There was something in the atmosphere of the neighborhood that urged all the inhabitants on to crime. The family life was a hell on earth. The place was obsessed by the Devil and accursed of God. A village will acquire a character of its own. It is claimed that all the evil thoughts of all the vicious inhabitants of a vile place will linger in the surrounding atmosphere for years and exercise a baneful influence on all who dwell there. In the Devil’s Half Acre you could not take a step without treading on the crimson stain of a reeking crime. The spooks were and are now as thick as Tophet there; the place is haunted by ghosts and fiends unholy in Death and Hell bedight. It was the obsession of the place by the powers of evil that attracted to it all the notorious criminals. The next spook to pollute the atmosphere was that of Mr. D. who, when on earth, was engaged in the banking business. In his left hand he carried a jimmy and in his right a gun, and he was peering here and there looking for a safe to crack or a cashier to shoot up. He was floating through the air at a height of about ten feet, and on his forehead blazed the blood-red mark of Cain, and his black aura was lighted by the fires of Tophet. When in life he lived in the house across the road. From this house also emerged a ghost with a halter around its neck. It was there with the halter he had swung himself over the battlements of time and dropped into eternity. The vicious influence of this house was irresistible. It is well to know this law of thought obsession and avoid these accursed places. The next spirit to make its appearance was my old friend Mr. E. who came from walking up and down in the earth trying to sell the girl he led by the hand. He was still on his uppers as usual, as I could see by the ragged condition of his astral body. The accompanying aura of a slate-green hue, embellished with dull-red flames, indicated a low, deceitful and sensual character. He stopped and, looking me over, said: “I remember you. Don’t you want to buy my wife here again? She is in good condition now. I admit that I cheated you forty years ago when I sold her to you for fifty cents, but now in the astral world she is a vision of youth and beauty.” Then came the ghost of Mr. F., a Sunday School teacher, who operated on a class of young ladies in the vestry of the church, that time-worn vestry, that well-beloved vestry, where the foundations of their philosophy were laid. A very genial, loving gentleman he was too, but his scholars being exceedingly frivolous, he found it necessary, in order to impress upon them the Divine truths, to pat them on the knees and sort of instil religion into them by the massage process. He has found his heaven. He appeared on the astral, surrounded, embraced and beloved by that same dazzling galaxy of beauties, now a star-crowned angel band.