The phantom coach of Warren Hastings
By K.R.N. Swamy

WHEN Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of British India left our shores in 1785, he, or those who had packed and shipped his belongings, mislaid an old black bureau which contained some prized papers and miniature portraits. There is plenty of evidence that this loss actually occurred and that it caused Hastings much concern. According to many "ghost hunters", the ghost of the Governor-General comes at midnight on New Year’s Eve every year to the portico of Hastings House in Calcutta in a coach driven by four horses. After getting down from the coach, Warren Hastings rushes up the stair-case in search of the lost documents. It appears that in the impeachment of Warren Hastings by the British Parliament in the late 18th century, these documents would have been of great use to the former Governor-General to prove his innocence.

Let us consider the history of this 220-year-old mansion. It is perhaps the most evocative survival from the period of the British East India Company at Alipore in Calcutta. Built in the southern outskirts of Calcutta around 1777, it was described as a "perfect bijou". Originally it was a simple, two-storeyed white cube with living quarters in the ground floor. In the particulars of sale deed made in 1785 by Warren Hastings, it was described as "an upper roomed house...consisting of a hall and rooms on each floor, a handsome stone stair-case and a back stair-case all highly finished with Madras Chunam (white wash) and the very best materials". Hastings loved the house and spent many happy hours there. When he returned to England the gardens of his mansion at Daylesford were laid out after his garden at Alipore.

In a written statement made on July 25,1884, by a Calcutta resident named Paul Bird (and corroborated by his wife), the phantom coach visiting Hastings House is described thus: "One evening, just at dusk, I was returning home from office in my buggy, with lamps lighted. It was dusk, but in the shadow of the trees which overhang the avenue approaching Hastings House, it was pretty dark. I was driving pretty fast, when I heard what appeared to be a run-away coach coming from Hastings House towards me. I immediately checked my horse and peered ahead to see how to avoid the coming danger, but as the noise did not seem to get any nearer, I cautiously proceeded, and when about a hundred yards from house, distinctly saw the reflections of my lamps on the panels of a carriage in front of me, proceeding the same way, viz: to Hastings House. I kept my eyes on the panels, so as not to run into them. The coach turned to the left to go under the portico, followed by me, but when I arrived there, there was no coach...it had disappeared. I was very much puzzled at this, but should probably have thought nothing more about it, had not my wife, who was watching for my arrival from an upper window, asked me at once, ‘What coach was that just ahead of you?’"

Mrs Bird, in a written statement dated a day later than her husband’s, says that she has little to add to his narrative, except that she also saw the outlines of the coach as it came up the avenue in front of his buggy, with his lamps shining on it so as to define the outline. And as she was at a window upstairs, she saw the apparition from a totally different angle. She suddenly lost sight of the coach and could not trace it right up to the portico; she thought that it had turned off from the direct road. She heard no sound of the second vehicle, only that of her husband’s horse and buggy. But she noticed him check his horse, as if he saw something ahead.

As such there is no doubt that Hastings House is haunted by a phantom coach of the era of Warren Hastings. One of the occupants of the mansion in the 20th century was Sir James Taylor and his wife Lady Braid Taylor. Sir James Taylor was the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India from 1936 to 1943 and he and his family spent a considerable portion of their Indian sojourn in this mansion.

In 1947, Lady Braid Taylor had given her impressions in Life magazine of this historic mansion and the "ghostly" problems she had to face. She lists the apparitions, maniacal hyena-like laughter she experienced in the building. She had heard the coach and horses drive up towards the mansion many times, but never saw them. Even her sceptical husband Sir John Taylor owned to hearing the horses. But her most vivid impression of the ghost-ridden mansion, was when she returned to the edifice after a sojourn in the UK. "My arrival was just before Christmas, with my baby son aged two-and-a-half. My husband’s dressing room had been converted into a night nursery and at midnight on Boxing Day (January 2) when the nannie was out, I heard the baby crying. It was unusual, for he generally slept soundly. He was wide awake when I went to him and much inclined for conversation and I thought if I told him to go to sleep, it would take longer than if I listened to him until he was tired enough to sleep of his own free will. We talked, he in his baby way and I trying to understand. And then he said, ‘Mummy, send that man away!’ I thought he was half asleep and was murmuring in a dreamy way, but he repeated his request more forcibly. Not wanting to excite or annoy him, I said: ‘All right, but which man?’. He pointed to the wardrobe and said, ‘That one mummy! The one dressed like a soldier in red and white, with his tail folded back’. A few more questions were sufficient to satisfy me that he was accurately describing a person dressed in the Directoire uniform of Warren Hastings’ time". — M.F.