ese matters.
The Slippertons' house was on the outskirts of a small town in
Buckinghamshire. The shell of the house dated from the early seventeenth
century. (You will find it described in the _Inventory of the
Royal Commission on Historical Monuments_--the second volume of the
Buckinghamshire survey.) But the inside had been gutted and replanned to
suit our modern requirements, such as the need for making each bedroom
accessible without passing through other bedrooms, the necessity for a
fitted bathroom, and so on.

I found the house as Slipperton had warned me that I should, in a
chaotic condition inside. Everything movable seemed to have been
moved--without any definite intention, so far as I could see, but just
for the sake of upsetting the decent order of the household. I found
a frying-pan, for instance, hung on the hook that was designed for the
dinner-gong, and the gong inside one of the beds. A complete set of
bedroom ware had been arranged on the drawing-room table; and apparently
some witticism had been contemplated with a chest of drawers, which had
become firmly wedged into the angle of the back staircase. In short, the
usual strange feats that characterise poltergeist phenomena.

I touched none of these misplaced things with the exception of the
frying-pan, which I needed to cook the sausages I had brought with me;
but after I had had my meal, I went through all the rooms and entered
the position of every article in a large note-book, making plans of each
room, besides a full list of the furniture and ornaments it contained.
Later, I went up into the roof and disconnected the water supply,
afterwards emptying the cistern and all the pipes. And before I went
to bed I turned off the electric light at the main switch. All these
precautions, as I need hardly tell you, were absolutely essential. It
might appear difficult to explain the moving of a large chest of drawers
by the sound of water-pipes or the fusing of an electric wire; but the
critics of psychical research have essayed far more difficult tasks than
that, to their own entire satisfaction.

I went up to the bedroom the Slippertons used to occupy, a little before
eleven o'clock. I had with me a couple of spare candles, a new notebook,
and a fountain pen. I was even at that time, I may add, a highly
trained researcher in every way, and was quite capable of taking a full
shorthand report of a seance. I tried my pulse and temperature before
getting in