oon, however, scared out of it.
This was in 1842; it was soon after pulled down. The ground was used
for the erection of cottages; but the hauntings being transferred to
them, they were speedily vacated, and no one ever daring to inhabit
them, they were eventually demolished, the site on which they stood
being converted into allotments.

There were many theories as to the history of "The Swallows"; one being
that a highwayman, known as Steeplechase Jock, the son of a Scottish
chieftain, had once plied his trade there and murdered many people,
whose bodies were supposed to be buried somewhere on or near the
premises. He was said to have had a terrible though decidedly unorthodox
ending--falling into a vat of boiling tar, a raving madman. But what
were the phantasms of the ape and cat? Were they the earth-bound spirits
of the highwayman and his horse, or simply the spirits of two animals?
Though either theory is possible, I am inclined to favour the former.

_Psychic Bears_

Edmund Lenthal Swifte, appointed in 1814 Keeper of the Crown Jewels in
the Tower of London, refers in an article in _Notes and Queries_, 1860,
to various unaccountable phenomena happening in the Tower during his
residence there. He says that one night in the Jewel Office, one of the
sentries was alarmed by a figure like a huge bear issuing from
underneath the Jewel Room door. He thrust at it with his bayonet, which,
going right through it, stuck in the doorway, whereupon he dropped in a
fit, and was carried senseless to the guard-room. When on the morrow Mr.
Swifte saw the soldier in the guard-room, his fellow-sentinel was also
there, and the latter testified to having seen his comrade, before the
alarm, quiet and active, and in full possession of his faculties. He was
now, so Mr. Swifte added, changed almost beyond recognition, and died
the following day.

Mr. George Offer, in referring to this incident, alludes to queer noises
having been heard at the time the figure appeared. Presuming that the
sentinel was not the victim of an hallucination, the question arises as
to the kind of spirit that he saw. The bear, judging by cases that have
been told me, is by no means an uncommon occult phenomenon. The
difficulty is how to classify it, since, upon no question appertaining
to the psychic, can one dogmatize. To quote from a clever poem that
appeared in the January number of the _Occult Review_, to pretend one
knows anything definite about the immat