A haunted house (or any other locality) is merely a place where experience shows that hallucinations are more or less localised, and the only especially interesting question about it is, why the hallucinations should be localised at a particular place, and what causes them there.

Such Phantasms of the Living have been discussed in the monumental work of Mr. Myers and the late Mr. E. Gurney.  They need be no further remarked upon here, than to observe that the following pages contain at least one example, viz. that of the apparition of the Rev. P. H——. (See p. 119.)

It is very difficult to judge of the forces which may act in the conditions of what we are accustomed to call “another world,” but a plausible explanation might be found in the Divine Word, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”  The thoughts and affections appear to dwell for a time where they have been already fixed during life, but changes here, including the gradual reunion on the other side, of all those who are loved with those who love them, the advancing dissociation of the mind with things here, and, no doubt, the evolution of a different life under different conditions, seem gradually to efface the ties of earthly memory, connecting the feelings with particular spots on earth.

Such thoughts not infrequently include repentance, a desire for the remedy of acts of injustice, and an eagerness for the compassion and sympathetic prayers of those whom we call the living.

It is natural, therefore, to suppose that haunting, such as that met with at B——­, would be connected with persons who had died within some such period as a century at the outside.  Now the number of the members of the S——­ family and others, whose thoughts, memories, feelings, and affections may presumably have dwelt largely at B——­, and who have died within the last hundred years, is very considerable; but—­saving the tradition referred to by Dr. Menzies (see p. 22), only to be dismissed—­there seems to have been no idea of the place being haunted before the deaths of Sarah N——­ and of Major S——­, whereas since that time the peculiar phenomena have been constantly attested.

John S——­, his successor, was, as stated, the second son of Major S——­’s sister Mary, and assumed the name of S——­ upon succeeding to the property.  He was a Roman Catholic; he was married, and had several children, of whom the eldest son is the present proprietor.  One of the younger sons is a Jesuit, but not yet a priest.

In January 1895 Mr. S——­ went to London on family business, and was there killed by being run over by a cab in the street.  It was stated on the authority of three persons, not counting members of his own family, that on the morning on which he left B——­ for the last time, while he was talking to the agent in his business-room, there were raps so violent as to interfere with conversation.  The earliest written notice of this circumstance, so far as can be discovered, is the following entry in Lord Bute’s journal for January 17, 1896:—­