In “Candled Peel” — the life story of Mr. Kinsey Peile, the actor — I came across yesterday a very fully corroborated Leeds ghost story.

“While on tour,” says the author, “with George Alexander we visited Leeds. I had taken lodgings with a friend in the company. The house we were to spend the week in stood in a dark, dismal garden, surrounded by high walls.

“I woke one morning at about four o’clock. Suddenly to my surprise, a lady with fair hair, dressed in a claret coloured plush tea-gown, trimmed with coffee-coloured lace, appeared at the foot of my bed, gazed at me for a few moments with lack-lustre eyes, and glided away round my bed towards a deep cupboard in the corner of my room in which I had placed my dressing case with its silver fittings.

“The idea of anything spooky never entered my brain; I thought she was after my silver-topped bottles. I sprang out of bed, went to the cupboard, and found no one there. I felt puzzled, but tumbled back into bed and was soon fast asleep.

“At breakfast I told my friend what I had seen; he laughed and said it must have been indigestion or imagination. I never worried my head about it until the Sunday morning of our departure, when I awoke and again saw the fair-lady in the tea-gown. This time I made up my mind to get to the bottom of the mystery. I cross-questioned my friend, as it was he who had suggested our taking these rooms. As a matter, of fact, he said, ‘your bedroom is supposed to be haunted by the ghost of Miss —– (a famous light opera singer of that time) whose husband is believed to have poisoned her. She died in your room.2

“‘Really,’ I answered, ‘I think you might have told me beforehand.’

“He went on calmly, ‘I wanted to have further proof of the story, for I have seen her too; in fact I was with her in the room an hour before she died. She was lying on the sofa wearing the tea gown you describe.’

“I wasn’t sorry to leave those lodgings.”