rrived, and slept
peacefully. Next day his sister told him about the disturbances,
after which he heard them as much as his neighbours, and was as
unsuccessful in discovering their cause. {189}

Of course this looks as if these noises were unreal, children of the
imagination. Noises being the staple of haunted houses, a few words
may be devoted to them. They are usually the frou-frou or rustling
sweep of a gown, footsteps, raps, thumps, groans, a sound as if all
the heavy furniture was being knocked about, crashing of crockery and
jingling of money. Of course, as to footsteps, people _may_ be
walking about, and most of the other noises are either easily
imitated, or easily produced by rats, water pipes, cracks in furniture
(which the Aztecs thought ominous of death), and other natural causes.
The explanation is rather more difficult when the steps pace a
gallery, passing and repassing among curious inquirers, or in this
instance.

THE CREAKING STAIR

A lady very well known to myself, and in literary society, lived as a
girl with an antiquarian father in an old house dear to an antiquary.
It was haunted, among other things, by footsteps. The old oak
staircase had two creaking steps, numbers seventeen and eighteen from
the top. The girl would sit on the stair, stretching out her arms,
and count the steps as they passed her, one, two, three, and so on to
seventeen and eighteen, _which always creaked_. {190} In this case
rats and similar causes were excluded, though we may allow for
"expectant attention". But this does not generally work. When people
sit up on purpose to look out for the ghost, he rarely comes; in the
case of the "Lady in Black," which we give later, when purposely
waited for, she was never seen at all.

Discounting imposture, which is sometimes found, and sometimes merely
fabled (as in the Tedworth story), there remains one curious
circumstance. Specially ghostly noises are attributed to the living
but absent.

THE GROCER'S COUGH

A man of letters was born in a small Scotch town, where his father was
the intimate friend of a tradesman whom we shall call the grocer.
Almost every day the grocer would come to have a chat with Mr. Mackay,
and the visitor, alone of the natives, had the habit of knocking at
the door before entering. One day Mr. Mackay said to his daughter,
"There's Mr. Macwilliam's knock. Open the door." But there was no
Mr. Macwilliam! He was just leaving his house at th