While I paced softly on, the last sound I expected to hear in so still a region, a laugh, struck my ear. It was a curious laugh; distinct, formal, mirthless. I stopped: the sound ceased, only for an instant; it began again, louder: for at first, though distinct, it was very low. It passed off in a clamorous peal that seemed to wake an echo in every lonely chamber; though it originated but in one, and I could have pointed out the door whence the accents issued…the laugh was as tragic, as preternatural a laugh as any I ever heard; and, but that it was a high room, and that no circumstance of ghostliness accompanied the curious cachinnation, but that neither scene nor season favoured fear, I should have been superstitiously afraid.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 11. As Jane tries to settle into her new life at Thornfield, Mrs. Fairfax shows her around the house. Jane hears a strange and unnatural laugh echoing through the property. Mrs. Fairfax tells her it is from Grace Poole, an eccentric servant. The laugh spooks Jane who at first thinks that it is from a ghost and there is no Grace Poole. Then at Mrs. Fairfax’s call Grace appears out of a nearby room. The incident is foreshadowing of the Gothic horrors to come and that everything is not as it appears at Thornfield. The laugher is actually that of Bertha Mason, Mr. Rochester’s insane wife, who is kept hidden and locked away in the attic.