that, with such evidence before me, I should not have got in a labourer,
and had the spot effectually dug and searched. I can only say, that so
it was. I was quite satisfied of the moral truth of every word that had
been related to me, and which I have here set down with scrupulous
accuracy. But I experienced an apathy, for which neither then nor
afterwards did I quite know how to account. I had a vague, but immovable
impression that the whole affair was referable to natural agencies. It
was not until some time after we had left the house, which, by-the-by,
we afterwards found had had the reputation of being haunted before we
had come to live in it, that on reconsideration I discovered the serious
difficulty of accounting satisfactorily for all that had occurred upon
ordinary principles. A great deal we might arbitrarily set down to
imagination. But even in so doing there was, _in limine_, the oddity,
not to say improbability, of so many different persons having nearly
simultaneously suffered from different spectral and other illusions
during the short period for which we had occupied that house, who never
before, nor so far as we learned, afterwards were troubled by any fears
or fancies of the sort. There were other things, too, not to be so
accounted for. The odd knockings in the roof I frequently heard myself.

There were also, which I before forgot to mention, in the daytime,
rappings at the doors of the sitting-rooms, which constantly deceived
us; and it was not till our "come in" was unanswered, and the hall or
passage outside the door was discovered to be empty, that we learned
that whatever else caused them, human hands did not. All the persons who
reported having seen the different persons or appearances here described
by me, were just as confident of having literally and distinctly seen
them, as I was of having seen the hard-featured woman with the blind
eye, so remarkably corresponding with Smith's description.