for the whole of Mrs. Piper’s operations; she might have accomplices who would never be seen speaking to her, and who would dictate actions, say, to one of the Pelham or Howard family.  These dictated actions, or inchoate plans, would then be reported by Mrs. Piper writing as George Pelham.  What Mrs. Piper saw or felt or heard would be—­at least at stated times—­seen or felt or heard by her fellow conspirators.  As in conjuring everything found was placed beforehand in the desired position.  Thus facts recounted had been induced.  The blackguard who spoke to her as Phinuit was less educated than the one who dictated George Pelham’s communications.

Mrs. Piper’s education was rather suited to receive the vulgar Phinuit’s, than the more refined pseudo Pelham’s communications.  But the progress from the one stage so revolting to Miss Freer, to the other so delightful, a sign of increased refinement to Mr. Myers, was hardly more a change than the turning on a hot tap after a cold water tap into a basin.  The receptacle was the same.  But as a strong hypnotist herself, Mrs. Piper could bring off the Sutton matter; she could easily give Mrs. Sutton visual hallucinations.  The startling position taken up by Mr. Myers in his article in the National Review, is easily explicable.  He and Dr. Hodgson were magnetised by Mrs. Piper, and were like wax in her hands.  Eusapia Palladius has the same power.

It is a sad declension in an eminent classic, that he, whose reference to the primitive heathen Ulysses torturing the shade of his own mother is rather revolting than elevating, should be full of wonder and delight at it.

After all Ulysses was the worthy ancestor of many a pirate hanged at Malta, more ferocious enemies of man than the Red Indian.  Some somnambulists should be perhaps protected from exploitation.  Mrs. Piper’s trance is presumably feigned, as trances can easily be.

To return to Haunted Houses.  In a haunted house case, a story suggested by some chronological connection, or the nature of the apparition, is attached to the phenomena.  No doubt, in these days where the individuals who perceive the phenomena have a wider experience, such a variety of persons appear that the ghostly appearance loses its individuality if not its authenticity.  Mr. Podmore discusses such cases.[20] In Mr. Podmore’s book when Poltergeists, Cock-lore ghost affairs, are discussed, it appears that genuine hallucinations may be associated with fraudulent physical phenomena.

[Footnote 20:  “Studies,” pp. 305-308; Chap. x.  Haunted Houses.]

These are, it may be positively stated, hypnotic hallucinations.  The two together in some cases, as in the one already mentioned[21] of “Alice,” amount to a very good ghost story, the blood on the floor alone excepted.  Alice’s home was a terrace house in a town.  The House at B——­ was very large and somewhat lonely.

[Footnote 21:  “Podmore,” p. 153.]