ance, a distinguished member of the S.P.R., whose
name is associated both in this country and in America with the
investigation of haunted houses, offered to take a lease of B----
House, after the lease had been resigned by Mr. H----, the proprietor
made no objection whatever. Indeed, the only allusion made to the
haunting was the expression of a hope on the part of Captain S----'s
agents in Edinburgh, that Colonel Taylor would not make it a subject
of complaint, as had been done by Mr. H----, in reply to which they
were informed that Colonel Taylor was thoroughly well aware of what
had happened during Mr. H----'s tenancy, and would undertake to make
no complaint on the subject. Captain S---- having thus thrown the
house into the open market, and let it to the well-known expert, with
no reference whatever to the subject of haunting, except that it
should not be made a ground of complaint, it is obvious that he
deprived himself of any right to complain as to observations upon the
subject of local hallucination, any more than of observation upon the
habits of squirrels or other local features. Nor had he any more right
to complain upon this ground, as vendor of the lease, than any other
vendor of articles exposed for public sale, such as a hatter, who
after selling a hat to Lord Salisbury, might complain that he had been
induced to provide headgear for a Conservative. At the same time, both
Colonel Taylor and his friends were well aware, from a vexatious
experience, that phenomena of the kind found at B---- are very often
associated with private matters, which the members of a family
concerned might object to see published, just as they might object to
the publication of the results of an examination of some object--say,
old medicine-bottles--found in the house let by them to a strange
tenant.

Acting upon this knowledge, it has been the general rule of the
Society for Psychical Research to publish the cases investigated by it
under avowedly false names, as private cases are published in medical
and other scientific journals. Out of a courteous anxiety that nothing
should occur which could in any way annoy any member of the S----
family, no one was admitted to the house for the purpose of observing
the phenomena, except on the definite understanding that they were to
regard everything as confidential, and it was always intended that any
publication on the subject was to be made with all names and
geographical indications