NOTES ON GHOSTS AND GOBLINS. 427 



claiming, c once I was hap-hap-happy, but now I am 

 meeserable,' and how the ghost resolved itself into a 

 rusty kitchen-jack. There is a case of a lady who 

 began to think herself the victim of some delusion, 

 and perhaps threatened by approaching illness, because 

 each night, about a quarter-of-an-hour after she had 

 gone to bed, she heard a hideous din in the neighbour- 

 hood of her house, or else (she was uncertain which) 

 in some distant room. The noise was in reality the 

 slightest possible creak (within a few feet of her pillow, 

 however), and produced by the door of a wardrobe 

 which she closed every night just before getting into 

 bed. This door, about a quarter-of-an-hour after being 

 closed, recovered its position of rest, slightly beyond 

 which it had been pushed in closing. In another case 

 the crawling of a snail across a window produced 

 sounds which were mistaken for the strains of loud but 

 distant music. 



It is, perhaps, not going too far to say that our 

 modern spirits, who deal in noise-making as well as 

 in furniture-tilting (of yet more marvellous feats I 

 say nothing), are not unacquainted with the means by 

 which the ear may be deceived as in the cases just con- 

 sidered. Some sounds said to be heard during dark 

 seances suggest the suspicion. 



It will be seen that the opinion to which I incline- 

 as the best and perhaps only natural interpretation of 

 events supposed to be supernatural is that real sights 

 and sounds are modified by the imagination, either 

 excited or diseased, into seemingly supernatural occur- 



