Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1873-06-05

sea and sky, there were two sloped ears as
Enthusiastically assinine as l felt myself al
the moment When | went to the win
dow (which before l felt unable to ap
proach) | saw that several stray donkeys
were wandering through the front gar
dens of the row of houses to which my
lodgings belonged. It is possible that the
inquisitive gentleman who had looked in
at my window was attracted by the flap
ping curtain, which he may have taken
for something edible. off So" l re
marked to L4yself, "two of your kind
would have been deceived tonight
1t would be easy to fill page after page
with the details of the various ideas en-
tertained about ghosts, COLLINS and de
mons. Such ideas extend not only to the
appearance of such beings, their apparel
their appurtenances, and 50 on, but to the
noises which they make either of them
selves or by means of various supernatural
objects which they are supposed to carry
about with them Thus:
The sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets
little ere the mightest Julius fell.
And it is to be noted that as ghosts com
monty show no face, so few have been
known to speak with full voice. This may
be because the noises heard at the hours
when ghosts are seen, are not such as can
be by any possibility mistaken for the hui
man voice in its ordinary tones, while
nevertheless, an excited Imagination can
frame spoken words out of the strange
sounds which can be heard in almost
every house in the stiffness of night. This
also serves to account for the notion that
ghosts can clank chains, or make other
dismal noises Sounds heard at night are
highly deceptive; small noise close by is
taken for loud noise at distance mot
necessarily very great distance); and a
noise made by objects of one kind will be
mistaken for noises made by OBJ
jects of a different kind altogether. A
friend of mine told me he had been dis
turbed two nights running by sound as
of an army tramping down road which
passed some 200 yards from his house; he
found the third night q had suggested an
experimental test as to the place where the
sound came) that the noise was produced
by clock in the next house, the clock
having been newly placed against the par
ty wall. We all know Carlyle's story of
the ghOstly voice heard each evening by
the low-spirited mana voice as of one, in
like doleful dumps proclaiming, "Once |
was hap-hap-happy, but now l am meeser-
able"-and how the ghost resolved itself
into a rusty kitchen jack There is a case
of lady who began to think herself the
victim of some delu,ion, and perhaps
threatened by approaching Illness because
each night, about a quarter of an hour af-
ter she had gone to bed, she heard a hide
Gus din in the neighborhood Of her house,
or else (she was uncertain which) in some
distant room The noise was in reality
the slightest possible creak (within few
feet Of her pillow, however,, and produced
by the door of a wardrobe which she clos
ed every night just before getting into bed.
The door, about quarter Of an hour after
being closed, recovered its position of rest,
slightly beyond which it had been pushed
in closing. In another case the crawling
of snail across a window produced
sounds which were mistaken for the strains
of loud but distant musfc.-CornhWM aga-