Priestley’s explanation of the Epworth disturbances is imposture by the servants, by way of a practical joke. Coleridge, on the other hand, says that “all these stories, and I could produce fifty cases at least equally well authenticated, and, as far as the veracity of the narrators, and the single fact of their having seen and heard such and such sights or sounds, above all rational scepticism, are as much like one another as the symptoms of the same disease in different patients.” It is a pity that Coleridge did not produce his fifty well-authenticated examples. The similarity of the narratives everywhere, all the world over, is exactly what makes them interesting. Coleridge goes on: “This indeed I take to be the true and only solution—a contagious nervous disease, the acme, or intensest form of which is catalepsy” (Southey’s _Wesley_, vol. i. p. 14, Coleridge’s note). If there be such a contagious nervous disease, it is a very remarkable malady, and well worth examining. The Wesleys were not alarmed; they bantered the spirit; they wished they could set him to work; and beyond the trembling of the children when Jeffrey was knocking during their sleep, there is no sign of morbid conditions. A neighbouring clergyman, who was asked to pass a night in the house, saw and heard just what the others heard and saw.[39] The hypothesis of a contagious nervous disease, in which every witness exhibits the same symptoms of illusion in all parts of the world, is a theory which needs a good deal of verification. Where material traces of the disturbances remain, it is absurd to speak of contagious hallucinations. We must fall back on the hypothesis of trickery, or must say with Southey, “Such things may be preternatural, yet not miraculous; they may not be in the ordinary course of nature, yet imply no alteration of its laws.” Any theory is more plausible than the idea that Mr. Wesley and Mr. Hoole were in a state bordering on catalepsy. Believers in hypnotism may think it possible that this, that, and the other persons, if they submitted themselves to hypnotic influences, might have the same hallucinations suggested to them. But there is no evidence, in the Epworth case nor in the Rerrick case, of any such matter. “So far as we yet know, sensory hallucination of several persons together, _who are not in a hypnotic state_, is a rare phenomenon, and therefore not a probable explanation” (_Proc. S. P. R._, iv. 62). There is some evidence that epileptic patients suffer from the same illusions—for example, the presence of a woman in a red cloak; and in _delirium tremens_ the “horrors” are usually similar. But that all the persons who enter a given house should be impressed by the same material illusions, as of chairs and tables, and even beds (like Nancy Wesley’s) flying about, is a theory more incredible than the hypothesis either of trickery