. The committee
needs a Maiden, as a Covin needed one, and among the visionaries of
the Psychical Society, there must be some young lady who should be
on the House Committee. Yet one writer in the Society's Proceedings
who has a very keen scent for an impostor, if not for a ghost, avers
that, from the evidence, she believes that they are examining facts,
and not the origin of fables.

These facts, as was said, differ from the stories in 'Christmas
numbers'. The ghost in typical reports seldom or never _speaks_.
It has no message to convey, or, if it has a message, it does not
convey it. It does not unfold some tragedy of the past: in fact it
is very seldom capable of being connected with any definite known
dead person. The figure seen sometimes 'varies with the seer'.
{139} In other cases, however, different people attest having seen
the same phantasm. Finally a new house seems just as likely to be
haunted as an old house, and the committee appears to have no
special knowledge of very ancient family ghosts, such as Pearlin
Jean, the Luminous Boy of Corby, or the rather large company of
spectres popularly supposed to make themselves at home at Glamis
Castle.

What then is the type, the typical haunted house, from which, if
narratives vary much, they are apt to break down under cross-
examination?

The phenomena are usually phenomena of sight, or sound, or both. As
a rule the sounds are footsteps, rustling of dresses, knocks, raps,
heavy bangs, noises as of dragging heavy weights, and of
disarranging heavy furniture. These sometimes occur freely, where
nobody can testify to having _seen_ anything spectral. Next we have
phantasms, mostly of figures beheld for a moment with 'the tail of
the eye' or in going along a passage, or in entering a room where
nobody is found, or standing beside a bed, perhaps in a kind of
self-luminous condition. Sometimes these spectres are taken by
visitors for real people, but the real people cannot be found;
sometimes they are at once recognised as phantasms, because they are
semi-transparent, or look very malignant, or because they glide and
do not walk, or are luminous, or for some other excellent reason.
The combination, in due proportions, of pretty frequent inexplicable
noises, with occasional aimless apparitions, makes up the _type_ of
orthodox modern haunted house story. The difficulty of getting
evidence worth looking at (except for its uniformity) is obviously
great.