awing
the air into the lungs, and to modify the voice in such a manner as to
make it seem to proceed from any distance, or in any direction whatever.

There is no doubt but many of these deceptions have been magnified by
weak people into those dreadful stories of apparitions and hobgoblins,
which the credulous and enthusiastic are too apt implicitly to believe.

THE

SCHOOL-BOY APPARITION.

A few years since, the inhabitants of Dorking, in Surrey, entertained a
notion, that a ghost walked in a certain place in that neighbourhood;
and that she (for it was an ancient lady, lately dead) was seen hovering
about the mansion-house, which was left uninhabited for some time; that
she would be up and down in the house very often in the day-time, making
a rumbling and a clattering noise; and in the night-time she walked in
the neighbouring fields, with a candle in her hand, and though the wind
blew ever so hard, it would not blow the candle out; that sometimes she
would appear in the open fields, sometimes up in the trees; and, in
particular, there was a little heath near Dorking, called Cotman Dean,
where, it was said, she was frequently seen.

There was a boarding-school of boys in that town, some of whom were
particularly roguish, and contrived all this walking, from the beginning
to the end. First, they got a small rope; and, tying one end of it to an
old chair which stood in an upper room of the house (for they had found
the means to get in and out of the house at pleasure), they brought the
other end of the rope down on the other side of the house, in a private
place, where it could not easily be seen; and by this they pulled the
old chair up, and then let it fall down again: this made a great noise
in the house, and was heard distinctly by many of the neighbours. Then
other boys of the same gang took care to call out the old women in the
next houses, that now they might hear the old lady playing her pranks;
and, accordingly, they would all assemble in the court-yard, where they
could plainly hear the noises, but not one of them would venture to go
up stairs. If any one offered to go a little way up, then all was quiet;
but, as soon as ever they retired, the rumbling would begin again. This
was the day's deception.

In the night, one of these unlucky boys got a dark lanthorn, which was
a thing, at that time, the country-people did not understand; and with
this he walked about the orchard, and two or three clos