EVERYBODY has heard of haunted houses; and there is no country, and scarcely any place, in which something of the sort is not known or talked of; and I suppose there is no one who, in the course of their travels, has not seen very respectable, good-looking houses shut up and uninhabited, because they had this evil reputation assigned to them. I have seen several such, for my own part; and it is remarkable that this _mala fama_ does not always, by any means, attach itself to buildings one would imagine most obnoxious to such a suspicion. For example, I never heard of a ghost being seen or heard in Haddon hall, the most ghostly of houses; nor in many other antique, mysterious-looking buildings, where one might expect them, while sometimes a house of a very prosaic aspect remains uninhabited, and is ultimately allowed to fall to ruin, for no other reason, we are told, than that nobody can live in it. I remember, in my childhood, such a house in Kent—I think it was on the road between Maidstone and Tunbridge—which had this reputation. There was nothing dismal about it: it was neither large nor old, and it stood on the borders of a well-frequented road; yet I was assured it had stood empty for years; and as long as I lived in that part of the country it never had an inhabitant, and I believe was finally pulled down—and all for no other reason than that it was haunted, and nobody could live in it. I have frequently heard of people, while travelling on the continent, getting into houses at a rent so low as to surprise them, and I have, moreover, frequently heard of very strange things occurring while they were there. I remember, for instance, a family of the name of S—— S——, who obtained a very handsome house at a most agreeably cheap rate, somewhere on the coast of Italy—I think it was at Mola de Gaeta. They lived very comfortably in it till one day, while Mrs. S—— S—— was sitting in the drawing-room, which opened into a balcony overhanging the sea, she saw a lady dressed in white pass along before the windows, which were all closed. Concluding it was one of her daughters, who had been accidentally shut out, she arose and opened the window, to allow her to enter; but on looking out, to her amazement there was nobody there, although there was no possible escape from the balcony unless by jumping into the sea! On mentioning this circumstance to somebody in the neighborhood, they were told that “that was the reason they had the house so cheap: nobody liked to live in it.”