The truth, which lies at the bottom of all such appearances, is probably, that ghostly disturbances are uniformly the acts of men, but of men who have ceased for a time to be free agents, and who have, for reasons to be explained presently, acquired exceptional powers. Thus, a famous jurist, Counselor Hellfeld, in Jena, was one evening on the point of signing the death warrant of a cavalry soldier. The subject had deeply agitated his mind for days, and before seizing his pen, he invoked, as was his custom in such cases, the "aid of the Almighty through His holy spirit." At that moment--it was an hour before midnight--he hears heavy blows fall upon his window, which sound as if the panes were struck with a riding-whip. His clerk also hears the blows distinctly, and begins to tremble violently. This apparent accident induces the judge to delay his action; he devotes the next day to a careful re-perusal of the evidence, and is now led to the conviction that the crime deserves only a minor punishment. Ere the year has closed, another criminal is caught, and volunteers the confession that he was the perpetrator of the crime for which the soldier was punished. In that solemn moment, it was, of course, only the judge's own mind, deeply moved and worn out by painful work, which warned him in a symbolic manner not to be precipitate, and the very fact that the blows sounded as if they had been produced by a whip proved his unconscious association of the noise with the cavalry soldier. And yet he and his clerk believed and solemnly affirmed, that they had heard the mysterious blows! This dualism, which, as it were, divides man into two beings, one of whom follows and watches the other, while both are unconscious of their identity, is the magic element in these phenomena. This unconsciousness, proving--as in dreams--the inactivity of our reason, produces the natural effect, that we fancy all ghostly appearances are foolish, wanton and wicked. The fact is, moreover that they almost always proceed from a more or less diseased or disturbed mind, and acquire importance only in so far as it is our duty here also to eliminate truth from error. Thus only can we hope to counteract their mischievous tendency, and to prevent still stronger delusions from obtaining a mastery over weak minds. This is the purpose of a club formed in London in 1869, the members of which find amusement and useful employment in investigating all cases of haunted houses and other ghostly appearances.