_March 16th, Tuesday._--Miss Moore, Miss Langton, the Colonel, and I, left B----. Miss Moore, Miss Langton, and I returning on March 20th. After leaving B---- Colonel Taylor wrote as follows to Lord Bute:-- _March 19th, 1897._--"I arrived in London yesterday, after having spent five weeks at B---- very pleasantly. I feel sure that there _is_ a ghostly influence pervading the house, but I am a little disappointed at the way in which it manifests itself, for, up to the time I left, the nature of the manifestations was such that, though it is satisfactory to me, it would not be so, I think, to those who do not look at such things from so favourable a position as I do. "I hope a change may yet come, and things take place which one might think would justify people in evacuating and forfeiting their money as the H----s did; certainly nothing of this sort happened while I was there. "It is very interesting to note Miss Freer's experiences, but in regard to those of others who have something to relate, it is perhaps difficult to determine how much these statements should be discounted for error of observation and self-suggestion. I heard many noises in the night during my stay at B----, but they were of much the same sort I have been accustomed to hear at a similar time in other houses. I think that some of our witnesses may have given them undue prominence, under the influence of their own expectancy. The clairvoyant visions of 'Ishbel' in the grounds are not of great evidential value for the scientific world in general, and I think that any amount of 'voices' could be read into the noises of the running stream, near where she is seen, by those who 'wished to hear.' Still, there are some objective noises which cannot be easily accounted for in an ordinary way, and the three almost independent visions of the brown cross are important. "I hope things will improve; in any case, you will have added considerably to psychical research when all has been recorded...." It is difficult perhaps to see why Colonel Taylor should regard the independent visions of the crucifix as of more value than the equally independent and far more numerous hallucinations, audible and visual, of "Ishbel." We have the statements of the failure of several persons who "wished to hear" voices in the sounds of the burn, which was, moreover, frozen and silent when the voices were heard by the first two non-expectant and quite independent witnesses. _March 19th._--A passage in Miss Langton's private journal under this date is as follows:--