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Title: Haunted and the Haunters

Author: Edward Bulwer Lytton

Release Date: November 28, 2004 [EBook #14195]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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A STRANGE STORY.

TO WHICH IS ADDED,

THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERS.

BY

EDWARD BULWER LYTTON (_LORD LYTTON_.)

"To doubt and to be astonished is to recognize our ignorance. Hence it
is that the lover of wisdom is in a certain sort a lover of mythi
[Greek: phylomythos pos], for the subject of mythi is the astonishing
and marvellous."--SIR W. HAMILTON (after Aristotle), _Lectures on
Metaphysics_, vol. i. p. 78.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 1897.

THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERS;

OR, THE HOUSE AND THE BRAIN.

* * * * *

A friend of mine, who is a man of letters and a philosopher, said to
me one day, as if between jest and earnest, "Fancy! since we last met
I have discovered a haunted house in the midst of London."

"Really haunted,--and by what?--ghosts?"

"Well, I can't answer that question; all I know is this: six weeks ago
my wife and I were in search of a furnished apartment. Passing a quiet
street, we saw on the window of one of the houses a bill, 'Apartments,
Furnished.' The situation suited us; we entered the house, liked the
rooms, engaged them by the week,--and left them the third day. No
power on earth could have reconciled my wife to stay longer; and I
don't wonder at it."

"What did you see?"

"Excuse me; I have no desire to be ridiculed as a superstitious
dreamer,--nor, on the other hand, could I ask you to accept on my
affirmation what you would hold to be incredible without the evidence
of your own senses. Let me only say this, it was not so much what we
saw or heard (in which you might fairly suppose that we were the dupes
of our own excited fancy, or the victims of imposture in others) that
drove us away, as it