THE

SCOTTISH REVIEW.

JANUARY, 1900.

ART. I.—THE ALLEGED HAUNTING OF B—

HOUSE.

'I

WANT to know

‘Oh, but you can't come here saying "I want to know," you know,' said the clerk in the Circumlocution Office, and though it is now some fifty years since Dickens gave to this standard of the ethics of information, a local habitation and a name, the principle is still with us. Lessing has told us that the seeking of truth is worth more than the finding of it,' but the Utilitarian maintains that there are many subjects as to which it is mere waste of time to want to know.' Spinoza has given us as a rule of life, neither to like nor to dislike, but to understand,' but the idle and the prejudiced does not want to know' what stands outside his narrow life and narrower creed. A Sir William Crookes may dare to say that he has a mind to let;' a Sir Isaac Newton may regret that the boundless ocean of truth lies unexplored before him,' but the many whose limitations are those of the Circumlocution Office cannot tolerate that others, even, should want to know.' They have never asked why an apple fell, or what moved the lid of the steaming kettle, nor does it occur to them to refer the discoveries of the principle of

gravitation or of heat as a mode of motion, to any elementary initiative of wanting to know.'

It may be that no truth of like importance underlies the fact, that, in certain places, there are sights and sounds not to be, as yet, accounted for; but when we have subtracted such possible explanations as lies, mal-observation, indigestion, cats, rats, bats, owls, hot-water pipes, wind, earthquakes, and practical jokes, and still find a residuum, it is surely not more inherently unscientific to want to know the nature of that residuum, than it was for Lord Rayleigh to spend months-as is reported-in precipitating that tea-spoonful of liquid oxygen, which has led to the right understanding of the fractional residuum in the component parts of our atmosphere.

6

Although, what is called 'psychical enquiry,' has engaged the attention of such men as Lord Rayleigh, Sir William Crookes, Professor Alfred Russel Wallace, and Professor Oliver Lodge, it is, nevertheless, hardly fair, as yet, to place it on a level with other subjects of scientific investigation; not, I venture to suggest, from any inherent disqualification, but because it is not even yet free from disreputable associations. It has long been handled with as much ignorance as politics, as much dogmatism as religion, as much self-seeking as money-making, as much vulgarity as the Problem Novel. The very counters with which the game is though not, I think, necessarily-played, the 'mediums,' and séances,' and 'phenomena,' have become synonymous with 'charlatan,' extortion,' and fraud.' The subject is in even a worse position than is card-playing, racing, the theatre, or the music hall; and, like them, is the opportunity for, though not necessarily the occasion of, profanity, vulgarity, and vice. Moreover, the subject is often complicated, as to its presentation, by the mental limitations of the clerk in the Circumlocution Office, who puts our note of enquiry as to what we want to know into the wrong pigeon-hole; labelling what is not yet classified. A typical example of such treatment is that of the recent volume of enquiry into The Alleged Haunting of B—— House; the label, haunting,' having been affixed by others, any time during the last twenty-five years, and in no sense by the Editors themselves, who, even in accepting it for the sake of argument,

carefully qualify it by the term 'alleged,' and from the page to the last, neither deny nor affirm the truth of the ind ment. Not only are the first words in the book, 'The alleg haunting of B-House,' but the last sentence runs, 'T editors offer no conclusions this volume has been put togeth as the house at B- - was taken, not for the establishment theories, but for the record of facts.' Notwithstanding th clear statement of the position, the Circumlocution Office cler type of reviewer, in his utter inability to understand any state o mind which wants to know,' what cannot be tied with re up tape, has agaiu and again docketed the case with the irrelevant label, 'not proven,' not in the least realising that the Editors have started an enquiry, and not submitted a brief.

6

The book relates how, in the early days of 1897, the Editors, strangers to the house in question,' wanted to know' the import of certain circumstances described in the signed statements of some eight competent witnesses, which had led, not merely to the designation haunted," but-far more convincing-to the evacuation of the house at the end of a few weeks by tenants who had paid a handsome rent for house, grounds, shooting moor, and salmon river, for a year. Lord Bute wanted to know,' to the extent of spending a good deal of money, and his co-editor to the extent of spending a good deal of time, and the book relates the result of this combined expenditure, in the form of a journal embodying the signed testimony of seventeen capable witnesses, in addition to that of the Editors, together with the evidence unsigned, but given in the presence of several persons and carefully recorded, of fourteen more, including nine servants.

