Ghost Stories by Franklin W. Dixon Page A

take the Hardys to their room. Haver was a big man with a mournful look. He talked about the ghost as he escorted them up the broad staircase to the second floor of the castle.
    â€œI saw the Wicked Lord one night last week when I passed the dungeon on my way to the storeroom,” he said. “I heard a weird noise, looked through the grill, and there he was! But he vanished when he saw me.”
    â€œWhat did you do then?” Joe inquired. “Did you go inside?”
    Haver shuddered. “That was the last thing I would have done. The ghost gave me such a turn I ran upstairs at once. I haven’t gone down there since then. I
do
hope you boys can get rid of the ghost!”
    â€œWe’ll try,” Frank promised.
    The butler showed the Hardys into their room and then went downstairs. Frank and Joe sat on their beds and discussed the strange things they had seen and heard since their arrival in Scotland.
    â€œThere’s a double whammy on this place,” Frank declared. “First, the witch’s curse that scared thetaxi driver. And then the ghost of Rollo MacElphin.”
    Joe tapped a knuckle against his chin. “I wonder if there’s a connection. We’d better ask about the witch before we meet the ghost.”
    When the dinner bell rang, Frank and Joe went downstairs. They met Lord MacElphin and Mrs. Crone, and the four had their meal together. It was a somber affair. Haver supervised with a doleful expression, and the maid who served appeared worried.
    The conversation centered around the ghost. “I saw him in the dungeon,” Mrs. Crone informed the Hardys. “I was carrying some vegetables in from the garden when an eerie sound made me look in. The phantom was there, uttering weird cries. Unfortunately, he disappeared when he saw me.”
    The Hardys questioned the housekeeper closely, but she could tell them no more.
    Mrs. Crone doesn’t seem as afraid as Haver does, Frank thought to himself. I wonder why.
    Joe changed the subject. “Lord MacElphin, the taxi driver who brought us here mentioned a witch’s curse on the castle. Have you any idea what he meant?”
    â€œMrs. Crone knows more about that than I do,” MacElphin replied.
    The housekeeper looked embarrassed. “It’s just that I belong to the Village Historical Society,” she murmured. “According to our records, a coven of witches used to meet on the land where the castle now stands. It is said that when the first Lord MacElphinbuilt his home, depriving the witches of their meeting place, the leader of the coven placed a curse on it. But that’s just an old superstition.”
    Dinner broke up shortly afterward. Lord Mac-Elphin retired to his study, Mrs. Crone went upstairs, and Haver led the Hardys down a spiral stone staircase to a passageway below. The butler took a torch from the wall. It was made of long, twisted fibers and was coated with pitch at one end. He lit the pitch with a pocket lighter and it burst into flames.
    â€œThis is a flambeau of the type used back in pirate days,” he stated. “It’s been a tradition, ever since the first Lord MacElphin, to light the dungeon area in the old-fashioned way.”
    Haver held the flambeau high in one hand, and it flared wildly as they moved along the dark flagstones of a narrow stone passageway. The Hardys felt eerie chills at the weird, twisting shadows thrown on the walls by the leaping flames.
    The butler stopped at a massive wooden door pierced about three-quarters of the way by an iron grill. “This is the dungeon,” he said. “If we followed the passage to its end, we would reach a door leading out of the castle into the vegetable garden.”
    He produced a large key from his ring, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. They went in and looked around.
    The dungeon was a grim prison made of stone blocks. Near the ceiling was a heavily barred window. Handcuffs and leg irons were