Ferrier while the
adventure was only beginning. As there seemed to be a chance of
taking a ghost "on the half volley," I at once communicated the first
part of the tale to the Psychical Society (using pseudonyms, as here,
throughout), and two years later Mrs. Claughton consented to tell the
Society as much as she thinks it fair to reveal.
This, it will be confessed, is a round-about way of obtaining fame,
and an ordinary person in Mrs. Claughton's position would have gone to
the Psychical Society at once, as Mark Twain meant to do when he saw
the ghost which turned out to be a very ordinary person.
There I leave these ghosts, my mind being in a just balance of
agnosticism. If ghosts at all, they were ghosts with a purpose. The
species is now very rare.
The purpose of the ghost in the following instance was trivial, but
was successfully accomplished. In place of asking people to do what
it wanted, the ghost did the thing itself. Now the modern theory of
ghosts, namely, that they are delusions of the senses of the seers,
caused somehow by the mental action of dead or distant people, does
not seem to apply in this case.
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