the noises, often very loud, and the movements of objects, and the lights which are the common or infrequent accompaniments of apparitions in haunted houses.  Now we have (always on much the same level of evidence) accounts of similar noises, and movements of untouched objects, occurring where living persons of peculiar constitution are present, or in haunted houses.  These things we discuss in an essay on ‘The Logic of Table-turning’.  By parity of reasoning, or at least by an obvious analogy, we are led to infer that more than ’an automatic projection from the consciousness’ of a dead man is present where he is not only seen, but heard, making noises, and perhaps moving objects.  If this be admitted then psychical conjecture is pushed back on something very like the old theory of haunted houses, namely, that a ghost, or spiritual entity, is present and active there.

Long ago, in a little tale called ‘Castle Perilous’ (published in a volume named The Wrong Paradise), the author made an affable sprite explain all these phenomena.  ‘We suffer, we ghosts,’ he said in effect, ’from a malady akin to aphasia in the living.  We know what we want to say, and how we wish to appear, but, just as a patient in aphasia uses the wrong word, we use the wrong manifestation.’  This he illustrated by a series of apparitions on his own part, which, he declared, were involuntary and unconscious:  when they were described to him by the percipient, he admitted that they were vulgar and distressing, though, as far as he was concerned, merely automatic.

These remarks of the ghost, were, at least, explicit and intelligible.  The theory which he stated with an honourable candour, and in language perfectly lucid, appears to have been adopted by Mr. Frederick Myers, but he puts it in a different style.  ’I argue that the phantasmogenetic agency at work—­whatever that may be—­may be able to produce effects of light more easily than definite figures. . . .  A similar argument will hold good in the case of the vague hallucinatory noises which frequently accompany definite veridical phantasms, and frequently also occur apart from any definite phantasm in houses reputed haunted.’ {158a} Now where Mr. Myers says ‘phantasmogenetic agency,’ we say ‘ghost’.  J’appelle un chat, un chat, et Rollet un fripon.  We urge that the ghost cannot, as it were, express himself as plainly as he would like to do, that he suffers from aphasia.  Now he shows as a black dog, now as a green lady, now as an old man, and often he can only rap and knock, or display a light, or tug the bed-clothes.  Thus the Rev. F. G. Lee tells us that a ghost first sat on his breast invisibly, then glided about his room like a man in grey, and, finally, took to thumping on the walls, the bed and in the chimney.  Dr. Lee kindly recited certain psalms, and was greeted with applause, ’a very tornado of knocks . . . was the distinct and intelligible response’. {158b} Now, on our theory, the ghost, if he could,