“I can remember hearing his third wife describe his dread of it, and my mother has told me how both the sister and the second wife used to say the same thing, though I was too young then for them to tell me about it.  Lautenschlager used also to complain to the country people who came to dine at his eating-house.  He considered himself an ill-used man, and felt that the supernatural powers were treating him very hardly, and subjecting him to a real persecution.  I have only the conversation of his wife and the gossip of the village to vouch for his sincerity, and the genuineness of the apparition is supported only by Lautenschlager’s word, but his evident anger and agitation were accepted as genuine, and no one dreamed of doubting his word.  He was not at all a dreamy or imaginative man, and did not drink.  His passion was merely momentary.  He was not only a draper and caterer but a usurer, and realized something of a fortune by lending money on good security to peasants and farmers who, it was said, did not consider how they bound themselves when they signed the papers he put before them.

“Lautenschlager continued to be haunted by the cat-ghost at irregular intervals for more than twenty years, and it made a marked change in his character.  He became serious, and during the latter part of his life would only talk about religion and read sacred literature.  He died about ten years ago.”

“FELINE.”

Letter 7

A Spectral Fox-terrier

Two or three years ago I visited a medium (Mrs. Davies of 44 Laburnum Grove, Portsmouth).  I had been seated only a few minutes when a little pug-dog of hers looked up in the direction of my knees and down towards my feet, growling and howling in a most strange manner.

“What on earth is he looking at?” I exclaimed.

“Oh,” said the medium, “there is a little fox-terrier lying across your feet; one half of his face is quite dark and the other half white, but he has such a peculiar black patch over the eye that one would almost think it was a black bruise.”  Now, sir, I had such a little dog in India, but this lady did not know of him, and would never have known had he not, as I afterwards found, died out there.  This is not only a case of the appearance of an animal after death, but also a case in which it was seen by another animal, as also by the medium.  I am also told that the pug-dog who had this vision of my dog was once seen to pounce upon what seemed to the medium to be several cats, near the copper in the scullery of the same house.  The medium asked a neighbour if the previous occupants had had any cats.  “Oh, yes,” replied the neighbour, “and badly the poor things were served, for they were cruelly thrown into the copper, which was full of boiling water.”

“SIMLA” (M.  Conder).

Letter 8

Killed by a Street Car, but walks in at the Front Door