"The departed are certainly proved to appear in their own ghostly
persons--nay, they often have been seen to do so," admitted
Travers. "But I will never believe they are at our beck and call,
to bang tambourines or move furniture. We cannot ring up the dead
as we ring up the living on a telephone. The idea is insufferable
and indecent. Neither can anybody be used as a mouth-piece in that
way, or tell us the present position or occupation and interests
of a dead man--or what he smokes, or how his liquor tastes. Such
ideas degrade our impressions of life beyond the grave. They are,
if I may say so, disgustingly anthropomorphic. How can we even
take it for granted that our spirits will retain a human form and
human attributes after death?"

"It would be both weak-minded and irreligious to attempt to get
at these things, no doubt," declared Colonel Vane.

"And they make confusion worse confounded by saying that evil
spirits pretend sometimes to hoodwink us by posing as good spirits.
Now, that's going too far," said Henry Lennox.

"But your own ghost, Sir Walter?" asked Fayre-Michell. "It is a
curious fact that most really ancient houses have some such
addition. Is it a family spectre? Is it fairly well authenticated?
Does it reign in a particular spot of house or garden? I ask from
no idle curiosity. It is a very interesting subject if approached
in a proper spirit, as the Psychical Research Society, of which I
am a member, does approach it."

"I am unprepared to admit that we have a ghost at all," repeated