they usually receive credit for; whereas if a ghost is actually in view, there is no reason why beasts should not see it. The best and most valid proof that an abnormal being is actually present was that devised by the ghost of Sir Richard of Coldinghame in the ballad, and by the Beresford ghost, who threw a heavy curtain over the bed-pole. Unluckily, Sir Richard is a poetical figment, and the Beresford ghost is a myth, like William Tell: he may be traced back through various mediaeval authorities almost to the date of the Norman Conquest. We have examined the story in a little book of folklore, Etudes Traditionistes. Always there is a compact to appear, always the ghost burns or injures the hand or wrist of the spectator. A version occurs in William of Malmesbury. What we need, to prove a ghost, and disprove an _exclusively_ telepathic theory, is a ghost who is not only seen, heard, or even touched, but a ghost who produces some change in physical objects. Most provokingly, there are agencies at every successful seance, and in every affair of the Poltergeist, who do lift tables, chairs, beds, bookcases, candles, and so forth, while others play accordions. But then nobody or not everybody _sees_ these agencies at work, while the spontaneous phantasms which are _seen_ do not so much as lift a loo-table, generally speaking. In the spiritualistic cases, we have the effect, with no visible cause; in ghost stories, we have the visible presence, but he very seldom indeed causes any physical change in any object. No ghost who does not do this has any strict legal claim to be regarded as other than a telepathic hallucination at best, though, as we shall see, some presumptions exist in favour of some ghosts being real entities. These rare facts have not escaped a ghost-hunter so intelligent as Mrs. Henry Sidgwick. This lady is almost too sportsmanlike, for a psychical researcher, in her habit of giving an apparition the benefit of every imaginable doubt which may absolve him from the charge of being a real genuine ghost. 'It is true,' she says, 'that ghosts are alleged sometimes to produce a physical effect on the external world;' but to admit this is 'to come into prima facie collision with the physical sciences' (an awful risk to run), so Mrs. Sidgwick, in a rather cavalier manner leaves ghosts who produce physical effects to be dealt with among the phenomena alleged to occur at seances. Now this is hardly fair to the spontaneous apparition, who is doing his very best to demonstrate his existence in the only convincing way. The phenomena of seances are looked on with deserved distrust, and, generally, may be regarded as an outworn mode of swindling. Yet it is to this society that Mrs. Sidgwick relegates the most meritorious and conscientious class of apparitions.