young man rose and looked into the gyp-room, but there being nobody there he naturally accused Mr. M. of dreaming; but the other assured him he had not been asleep. He then described the stranger an elderly man, dressed like a country squire, with gaiters on, and so forth. “Why that’s my father,” said the host, and he immediately made enquiry, thinking it possible the old gentleman had slipped out unobserved by Mr. M. He was not, however, to be heard of; and the post shortly brought a letter announcing that he had died at the time he had been seen in his son’s chamber at Cambridge.