Secret Chambers and Hiding Places (Illustrated) (Electronic book text)

The secret chamber is unrivaled even by the haunted house for the mystery and romance surrounding it. Volumes have been written about the haunted house, while the secret chamber has found but few exponents. In the secret chamber, however, we have something tangible to deal with - a subject not only keenly interesting from an antiquarian point of view, but one deserving the attention of the general reader; for in exploring the gloomy hiding-holes, concealed apartments, passages, and staircases in our old halls and manor houses we probe, as it were, into the very ground work of romance. We find actuality to support the weird and mysterious stories of fiction.