made upon the astral light that a
person with even the faintest glimmer of psychic faculty cannot but be
deeply impressed by it, and it would need but a slight temporary
increase of sensibility to enable him to visualize the entire
scene--to see the event in all its detail apparently taking place
before his eyes--and in such a case he would of course report that
the place was haunted, and that he had seen a ghost. Indeed, people
who are as yet unable to see psychically under any circumstances are
frequently very unpleasantly impressed when visiting such places as we
have mentioned; there are many, for example, who feel uncomfortable
when passing the site of Tyburn Tree, or cannot stay in the Chamber of
Horrors at Madame Tussaud's, though they may not be in the least aware
that their discomfort is due to the dreadful impressions in the astral
light which surround places and objects redolent of horror and crime,
and to the presence of the loathsome astral entities which always
swarm about such centres.

[Sidenote: Family Ghosts.]

The family ghost, whom we generally find in the stock stories of the
supernatural as an appanage of the feudal castle, may be either a
thought-form or an unusually vivid impression in the astral light, or
again he may really be an earth-bound ancestor still haunting the
scenes in which his thoughts and hopes centred during life.

[Sidenote: Bell-ringing, stone-throwing, etc.]

Another class of hauntings which take the form of bell-ringing,
stone-throwing, or the breaking of crockery, has already been referred
to, and is almost invariably the work of elemental forces, either set
blindly in motion by the clumsy efforts of an ignorant person trying
to attract the attention of his surviving friends, or intentionally
employed by some childishly mischievous nature-spirit.

[Sidenote: Fairies.]

The nature-spirits are also responsible for whatever of truth there
may be in all the strange fairy stories which are so common in certain
parts of the country. Sometimes a temporary accession of clairvoyance,
which is by no means uncommon among the inhabitants of lonely
mountainous regions, enables some belated wayfarer to watch their
joyous gambols; sometimes strange tricks are played upon some
terrified victim, and a glamour is cast over him, making him, for
example, see houses and people where he knows none really exist. And
this is frequently no mere momentary delusion, for a man will
sometimes go