Crinolines are Dangerous -- edited April 2022
Copyright Oggbashan January 2021
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.
This is a short story of a ghostly encounter.
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I was pleased to have bought The Jurat's House. It was a medieval building in an old town and large enough for me and a possible family. I could only afford it because it was cheaper than it ought to be because it was supposed to be haunted.
The old lady who had last lived there said she wasn't worried by the ghost of a crinolined lady who walked around the house at night. She felt that the ghost was a benign presence. But when the house had been owned by a man, the ghost was supposed to have been a problem -- unspecified, but a problem that caused the house to be sold and resold many times before the old lady bought it in the 1970s.
The story was that the ghost was that of a woman who had died on what would have been her birthday and Valentine's Day. Edith had been putting some of her birthday cards on the mantelpiece when she was startled by the family cat knocking an ornament over. Edith swung around suddenly, but she was wearing the largest version of the latest crinoline fashion with a large projection at the back. That crinoline had swept the small fireguard aside and the edge of the crinoline had touched the fire.
The crinoline cover and her dress were made of lightweight cotton and Edith was wearing cotton long-legged pantaloons underneath. The dress, the crinoline and the pantaloons caught fire and within seconds all her clothes were alight. Her family rushed in, alerted by her screams, but it was too late. Edith had third degree burns over almost all of her body and died within less than a minute. She was one of three thousand women in the UK who had died because their crinolines caught fire.
But why was she haunting the house as a ghost?
Her birthday, Valentine's Day, had been the day when her fiancé, Amos, was due to return on a short leave from the Crimean War. They had become engaged just before he set sail for the Crimea as an officer in the Heavy Dragoons.
Three years' later, on her birthday, they were to be reunited and to announce the date of their wedding to the family. Amos was due to arrive that noon. He did, to find that his fiancée had been dead for two hours. Within days, he sailed back to the Crimea and was killed while leading a cavalry charge.
Edith's ghost is still waiting for Amos. She prowls the house looking for him.
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I couldn't see the problem with a crinolined lady prowling my house at night. If she hadn't bothered the old lady, why should she upset me? I was already upset because my house purchase had been the last straw that ended my relationship with my girlfriend. Magda had wanted both of us to go on an expensive cruise to Antarctica. I couldn't afford that and buy a house and I saw getting a house as more important. Magda didn't agree, we argued, and now I am an ex-boyfriend but with a very nice period house.
I was sorry that Magda was history but I didn't see an Antarctic cruise as the earth-shattering experience Magda thought it would be. I had looked at the details and it seemed to me to have too many days at sea with nothing to see, and then a few rocks and penguins, and more days at sea -- for thousands of pounds? I would rather have had a couple of Mediterranean cruises for the half the price, not that I could have afforded them and the Jurat's House.
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I was feeling tired but contented. During the day I and some friends had moved all my belongings out of my rented flat in the Jurat's House. It was Valentine's Day, the day that the ghost is supposed to be most active. I was sitting on the Victorian Chaise Longue with a sixth glass of beer, looking at the open fire burning behind a spark guard and a large fireguard fixed to the wall with clips that couldn't be undone by small fingers. The fireguard was mainly for visits by my young nephews who would probably come at the weekend with my sister and her husband. Joe had offered to help me modernise the bathroom. I had the fittings but for the next few days I'd have to use the thirties bath. It worked but was chipped and stained.
I heard the rustle of clothing behind me. I stood up and turned around. There was Edith the ghost in her large crinolined dress. She would have been a tall woman by Victorian standards at about five feet eight inches. I bowed to her. She held out her skirts and curtsied, far more elegantly that I had ever seen a modern woman do.
"Hello Edith," I said, "I'm pleased to meet you."
"Are you? Most men are worried when I appear."
"Why, Edith?"
"Because I am waiting for Amos, and you're not Amos."
"No, Edith. I'm not. I'm Geoffrey, the new owner of the Jurat's House."
"And my landlord, since I am a tenant in your house, Geoffrey."
"If you're not a disruptive tenant, why should I be concerned?"
"Because I want more than most men are willing to give, Geoffrey."
"You do, Edith? And what do you want?"
"You know that the day I died was my birthday and St Valentine's Day?"
"Yes."
"What you don't know and only I, Amos and my father knew, was that it was going to be my wedding day. Amos had to return to the Crimea in a few days and he had a special licence. At two o'clock we were to be married, but I died at ten in the morning. That night was going to be the first night of our very short honeymoon."
Edith paused.
"And?" I prompted.
Edith pirouetted to show the size of her dress.
"I am wearing my newest and largest crinoline. In a couple of hours I was going to change out of the dress into my wedding dress. I would marry Amos and a few hours after that I was going to bury him under my crinoline while he took my virginity -- or would I be taking his? He was going to be my victim, struggling under yards of white satin as I rode him.
Now I am a ghost, I can't marry. But I still want to lose my virginity by impaling myself on a man trapped under my skirts. Yet each time I come into a man's bedroom, in my wedding dress -- he runs away. It has been over one hundred and fifty years and yet I am still a virgin. A ghostly virgin perhaps? But a virgin and I want what Amos never had to time to give me -- a male erection to penetrate me."
"Is that possible, Edith? Can a ghost actually take a man inside her?"
"I don't know. No man has let me try. But..."
Edith walked towards me. I could feel the front of her skirt pressing against my trousers. How? I don't know but the skirt felt solid with a yielding crinoline underneath. She kept coming and the skirt dented until its folds were beyond me. Edith held out a hand and took mine. Her hand felt cool, not cold, and almost human. I put my beer glass down and wrapped my arms around her waist. It was a slim, trim waist.
Edith turned her face up to mine and we kissed. I shut my eyes. I could have been kissing any human woman. One of Edith's arms came around my head and pulled our lips closer. This kiss was sensuous and more passionate than any I had had from Magda. I was drowning in it.
When we stopped kissing we were both short of breath.
"Wow!" I said eventually.
"Wow, indeed," Edith said. "I didn't know if I could kiss a human. No one had ever let me get that close before. Now I have? I want more, Geoffrey please? Can you go to your bedroom and get ready for bed, please?"
"Yes, Edith. But I'll have to shave and shower. I've been moving furniture all day."
