esistance, and the head continued to advance. Both Mr.
and Mrs. Murphy then made a frantic attempt to find the door, the head
still pursuing them, and, tripping over something in their wild haste,
fell together on the floor. There was now no hope, the head had caught
them up; it hovered immediately above them, and, descending lower,
lower, and lower, finally passed right through them, through the
floor, and out of sight. It was long ere either of them could
sufficiently recover to stir from the floor, and when they did move,
it was only to totter to their bed, and to lie with the bedclothes
well over their heads, quivering and quaking till the morning.

The hot morning sun dissipating their fears, they got up, and,
hurrying downstairs, demanded an interview with their landlord. It was
in vain the latter argued it was all a nightmare they showed the
absurdity of such a theory by vehemently attesting they had both
simultaneously experienced the phenomena. They were about to take
their departure, when the landlord, retracting all he had said,
offered them another room and any terms they liked, "if only they
would stay and hold their tongues."

"I know every word of what you say is true," he said, in such
submissive tones that the tender hearts of Mr. and Mrs. Murphy
instantly relented, and they promised to remain. "But what am I to do?
I cannot shut up a house which I have taken on a twenty years' lease,
because one room in it is haunted--and, after all, there is only one
visitor in twenty who is disturbed by the apparition. What is the
history of the head? Why, it is said to be that of a pedlar who was
murdered here over a hundred years ago. The body was hidden behind the
wainscoting, and his head under the cupboard floor. The miscreants
were never caught; they are supposed to have gone down in a ship that
sailed from this port just about that time and was never heard of
again."

This is the gist of the story the clergyman told me, and, believing
it as I undoubtedly do to be true, there is every reason to suppose
that the inn, to which I have, of course, given a fictitious name, if
still in existence, is still haunted.

CASE XIV

THE HAUNTINGS OF "---- HOUSE," IN THE
NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE GREAT WESTERN ROAD,
ABERDEEN

The following experience of a haunting is that of Mr. Scarfe, who told
it me some few summers ago, expressing at the same time great
eagerness to acco