GHOSTS.


"But stop," says the courteous and prudent reader, "are there any
such things as ghosts?"

"Any ghostesses!" cries Superstition, who settled long since in the
country, near a church yard on a "rising ground," "any ghostesses!
Ay, man, lots on 'em! Bushels on 'em! Sights on 'em! Why, there's
one as walks in our parish, reglar as the clock strikes twelve--and
always the same round, over church-stile, round the corner, through
the gap, into Shorts Spinney, and so along into our close, where he
takes a drink at the pump--for ye see he died in liquor, and then
arter he squenched hisself, wanishes into waper.

"Then there's the ghost of old Beales, as goes o' nights and sows
tares in his neighbor's wheat--I've often seed 'em in seed time.
They do say that Black Ben, the poacher, have riz, and what's more,
walked slap through all the squire's steel traps, without springing
on 'em. And then there's Bet Hawkey as murdered her own infant--only
the poor little babby hadn't learned to walk, and so can't appear
ag'in her."

THOMAS HOOD, The Grimsby Ghost.

That dark little room I described as so convenient during a terrific
thunderstorm or the prowling investigations of a burglar, began after a
while to get mysterious and uncanny, and I disliked, nay, dreaded to
enter it after dark. It was so still, so black, so empty, so chilly with
a sort of supernatural chill, so silent, that imagination conjured up