The Alleged Haunting of B---- House | Page 7

accepted fact that all mental processes are accompanied by physical processes in the brain. In the following pages will be found instances of the phenomenon of the apparent removal of bed-clothing, which raise a question as to the propriety of regarding as exhaustive an explanation based solely upon the hypothesis of subjective hallucination which otherwise would appear to be generally applicable. It would stand to reason that if such an intelligence can produce an hallucination of the appearance of the human figure, it would be at least equally easy for it to produce an hallucination of the appearance of a beast. A belief to this effect seems to be the explanation of the fact mentioned in a letter to _The Times_ of June 10, 1897, by Dr. Menzies, who refers to Major S---- as "an old and dear friend." He writes, "I have no doubt that he created much scandal by saying to his gardener that he had better take care to keep up the garden properly, for when he was gone his soul would go into a mole and haunt the garden and him too."
This theory of the possibility of producing by mental force the hallucination audible or visual of a beast, may also be the explanation, not only of the apparition of the large dog which has been seen, as well as that of a spaniel, but also of the phenomenon, attested by several witnesses, of their having heard the sound as of a large dog throwing itself from the outside against the lower part of their doors.
Major S---- died, as already stated, in 1876, and was buried beside Sarah N---- and, it is said, an old Indian manservant. The grave is in the middle of the parish churchyard. No monument marks their resting-place, but a high enclosure, which surrounds it, is a prominent object. The whole of his dogs, fourteen in number, including the spaniel already mentioned, were killed after his death.
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The S.P.R. some years ago published a census of hallucinations based upon the interrogation of seventeen thousand persons, who were not only taken casually, but from whom those were excluded whose replies were foreseen. From the analysis of these statistics, it appears that the great majority of these phantasms are figures of people who were living and continue to live, although research seems to point to the fact that their bodies are either always, or very often, in a state of apparent unconsciousness at the moment of the phenomenon. Among the minority, i.e. of apparitions of the dead, the frequency seems to be in inverse proportion to the time which has elapsed since death. Those which appear at the moment of death are very frequent, whereas, on the other hand, those of persons who have been very long dead are almost unknown; e.g. the apparition seen by Lady Galway a few years ago at Rufford Abbey, where the form represented a person who must have been dead for about three hundred years, belongs to a class of which examples are very few.
A haunted house (or any other locality) is merely a place where experience shows that hallucinations are more or less localised, and the only especially interesting question about it is, why the hallucinations should be localised at a particular place, and what causes them there.
Such Phantasms of the Living have been discussed in the monumental work of Mr. Myers and the late Mr. E. Gurney. They need be no further remarked upon here, than to observe that the following pages contain at least one example, viz. that of the apparition of the Rev. P. H----. (See p. 119.)
It is very difficult to judge of the forces which may act in the conditions of what we are accustomed to call "another world," but a plausible explanation might be found in the Divine Word, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." The thoughts and affections appear to dwell for a time where they have been already fixed during life, but changes here, including the gradual reunion on the other side, of all those who are loved with those who love them, the advancing dissociation of the mind with things here, and, no doubt, the evolution of a different life under different conditions, seem gradually to efface the ties of earthly memory, connecting the feelings with particular spots on earth.
Such thoughts not infrequently include repentance, a desire for the remedy of acts of injustice, and an eagerness for the compassion and sympathetic prayers of those whom we call the living.
It is natural, therefore, to suppose that haunting, such as that met with at B----, would be connected with persons who had died within some such period as a century at the outside. Now the number of the members of the S----