Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men | Page 7

in his article in the National Review, is easily explicable. He and
Dr. Hodgson were magnetised by Mrs. Piper, and were like wax in her
hands. Eusapia Palladius has the same power.
It is a sad declension in an eminent classic, that he, whose reference to
the primitive heathen Ulysses torturing the shade of his own mother is
rather revolting than elevating, should be full of wonder and delight at

it.
After all Ulysses was the worthy ancestor of many a pirate hanged at
Malta, more ferocious enemies of man than the Red Indian. Some
somnambulists should be perhaps protected from exploitation. Mrs.
Piper's trance is presumably feigned, as trances can easily be.
To return to Haunted Houses. In a haunted house case, a story
suggested by some chronological connection, or the nature of the
apparition, is attached to the phenomena. No doubt, in these days where
the individuals who perceive the phenomena have a wider experience,
such a variety of persons appear that the ghostly appearance loses its
individuality if not its authenticity. Mr. Podmore discusses such
cases.[20] In Mr. Podmore's book when Poltergeists, Cock-lore ghost
affairs, are discussed, it appears that genuine hallucinations may be
associated with fraudulent physical phenomena.
[Footnote 20: "Studies," pp. 305-308; Chap. x. Haunted Houses.]
These are, it may be positively stated, hypnotic hallucinations. The two
together in some cases, as in the one already mentioned[21] of "Alice,"
amount to a very good ghost story, the blood on the floor alone
excepted. Alice's home was a terrace house in a town. The House at
B---- was very large and somewhat lonely.
[Footnote 21: "Podmore," p. 153.]
It is, however, less than 200 yards from a road along the Tay, that river
running parallel to its front to the southward of it.
Rights of way from the north-west pass north of the house, and there
were some empty lodges there; these might afford shelter to the persons
of strong hypnotic power who chose to play the ghost. The continuity
of the noises at night would be thus facilitated. The house belonged to
the grand-nephew of a retired Indian major. It is apparently suggested
that the major's relations with a young housekeeper were suspicious.
The two and a native Indian servant are buried in the kirkyard at L----;
presumably Logierait.

The haunted house is, as was said, at Ballechin in Perthshire; and it
may be noted that to Perthshire Esdaile, the famous Calcutta hypnotist
and physician, retired; but that he was unable to effect with the
Perthshire people the marvellous cures he had brought about in India.
Perhaps the Indian servant may have attracted the attention of some
base imitator of the honourable Esdaile. It may be noted that an officer
of rank, whose family were friends and not very distant neighbours in
the south of England of the late Rev. Lord Sydney Godolphin Osborne,
experienced some singular phenomena. Lord Sydney was a great
hypnotist, and cured, or believed he cured, many cases of epilepsy. The
officer in question suffered at times from a tickling in his face, which
annoyed him very much; it seemed to be more on the cheeks than in the
corners behind the nostrils.
The connection with hypnotism is seen in the next case. A much
younger man, a captain in the Indian army, who had attended many
spiritist seances, suffered much the same sort of tickling annoyance.
Both were perfectly sane, and were doubtless persecuted. They were
intelligent, capable people. A friend informs the writer that when some
years ago he visited a fortune-teller of the Mrs. Piper class in London,
he had a cold trickling up his feet, doubtless from hypnotism, to help
thought reading.
The tickling of the face is the result of a more or less vain attempt to
reach the ear or eye. It will be felt by people driving whose ear and eye
would otherwise be affected. People sleeping in an exposed place may
suffer more, as the fixed recumbent position makes them obnoxious to
attack, as was previously remarked. The hyperaesthesia spreads in a
slight degree round the eye.
The nature of the eye is hardly understood yet; it is quite possible that
subconscious pictures pass before us like a cinematograph, enforcing or
enforced by our thoughts. It has been remarked that thought is a species
of self-hypnotism. Hypnotism may only make these pictures more
distinct and modify them by degrees. In the attempt to inflict a picture
on the eye, only the dark image of it may be seen. The writer believes
that this means failure to affect the mind. Binet and Féré mention the

dark after-shadow.
The extremest direct effect of hypnotism upon the eye, mechanically
speaking, is doubtless scarcely more than the shock of thistledown
wafted against it by a gentle breeze. It appears to