A STRANGE STORY. TO WHICH IS ADDED, THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERS. BY EDWARD BULWER LYTTON (_LORD LYTTON_.) "To doubt and to be astonished is to recognize our ignorance. Hence it is that the lover of wisdom is in a certain sort a lover of mythi [Greek: phylomythos pôs], for the subject of mythi is the astonishing and marvellous."--SIR W. HAMILTON (after Aristotle), _Lectures on Metaphysics_, vol. i. p. 78. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 1897. THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERS; OR, THE HOUSE AND THE BRAIN. * * * * * A friend of mine, who is a man of letters and a philosopher, said to me one day, as if between jest and earnest, "Fancy! since we last met I have discovered a haunted house in the midst of London." "Really haunted,--and by what?--ghosts?" "Well, I can't answer that question; all I know is this: six weeks ago my wife and I were in search of a furnished apartment. Passing a quiet street, we saw on the window of one of the houses a bill, 'Apartments, Furnished.' The situation suited us; we entered the house, liked the rooms, engaged them by the week,--and left them the third day. No power on earth could have reconciled my wife to stay longer; and I don't wonder at it." "What did you see?" "Excuse me; I have no desire to be ridiculed as a superstitious dreamer,--nor, on the other hand, could I ask you to accept on my affirmation what you would hold to be incredible without the evidence of your own senses. Let me only say this, it was not so much what we saw or heard (in which you might fairly suppose that we were the dupes of our own excited fancy, or the victims of imposture in others) that drove us away, as it was an undefinable terror which seized both of us whenever we passed by the door of a certain unfurnished room, in which we neither saw nor heard anything. And the strangest marvel of all was, that for once in my life I agreed with my wife, silly woman though she be,--and allowed, after the third night, that it was impossible to stay a fourth in that house. Accordingly, on the fourth morning I summoned the woman who kept the house and attended on us, and told her that the rooms did not quite suit us, and we would not stay out our week." She said dryly, "I know why; you have stayed longer than any other lodger. Few ever stayed a second night; none before you a third. But I take it they have been very kind to you." "'They,--who?' I asked, affecting to smile.