On the contrary, the scenes enacted in houses that appear to be
really haunted are generally very simple and insignificant, not
to say dull and commonplace. The ghosts are quite unpretentious
and go to no expense in the matter of staging or costume. They
are clad as they were when, sometimes many years ago, they led
their quiet, unadventurous life within their own home. We find in
one case an old woman, with a thin grey shawl meekly folded over
her breast, who bends at night over the sleeping occupants of her
old home, or who is frequently encountered in the hall or on the
stairs, silent, mysterious, a little grim. Or else it is the
gentleman with a lacklustre eye and a figured dressing-gown who
walks along a passage brilliantly illuminated with an
inexplicable light. Or again we have another elderly lady,
dressed in black, who is often found seated in the bay window of
her drawing-room. When spoken to, she rises and seems on the
point of replying, but says nothing. When pursued or met in a
corner, she eludes all contact and vanishes. Strings are fastened
across the staircase with glue; she passes and the strings remain
as they were. The ghost--and this happens in the majority of
cases--is seen by all the people staying in the house: relatives,
friends, old servants and new. Can it be a matter of suggestion,
of collective hallucination? At any rate, strangers, visitors who
have had nothing said to them, see it as the others do and ask,
innocently: "Who is the lady in mourning whom I met in the
dining-room?"

[1] Proceedings, vol. i., pp. 101-115; vol. ii., pp. 137-151;
vol. viii., pp. 311, 332, etc.