420 THE BORDERLAND OF SCIENCE. 



beyond. One of the sisters looking up towards the 

 skylight, saw there the face of her dying sister looking 

 sorrowfully down upon them. She seized another sister 

 by the hand and pointed to the skylight : and one after 

 another the sisters looked where she pointed. They 

 spoke no word ; and in a few moments their father and 

 mother called them to the room where their sister had 

 just died ; but when afterwards they talked together 

 about what had happened that night, it was found that 

 they had all seen the vision of the sorrowful face. 



A remarkable circumstance in these and many other 

 instances of supposed visions, is the utterly unreason- 

 able nature of the supposition actually made in the 

 mind of the ghost-seer. In the stories where a ghost 

 appears for some useful purpose, as to show where 

 treasure has been concealed or to reveal the misdeeds 

 of some person still living, the mind does not reject 

 the event as altogether unreasonable though the 

 circumstances may be (and commonly are) sufficiently 

 preposterous. But one can conceive no reason whatever 

 why a departed wife and mother should make her 

 appearance in a garden-chair on a dusky evening, and 

 still less why the vision of a dying sister should look 

 down through a skylight. It is singular that on this 

 account alone the mind does not reject the illusion in 

 such cases. 



Among the most perplexing circumstances in the 

 common belief about ghosts, are the accepted ideas 

 about ghostly habiliments. For instance, why should 

 so many ghosts be clothed in white ? If the answer is 



