The Book of Dreams and Ghosts Part 25

{196} I have once seen this happen, and it is a curious thing to see, when on the other side of the door there is n.o.body.

{198a} S.P.R., iii., 115, and from oral narrative of Mr. and Mrs.

Rokeby. In 1885, when the account was published, Mr. Rokeby had not yet seen the lady in grey. Nothing of interest is known about the previous tenants of the house.

{198b} Proceedings, S.P.R., vol. viii., p. 311.

{199} Letter of 31st January, 1884.

{200} Six separate signed accounts by other witnesses are given.

They add nothing more remarkable than what Miss Morton relates. No account was published till the haunting ceased, for fear of lowering the letting value of Bognor House.

{201} Mr. A. H. Millar's Book of Glamis, Scottish History Society.

{202} This account is abridged from Mr. Walter Leaf's translation of Aksakoff's Predvestniki Spiritizma, St. Petersburg, 1895. Mr.

Aksakoff publishes contemporary letters, certificates from witnesses, and Mr. Akutin's hostile report. It is based on the possibility of imitating the raps, the difficulty of locating them, and the fact that the flying objects were never seen to start. If Mrs. Shchapoff threw them, they might, perhaps, have occasionally been seen to start.

S.P.R., vol. xii., p. 298. Precisely similar events occurred in Russian military quarters in 1853. As a quant.i.ty of Government property was burned, official inquiries were held. The reports are published by Mr. Aksakoff. The repeated verdict was that no suspicion attached to any subject of the Czar.

{205} The same freedom was taken, as has been said, with a lady of the most irreproachable character, a friend of the author, in a haunted house, of the usual sort, in Hammersmith, about 1876.

{206} Proceedings, S.P.R., vol. xii., p. 49.

{212} John Wesley, however, places Hetty as next in seniority to Mary or Molly. We do not certainly know whether Hetty was a child, or a grown-up girl, but, as she always sat up till her father went to bed, the latter is the more probable opinion. As Hetty has been accused of causing the disturbances, her age is a matter of interest. Girls of twelve or thirteen are usually implicated in these affairs. Hetty was probably several years older.

{220} 30th January, 1717.

{221} Glanvil's Sadducismus Triumphatus, 1726. Preface to part ii., Mompesson's letters.

{222} Gentleman's Magazine, November, December, 1872.

{223} This happened, to a less degree, in the Wesley case, and is not uncommon in modern instances. The inference seems to be that the noises, like the sights occasionally seen, are hallucinatory, not real. Gentleman's Magazine, Dec., 1872, p. 666.

{229} S.P.R. Proceedings, vol. xii., p. 7.

{232} Demon Possession in China, p. 399. By the Rev. John L. Nevius, D.D. Forty years a missionary in China. Revel, New York, 1894.

{233a} Translated from report of Hsu Chung-ki, Nevius, p. 61.

{233b} Nevius, pp. 403-406.

{234} Op. cit., p. 415. There are other cases in Mr. Denny's Folklore of China.

{239a} The Great Amherst Mystery, by Walter Hubbell. Brentano, New York, 1882. I obtained some additional evidence at first hand published in Longman's Magazine.

{239b} The sources for this tale are two Gaelic accounts, one of which is printed in the Gael, vol. vi., p. 142, and the other in the Glenbard Collection of Gaelic Poetry, by the Rev. A. Maclean Sinclair, p. 297 ff. The former was communicated by Mr. D. C. Macpherson from local tradition; the latter was obtained from a tailor, a native of Lochaber, who emigrated to Canada when about thirty years of age.

When the story was taken down from his lips in 1885, he was over eighty years old, and died only a few months later.

{246} John Arnason, in his Icelandic Folklore and Fairy Tales (vol.

i., p. 309), gives the account of this as written by the Sheriff Hans Wium in a letter to Bishop Haldorr Brynjolfsson in the autumn of 1750.

{249} Huld, part 3, p. 25, Keykjavik, 1893.

{259} As at Amherst!

{272} Written out from tradition on 24th May, 1852. The name of the afflicted family is here represented by a pseudonym.

{273} From Eyrbyggja Saga, chaps, l.-lv. Froda is the name of a farm on the north side of Snaefell Ness, the great headland which divides the west coast of Iceland.

{292} Fact.

{299} Cornhill Magazine, 1896.

{300} This story should come under the head of "Common Deathbed Wraiths," but, it is such an uncommon one!