classical case of John Wesley's family at Epworth in
1726, or the case of the Fox family at Hydesville near
Rochester in 1848, which was the starting-point of
modern spiritualism. Nothing sensational came of our
journey, and yet it was not entirely barren. On the
first night nothing occurred. On the second, there
were tremendous noises, sounds like someone beating a
table with a stick. We had, of course, taken every
precaution, and we could not explain the noises; but at
the same time we could not swear that some
ingenious practical joke had not been played upon us.
There the matter ended for the time. Some years
afterwards, however, I met a member of the family who
occupied the house, and he told me that after our visit
the bones of a child, evidently long buried, had been
dug up in the garden. You must admit that this was
very remarkable. Haunted houses are rare, and houses
with buried human beings in their gardens are also, we
will hope, rare. That they should have both united in
one house is surely some argument for the truth of the
phenomena. It is interesting to remember that in the
case of the Fox family there was also some word of
human bones and evidence of murder being found in the
cellar, though an actual crime was never established.
I have little doubt that if the Wesley family could
have got upon speaking terms with their persecutor,
they would also have come upon some motive for the
persecution. It almost seems as if a life cut suddenly
and violently short had some store of unspent vitality
which could still manifest itself in a strange,