lustrated the
copious fallacies which haunt the human intellect. Thus it was
maintained by some persons, and denied by others, that sounds of
unknown origin were occasionally heard in a certain house. These, it
was suggested, might (if really heard) be caused by slight seismic
disturbances. Now many people argue, "Blunderstone House is not
haunted, for I passed a night there, and nothing unusual occurred".
Apply this to a house where noises are actually caused by young
earthquakes. Would anybody say: "There are no seismic disturbances
near Blunderstone House, for I passed a night there, and none
occurred"? Why should a noisy ghost (if there is such a thing) or a
hallucinatory sound (if there is such a thing), be expected to be more
punctual and pertinacious than a seismic disturbance? Again, the
gentleman who opened the correspondence with a long statement on the
negative side, cried out, like others, for scientific publicity, for
names of people and places. But neither he nor his allies gave their
own names. He did not precisely establish his claim to confidence by
publishing his version of private conversations. Yet he expected
science and the public to believe his anonymous account of a
conversation, with an unnamed person, at which he did not and could
not pretend to have been present. He had a theory of sounds heard by
himself which could have been proved, or disproved, in five minutes,
by a simple experiment. But that experiment he does not say that he
made.

This kind of evidence is thought good enough on the negative side. It
certainly would not be accepted by any sane person for the affirmative
side. If what is called psychical research has no other results, at
least it enables us to perceive the fallacies which can impose on the
credulity of common-sense.

In preparing this collection of tales, I owe much to Mr. W. A.
Craigie, who translated the stories from the Gaelic and the Icelandic;
to Miss Elspeth Campbell, who gives a version of the curious Argyll
tradition of Ticonderoga (rhymed by Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, who
put a Cameron where a Campbell should be); to Miss Violet Simpson, who
found the Windham MS. about the Duke of Buckingham's story, and made
other researches; and to Miss Goodrich Freer, who pointed out the
family version of "The Tyrone Ghost".

CHAPTER I

Arbuthnot on Political Lying. Begin with "Great Swingeing
Falsehoods". The Opposite Method to be used in telli