ertake to
conduct the investigation. Mr. Myers also wrote urgently to her,
saying, "If you don't get phenomena, probably no one will." She was
abroad at the time, but at considerable personal inconvenience
consented to return, and on December 26th she wrote to Lord Bute,
stating that she could reach Ballechin on February 2nd, and adding--

"I have been reflecting further on the question of the personality of
investigators. I think the names you suggest, and some others which
occur to me, divide naturally into three classes (assuming, and I
think you agree with me, that it does not follow that every one can
discover a ghost because it is there, nor that their failure to
discover it is any proof that it is not there). (1) Those who have
personal experience of phenomena, and may be expected to be
susceptible to psychic influences; (2) those who have no personal
powers in that line, but are open-minded and sympathetic; and (3)
those who are passively open to conviction. A fourth class, those who
come to look for evidence against the phenomena, but will accept none
for it, should, I think, be left until we have some demonstrable
evidence to show.... Mr. Myers proposes himself for April 14-21.... I
should suggest the keeping of a diary, in which every one willing to
do so should make entries, negative or affirmative."

The _Times_ Correspondent further criticised the method of inquiry
employed at B----.

"Lord Bute's original idea was a good one, but it was never properly
carried out. Observing that the S.P.R. had made many investigations in
a perfunctory and absurd manner by sending somebody to a haunted house
for a couple of nights and then writing an utterly worthless report,
he desired in this case a continuous investigation extending over a
considerable period. He ought, therefore, to have employed a couple of
intelligent detectives for the whole term, and thus secured real
continuity. As things are, the only continuity is to be found in the
presence--itself not entirely continuous--of the lady just mentioned.
But simply because she is a lady, and because she had her duties as
hostess to attend to, she is unfit to carry out the actual work of
investigating the phenomena in question. Some of her assistants sat up
all night, with loaded guns, in a condition of abject fright; others,
there is reason to suspect, manufactured phenomena for themselves; and
nearly all seem to have begun by assuming supernatural interference,