Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/567

 HOSTS! How wide a field of speculation does the subject unfold! Personally, I enter on tip-toe on a theme so fraught with weird possibilities. Not so unjust to others as to disbelieve all that I cannot understand, I am still far from accepting the manifestations they professedly realise, yet cannot explain away by any accompanying motive, good, bad, or indifferent. I have been present, amongst spiritualists at the raising of ghosts, which consisted, in most cases of the so-called reappearance of objectless ne'er-do-wells—Hindoos who have spoken broken English with an Irish accent, and French Marquesses and German Barons with the dialect of the Seven Dials. Some, again, had they been in the flesh, would, in their disregard for the period of their costumes, have been worthy the mummers of a country fair. When a mediæval magnate has on Blucher boots, which couldn't well have been worn before Waterloo, one may be prepared, without undue surprise, to see Helen of Troy in a poke bonnet or Psyche with a sunshade.

Quoting still from personal experience, I may mention a haunted studio I once had, in which the previous occupier, who had been a great friend of mine, and who