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 handkerchief.  From 1882 to 1884, Miss Morton saw the spectre six times, but did not name it to her family.  Her sister saw the appearance in 1882, a maid saw it in 1883, and two boys beheld it in the same year.  Miss Morton used to follow the appearance downstairs and speak to it, but it merely gave a slight gasp, and seemed unable to converse.  By way of testing the spectre, Miss Morton stretched threads at night from the railing of the stair to the wall, but the ghost descended without disturbing them.  Yet her footsteps sounded on the stairs.  This