This is a fearful omen, and always portends some direful crisis or calamity.

It occurs, only once or twice in a century.
I don't know whether Madame had heard anything of these phenomena; but she did report which very much frightened me and Mary Quince.

She asked us who walked in the gallery on which her bed-room opened, making a rustling with her dress, and going down the stairs, and breathing long breaths here and there.

Twice, she said, she had stood at her door in the dark, listening to these sounds, and once she called to know who it was.

There was no answer, but the person plainly turned back, and hurried towards her with an unnatural speed, which made her jump within her door and shut it.
When first such tales are told, they excite the nerves of the young and the ignorant intensely.