The late proprietor had in 1892, some five years earlier, declined to allow Lord Bute to investigate. The tenancy was undertaken by Colonel H--, and, after his resignation, by Colonel Le Mesurier Taylor, late Professor of Tactics at Sandhurst, and, like the Editors, a member of the Society for Psychical Research. He resided at B House during

a considerable portion of the enquiry, in which his special share was that of experiment as to possible normal causes. An additional reason for silence as to the object of the tenancy lay in the desire not to forewarn any person who might be concerned,

as some one had alleged, in deliberately producing the phenomena. Only one of all the witnesses (one of two who preferred to suppress their contributions to the journal) was of opinion that human agency was concerned, but nevertheless much enquiry and experiment was from the first carefully directed towards the possibilities of practical joking. A joke which persists for over a quarter of a century would itself be a psychological phenomenon worthy of investigation, and even if, as is not unfrequently the case in practical jokes, it were dictated rather by malice than by jocularity, one would have to suppose a state of ill-feeling somewhat widely distributed, for the victims known to the Editors and exclusive of the S family, their visitors, and friends, num

bered close upon fifty persons.

This computation of over twenty-five years as the duration of the disturbances, takes into account that period only as to which first hand evidence had been obtained, and passes over not only many rumours in the neighbourhood, but also the published statement of Dr. Monzies, an old friend of the S— family, that B House was said to be haunted at the time of Major S's succession to the property in 1844. It is of course natural that the journal kept during Colonel Taylor's tenancy, containing as it does the signed evidence of seventeen persons in addition to that of the Editors, should attract more interest than the scattered and less consecutive records of earlier witnesses, but in estimating the value of the evidence this should not be left out of account, as has been the case in many notices of the book, for without these records it is of course obvious that the house would never have been taken for purposes of investigation, and they are in fact the pièces justificatifs of the enquiry.

From motives of courtesy, the Editors have voluntarily suppressed the evidence of the family of the proprietors, as it ceased to be fairly admissible when an anonymous member of the staff of The Times, writing in that journal, betrayed not only much private information as to the experience of the guests, (of whom he was one for some forty-eight hours) but also the locality of the house*, and the name of its owner, facts which the Editors

* Which is not Falkland in Fifeshire, as alleged in The Daily News.

had never intended to disclose. The correctness of his details, so far as places and names were concerned, were unfortunately admitted in print, by the S-- family themselves. The prejournal period, however, as to which their information would have been especially valuable, is abundantly described in ten signed statements, some of considerable length. Quotations are also made from information derived from five servants of the S-family. However, as many persons dismiss servants evidence as 'meré servant-hall gossip,' stress has not been laid upon their narratives. But in the present instance, and in that of nine servants during Colonel Taylor's occupancy, this group of witnesses includes some of the most hardened sceptics among the party. Upon the abstract value of servants' evidence opinions may differ. The acceptance of wages need not imply a disregard for truth, and inferior education is often the condition of superior powers of observation. Incapacity for accurate deduction is not peculiar to the working-classes, and in the present instance would not signify, as they were asked to contribute, not opinions, but facts. The worst that can be said is, that they follow and support each other, and that the statement of twenty should count only as one. Perhaps such of us who have had much argument and discussion with the intelligent working classes, especially in Scotland, might express a different view as to the ease with which they may be persuaded, contrary to the convictions they entertain!

For the mere seeker after the marvellous, the pre-journal period has perhaps more of interest than the later months, especially so far as the tenancy of the H—— family is concerned. Bangs upon bed-room doors, as if,' says Major B, a guest of the H——'s, 'a very strong man were hitting the panels as hard as ever he could hit,' were common to both periods; so too was the cracking, vibrating batter against the door,' described by another guest, a distinguished lady novelist; so also was the thud against the lower panels as if a big dog had fallen heavily on to the mat, which disconcerted a Jesuit priest in 1892, and these facts are recorded in almost similar terms by many witnesses who had not heard each other's testimony, and had had no opportunity of comparing notes; for the collection of earlier