“She had never gathered from the Scriptures that beasts had souls--what then was this phantom of a dog? “I suggested it might be a Poltergeist or Elemental, one of those purely bestial creations that for various reasons which you explained at your recent lecture--always haunt certain localities?” “Yes!” I said, interrupting Miss Medley, “the sub-animal type of elemental is fairly common--if you refer to the June number 1908 of the magazine published by the Society for Psychical Research you will see an extremely well authenticated case of the haunting of a village by a white pig with an abnormally long snout and I could enumerate many other similar instances. But continue!” “My aunt,” Miss Medley went on, “informed me that the house had once been occupied by a lady who had lived a very selfish--not to say sensual life. She had settled down at Burle, after having been divorced twice, and her weekly routine was one incessant whirl of pleasure. “She died without the consolation of the Church, surrounded by a crowd of fawning money-hunters and over-gorged poodles, so that for this, as well as other reasons I think there may be an alternative solution to the haunting. Is it not possible that what I saw was actually the spirit of this worldly woman, which thoroughly brutalised by long indulgence in sensuality had gradually adapted that shape most befitting IT.” “And the moral of that, Miss Medley,” I observed, “is--if you do not wish to become a beast do not live like one! Yes! there is much to be learned from a study of the different types of phantasms--more I believe than from any pulpit discourses. Is that your only psychic experience?” Miss Medley shook her head. “No!” she said, “I had another very gruesome one at Burle. After the dog episode my aunt thought fit to warn me not to pass along a certain road after dusk. ‘There is an elm standing close to it,’ she said, ‘which the people about here declare to be haunted; as you have seen one ghost you may see another--so please be careful!’ “Now you might think that after such a disagreeable experience I would have followed my aunt’s advice, but curiosity getting the better of discretion I disobeyed her and, selecting a fine evening for the enterprise, set out to the tree. “As it was two or three miles away, and I was dearly fond of riding, I hired a horse and going along at a jog-trot approached the forbidden spot at about eight o’clock. “The lane in which the haunted elm stood was narrow, trees of all sorts and sizes lined it on either side, and the shadows, intensified by the thickness of the foliage overhead, almost obliterated the roadway. “All was dark and silent. I no longer wondered at the villagers fighting shy of such a place; it looked a positive cock-pit of spookdom.