The Exorcism // A House Possessed — Charity Blackstock

Original title: The Exorcism.

Collie Lodge is an ancient house situated on the banks of Loch Ness in the north of Scotland. It is inhabited by several paying guests--and a ghost, a lively spirit named Margaret, whose short and tragic life ended nearly 150 years ago.

Miss Murphy, a bleak Irish spinster, kept a small hotel (or a large boarding house, depending on your point of view), a nice old Georgian pile in the Scottish highlands, that she had inherited from a far distant relative.

Although Miss M. had little appreciation for them, the house was filled with lovely relics, beautiful old antiques, and the ghost of young Margaret who had run away with her solider lover a hundred and fifty years before, only to lose him tragically in the Napoleonic Wars.

The paying guest find the ghost enchanting, frightening, or unbelievable -- according to their ages and sophistication. Miss Murphy, however, militantly proper, feels that no respectable boarding house ought to have a ghost, and accordingly arranges for the local parish priest to exorcise the gentle shade.

Unwittingly, Miss Murphy thus generates catastrophe. For it turns out that the ghost has been protecting the fate of a necklace with a spectacular past, a high monetary present value and a now inadequate guard.

A situation which at least one of her black-souled, well-bred paying guest is willing to exploit -- to its deadly limit.