There is no suggestion to make here other than the manifestations may
have been the phantasms of a man, dog, and horses that at some former
date had been killed, either accidentally or purposely, in or near that
spot.


_The Jumping Ghost_

Mr. George Sinclair, in his work _Satan's Invisible World Discovered_,
gives a detailed account of hauntings in a house in Mary King's Close,
Edinburgh.

The house, at the time Mr. Sinclair writes, was occupied by Mr. Thomas
Coltheart, a law agent. Seated one afternoon at home reading, Mrs.
Coltheart was immeasurably startled at seeing, suspended in mid-air
gazing at her, the head of an old man. She uttered some sort of
exclamation, most probably a cry, and the apparition at once vanished.
Some nights later, when in bed, both she and her husband saw the same
head, which was presently joined by the head of a child, and a long,
naked arm, which tried to catch hold of them.

On another occasion, a member of the Coltheart family was greatly
alarmed by the sudden appearance of a large dog, which leaped on the
chair by her side, and as suddenly disappeared.

Every effort was made to lay the ghosts. Ministers--and one knows how
pious Scotch clergymen are--were called in, but their exhortations,
instead of dispelling or even minimizing the phenomena, only increased
them. It was a case of more prayers, more spooks; which state of
affairs, however complimentary to the ministers' powers of address, was