in houses to stop hauntings. Modern
example. The Restoration and Scepticism. Exceptional position of
Dr. Johnson. Frequency of Haunted Houses in modern Folklore.
Researches of the S. P. R. Failure of the Society to see Ghosts.
Uncertain behaviour of Ghosts. The Society need a 'seer' or
'sensitive' comrade. The 'type' or normal kind of Haunted Houses.
Some natural explanations. Historical continuity of type. Case of
Sir Walter Scott. A haunted curacy. Modern instances. Miss
Morton's case: a dumb ghost. Ghost, as is believed, of a man of
letters. Mr. Harry's ghost raises his mosquito curtains. Columns
of light. Mr. Podmore's theory. Hallucinations begotten by natural
causes are 'telepathically' transferred, with variations, to
strangers at a distance. Example of this process. Incredulity of
Mr. Myers. The spontaneous phenomena reproduced at 'seances'. A
ghost who followed a young lady. Singular experience of the writer
in Haunted Houses. Experience negative. Theory of 'dreams of the
dead'. Difficulties of this theory; physical force exerted in
dreams. Theory of Mr. James Sully. His unscientific method and
carelessness as to evidence. Reflections.

Reginald Scot, the humane author who tried, in his Discovery of
Witchcraft, 1584 (xv. 39), to laugh witch trials away, has a
triumphant passage on the decline of superstition. 'Where are the
soules that swarmed in time past? where are the spirits? who heareth
their noises? who seeth their visions?' He decides that the spirits
who haunt places and houses, may have gone to Italy, because masses
are dear in England. Scot, as an ardent Protestant, conceived that
haunted houses were 'a lewd invention,' encouraged, if not
originated, by the priests, in support of the doctrine of purgatory.
As a matter of fact the belief in 'haunting,' dates from times of
savagery, when we may say that every bush has its bogle. The Church
had nothing to do with the rise of the belief, though, early in the
Reformation, some 'psychical phenomena' were claimed as experimental
proofs of the existence of purgatory. Reginald Scot decidedly made
his Protestant boast too soon. After 300 years of 'the Trewth,' as
Knox called it, the haunted houses are as much part of the popular
creed as ever. Houses stand empty, and are said to be 'haunted'.
Here not the fact of haunting, but only the existence of the
superstition is attested. Thus a house in Berkeley Square was long
uno