communications. But what are we to say of the ghosts that spring
up more than a year, nay, more than ten years after the
disappearance of the corpse? They are very rare, I know, but
after all there are some that are extremely difficult to deny,
for the accounts of their actions are attested and corroborated
by numerous and trustworthy witnesses. It is true that here
again, where it is in most cases a question of apparitions to
relations or friends, we may be told that we are in the presence
of telepathic incidents or of hallucinations of the memory. We
thus deprive the spiritualists of a new and considerable province
of their realm. Nevertheless, they retain certain private
desmesnes into which our telepathic explanations do not penetrate
so easily. There have in fact been ghosts that showed themselves
to people who had never known or seen them in the flesh. They are
more or less closely connected with the ghosts in haunted houses,
to which we must revert for a moment.

As I said above, it is almost impossible honestly to deny the
existence of these houses. Here again the telepathic
interpretation enforces itself in the majority of cases. We may
even allow it a strange but justifiable extension, for its limits
are scarcely known. It has happened fairly often, for instance,
that ghosts come to disturb a dwelling whose occupiers find, in
response to their indications, bones hidden in the walls or under
the floors. It is even possible, as in the case of William
Moir,[1] which was as strictly conducted and supervised as a
judicial enquiry, that the skeleton is buried at some distance
from the house and dates more than forty years back. When the
remains are removed and decently interred, the apparitions cease.