The most peculiar occurrences, however, were the antics of certain keys
belonging to doors in the house. "The door of the front bedroom was
often found locked, and the key would disappear." The doctor kept his
eye on the key and presently saw it move round, locking the door, and
then "he saw the last of the key disappearing through the hole." At
another time the lady of the house, her children, and the maid were
locked in for some hours. "The key would be kept away for days; then it
would suddenly appear. One day it was found in Mrs Macdonald's lap; once
it was quietly laid on the doctor's head," and so forth. On one occasion
when the key was not given up the doctor called out: "Won't you send us
down the key before we go?" They were passing down the stairs and,
before they reached the bottom, the key was gently dropped on the
doctor's head. The most careful observations failed to discover the
known means by which the feats could be accomplished. The evidence of
the intelligence and of the mischievous disposition of these uncanny
tricksters was borne out by sounds of dancing being heard outside the
door just afterwards.
"The possible non-ghostly explanations," says Mrs Sidgwick, "of what
pass as ghostly phenomena may be conveniently classed with reference to
the various sorts of error by which the evidence to such phenomena is
liable to be affected. I should state these as (1) hoaxing, (2)
exaggeration or inadequate description, (3) illusion, (4) mistaken
identity, (5) hallucination.... I think, however, that anyone who has
read the evidence will at once discard the first of these alternatives
so far as the great mass of the first-hand narratives is concerned."
There are not a few cases, however, where the ghostly manifestations
have been found to be due to human agency. The following instance was
brought to my notice by a well-known firm of estate agents at Tunbridge
Wells:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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