any service to us on our arrival. After thanking her, my wife said: "I
expect you will laugh at me, but I cannot help telling you there is
something strange about the bungalow"; and she then went on to narrate
what she had seen.

Instead of laughing the old lady looked more and more serious as she
went on, and when she had done asked to be shown exactly where the
apparition had appeared. My wife took her to the spot, and on being
shown it old Mrs. La Chaire exclaimed: "This is the most wonderful thing
I have ever heard of. Eighteen years ago my bed was on the very spot
where yours was last night, and I was lying in it too ill to move, when
my husband, whom you have described most accurately, stood where you saw
him and shot himself dead."

This statement of the widow convinced me that my wife had really seen
what she said she had, and had not dreamed it; and this experience has
led me to make further enquiries into the nature of happenings of this
kind, with the result, that after carefully eliminating all cases which
could be accounted for in any other manner, I have found myself
compelled to admit a considerable number of instances of what are
called "ghosts," on the word of persons whose veracity and soundness of
judgment I should not doubt on any other subject. It is often said that
you never meet any one who has himself seen a ghost, but only those who
have heard of somebody else seeing one. This I can entirely contradict,
for I have met with many trustworthy persons of both sexes, who have
given me accounts of such appearances having been actually witnessed by
themselves. In conclusion, I may mention that I was telling this story
some twenty years later to a Colonel Fox, who had known the unfortunate
man who committed suicide, and he said to me: "Do you know what were the
last words he said to his wife?"