as the
date upon which the evidence was to be presented at a general meeting
of the S.P.R.

In the meantime, however, the article of the anonymous _Times_
correspondent appeared in that journal on June 8th--an article which
was practically an attack on certain methods of the S.P.R., after
which Mr. Myers published the following letter:--

ON THE TRAIL OF A GHOST.

_To the Editor of "The Times."_

"SIR,--A letter entitled 'On the Trail of a Ghost,' which you
publish to-day, appears to suggest throughout that some statement
has been made on behalf of the Society for Psychical Research with
regard to the house which your correspondent visited. This,
however, is not the case; and as a misleading impression may be
created, I must ask you to allow me space to state that I visited
B----, representing that society, before your correspondent's
visit, and decided that there was no such evidence as could
justify us in giving the results of the inquiry a place in our
_Proceedings_. I had already communicated this judgment to Lord
Bute, to the council of the society, and to Professor Sidgwick,
the editor of our _Proceedings_, and it had been agreed to act
upon it.--I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

"FREDERICK W.H. MYERS,
_Hon. Sec. of the Society for Psychical Research._

"LECKHAMPTON HOUSE, CAMBRIDGE, _June 8_."

One may gather from a comparison of this letter with the foregoing
records that the standard of evidence is a somewhat variable quantity
in the Society for Psychical Research. In attempting to explain the
matter, Mr. Myers wrote to Lord Bute, June 11, 1897:--

"As to haunted houses recorded at length in _Proceedings_, there have
been several minor ones, and one especially, 'Records of a Haunted
House,' where I was instrumental in getting the account written. The
great point there was the amount of coincidence of visions seen
independently.... In the B---- case there is _some_ coincidence of
vision, but so far as I know, not nearly so much as in the Records of
a Haunted House, which did appear in _Proceedings_. We want to keep
our level approximately the same throughout."

Another point of view in relation to the same matter, is that taken by
Miss Freer in an article in the _Nineteenth Century_, August 1897:--

"That the S.P.R. recognised that haunted houses were among the alleged
facts of general interest, was proved by their early appointment of a
Committee of