Mr. Podmore’s theory comes in thus:  ’the later experiences may have been started by thought transference from Miss Morris, whose thoughts, no doubt, occasionally turned to the house in which she had suffered so much agitation and alarm’.  Moreover ‘real noises’ may have ‘suggested’ the visual hallucinations to Miss Morris. {147} Mr. Podmore certainly cannot be accused of ordinary superstition.  There is a house, and there is a tenant.  She hears footsteps pounding up- and down-stairs, and all through her room, she says nothing and gets used to it.  Let it be granted that these noises are caused by rats.  After conquering her dislike to the sounds, three weeks after her entry to the house, Miss Morris meets a total stranger, deadly pale, in deep black, who vanishes.  This phantasm has gathered round the nucleus which the rats provided by stamping up- and down-stairs, and through Miss Morris’s room.  It is natural that a person who hears rats, or wind, or waterpipes, and makes up her mind not to mind it, should then see a phantasm of a pale woman in black; also should hear loud knocks at the door of her chamber.  Miss Morris goes away, a year later comes Mrs. G., and Mrs. G., her children, her servants, a barrister and an exorcist, are all disturbed by

Noises.

Knocks.

Sobs.

Moans.

Thumps.

Dragging of heavy weights.

One dreadful white face.

One little woman.

Lights.

One white skirt hanging from the ceiling.

One footfall which played two notes on the piano (!).

One figure in brown.

One man with freckles.

Two human faces.

One shadow.

One ‘part of the dress of a super-material being’ (Barrister).

One form (Exorcist).

One small column of misty vapour.

Now all this catalogue of prodigies which drove Mrs. G. into the cold, bleak world, was caused, ’by thought transference from Miss Morris,’ who had been absent for a year, and whose own hallucinations were caused by noises which may have been produced by rats, or what not.

This ingenious theory is too much for Mr. Myers’s powers of belief:  ’The very first effect of Miss Morris’s ponderings was a heavy thump, followed by a deep sob and moan, and a cry of, “Oh, do forgive me,” all disturbing poor Mrs. G. who had the ill luck to find herself in a bedroom about which Miss Morris was possibly thinking. . . .  Surely the peace of us all rests on a very uncertain tenure.’  Meanwhile Mr. Myers prefers to regard the whole trouble as more probably caused by the ‘dreams of the dead’ woman who hanged herself with a skipping rope, than by the reflections of Miss Morris.  In any case the society seem to have occupied the house, and, with their usual bad luck, were influenced neither by the ponderings of Miss Morris, nor by the fredaines of the lady of the skipping rope. {149} It may be worth