nuns was
haunted by a spectre who moaned, tramped noisily around, dragged the
sisters out of bed by the feet, and even tickled them nearly to
death! This annoyance lasted for three years, so Wierus says. {132}
Wodrow chronicles a similar affair at Mellantrae, in Annandale.
Thyraeus distinguishes three kinds of haunting sprites, devils,
damned souls, and souls in purgatory. Some are mites, mild and
sportive; some are truculenti ferocious. Brownies, or fauni, may
act in either character, as Secutores et joculatores. They rather
aim at teasing than at inflicting harm. They throw stones, lift
beds, and make a hubbub and crash with the furniture. Suicides,
murderers, and spirits of murdered people, are all apt to haunt
houses. The sprites occasionally appear in their proper form, but
just as often in disguise: a demon, too, can appear in human shape
if so disposed: demons being of their nature deceitful and fond of
travesty, as Porphyry teaches us and as Law (1680) illustrates.
Whether the spirits of the dead quite know what they are about when
they take to haunting, is, in the opinion of Thyraeus, a difficult
question. Thomas Aquinas, following St. Augustine, inclines to hold
that when there is an apparition of a dead man, the dead man is
unconscious of the circumstance. A spirit of one kind or another
may be acting in his semblance. Thyraeus rather fancies that the
dead man is aware of what is going on.

Hauntings may be visual, auditory, or confined to the sense of
touch. Auditory effects are produced by flutterings of air, noises
are caused, steps are heard, laughter, and moaning. Lares domestici
(brownies) mostly make a noise. Apparitions may be in tactile form
of men or animals, or monsters. As for effects, some ghosts push
the living and drive them along, as the Bride of Lammermoor, in
Law's Memorialls, was 'harled through the house,' by spirits. The
spirits of an amorous complexion seem no longer to be numerous, but
are objects of interest to Thyraeus as to Increase Mather. Thyraeus
now raises the difficult question: 'Are the sounds heard in haunted
houses real, or hallucinatory?' Omnis qui a spiritibus fit,
simulatus est, specie sui fallit. The spirits having no vocal
organs, can only produce _noise_. In a spiritual hurly-burly, some
of the mortals present _hear nothing_ (as we shall note in some
modern examples), but may they not be prevented from hearing by the
spirits? Or again, the sound