The Irish standard., 1913-01-25

every facility for spending d night in
the haunted rooms, but tnYt, owing
to u change of plans, l was unable,
ultimately, to accept his imitation.
Tragic Incidents.
''Two very curious sets of facts were
related to me. The first concerned the
rather tragic events that had taken
place in the old presbytery; a priest
had fallen from one of the windows
and had been taken up dead; a sa-
cristan had been found dead at the
foot of one of the staircases. Yet,
strange enough, none OF the sights
eventually seen in the house seemed
to have any connection whatever With
these happenings. The seeond set of
facts Was as follows U can only re-
member at this distance Of time a few
Of the incidents, and see not even
these in their right order):
1.-Two young assistant priests, arriv-
iEg together, and being Informed OF
the current reputation of the old house
laughed the whole affair. to scorn, and
insisted on sleeping upstairs il the
disuscd rooms. a partition, not SO
high as the ceiling separated one from
the other On the following morning
they requested that their beds might
be moved to the new presbytery, since
for no consideration in the. world
would they sleep in the old house
again. They had passed, they said, an
appalling night of terror; there We're
continual movements about them and
in the air; there were llnockings and
low voices talking. One OF the two,
e day or two later, brought to the
house, in the daytime, his own con-
fessor, a monk, and sent him upstairs
turned, completely self controlled, and
related how ON coming into the front
room he had seen Immediately FIR. A.
E., the late rector of the mission,
seated by the window and saying his
eftite, his figure presently vanished.
is sinteresti tiSg to note F'rss A.. III was
not the priest who had fallen from
the window, but had died ur;ctly il his
!,ed.'
The author tells us of Il haunted
church and presbytery near Liverpool.
One instance proved rather more
amusing than otherwise, for the priest
relnar]ling to his housekecper that at
any rate the ghosts had not begun to
throw the crockery in his house about,
suddenly stopped as he saw q cup de-
tach itself from the hool: ON which
it rested ON the plate shelf and ap-
parently throw itself to the floor with
out breaking!
Again. goes on Mgr. Benson, 1.-The
very house ] am inhabitins at this
moment has recently begun to justify
it's rustic reputation. When ! acquired
the place four or five years ago I
slept each night in it for about two
years in a srnallish bedroom at the
top of the stairs ON tho first floor,
One or two small incidents happened
cn which ! lay 10 stress; these are
easily explicablc on natural grounds
IT, such matters as wholly negligible
either way, since ] have long ago
c;.lnc to the conclusion that I do not
possess the faculty, whatever it he
for perceiving with my senses prefer
natural phenomena. Since that date
when the room became a. guest cham
ber, it has three times Altogether as
serted itself in these ways" The
ghostly visitations. included q tall old
woman, during whose presence the oc-
cupant Of the room could neither
move nor speak; ghostly footsteps, the
rafting of the handle, the entrance Of
something that could not b. seen, etc.
Theory.
In concluding his article Mgr. Ben
son gives three theories that are put
forward il explanation of tn. phenom-
ena; the first (the common oae), that
Of the discmbodied spirit visiting the
scene of a. former crime or sin. though
as the author points out it is not al
ways the supposed criminal who "re-
turns" but often the victim, a fact
which makes the theory a little diff
cult; the second is that the phcnome-
ma are due to past violent emotion
which has saturated the physical sur
roundings, just as the musical sound
saturatc the sramoplone record, and
j., is felt by a nature peculiarly sensitive
tc such emotions: and the third (that
Of the Thcosophists) that the human
; body has an astral envelope which
is released at death and il SINE cases
retains kind of quasi life. but one
thing" concluded Mgr. Benson, "at