ccupied, for reasons perfectly commonplace and intelligible. But
the fact that it had no tenants needed to be explained, and was
explained by a myth,--there were ghosts in the house! On the other
hand, if Reginald Scot asked today, 'Who heareth the noises, who
seeth the visions?' we could answer, 'Protestant clergymen, officers
in the army, ladies, land-agents, solicitors, representatives of all
classes, except the Haunted House Committee of the Psychical
Society'.

Before examining the researches and the results of this learned
body, we may glance at some earlier industry of investigators. The
common savage beliefs are too well known to need recapitulation, and
have been treated by Mr. Tylor in his chapter on 'Animism,' {129}
and by Mr. Herbert Spencer in Principles of Psychology. The points
of difference between these authors need not detain us here. As a
rule the spirits which haunt the bush, or the forest, are but
vaguely conceived of by the Australian blacks, or Red Men: they may
be ghosts of the dead, or they may be casual spirits unattached. An
example analogous to European superstition is given by John Tanner
in his Narrative of a Captivity among the Red Indians, 1830. In
this case one man had slain his brother, or, at least, a man of his
own Totem, and was himself put to death by the kindred. The
spectres of both haunted a place which the Indians shunned, but
Tanner (whose Totem was the same as that of the dead) passed a night
on the scene. His dreams, if not his waking moments, for his
account is indistinct, were disturbed by the ghosts. It is
impossible to ascertain how far this particular superstition was
coloured by European influences. {130}

Over classical tales we need not linger. Pliny, Plutarch,
Suetonius, St. Augustine, Lucian, Plautus (in the Mostellaria),
describe, with more or less of seriousness, the apparitions and
noises which haunted houses, public baths, and other places.
Occasionally a slain man's phantom was anxious that his body should
be buried, and the reported phenomena were akin to those in modern
popular legends. Sometimes, in the middle ages, and later, the law
took cognisance of haunted houses, when the tenant wished to break
his lease. A collection of authorities is given elsewhere, in
Ghosts before the Law. It is to be noticed that Bouchel, in his
Bibliotheque du Droit Francais, chiefly cites classical, not modern,
instances.

Among the most careful and exhausti