"_June 10th._--If the noises complained of by nearly all who have
stayed at B---- were the result of practical jokes perpetrated by the
H----s, how is it that not only were they heard by guests who stayed
there years ago, but are admitted by members of the S---- family to
have been heard by themselves? Miss Freer also has told me, that the
same noises were heard at all hours day and night by herself and her
guests for months after the H---- family and their servants had left
Scotland. This so completely exonerates them from the absurd charge,
that I should hardly have mentioned it, had not Miss Freer seemed
quite under the impression that practical jokes had been played during
the tenancy of the H----s; and as a proof of this, she told me that
the doors, especially of two of the rooms, were marked with nailed
boots, and the panels even split through, and this damage was
attributed by her to the younger members of the H---- family. I am
happy to say I was able to disabuse her mind of this idea, as we were
staying at B---- within a few days of their leaving Scotland, and I
had most carefully examined the doors especially of the two rooms
specified, one of which was our own room. There was not a scratch, nor
the smallest mark or indentation; others can also vouch for this fact.
The H----s had all left B---- for good at that time, except the
eldest son, and Miss Freer agreed with me that whatever damage was
done to the doors, must therefore have been done after the H----s
left, and before her party came in.... The hot-water pipe theory
revived by the writer of the article in _The Times_ is disproved by
Miss Freer, who told me that the hot-water apparatus was not used for
some time, and that the disturbances continued just the same.... The
stories told in connection with B---- were not circulated or started
by the H---- family. They were told _to_ them by persons living around
B----."
In a letter to Miss Freer, dated June 12th, Mrs. "G." writes, in
reference to the charge of practical joking:--
"They are the most unlikely family to do such a thing; and besides, if
further proof were wanted, the young men of the family were away from
B---- when we stayed there ten days, and there was only one night when
we did not hear the noises."
Miss Freer of course entirely accepts Mrs. "G.'s" statement, and that
of Mr. H---- as published in _The Times_. She had been led to her
earlier conclusions as to the marks of a boot-heel on the upper panels
of the doors by the statements of interested persons.
A suggestive point in this connection is the fact, to which Miss "G."
has herself testified, that while Mr. and Mrs. "G." were disturbed to
the utmost degree, their daughter, who slept in a room communicating
with that of her mother, heard nothing whatever; from which it would
appear that the noises heard by them were subjective, and that the
alleged evidence of the boot-heel, even were it credible, would be, in
fact, irrelevant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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