indicated, when Scott came to examine them.

In a dreadfully noisy curacy vouched for by 'a well-known Church
dignitary,' who occupied the place, there was usually a frightful
crash as of iron bars thrown down, at 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning.
All the boxes and heavy material in a locked set of attics, seemed
to be dancing about, but were never found to have been stirred. Yet
this clergyman discovered that 'the great Sunday crash might
manifest itself to some persons in the house without his wife or
himself being conscious of it. Knowing how overwhelming the sound
always appeared to me when I did hear it, I cannot but consider this
one of the most wonderful things in the whole business.' {142}

In this case, in a house standing hundreds of yards apart from any
neighbour, and occupied only by a parson, his wife, and one servant,
these phenomena lasted for a year, with great regularity. There
were the usual footsteps, the ordinary rappings were angry when
laughed at, and the clergyman when he left at the end of a year, was
as far as ever from having detected any cause. Indeed it is not
easy to do so. A friend of the writer's, an accomplished man of
law, was once actually consulted, in the interests of an enraged
squire, as to how he could bring a suit against _somebody_ for a
series of these inexplicable disturbances. But the law contained no
instrument for his remedy.

From the same report of the S. P. R. we take another typical case.
A lady, in an old house, saw, in 1873, a hideous hag watching her in
bed; she kept the tale to herself, but, a fortnight later, her
brother, a solicitor, was not a whit less alarmed by a similar and
similarly situated phenomenon. In this house dresses were plucked
at, heavy blows were struck, heavy footsteps went about, there were
raps at doors, and nobody was ever any the wiser as to the cause.
Here it may be observed that a ghost's power of making a noise, and
exerting what seems to be great physical energy, is often in inverse
ratio to his power of making himself generally visible, or, at all
events, to his inclination so to do. Thus there is a long record of
a haunted house, by the chief observer, Miss Morton, in P. S. P. R.,
pt. xxii. p. 311. A lady had died of habits too convivial, in 1878.
In April, 1882, Miss Morton's family entered, but nobody saw the
ghost till Miss Morton viewed it in June. The appearance was that
of a tall lady in widow's weeds, hiding her face with a