most
ignorant of mankind, in ages or states of society when the people
might be made to believe any thing; or at times so distant, or places
so remote, that the narrators run no risk of detection or exposure.
The love of the marvellous, the force of early impressions, the craft
of many persons, and the folly of others, will however occasion every
village to have its haunted house for ages to come, in spite of the
press, and of those discoveries of philosophy which are every day
narrowing the sphere of miracles and prodigies.

In considering this subject with the attention that is due to it, it
has appeared to me that all the stories of ghosts and super, or,
un-natural appearances, may be referred to some of the following
causes:

1. To the augmentation produced by fear in any effect on the
senses--thus the ear of a terrified man will convert the smallest
noise into the report of thunder, or his eye will change the stump of
a tree into a monster twenty feet high. As the senses are furnished
for protection, their irritability, under the impression of fear, is
part of their economy, as the means of preserving our being; but it is
absurd to refer back the effects thus augmented, to external causes
which might be capable of producing the augmentation. To such an error
of the senses and of reasoning, is, however, to be referred half the
ghosts and supernaturals of which we hear in village ale-houses, in
nurseries and schools.

2. To diseased organs of sensation; as an inflamed eye producing the
effect of flashes of light in the dark, or fulness of blood producing
a ringing or singing in the ears. Sometimes diseases of the visual
organs are accompanied by hallucinations of mind; and persons ill in
fevers often see successions of figures and objects flit before their
eyes till the disease has been removed. The workings of conscience or
nervous affections will also produce diseases of the senses, and such
hallucinations of mind as to occasion a person to fancy he sees
another, or to be haunted by him. But there is nothing supernatural in
all this; it is sometimes a local disease, sometimes an effect of
fever, sometimes a nervous affection, and sometimes partial insanity.

3. To natural causes not understood by the parties. Thus, anciently
the northern lights were mistaken for armies fighting; meteors and
comets for flaming swords, portending destruction or pestilence; the
electrified points of swords to the favour of heaven