Haunted Houses. Antiquity of Haunted Houses. Savage Cases. AncientEgyptian Cases. Persistence in Modern Times. Impostures. ImaginaryNoises. Nature of Noises. The Creaking Stair. Ghostly Effectsproduced by the Living but Absent. The Grocer's Cough. Difficulty ofBelief. My Gillie's Father's Story. "Silverton Abbey." The Dreamthat Opened the Door. Abbotsford Noises. Legitimate Haunting by theDead. The Girl in Pink. The Dog in the Haunted Room. The Lady inBlack. Dogs Alarmed. The Dead Seldom Recognised. Glamis. A BorderCastle. Another Class of Hauntings. A Russian Case. The DancingDevil. The Little Hands.Haunted houses have been familiar to man ever since he has owned aroof to cover his head. The Australian blacks possessed only sheltersor "leans-to," so in Australia the spirits do their rapping on thetree trunks; a native illustrated this by whacking a table with abook. The perched-up houses of the Dyaks are haunted by noisy routingagencies. We find them in monasteries, palaces, and crofters'cottages all through the Middle Ages. On an ancient Egyptian papyruswe find the husband of the Lady Onkhari protesting against her habitof haunting his house, and exclaiming: "What wrong have I done,"exactly in the spirit of the "Hymn of Donald Ban," who was "sairhadden down by a bodach" (noisy bogle) after Culloden. {188a}The husband of Onkhari does not say _how_ she disturbed him, but themanners of Egyptian haunters, just what they remain at present, may begathered from a magical papyrus, written in Greek. Spirits "wail andgroan, or laugh dreadfully"; they cause bad dreams, terror andmadness; finally, they "practice stealthy theft," and rap and knock.The "theft" (by making objects disappear mysteriously) is oftenillustrated in the following tales, as are the groaning and knocking.{188b} St. Augustine speaks of hauntings as familiar occurrences, andwe have a chain of similar cases from ancient Egypt to 1896. Severalhouses in that year were so disturbed that the inhabitants wereobliged to leave them. The newspapers were full of correspondence onthe subject.The usual annoyances are apparitions (rare), flying about of objects(not very common), noises of every kind (extremely frequent), groans,screams, footsteps and fire-raising. Imposture has either been provedor made very probable in ten out of eleven cases of volatile objectsbetween 1883 and 1895. {188c} Moreover, it is certain that the noisesof haunted houses are not equally audible by all persons present, evenwhen the sounds are at their loudest. Thus Lord St. Vincent, thegreat admiral, heard nothing during his stay at the house of hissister, Mrs. Ricketts, while that lady endured terrible things. Afterhis departure she was obliged to recall him. He arrived, and sleptpeacefully. Next day his sister told him about the disturbances,after which he heard them as much as his neighbours, and was asunsuccessful in discovering their cause. {189}Of course this looks as if these noises were unreal, children of theimagination. Noises being the staple of haunted houses, a few wordsmay be devoted to them. They are usually the frou-frou or rustlingsweep of a gown, footsteps, raps, thumps, groans, a sound as if allthe heavy furniture was being knocked about, crashing of crockery andjingling of money. Of course, as to footsteps, people _may_ bewalking about, and most of the other noises are either easilyimitated, or easily produced by rats, water pipes, cracks in furniture(which the Aztecs thought ominous of death), and other natural causes.The explanation is rather more difficult when the steps pace agallery, passing and repassing among curious inquirers, or in thisinstance.
